captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2008 a willingness to demand that just as a great president of the united states must evolve to stand publicly for every person's right to live and love, so, too, a great organization must evolve to champion young women leading the women's movement forward without its tutelage. [ applause ] so, too, a great organization must evolve to celebrate young women leading the movement forward without direct construction. instruction. [ applause ] we should be so inspired to hear

from the young feminist leaders who will speak now. first up is a woman who, i'm going to say it, we should all encourage to run for president of the united states, sandra fluke. but before we do that, we're not going to let you speak first, because we need to give you an award. please give a hand to our wonderful president of our organization, the national organization for women, terry o'neil, who will introduce sandra by presenting her with a much deserved award. [ applause ] >> thanks. thanks to all of the amazing women who are up here today. sandra, i'm really thrilled to be giving you this award. tamika, you and i have been at rallies. we have been at conventions. we are walking together. we are marching together. it has been wonderful, and krystal, you've just been fabulous. msnbc is my very favorite channel.

>> same here. >> thank you for all you're doing. a few short months ago, sandra fluke was a third year law student at georgetown university. university law center. she was a woman of accomplishment. among other things, she had been president of the georgetown students for reproductive justice. before she went to law school, she co-founded the new york statewide coalition for fair access to family court, which successfully lobbied for legislation that would allow lgbtq teen and other survivors of intimate partner violence to access protective orders. but when representative darrell issa -- yeah, that's what i thought. [ booing ] i was waiting for that. chair of the house committee on oversight called a hearing for the purpose of sputtering and

railing against the obama administration's inclusion of contraception in the list of preventive health care services that insurance companies must cover without co-pays, mr. issa actually banned sandra fluke from testifying at his hearing. here is how mr. issa described this accomplished young woman. "a college student who appears to have become energized over this issue, who is not appropriate or qualified to testify about contraceptive coverage, who does not have, quote, the appropriate credentials to speak at a committee hearing on birth control." [ booing ] because according to mr. issa, the issue of contraceptive coverage and health insurance plans is not about women.

it's about the religious freedom of the united states conference of catholic bishops. now, as we all know, a firestorm of protests erupted over this. minority leader nancy pelosi arranged a forum in which sandra would be able to present her testimony, and at that forum, representative elijah cummings asked her directly, he said, "ms. fluke, what can you tell us, what is it that makes you qualified to speak to the issue of contraceptive coverage?" and sandra -- i saw the video of this, sandra looks directly at the panel, and she says, "i am an american woman who uses birth control." [ applause ]

and that said it all, with that one simple, dignified response. sandra fluke claimed power for every single woman in the united states. [ applause ] because what she was signaling to us all is that any time we are effected by policies of powerful elites, we have a right to speak and to be heard. sandra's claim to power scared a lot of people. it really, really scared rush limbaugh. and you know, rush limbaugh is not just any blowhard -- i mean extremist right wing radio host. in fact, rush limbaugh is one of the most feared power brokers in the entire republican party today, and that comes not from any left wing person.

that comes from a republican party operative who worked in the george w. bush white house saying that rush limbaugh is in fact a feared power broker throughout the republican party. mighty rush limbaugh was so upset by the fact of sandra fluke speaking truth to power that he decided he was going to take her down. he claimed that sandra's advocacy for contraceptive coverage made her a slut and a prostitute. he said she was having so much sex that she needs a whole lot of contraception and she wants other people to pay for it. think about that. mighty rush limbaugh doesn't seem to understand the birth control pill is not like viagra. [ laughter ] [ applause ]

you don't take a birth control pill just before having sex like, oh, never mind. sandra fluke was not cowed by limbaugh's relentless three-day defamatory character assassination. in fact, just the opposite happened. women and men around the country were disgusted by limbaugh and in short order, he lost nearly 100% of his national advertisers. [ applause ] so, please, all of you join me in honoring this amazing champion, this role model, now's 2012 woman of courage. [ cheers and applause ]

