Dolores Huerta is a civil rights activist and community organizer who has worked for labor rights and social justice for over 50 years. In 1962, she and Cesar Chavez founded the United Farm Workers union. She served as Vice President and played a critical role in many of the union’s accomplishments for four decades. In 2002, she received the Puffin/Nation $100,000 prize for Creative Citizenship which she used to establish the Dolores Huerta Foundation (DHF). DHF is connecting groundbreaking community-based organizing to state and national movements to register and educate voters; advocate for education reform; bring about infrastructure improvements in low-income communities; advocate for greater equality for the LGBT community; and create strong leadership development. She has received numerous awards: among them The Eleanor Roosevelt Humans Rights Award from President Clinton in 1998. In 2012 President Obama bestowed Dolores with The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. Dolores is also a board member of the Feminist Majority Foundation.
Katherine (Kathy) Spillar is the Executive Director of Feminist Majority Foundation and Feminist Majority, national organizations working for women’s equality, empowerment and non-violence; one of the founders, she has been a driving force in executing the organizations’ diverse programs securing women’s rights both domestically and globally since its inception in 1987. She is also the Executive Editor of Ms. and editor of and contributor to 50 Years of Ms: The Best of the Pathfinding Magazine that Ignited a Revolution. Under her oversight, Ms. has increased its investigative reporting and in-depth analysis and today is the largest print and online feminist platform—reaching millions from across the globe via the quarterly print magazine, a vibrant and popular website, a robust daily and weekly e-newsletter mailing list, social media, the innovative digital textbook resource Ms. Classroom and audio and video programming from Ms. Studios.
Ashley Steimer-King is the Senior Program Director of Girls Learn International, a project of the Feminist Majority Foundation. Ashley graduated with an M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Roehampton University in London, completing her thesis on gender-based violence and grassroots feminist protest. She previously worked with several NGOs in their United Nations offices, training middle and high school students on international human rights learning and advocacy. Ms. Steimer-King is proud to lead the team in delivering year-round programming for GLI’s middle and high school student activists.
The Pad Project was started in 2013 by a youth-driven community of students and educators convinced that menstruation matters for everyone. What began as a documentary film project highlighting a single village has expanded to an organization with global reach. In 2019, that documentary film, Period. End of Sentence., won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short, and since then, The Pad Project has continued to grow. The Pad Project’s mission is to create and cultivate local and global partnerships to end period stigma and to empower women and all menstruators worldwide.
Girls Learn International (GLI), a program of the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF), is educating and energizing middle and high school students to boldly take action for human rights, gender equity, and access to education. With 190 active school-based Chapters across 28 U.S. states and 14 countries, GLI is training and mobilizing more than 5,000 young people ages 10-18. Together with student leaders, including the Student Advisory Board, GLI is building a movement of informed advocates and a new generation of leaders and activists for social change. The GLI program provides a student club framework and educational materials for students to learn about human rights, with a focus on the obstacles that girls and gender-expansive youth face in realizing their full rights, both in the U.S. and globally. The GLI Guidebook is one of the only study-to-action resources for peer-to-peer human rights learning designed to be used directly by students. GLI teaches leadership skills and provides opportunities for students to connect with a network of student advocates and leaders locally, nationally, and globally.
The Feminist Fight Forward: Lessons From 50 Years of Ms.
Since its earliest days, Ms. was a brazen act of independence, demonstrating the untapped potential for journalism that centered news and analysis on women and their lives. The very first issue flew off newsstands nationwide in 1972, selling out almost instantly, thus demonstrating the potential—and power—of making feminism more visible and accessible to the general public.
Fifty years later, that legacy still shines bright. Ms. remains a trusted feminist source for news, analysis and commentary, and a unique catalyst for forging community, elevating ideas and inspiring action.
How best to commemorate all that Ms. means to generations of readers? With an extraordinary book, of course! 50 YEARS OF Ms.: THE BEST OF THE PATHFINDING MAGAZINE THAT IGNITED A REVOLUTION was released on Sept. 19 by Alfred A. Knopf.
It is a stunning collection: 500-plus pages of the most audacious, most norm-breaking coverage Ms. has published on women, men, politics (sexual and otherwise), marriage, family, education, work, motherhood, reproductive rights, LGBTQ lives, racial justice and so much more. The book is filled with the best of the magazine’s features and award-winning fiction and poetry.
Naturally, no Ms. anthology would be complete without highlights from the thousands of letters to Ms.that poured in over the years from women and men, girls and boys, from across the country and around the globe.
50 YEARS OF Ms. showcases it all, decade by decade, along with behind-the-scenes photographs that reveal and reflect the societal changes set in motion by Ms.—and, of course, the often startling, always iconic covers that galvanized readers. As it proudly features some of the most revolutionary writers and thinkers of the past half century, the book is as much a reflection on the era as it is a road map for the path forward.
Publishers Weekly calls 50 YEARS OF Ms. a “lively and inspiring look at the pioneering feminist periodical” that makes “a persuasive case for the magazine’s continued importance.”
The book’s release presents a remarkable opportunity for Ms. to travel the country and host vibrant, intergenerational conversations focused on tackling today’s most urgent challenges. Together with an array of partners and contributors, national and local, we will bring the stories and values of Ms. to communities nationwide—on college campuses, at independent bookstores and museums, and at cultural festivals and community venues. Please see our website, msmagazine.com/book, for an up-to-date listing of our entire fall 2023 book tour.
