Women on the Verge of Entrepreneurship by Lisa Duggan

Entrepreneurship - how sweet it is!

There’s nothing more exciting than the feeling of possibility, of knowing that something unique and new is about to be born. It’s the feeling we get at graduations and weddings, whether we’re standing on the dock waving off friends and family, or we’re the passengers on the ship that’s sailing away to the Big Next. 

Last week the Women Entrepreneur Festival at NYU’s ITP School was that ship — where I happily drank champagne from the top deck, along with 250 other fabulous women.

This is the 2^nd festival hosted by ITP, the brainchild of Nancy Hechinger, of the ITP faculty, and entrepreneur and angel investor Joanne Wilson, aka @TheGothamGal. The goal of this year’s festival was to continue its inaugural mission: “To sow the seeds for a community of women entrepreneurs in NYC”, and, “to expose women who have not yet taken the entrepreneurial leap — the pre-entrepreneurs — to the women who have.”

Venture Capital is the ultimate swag.

For a post-feminist-era, Generation XXer, who turned seven the year Title IX became law (and who cries a little too hard at women’s sports events) I’m still in awe of mass gatherings of smart, powerful women.  Beginning with the decidedly personal keynote by Arianna Huffington at the kick-off, to the inspiring poem read by ITP founder Red Burns at its conclusion, the festival delivered on its mission. WE was the place to rub elbows with women in all stages of entrepreneurship.

Arianna, Joanne Wilson, and Mary Schmidt Campbell, Dean of the Tisch School of the Arts.

What I found rare about the festival (besides hundreds of women gathered in one spot discussing the value of a different kind of Ruby) was its lack of the ubiquitous, self-deprecating, female framework that requires women to denigrate one aspect of themselves in order to boast about another. The WE Festival suggests a future world where girls are not Either/Or — smart or beautiful — but Both; where an interest in fashion and HTML are not mutually exclusive. A future where a great pair of heels doesn’t signal that you’re superficial, but super-savvy.

“Great shoes! Now, can you tell me where you found your web developer?”

This year the festival (not conference, it’s a celebration after all) focused on makers — knowledge makers, taste makers, change makers — and offered three morning and three afternoon sessions. Attendees were invited to circulate freely among the overlapping sessions, which many intended to do, but most women commented that they couldn’t tear themselves away from any panel. (Another rarity about WE — what’s the last conference you attended where you didn’t need Red Bull to stay awake for the afternoon program?) And no one dared miss the rousing and informative Investor Panel that concludes each festival, this year hosted by the incisive Janet T. Hanson, Founder and CEO of @85Broads. (Girls just want to have funds now, Cindy Lauper. Time to update our anthem.)

We’ve made tremendous progress between the time Gloria burned her bra and Brandi Chastain exposed hers. Women now have unprecedented access to the education and connections necessary to build companies that men used to inherit at birth, and which allowed them to dominate the economic field for so long. Greater access to Capital must be next, if we are to realize our dreams of ownership, innovation and leadership. The WE Festival points women in that direction by providing a place for investors and entrepreneurs to meet and mingle.

Winning!

And as my work focuses on parenthood, I’d add another critical component to our success as women entrepreneurs: childcare and eldercare. Women are still expected to assume the role of caregiver in heterosexual unions, even when their work is equally or more rigorous than their male partner’s. It’s difficult (but not impossible, as so many women have proven) to focus on innovation if you’re constantly worried about who’s greeting the 3 o’clock bus.

Reliable, affordable, sustainable, quality solutions to the caregiver dilemma — both from the private and public sector— are needed to allow women now, and our daughters later, to move forward with their ambitious plans. Encouraging men to consider becoming the full-time caregiver is one solution, i.e., proposing that your husband become a stay-at-home Dad, a route which an increasing number of dads are choosing.  A Parent-Fund is another: a tax-deductible savings account similar to a college fund, that’s to be drawn against when our sons and daughters ramp off for parenthood, and require funds for childcare, eldercare, continuing education or — to start a new business. (I'm waiting patiently for someone to create this investment vehicle…)

If you’re looking for more inspiration, I urge you to read through all 250 bios of the attendees found here and then read the list of speakers, panelists and moderators here.  But FIRST read my very brief list below (in no particular order) of some of the incredible women I met, learned from and laughed with at this year’s #WE. 

