Hannah Wallace

Politics Not As Usual

I wrote a profile of two powerhouse Mount Holyoke alumnae: Tami Gouveia ('96) and Kristen Elechko ('97) for the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly.  

Kristen Elechko, left, and Tami Gouveia, right. 

In early 2021, Kristen Elechko ‘97, who had recently wrapped working for U.S. Senator Ed Markey’s reelection campaign in Massachusetts, finally had time to read her Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly. She was skimming through the Class Notes when one name jumped out at her: Tami Gouveia ‘96.

Though she had not known Gouveia at Mount Holyoke, she had recently read the statement that Gouveia, a Massachusetts state representative from the 14th Middlesex District, had released on why she hadn’t voted for Ron Mariano for speaker of the Massachusetts House. "I believe that the residents of my district and across the state deserve, and are demanding, an open process and new leadership that represents the values, identities and priorities of voters across our state," Gouveia’s statement read in part. She felt that Mariano stood for politics as usual — he was so sure he’d win that he didn’t even give a speech until after he was elected — and that the climate crisis, the housing emergency and staggering economic inequality in Massachusetts demanded bolder leadership than he would offer. None of her House colleagues could give her a compelling reason to vote for Mariano, a Democrat, she wrote, except that she could be punished for not endorsing the status quo. "None could describe the great things that Speaker Mariano might do to help ensure a just recovery through the coronavirus pandemic," she wrote.

Elechko was impressed that Gouveia had the guts to not vote for Mariano. "I’d had conversations within my channels around how much I appreciated her standing in her leadership and in her values, and doing something that’s very hard publicly," Elechko says. She was also inspired by how Gouveia regularly spoke up about the need for climate justice and simultaneously raised up young leaders of the Sunrise Movement. When she discovered that Gouveia was an MHC alum, she says, "I lost my mind! I reached out to her on every channel possible and thanked her, and also noted that we were at Mount Holyoke at the same time. We had a wonderful exchange," Elechko says. And then that was that.

A few months later, in March, when Lowell, Massachusetts, native Gouveia decided to run for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, she started asking people in her networks for suggestions for a whip-smart campaign manager. Elechko’s name came up several times. Gouveia soon arranged to talk with Elechko over Zoom.

"It wasn’t like a traditional interview. It was more like, ‘Here are my values and here’s how I approach the world, and here’s how I think about campaigns, and here’s how I think about leadership,’" Gouveia says. "And then there was a lot of laughing, head nods and ‘Yes. Yes! Yes!’"

They had two or three multi-hour-long conversations.

Elechko, who had been the deputy relational organizing director for Ed Markey’s campaign, had instant chemistry with Gouveia. Gouveia felt the same and hired Elechko, who began her new job as campaign manager in mid-June.

GOUVEIA: POLITICS NOT AS USUAL

When I interviewed Gouveia in 2018 for my “She’s Running” feature for the Quarterly it was the first time she had run for office, after a 25-year career as a social worker protecting children from environmental toxins and preventing substance abuse. She ran against two men in the primary—winning with 64.3% of the vote, the widest margin of a first time candidate in the state’s history—and then went on to win against a Green-Rainbow Party candidate in the general, garnering 90% of the vote.

"Representing the people of the 14th District has been the joy of a lifetime," Gouveia says. "They are just very civically engaged. They show up for meetings, they reach out to me all the time about different policy issues they care about." But despite getting some progressive legislation passed, her time in the state legislature has shown her that her skills as a public health social worker might be better suited to the role of lieutenant governor. "What I’ve been observing is that the corner office has been occupied by people who prefer to maintain the status quo. They don’t have the express commitment to addressing the structural issues that drive inequities in our state — whether you’re talking about inequities around race or ethnicity or immigration status or class or gender and gender identity. We’re standing still," Gouveia says. "So there’s so much opportunity — especially with the infusion of federal dollars as a result of COVID-19 — to really chart a different path forward. And I’m not seeing that from Charlie Baker."

Continue reading here.     Or download the PDF here. Download MHQ_Sum21_Tami-Kristen FEAT_Spreads

She's Running

I wrote a feature on the amazing MHC alumnae who are running for political office for the summer issue of the Mount Holyoke Quarterly. Some are running for Congress, others are running for state representative or school board. 

Since Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 presidential election, record numbers of women have declared their candidacy for elected office. This season, Mount Holyoke alumnae are both on the ballot and behind the scenes.

Emily Martz ’94 left her job as deputy director at the Adirondack North Country Association to run for U.S. Congress in her conservative upstate New York district. The decision came, in part, out of a conviction that Democrats weren’t successfully communicating that they represent white, working-class people. “In my area in particular, which is 97 percent white and low-income, Democrats as a party did not articulate that they stand for their own constituents,” says Martz.

It also grieved her to see political discourse in America become so polarized. “One of the big reasons that we had the results we did in 2016 is because we just weren’t talking to each other,” says Martz, who majored in history and minored in politics at Mount Holyoke. She began having as many conversations as she could with people who had different political backgrounds than her own. By May, she had decided to run for the U.S. House seat in her district: New York’s 21st.