>> thank you so much for that very warm and lively welcome. i love speaking to a room full of my kind of women, not staying in their seats and not staying quiet during comments. it's excellent. i have to say thank you so very much to terry and all of you and to n.o.w. for recognition of what i've done in this way. i have to say that i feel less like a woman of courage and more like a woman who knows how to follow a good model, because i, like i'm sure every young feminist in this country has learned so much from the trails that so many of the women in this room blazed. i want to say thank you for all that you have done for me, for other women my age and all that you continue to do. thank you very much. [ applause ]

i especially want to say thanks for having my back the last few months. [ applause ] there were a lot of people who spoke out on my behalf and that's really what made it possible for me to do what i did in terms of trying to frame the conversation and trying to say some important things in the wake of the situation, and now and also miss krystal ball, we're two of the loudest voices in that effort in really trying to support me and support this conversation, and i thank you so very much. [ applause ] and i think what was so fantastic about the last few months and the energy that we have seen is that it has been around a lot of young women

getting involved. not just young women but really many women stepping to the fore, and i want to say thank you to erin and how she introduced this. it's not about young women becoming more active. there are some of my generation who really did have this assumption that we lived in a post-feminist world. i think they have awakened from that delusion, hopefully. but there are many, many young women who have already been engaging and been active and really working on these issues, and the last few months have been a lot about making that visible, and having that be seen by the country that feminism is alive and well in this country, and young women are active and empowered and really working hard on these issues. so with that i think i'll transition into what we're speaking about for the rest of our time here today, which is young women organizing and young feminists organizing.

and i have to say that i probably share this feeling with my other panelists, that it's a little odd for each of us to say what are young women organizing about? what are we working on? because we could turn to so many of the young women in this room and say, well, tell us what you're working on. i think that's one of the beautiful and powerful things about young women's activism and young feminist activism. it's not focused on one single issue. these are young feminists who are empowered to work on a whole variety of things the and we're going out and working on them in tandem and spreading on the web and just doing it all in so many different ways. so i'll say a little bit about a few of the things that, you know, i'm excited about and i know we will as well, but there's really so much happening. so in -- you know, one of the things that happens when darrell issa calls you a college student and rush limbaugh calls you a co-ed is that you suddenly get tapped as being several years younger than

you actually are. so i've spent the last few months trying to figure out how to be young and hip and cooler than i ever was. so my stereotypical approach to young feminist organizing is twitter, right? so today i tweeted out and asked, you know, young feminists what i should talk about in terms of what we were doing, what we were working on and what we were organizing about. of course, i got back a few of the responses of things that have been in the news lately, which are absolutely really important, things like equal pay and health care, and just tragic, but temporary closing, because it's going to be temporary of the clinic in mississippi, the last clinic that was providing abortions in mississippi. of course, reproductive choice in a lot of other flavors. they're certainly active on those issues that have been the headlines of the day, but i me

that krystal is going to talk about some of those and i'm sure tamika will as well. i'm not going to do the whole panel. you're going to do some work. they also tweeted back something that i think has really been highlighted the last few months as we've seen real lawmakers deny me a seat at the table that day and we saw in michigan with the lawmakers not being allowed to speak there as well. they tweeted back, and these are quotes so they'll be in twitter speak. "let's stop asking men to vote the way we want. put women in power in 2012. i think boehner sold cars. we can do much better." [ applause ] the next woman tweeted, "we need more young women to get off the sidelines and run for office." [ applause ] >> sandra. >> krystal.

this one said, "electing women who don't quit because they have children, leaving us stuck with yet another good old boy white man." i'm going to reframe that as the call for work/family balance and support for working women and women in office. and they also tweeted to me about some of the things that i think really do move young feminists, which wer,e one woman said, "i think body rights and image are the two major issues for women." other said acceptance and consideration for transwomen acceptance." here is an e-mail from my mom. i'm going to skip that one. [ laughter ] this woman said to me, "most young women i know are not engaged in women's issues to the depth and the breadth that my gender, the baby boomers, were.