Their collective, infectious energy will keep me moving forward for months to come.

* * * * *

Ilysse Rimalovski is an ideator, collaborator, journalist, copywriter, coach and extra-lucky for me, a neighbor, who was happy to share the ride in from New Jersey. I first met Ilysse when she was presenting a new business idea in the health and wellness sector for our area. We’re now committed to meeting 1x month for support and inspiration for our respective business ideas. You can find Ilysee on Twitter @ThriveWell.

Katie Clegg is Founder & Chief Eating Officer of Foodiacs, whose tagline, Live Voraciously, I had tattooed on my butt this morning. Katie & company know that food is here to serve us, not the other way around.  Foodiacs is, “dedicated to connecting our members with gourmet food artisans and culinary tools and experiences.” Members enjoy exclusive information and access to exquisite food from around the country. Plus? She founded and runs the company with an ex-boyfriend — and they get along swimmingly. Keep your eye on Katie.

Amy-Willard Cross looks a little like Carrie Fisher (sane, young, Carrie Fisher with very cool eyeglasses) and has the hardboiled energy of Kate Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story. Which seems just about right, as she’s a journalist, world traveler and founder of Vitamin W, a curated news site where you can get your daily dose of “news, business and philanthropy for women.” You can also contribute to the advancement of women and girls everywhere through your Vitamin W membership. Vitamin W is, “100% Kardashian-free. Guaranteed.”

Nancy Rielle is the CEO and Co-Founder of VerveCards, maker of “ecards for savvy senders.” The idea for her company was born when her choice for a belated birthday e-card was reduced to, "This one doesn't totally suck.” I like their link-less format – the card appears on your screen immediately. I’ll be sending one to my cousin Louise today, in hopes that it will stop her from sending me a Jacquie Lawrence e-card ever again.

Sarah Chipps is a JavaScript developer and the founder of Girl Develop It which, “Teaches low cost web development classes geared towards women.” Sarah recently hosted a hack-a-thon for women that, she reports, smelled way better than one populated by her coding male-counterparts. During the Knowledge Makers panel I asked Sarah if she ran a summer coding-camp for my eight year old daughter. My question prompted the lovely Adda Birnir, founder of Balance Media, to lean over and hand me a deck of cards stamped Digital Divas, with a glossary of web technologies (so clever!) Digital Divas is, “an educational experiment whose goal is to make technology more accessible to everyone (especially the divas).” 

The indomitable Tereza Nemessanyi, aka @TerezaN, was also in attendance. Tereza is a WE alum and founder and CEO of Honestly Now, a Q&A gaming site that is quickly gaining users and popularity (warning: it's highly addictive!). I'm designing a bitchin' holster for Tereza, so she can carry her multiple mobile devices (two phones and a camera!) with style — and to thank her for connecting me with a potential partner on the spot, via said devices. (You can read more about how Tereza combines motherhood with entrepreneurship on The Parent du Jour, here.) 

I also got to meet, IRL, the amazing Whitney Johnson, president and co-founder of Rose Park Advisors. Prior to WE, we had only "met" online when Whitney asked me to guest-post on her Dare to Dream blog (which becomes a book, DARE-DREAM-DO: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream in May 2012) and I asked her to share her family with me, virtually, on The Parent du Jour. Whitney is a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review and a TEDx speaker. Follow her on twitter at @johnsonwhitney. 

Lastly, but certainly not least, a one-liner I tossed off to attendee and software engineer Véronique Brossier has become the name of her blog: Let Them Eat Code.  As technology continues to make more and greater opportunities for all 21st century entrepreneurial Divas, digital or not, that's excellent advice we all should take.

