"Social media is not just a place we 'go' anymore. It's a place we live, work, and play. That's why it's more crucial than ever to ensure that all people can safely access these spaces and freely express themselves without fear of retribution," Jenna Sherman, campaign director at UltraViolet
"Adriana Smith's family should have had a choice. Her mother was clear that she wanted to make the decision about whether her daughter's body should be kept on life support. But Georgia doctors and legislators failed Adriana and her family." said Arisha Hatch, interim executive director of UltraViolet
UltraViolet, a political group that fights sexism, has a bone to pick with Facebook. It wants Facebook to put a women on its board of directors and is urging its 300,000 members to petition Facebook about it. They have a point. More than half of Facebook’s users are women — 58% — Facebook says. And women are more active users of Facebook than men, doing two-thirds the sharing. So while Facebook is making a bundle selling ads to women, it is downright shameful that Facebook couldn’t find a single woman board member to help advise it. The irony of Facebook’s all male board is that the company’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg recently spoke out against how women were being kept out of power positions. At last month’s Women In The World conference in New York, Sandberg said, “Women have held 15 to 18 percent of top jobs for the past few years. Is this a stalled revolution?”
Mr. Limbaugh will lose some outlets next month regardless, when Cumulus, which carries him on nearly 40 of its stations, will launch its own syndicated program, The Mike Huckabee Show. Airing in the same noon-to-3-p.m. time period, it’s being promoted as “more conversation, less confrontation,” and is cleared to air on more than 130 stations. And Mr. Limbaugh’s critics, unmoved by his grudging apologies, are ready to besiege advertisers who return to his show. “Companies that come back will have to explain to their customers and their shareholders why they’re back,” said Shaunna Thomas, co-founder of UltraViolet.
The campaign to pressure advertisers to leave conservative Rush Limbaugh’s radio show after his misogynistic comments about a college student looks familiar – it was presaged six years ago in a similar effort directed at a San Francisco talk-radio station by an anonymous blogger called Spocko. Since then, contacting advertisers about the content their ads pay for has become routine, fueled by the Internet. This time, organizations such as Ultra Violet, an online activism site focused on women’s issues, are leading the backlash.
At the same time Carusone was contacting advertisers, Nita Chaudhary began her own, parallel effort. Chaudhary, who co- founded women’s-rights group UltraViolet last year, said she was incensed after reading through a transcript of Limbaugh’s “slut” comments. She spent that afternoon finding Limbaugh advertisers, via the Web and through Media Matters’ website, which had started to track who was still airing marketing on the show. Washington- based UltraViolet and Media Matters aren’t affiliated.
It has been nearly two weeks since Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a “slut” and in the age of the 24-hour news cycle, that is virtually an eternity. Yet the outrage over the conservative talk radio host’s remarks is still making headlines, spawning activist attacks and causing headaches for advertisers. Premiere Networks, the radio group that syndicates the Rush Limbaugh Radio Show, pulled all of its barter ads — which run at all hours, not just during Premiere Network programming– from the group’s affiliated stations. The company would not say whether the suspension, which runs from March 12 through March 23, was in response to the Limbaugh backlash, but the only two companies whose ads are exempted from the hiatus are LifeLock and Lear Financial, both of which have publicly said they will not pull their ads from Limbaugh’s show.
Progressive campaigners and online activists Nita Chaudhary and Shaunna Thomas had an idea for a new kind of women’s rights group: one that uses cutting-edge online advertising techniques to engage more people in the fight to end sexism in politics, media and pop culture. They were not quite ready to launch their project, called UltraViolet, and their website was not yet running when the news broke that Susan G. Komen for the Cure had pulled cancer screening grants from Planned Parenthood over abortion politics. Feeling that this could be their moment to grab women’s attention, Ultraviolet leapt into action, launching its first campaign with Moveon.org to call on Komen to reverse its decision and gathering 60,000 signatures in just a few hours.
Larry Summers is in the running to head the World Bank. But according to tens of thousands of people that recently signed a petition, he’s not the man for the job
More than 37,000 people have signed a petition expressing their dismay at the idea that Summers — who as then-president of Harvard, once famously suggested that women might lack an “intrinsic aptitude” for science and engineering — could be put in charge of the World Bank, an institution that allocates funds to developing countries.
UltraViolet, an online community of activists striving to fight sexism in the public sector, launched one of the campaigns which collected more than 37,000 signatures in less than a week, and CREDO Action, Planned Parenthood’s largest corporate donor, launched a very similar campaign which accumulated more than 50,000 signatures. CREDO, whose campaign included hundreds of calls to Komen’s Dallas headquarters, also pledged a $200,000 grant program to replenish the funds that had been threatened by Komen’s former decision.
Shortly after news of Handel’s resignation became public, more than a dozen women delivered petitions with 832,000 online signatures to Komen’s national headquarters in Farmers Branch, Texas, demanding that the charity continue funding breast health services for women. Most of the women represented organizations MoveOn.org, CREDO Action and UltraViolet, but at least two showed up on their own for what they thought might be a bigger demonstration.
About a dozen women Tuesday delivered petitions with 832,000 signatures to officials at the Susan G. Komen for the Cure headquarters in Farmers Branch, demanding that the charity continue funding breast health services for women. The women represented organizations Move.On.org, CREDO Action and UltraViolet. Leaders of the groups met with Komen officials for about a half-hour.