why is that" and i don't know that i have the answer actually. i know pour sure that i don't have the answer to that very big question, but i think a lot of us have been thinking about and struggling with for some time, but i think perhaps one thing that could help us to overcome this is that i think maybe young feminists and young people who aren't engaged in the feminist movement see things through a slightly different lens. i think a lens of gender equality might be one that works better in talking to that generation. i know everyone in this room understands a gender equality lens and understands that issues like body image and transfolks and gender identity are issues that affect men as well as women, and that's always what this movement has stood for is thinking about the ways that these issues affect all of our members of our families, not just women. but i think that that may be something that we need to think about in our messaging and in our language, when we talk to young people, because

organizations like n.o.w. have done such a fabulous job in breaking down barriers for women. i think it's the young women don't feel necessarily that it's about being a woman that is the problem. they don't feel the discrimination so pressured and so coherently than it was in the past generations. but i think they do see things like they are not free to express their gender identity in whatever way they want to, and that perhaps their male siblings or peers are not free to express themselves. i think that is one of the ways that this generation can be appealed to, is to think about gender equality and breaking down the barriers that hurt all of us and thinking about it in those terms, framing it that way, because we know that's a frame that all of the issues we've worked on fit into, and i absolutely do not mean that we should in any way disard card

any of the things we are working on or the feminist identity. i think we have to make sure to explain our movement and explain our issues in way that appeals to this generation and how they feel about the world and what's happening. so that's my stab at wisdom. i'm sure that it will fall short in some ways. [ applause ] but it's my attempt, so with that, i will turn it over to i believe krystal is next. is that right? >> yes. >> or i'll turn it over to erin to introduce krystal. [ applause ] >> thank you so much. you are such an inspiration, sandra. for those of you who don't know krystal ball, another major inspiration for young women and young people. she made it safe for the facebook generation to run for office. she is the new msnbc co-host of

the brand new show "the cycle." [ cheers and applause ] she's a political writer. she's an activist and she's a former congressional candidate. [ applause ] if you're not on twitter, you've got to get on twitter and start following krystal. because she is so active in combating media misogyny. she was among the first to call for a boycott of i guess i shouldn't say friend, our long-term acquaintance, rush limbaugh's advertisers following his long smear of sandra. [ applause ] by the way, rush said he was going to leave the country if the affordable care act was upheld. has he left yet? [ cheers and applause ]

talk about walking the walk. cristal in 2010 she was endorsed by virginia n.o.w. and she survived a very tough primary to become the democratic nominee for u.s. congress from the first district of virginia. [ applause ] i remember going to a younger women's event that krystal was at when she was running, and i know you met a ton of people then, so i don't expect you to remember, but she talked about how people told her, "you've got to cut your hair and you shouldn't talk about being a mom." she said i'm not going to do that. i think she is so cool. well, she didn't successfully unseat the republican incumbent. her campaign raised nearly $1 million from more than 6,000 donors. [ applause ] following her congressional campaign cristal was named by "forbes" magazine as number 21 on the magazine's most powerful women of the midterm elections list.

[ applause ] "the week" magazine has rated her as one of the top eight political stars of 2010. we are so excited to have krystal with us today. [ applause ] >> that was an awesome introduction. i hope i can live up to all of that. thank you so much, erin. i just have to take a minute to say how cool it is to be in this room with this group of ladies and the men who support those ladies, and with sandra, who really did inspire a lot of the work that i did this year. to be on a panel with sandra talking about young women organizing is a little surreal. thank you now for giving me that opportunity and erin and terry and all of you for being here.

i really appreciate it. i wanted to start with one of my favorite quotes to set the scene from alice walker, author of "the color purple." she said, "the most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." i know that i'm preaching to the choir in this room. this is a group of women who know they are powerful and are not afraid to use the power. but i think it serves as a reminder for perhaps why some in our generation have been less engaged. they have been taught by our political system to think they don't have any power. there's two ways to look at what's happened this year. there's the pessimistic way, and i know you all are familiar with the stats. we've had in 2011, over 1,100 provisions introduced in state legislatures nationwide telling women what they can and can't do with their lives and their bodies, a record number.