* Photo source: my own, or those captured from Twitter, at #WEFestival.

Check out The Parent du Jour, my 365 day web project, featuring mothers and fathers from around the world. It has been described as, "An online book being written one day, and one parent, at a time."Thanks! - Lisa D.

Our Children Would Be Safer If They Were Baby Seals Or Dolphins

Today's post was written by our new friend from the North, Maggie's Bear.

*Mr. Bear and I met the way people and animals usually meet. He followed me home on Twitter, then I fell in love with his blog. (And he was kind enough to contribute a profile to The Parent du Jour.)

MB is a rare find, and not just because he's a talking ursus arctos horriblis. Flip through the pages of his blog; you'll find informed commentary on everything from politics to parenting.

That's right, informed commentary. It's not extinct.

Here, he talks about how we put entertainment, politics, commerce — just about everything else — ahead of our children's safety and well being.

* * * * *

THERE ARE MANY ways to gauge the health of a society. The condition of its economy, the effectiveness of its political leadership, how united or divided the people are on the issues they face and so on. How a society treats its most vulnerable is probably the most accurate form of measure because it speaks to the heart of that society’s

There is no more vulnerable group in our global society than children and we aren’t measuring up.

I wrote yesterday about children in Greece being abandoned by their parents because of the tough economic conditions that country is facing. In Saudi Arabia, a man was arrested and charged for trying to sell his son on the Internet for $20 million and in Canada, a father and his wife and son are on trial, charged with the murder of the father’s three daughters and their aunt.

This isn’t something to be found only in developing countries, this lack of concern for the welfare of children is becoming endemic across all societies.

Yesterday, it was reported that an Occupy protester was arrested for leaving his baby in a tent in sub zero weather. Penn State is in the grip of a huge child sex abuse scandal and so many children go missing in North America, we’ve created a unique system called the Amber Alert just to try and recover them.

Pedophile porn rings abound on the Internet and children all over the world, some still infants, are routinely victimized and terribly abused so that some can make money feeding the sick perversions of others.

In 2005, the last year for which there are accurate statistics, there were 66,500 children reported missing in Canada alone, a country of only 35 million people.  In the United States, the number is almost 800,000. Globally, the number is in the millions although nobody really knows for sure just exactly what the true number is because some countries don’t track the statistics.

Four children die every day in the United States from abuse and there are proportionate numbers in other developed countries around the world.

These are children and they are at risk but what are we focused on? Based on what is being talked about online, and somewhat passionately and even stridently, we seem to be focused on everything but our children. 

There are those who send out tweets every day to save baby seals, dolphins or (insert mammal of choice). Others are intent on proving that the Republicans /Conservatives or the Democrats/Liberals are the agents of Satan and must be defeated or else we are on the Freeway to Hell.

Quite a few are committed to making fools of themselves with inane comments about their hair, their sex lives or the sex life they would like to have with another tweep while others are burning with the light of Jesus to save the world from an oil pipeline, greenhouse gas emissions and melting polar ice.

There are thousands of messages advertising how to make money online, how to increase your social network presence and about this new high tech toy or that.

The economy consumes many people while showing others how to profit and make money in this current economy is the mission of more than a few. Football, hockey, the UFC or (insert sport of choice) are the passion of those taking a break from whatever else they usually comment on.

Anonymous brags on the Internet about how it shut down a child porn ring and then moves on to its next grandstanding moment.

In between are countless quotes from famous dead people and the bible and while all this chatter goes on an average of more that 2000 children in North America alone will go missing that same day.

Yes, there are people who are concerned. Some devote their lives and their careers to doing something about it but most of our societies have other, more important priorities. A few people fire off a quick tweet donation to some mysterious website in support of abused children but then it’s back to the chatter.

I understand and appreciate that we can’t be talking about only this topic every day, all day. We live our lives to the best of our ability and we have many things that interest us, that we consider important and that we want to discuss and share with others.