Martz was one of a record-busting 467 women running for seats in the U.S. House this year,* according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics. (The previous record had been 298, set during the 2012 election cycle.) Record numbers of women are running for other political offices as well: In mid-May, for example, 47 women were running for governor, including Stacey Abrams, who on May 22 won Georgia’s primary and could become the nation’s first black female governor if she wins in November. There’s also been a surge of women running at the local level, for state Senate and House, city council and school board. Most of these female candidates are left-leaning: 352 of those 467 women who ran for Congress are Democrats. And all of the alumnae we were able to identify for this article share this party affiliation. The 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump — a candidate with no political experience — over Hillary Clinton, who had many years of experience, including eight years as senator from New York, has for some been a motivating force.

Mount Holyoke women have long pursued careers in public service — some as elected politicians and others in appointed positions. The first to come to the minds of many alumnae is, of course, Frances Perkins, class of 1902, who was appointed secretary of labor by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933. But Mount Holyoke has also produced a host of other well-known alumnae who have held political office, including Ella Tambussi Grasso ’40, who in 1974 was elected Connecticut’s first female governor, New York congresswoman Nita Melnikoff Lowey ’59, who is currently serving her 15th term, and Elaine Chao ’75, current U.S. secretary of transportation and secretary of labor under President George W. Bush. To identify alumnae who may join the ranks of these whose stories and legacies we already know, we engaged with clubs and Facebook groups, put out a greater call on social media, and searched the Alumnae Association’s directory. We found several women who are running for office — some for the first time — and others with careers in the political arena.

The story continues here.  And don't miss the sidebar on the women whose job is to remain behind the scenes—the recruiters, campaign managers, and policy advisors—from Mary Hughes ('74) to Kristen Elechko ('97). 

A Hot Topic: Menopause

When the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly asked me to write about menopause, I hesitated. Menopause was something I was vaguely aware of, of course—having heard about the aggravating symptoms from my mom, aunt, and older women friends—but it was a subject I kept at a distance, like cancer or the conflict in Libya. But then I realized it'd be an opportunity for me to get to the bottom of all the confusion surrounding hormones (once known as HRT, now referred to by the North American Menopause Society as HT).  It would also let me interview a dozen really smart alumnae gynecologists.

I learned a lot reporting the resulting article which ran in the summer Quarterly. It turns out that the results of the famous Women's Health Initiative study should be taken with a grain of salt. The women in the estrogen-progestin trial had already gone through menopause when they started taking hormones—their average age was sixty-three. This, not the fact that they were taking hormones, may account for the increased risk of heart disease found during the study. Even the North American Menopause Society has said that it's safe for women to take a estrogen-progestin combo as long as you do it within ten years of menopause (because of the lower heart disease risk) and as long as you don't take it for more than five years (because of an increased risk of breast cancer). Read more of what I discovered—including integrative therapies like acupuncture and black cohosh that can help with hot flashes—here.

Mount Holyoke alumnae chefs, gluten-free bakers, and kombucha brewers

I shouldn't have been surprised by how many fabulous restaurants Mount Holyoke women run—from New York's La Lunchonette to the farmer-driven Guadalupe Cafe in Sylva, North Carolina. There are also MHC women running up-start kombucha companies (Portland, Oregon), gluten-free bakeries (Miss Nicky's Gourmet Toffee in Montclair, New Jersey) and coffee shops (Costa Rica).  Read my full article on MHC alumnae in the food world in the spring issue of the Alumnae Quarterly.

And for additional (web-only) profiles, see here. 

Women at the Top

 A recent Stanford-University of Chicago study showed that women in Congress sponsor and cosponsor more legislation than their male colleagues do. They bring more federal resources and assistance back to their districts and get more cosponsors for their bill. So why do women hold only 16 percent of the seats in Congress? And why are just a paltry 12 percent of U.S. governors female?  I found out during my recent interview with political strategist Mary Hughes, founder of the 2012 Project, a campaign that encourages women over 45 to run for political office. Here's a quick tease. (To read the  the full interview, click through to page 15.)

In 2008 it seemed for a brief, heady moment that women were asserting their rightful place in national politics: Hillary Clinton ran for president, and Sarah Palin for vice president. But neither were elected, and the 2010 mid-term elections proved a major setback for women in politics. For the first time since 1978, female representation in Congress actually declined. Today, women hold just 16% of seats in Congress. Only 12% of governors are women and 23% of state legislators are women. 

Hoping to reverse these depressing statistics, political strategist Mary Staton Hughes founded the 2012 Project, a nonpartisan national campaign to identify and engage accomplished women over 45 to run for political office. The Project, part of Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics, targets accomplished women from fields that are underrepresented in government such as science and technology, finance, health, and energy/environment. The timing of the project is intentional. It comes on the heels of this year’s Congressional reapportionment, the redrawing of state and congressional districts to reflect population shifts. This creates new open seats—and a once-a-decade opportunity for women who are new to politics. (Research shows that new seats are easier for political newcomers—male or female—to win than those held by incumbents.)

“I want to engage women who are pioneers in their fields, who have already broken some glass ceilings. These women have expertise that’s in short supply in many state legislatures,” says Hughes, who was an American studies major at Mount Holyoke College.