we've had unbelievable assaults on planned parenthood. we had seven states in 2011 either de-fund or massively cut cut the funding to planned parent hood. we had another eight states in 2012 that are considering doing the same. we have texas, which has decided they would rather their women, their low income women not have preventative well women care at all than partner with planned parenthood in that program. we have the horrible situation in mississippi where the one remaining clinic is in danger of closing, but hopefully going to be coming back. we've had transvaginal probes in my home state of virginia. so those negative things are one way to look at this year. there's another way to look at this year. we also had komen for the cure make a horrific decision in ending their partnership with planned parenthood, but that wasn't the end of the story, as you all remember. we then had people, men, women,

young and old across the country saying this is not okay with us, speaking out through traditional means and also online, and we saw a change. we also had in virginia, when bob mcdonald and the republican legislature tried to go way to for and say not only are we going to have mandatory ult ultrasounds, a medically unnecessary procedure, we are actually going to force state-mandated transvaginal probes on the population, women and men across the country also said, hold on a second. this is way too far. while we still have now mandatory ultrasounds in the state, we at least got that part stripped down and we had a personhood bill that was sent back to committee. so we had victories there as well, and then miss sandra fluke came around, and i have to say, what is wrong with darrell issa, honestly, like what is wrong with that guy?

[ applause ] i just don't get it. so sandra comes along, and you know what? when rush limbaugh attacked her on day one, i'm ashamed to say that his bar of obnoxiousness is set so low, that i just thought "slut, prostitute," typical rush. it was on day two when he called for sandra's sex tapes to be posted online for the titillation of himself, that i finally said you know what? we can't stand for this any longer. i actually -- it's kind of a funny thing, how this started. i am lucky as you know to have a relationship with msnbc to have a new show, and at that time i was doing a guest appearance on martin bashir's show. it was right after rush limbaugh's segment ended.

our segment was supposed to be about something else and it ended up being about sandra and rush. after the segment, martin said to me, "krystal, you're really passionate about this, and you should write something about it." i said that's a good idea. i think i will. so i went home and i started writing. as i was writing and digging up all these old, horrific, unbelievable quotes from rush limbaugh, i just kept getting more and more upset. in the middle of writing, i took a break and went online to twitter, and i started talking to some of my friends about what happened and what was going on, and i just realized that there was this incredible passion and anger out there at what he had said and what he had done. at some point in this twitter conversation, someone suggested to me, why don't we boycott rush limbaugh's sponsors. and i thought you know what? that's a great idea. just talking about this guy, that's exactly what he wants. we have to go after him in way that will be meaningful to him.

so that night, i wrote my piece. it was called "boycott rush." the next day, a friend and myself launched a petition called "boycott rush." by the end of that day, and this was one of many efforts going on across the country but by the end of the next day, sponsors were already starting to drop from his program. [ applause ] and by the end of 24 hours, we had over 100,000 signatures on that petition. and the pace of advertisers dropping didn't slow, it quickened, until, as terry said, he literally was on his flagship station in new york he was having to play dead air time. even the public service announcements that are free wouldn't play on his air waves. [ cheers and applause ]

now, rush tries to play this off like it's no big deal, but you will notice that he still talks about it a lot. he still, one of the radio stations that carries his program on only a few networks and is publicly traded had to come out and give their financial results. they said they have lost millions because of carrying rush limbaugh. the main carrier of the limbaugh program, which carries him on many other stations is not publicly traded so we don't have insight directly into their financials, but we can assume based on what cumulus media said, that they are also being financially impacted by rush limbaugh's on knockious, ma imagineist innic, racist, hate media. this is a guy who has never been held to account, never. [ cheers and applause ]

after the initial cable news wave crusted and fell and we went onto donald trump's fund-raiser or whatever was next, there was a little bit of a quiet period. normally what happens with these things is everybody kind of moves on to whatever is next. what i'm really excited about and what to kind of focus on in these comments is that in the stop rush movement, that didn't happen. we actively worked to gather all the efforts that were going on independently, all the different people and petitions. we had volunteers build a website on stoprush.net, for people could go to see what sponsors were still with rush in what markets. are they national or local sponsors. volunteers could sign up to listen to his program and track

who was still with rush so that we would have a database and be able to coordinate action on a local and a national level. it's an incredible thing. it works actually quite well, and i'm really proud to have been a part of this effort, and it's ongoing and it's continuing and the pressure is continuing to be applied. i think the model of people across the country having an emotional reaction, coming together and finding each other online, and then actually building something and building a movement. nobody being paid, completely volunteer, i think it's an incredible thing and i think it's a really positive thing, and i think it's exactly what alice walker had in mind when she said, "we have to understand that we have power." despite the money and politics, despite the rigged system that is so frustrating, ultimately whether it's rush m