Women’s Liberty Bell Blog

What’s the best thing about blogging?

I’m going to call it a tie. On one hand, it’s tough to beat the actual process of writing. I love the moment when I sit down in front of the computer, search my mind, heart and soul and then try to wrangle words into a structure that will communicate what I’m processing. It’s a rush.

On the other hand, I’ve really enjoyed the interaction with others. Blogging has connected me in all sorts of ways. For instance, when something gender related goes viral in the news, my inbox explodes with people forwarding it to me. Or, the other day, I had a conversation with a blog reader who looked me up in order to ask a few questions.

And then there’s the Women’s Liberty Bell Blog.

Through a string of connections, on Tuesday I found myself posting on the Women’s Liberty Bell Blog. Here’s a bit about this blog:

“The purpose of the Women’s Liberty Bell Blog is to promote dialogue around how to more fully enlist our faith traditions in the ongoing work of uplifting girls/women around the world, not only in the form of charity/humanitarian efforts, but even more fundamentally to establish a very clear, spiritual framework for women’s human equality around the world.”

What about the Liberty Bell imagery?

“Katharine Wentworth Ruschenberger commissioned a replica of the Liberty Bell to help spread the cause of woman suffrage in Pennsylvania. The inscription on the bell likened the denial of votes for women to the tyranny of English rule which fueled the American Revolution. It differed from its brother only in that it lacked a crack and bore the inscription, Establish Justice. The 2,000 pound bell became something of a sensation. It toured 5,000 miles in a flatbed truck built specifically for this purpose, criss-crossing Pennsylvania. It eventually appeared at suffrage events in Chicago and Washington, DC. Its travels were marked by large crowds and band-led parades. Miniature versions of the bell were sold to defray the cost of its tour. It was a media darling. The bell’s clapper was chained into silence until the passage of the 19th Amendment. In a ceremony held in Independence Square in September, 1920, the bell was raised and rung by a woman dressed as Justice, signaling true liberty in the United States: suffrage for women. The Justice Bell now resides in the Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge.”

Pretty cool. More on the Women’s Liberty Bell, also known as the Justice Bell, here.

So it was a delight to post yesterday, in response to a prompt about men’s experience in the movement toward gender equality. You can find my post here. Thanks to the folks at the Women’s Liberty Bell Blog for letting me “chime” in, and I look forward to coming back again sometime.