But what I don’t understand is why the safety and care of our children isn't a priority. In fact, I question why it isn't even on the political agenda.

There isn’t one political candidate talking about this, not one PAC, lobby or community group, newspaper, television or radio station or political party putting pressure on government to address this problem. We’re more outraged and defensive about SOPA and the possibility of government imposing restrictions on the Internet than we are about what is happening to children…our children in our communities.

You can tell much about a society by its priorities and it’s clear that our society is more concerned with saving animals and the Internet than it is with saving our children. We've become more focused on proving our point, whatever it is, than we are with protecting the most vulnerable in our society. I'm not surprised, this is the same society that steps around the homeless while donating to protesters living in tents. Yesterday a baby was endangered thanks to the negligence of one of those protesters whose priorities were focused on something other than the welfare of his child.

Sadly that seems to say pretty much all you need to know about our values. It makes me wonder how we can ever hope to build a successful society on them.

© 2011 Maggie's Bear

All rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

The Caregiver's Dilemma by Lisa Duggan

  TheMamaFesto: @ motherhoodmag Same old same old : ) I'm in a weird space of "things seem ok" & waiting for the other shoe to drop LOL

motherhoodmag: TheMamaFesto I'm no longer waiting for the other shoe, that dropped a while ago—& some boots & sneakers. I'm going out to buy a shoe rack.

Today started like any other Monday.  The alarm clock rang, we cajoled the child from bed, somebody showered, and we were out the door by 8. After drop-off  I sat parked in the station lot, sipping my coffee and doing one of my favorite things — reading Twitter. I read a few links, reTweeted some others and caught up with my favorite blogs and virtual friends, including MamaFesto.

Oh, the world was still going to shit all around me — as NPR let me know — but for that half hour in my immediate little world, in the 5 x 5 space of the heated front seat, all was peaceful. Alice was in school, hubby was at the office and the babysitter was covering pick-up, giving me an extended workday. The next eight hours were mine.


But first there were all those dropped shoes to think about.

In the last year, on both sides of my and my husband's families, our parents have suffered extraordinary health problems that have required our attention, our time and increasingly our assistance.

Or rather, my attention, my time and my assistance.

As anyone doing the stay-at-home gig knows, much of the work we do is unquantifiable. It's not measured in hours, initiatives or projects completed as it's done in the corporate world, but in conversations — time spent talking about and listening to the needs of those we care for, and in taking the action necessary to provide that care. 

Which usually means more conversations — with doctors, appliance repair people, teachers, babysitters, landscapers. Anything that happens during the day, at the house, is our domain. So, in addition to making sure there are clean clothes and food for when people get home, I'm the one calling the insurance adjustor and the contractor when a freak storm takes out a piece of our carport.

In the case of our parents, it has meant numerous hospital visits,  arranging home-care, or waiting for a phone call telling the result of a scary test. It has meant signing one parent up for on-line bill-paying to make sure the property insurance gets paid (by me), and discussing end-of-life requests with the other. It has meant spending weekdays, and weekends, traveling back and forth to Staten Island and Queens.


All the while, I keep things moving. Lunches get made and homework is done and our own bills are paid, sometimes late, but they are. The Parent du Jour keeps chugging along (thanks in large part to Ms. @KDWald) and other friends help by taking my daughter for long playdates and sleepovers so I can catch up.  I cry in the shower or in the car, because there's no other time to process the emotional fallout of what's happening and because I don't want to frighten my little girl. 

It's been tough, (she said, in the understatement of the year), but I keep going. These are the most important people in the world to me; my daughter, my husband, my parents, my in-laws. They are the world, to me. The dilemma is not in finding the way to keep my commitments to them all, but to keep my mind on the clock. 

I may not like the way we're spending our time these days— solving problems or putting out fires, rather than taking trips or celebrating milestones — but that's not for me to say. 

Someday we'll all be gone. 

I want to go knowing I gave the people I love everything I had while we were still here, together.

