Women's Voices Raised for Social Justice

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Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down Awards

May, 2008

to the North St. Louis YouthBuild program, which will receive an award from Focus St. Louis in May in the area of "providing quality educational opportunities." Ironically, this program, which provides educational opportunities as well as job training skills, will likely be discontinued next year because government funding has been withdrawn. For information about this innovative program, go to: www.friedensforever.org.

March, 2008

to both Democrats and Republicans in the Missouri legislature, who killed Phase I of Governor Matt Blunt's Insure Missouri program. While this proposal was not perfect, it would have enabled 54,000 low-income working parents to obtain health care coverage beginning in the middle of March.

January, 2008

To Ward Connerly, chair of the so-called "American Civil Rights Institute," who is backing and bankrolling an effort to get signatures on the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative, a proposed amendment to the Missouri Constitution. The proposal, under the guise of "civil rights," would actually end most affirmative-action programs in the state.

To all those who have exposed Connerly's intent to wage a racist campaign to strike down an important justice-making tool, and to all those who will decline to sign the petitions to get this issue on the 2008 ballot in Missouri.