How to Stop the Bullies

This summer, I took a break from my regular beats of food politics and integrative medicine to write about something I knew little about: bullying. 

My piece (pg. 26 in the fall Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly) was spurred in part by the case of Phoebe Prince, a fifteen-year-old student who took her own life last January after being bullied mercilessly and repeatedly by classmates. (She attended South Hadley High, down the street from Mount Holyoke; the D.A. on the case is an MHC alumnae.) In the past month or so, additional bullying-related suicides, all of them anti-gay, have made national headlines: 18-year-old Tyler Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge after discovering his roommate had broadcast a video of him making out with a male classmate online. Billy Lucas, 15, of Indiana and Seth Walsh, 13, of California, both were victims of anti-gay bullying as was Asher Brown, 13, of Texas. All three committed suicide. To my mind, these qualify as hate crimes—and should be treated accordingly.

Though I didn't cover solutions to anti-gay bullying specifically, the basics of what I learned still apply: students need to be taught empathy and teachers (and parents) need to intervene when they witness bullying. Both of the top anti-bullying prevention programs employed at public schools across the U.S. focus on empathy building and teacher training: the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (named after pioneering bullying researcher Dan Olweus, whose initiatives were adopted by Norway in the early 80's to great success) and the Center for School Climate and Learning, which sends consultants into schools to absorb the school climate before recommending changes.

"I think of my work not as anti-bullying but as pro-social work," Christopher E. Overtree from the Center for School Climate and Learning told me. "We try to stimulate a positive social climate that makes bullying stand out as a negative behavior."

Instead of quick but ineffective fixes (such as teachers giving lectures on bullying), the Center for School Climate and Learning advocates more creative, holistic approaches. For instance, in one Tennessee school, Overtree suggested faculty and staff start a club where students could make hats for pediatric cancer patients. "It had a drastic change on the demeanor of the school," Overtree says. "Every student became engaged. Academically things improved, too." 

 

 

Women Farmers and Food Justice Activists

There is reason to be hopeful about the changing landscape of farming—and food—in America.

Those of us who've been participating in the local food movement over the past few years may not be surprised to hear this, but there are 18,500 more small farms in the U.S. today than there were in 2002. (The U.S. Department of Agriculture, who provides these stats, defines small farms as those with $250,000 or less in sales.)  In other words, while gargantuan factory farms are still out there, polluting our water, eroding the soil, and using antibiotics and pesticides indiscriminately, there's a rising movement of younger, sustainably-minded farmers who are growing food (and livestock) organically and on a smaller scale. (This is not to say that all 18,500 of these small farms are organic or sustainable but in general, small farms tread lighter on the environment than a CAFO does.)  

Interestingly, this increase in small farms corresponds to a rise in the number of women farmers in the U.S. The 2007 Census of Agriculture shows that women have a growing presence in U.S. agriculture: of the 3.3. million farm operators in the U.S., 30 percent were women. (This represents a 19 percent increase from 2002—far outpacing the 7 percent rise in the number of farmers overall.) 

While reporting this article for the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly, I interviewed a range of inspiring women from the twenty-something farm manager at Added Value in Red Hook, Brooklyn to a journalist who documents Chicago's urban ag movement on her blog (she's also at work on a book about urban agriculture). I also spoke to a pioneering sheep's milk cheesemaker, an outreach coordinator for NYC's GreenThumb program (she's also on the steering committee for the Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners conference this fall), and a woman who farms wheat, alfalfa, wine grapes, and olives—and raises sheep—on 2,000 acres on the Western Cape of South Africa.

Pathfinders in Public Health

I wrote this article about Mount Holyoke alumnae who are spearheading important public health projects before the swine flu epidemic hit.  But this outbreak (just like the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe, and the very real dilemma of antibiotic resistance here in the U.S.A.) shows just how vital preventive measures are—and I'm glad to see that President Obama is focusing on prevention. Since his deputy chief of staff is a Mount Holyoke alumnae, I'd like to think she read this article carefully—particularly the answers these five women gave to my question What would you ask President Obama to do for public health? 

the Global Classroom

Last fall, I had the opportunity to take my first online class—with the assignment to write about the experience for the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly. In a word, it was a challenge.  Not only technically—trying to master the art of IMing intellectually rigorous comments in a "classroom" of 20 or so students who were simultaneously IMing—but also intellectually.   (Let's just say it's been a long time since I've had to read long, dry academic articles and discuss them with women who are better read than I am.)  As was always the case at MHC, I was impressed by the level of discourse but also by the real-world value of taking such a class. (It was about the perils and benefits of globalization.) 

And what of the perils and benefits of online learning?  Well, let's start with the benefits: you never have to leave the house and can sip a glass of wine as you fire off your thoughts. (This feels mildly subversive; somehow, I bet I wasn't the only one to do it.) The downside is that (at least in this instance) you can't see your professor or any students in real time—which somehow makes it difficult to focus on one thread of the discussion. 

In any event, here's my report on the class and on MHC's unique partnership with the New York Times' Knowledge Network to produce even more online classes for both MHC alumns and the wider public.