A Pacifist Contemplates the Value of Conflict on Veterans Day by Lisa Duggan

This post has been removed by the author.

BLOG-IN! SPEAK OUT! Parents Send a Letter To Washington

* Today, across the web, bloggers will be simultaneously posting this letter as a new form of democratic protest called the Blog-In. I am just one of many. Click here to see a full list of the writers participating. (Our hashtag on Twitter is #BlogIn2011.)

You are invited to join, too. Simply copy & paste this letter on your blog, Facebook or Google+ page—and let your voice be heard.

Dear 2012 Presidential Candidates,

We are your future constituents and we are parents.

We are American mothers and fathers and grandparents and guardians. Our families might be the most diverse in the world. Blended and combined in endless permutations, we represent every major religion, political ideology and ethnic culture that exists. We are made from equal parts biology and choice. Our children come to us in every way possible—including fertility miracles, adoption, and remarriage.

Our very modern families embody the freedom that defines America. We embody America. We are rich in diversity, but we are united in our family values. We come together today, with one voice, to express our grave disappointment in the national political discourse.

The 2012 countdown has barely begun and we are already bombarded with the warmed-over, hypocritical rhetoric of 2008. We are living in a time where 15.1% of Americans now live in poverty, the unemployment rate stands at 16%, and we are spending close to $170 billion annually between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Given the current state of affairs we would expect every candidate to focus on the issues that truly matter: job creation, debt-relief, taxes, education, poverty, and ending the war(s). Instead, it is already clear to us that the conversation has been hijacked, with the goal of further polarizing our nation into a politically motivated and falsely created class-war.

We will not stand for another campaign year in which politicians presume to know what our family values are as they relate to the nation.

To be clear, here are our family values:

•  Affordable health care, including family planning, for all Americans. We will not tolerate any candidate using the shield of “Choice” to blind us from the issues that really matter. When funding is stripped from organizations like Planned Parenthood, access to sliding-scale health care (including yearly pap smears & mammograms), comprehensive sex education, and family planning is blocked from the poorest of the population.

•  Access to education, and the ability to actually use it. We want quality, affordable, federally-funded full-day, pre-K programs made available in every State, in order to provide an even starting point for all children enrolled in public schools— regardless of the wealth of the district or town they live in.

•  A reinstatement of regulations for banks issuing mortgages and full prosecution for those who engaged in fraud. We want full accountability —investigation, indictment and prosecution— of those individuals and financial institutions who engaged in fraudulent lending practices and who helped create the massive foreclosures that left many families homeless or struggling to keep their homes.

•  A return of strict environmental regulations protecting water, air, food, and land that were removed in the last two decades. We want our children to grow up in a world not weighed down by the strains of pollution and global warming. Between BPA in our products, sky-rocketing rates of asthma in kids, questionable hormones in our over-processed food, and more, we need leaders who will put our needs and safety over the desires and profits of large corporations.

Family planning, healthcare, education, economic solvency and environmental safety: these are our national family values.

Candidates who demonstrate the ability to understand the gravity of these issues, and their impact on our families, and who can provide actual, viable solutions to these problems will garner our support and our votes.

We believe in our democratic system, and we'll continue to use our voices and our votes to see that it reaches its fullest potential.

Sincerely,

Your future constituents,

The Mothers & Fathers of America

If you would like to forward this letter to your elected officials, you can find their contact info at the following links: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtm


To see who else is participating in #BlogIn2011, please click here.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


* On the origin of this letter.

It was directly after watching one of the Republican debates in October.
All I could think was: Not. Another. Year. Of. This. Bullshit.

I think it was when Rick Perry said something ridiculous about Planned Parenthood, or Michelle Bachman denounced vaccine science, or Mitt Romney's shiny hair painfully blinded me, just for a moment, and I stubbed my toe...but does it really matter which absurd moment of the debate triggered my pain and outrage?

My country, our country, is in serious, deep, trouble and these idiots offered nothing substantive for solving the problems before us. So I sat down to write the tirade that would become this letter. The original piece included sentences like this:

"[A]n administration that aided and abetted the corporate behemoths that dictate our fiscal policies as they robbed us blind; an administration that thoroughly gutted and dismantled the environmental and financial regulations that kept us safe and solvent, at their bequest."

With the help of a more reasonable and skilled writer, Ms. Avital Nathman, we uncovered the issues and values behind the outrage, and made a list of what should be discussed, what must be addressed — if we are to survive — and hammered them into this, this.... Blog-In.

The first of it's kind. (We think.)

Thanks for reading. Thanks for circulating the letter to your friends and family on Facebook, or  adding it to your own blog, even after today is done.

Thanks, to these beautiful bloggers, for posting along with us on Tuesday, November 8, 2011.

Thanks — to everyone participating — for believing that a small thing, like writing a letter, is important; for knowing that our voices matter, and for hoping that together, we can create meaningful change that delivers a better future to our children.

— Lisa Duggan

JOIN US NOVEMBER 8 FOR THE FIRST "BLOG-IN"

On NOVEMBER 8 2011, we launch the first ever Blog-In, a new form of democratic protest that honors the historical roots of the non-violent "sit-in", and the contemporary domestic and international occupiers of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

By simultaneously posting an open letter to the 2012 Presidential Candidates, we parent-bloggers intend to make known what we hold as our national family values — as opposed to the political rhetoric that is often dished out in a campaign year.

To learn more about the Blog-In, why it was created, by whom, and how you can participate, please click here:


The Mamafesto: Blog-in! Speak-out!

Parents For Occupy Wall Street or My Playdate with Democracy by Lisa Duggan

Parents For Occupy Wall Street, Friday October 21, 2011. Preparing for the
200+ playdate that began at 4pm at Zuccotti Park, New York City.

It started simply enough. Dana Glazer and I (Dana is the documentary filmmaker of The Evolution of Dad) were playing email-tag, trying to find a day to have lunch, when he wrote;

"Do you think there's a parenting angle to the protests currently going on at Wall Street? I'm itching to go down there with a camera but was thinking that maybe there's a mom / dad angle to this? What do you think?"

Not only did I like his angle, I had been thinking along similar lines.

Avi Nathman (aka @TheMamaFesto) and I had just finished drafting an open letter to the 2012 Presidential Candidates, which addresses many of the same issues Occupy Wall Street and the numerous Occupations around the world do. We chose to sign the letter, "From the Mothers and Fathers of America". (More on the letter later, and how you can participate.)

Before I could hit send, Dana wrote back to say he had found this group while Googling—
Parents For Occupy Wall Street.  They were planning the world's largest sleepover in Zuccotti Park on Friday, October 21, and he was going to be there to film the event— and did I want to come?

* * * * * * *

 Lock Your Doors, Mary: It's Those Dirty Community Organizers

"The newspaper said, "Say, what you doing in bed?
I said, "We're only trying to get us some peace."

Kirby Desmarais, the organizer of PFOWS was younger than I expected her to be, not yet 30. She's a a young mother, too — her daughter is only 18 months old (and adorable). She manages EverythingInddependent.com, a company she built herself, and which she runs with her husband, Mark.  Everything promises to help independent artists and bands find success, "through management, placement, networking and analytics."

Despite their already-busy life, full of work and family obligations, Kirby and Mark were able to organize PFOWS in about eight days — from passionate concept to successful execution (over 200 people stayed the night) — including a website, a banner and hot yellow t-shirts reading "Parent SECURITY". Oh, and they also secured a CNN crew to embed themselves for the duration; beloved kid's musician Dan Zanes and band to play for the crowd ("Pay Me my Money Down", of course, among other favorites), and Dana and I to film the event, as well.

That's right — just your typical law-less, job-less, communists-hippie types. Like those NYPost headlines warned you.

Kirby and her husband and daughter had visited Zuccotti a few times before and noticed many parents with kids doing the same. She got the idea to create a safe, designated place for families within the park, so parents could participate in the occupation and take care of their kids' needs at the same time. She reached out to the organizers of OWS, aka the General Assembly, with her idea for a family sleep-in.

More lazy, shiftless beatniks: these rebels drove all the way down from New Hampshire,
where mom, Margit Berman, top, is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School.
The other crazy radicals she's cuddling with are husband Jeremy McDonald, and 8 yo son, Robin McDonald.

The GA welcomed Kirby's idea and the group, and said they would designate an area on the Broadway side of Zuccotti park for the congregating parents. Kirby also spoke to the New York City police department to discuss safety issues, and together they helped her devise the security guidelines employed that night (all parents had to bring a child to be welcomed into the space, show photo ID, and sign in and out) as well as an exit strategy, should the need arise to leave the space quickly.

Kirby was expecting 200 parents to show. During the course of the evening, from 4pm when the first few parents and kids trickled in, to 10pm when I finally left, they would have to expand the roped-in space two times.

By the time the event ended Saturday morning, over 500 people had signed in at the checkpoint in Zuccotti Park.

* * * * * * * 

Countries with Paid Parental Leave, left. On the right, countries with NO Paid Parental Leave; Liberia, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and the United States.

Mommy, Why Do We Occupy?

Many people are waiting for the organizers of Occupy Wall Street (and by extension, Parents for OWS) to declare an official agenda, and publish a list of demands. But my experience at the park Friday night tells me that's not going to happen anytime soon.

In my opinion, Occupy Wall Street's first accomplishment was to bring international attention to the devastating effects of the criminal action(s) of the multi-national banks and financial institutions on American taxpayers — specifically the years of fraudulent lending that created the mortgage-apocalypse, the housing collapse and the 2008 recession — which has yet to be prosecuted (although the Federal Housing Finance Agency is now in the process of suing 17 of the financial institutions involved).

OWS' next action, or actions, will be determined by the crowd.

The people organizing and participating in Occupy Wall Street are practicing (and expanding, daily) a horizontal, consensus-driven, living form of democracy. Here, the whole truly reflects the sum and the strength of the individual parts. Yes, there is a body driving the concept and execution of OWS — the General Assembly — but there is no one, elected, governor of the park directing it's actions.

The head of this body keeps changing, depending upon the needs and desires of the group, at that moment. This structure may ensure it's survival — if you chop off the "head" of OWS, another will grow in its place, immediately.

Members of various working committees — completely volunteer-powered — execute the tasks necessary to keep things flowing in Zuccotti; i.e., food service, sanitation, press and publicity and daily events, like hosting PFOWS.

Direct Actions, such as the march to Columbus Circle on Friday the 21st, to join Pete Seeger, is voted upon by everyone in the park, using the now infamous human megaphone method. (An incredible thing to witness).

What Do the Parents Want

Some of the values of PFOWS are reflected in the sign posted under their banner Friday night, pictured above. The broad mission they commit to is written on their website:

"With our children's best interests in mind we join together peacefully to support the Occupy Wall Street movements across the US on our children's behalf. We're speaking for the 99% that can't speak up for themselves. " 

and

"[We are] a collective community for Parents & Organzations in support of Occupy Wall Street. We choose to remain nonpartisan and offer a platform and forum for all to be heard in support of the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

Isn't that the first job of any parent? To speak for those who cannot speak for themselves? To protect their children and teach their children to use non-violent means, to "use their words", to express their demands and concerns?

I found no one at this group advocating for the re-distribution of anyone's wealth. What I found were thoughtful, educated, concerned parents joined together to protest an injustice, and to re-assert the democratic values this country was founded upon.

These parents believe that their children can build a life rich with reward and meaning —without diminishing the lives of others in the process.

For further information about Parents For Occupy Wall Street, visit their Facebook page, which details upcoming meetings and actions: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=307649882581804