• Building an Online Community Resource
  
• Amazon:
  AlternativeTherapies
  for Breast Cancer
  
• Women Fight Globalization
  
• Sea Change
  
• Virtual Sisterhood
  
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The Story Behind the Boston Women's Web
by Erica Goldman

Phase 1: The Conception

"Hello, my name is Erica Goldman and I'm organizing a resource on the Internet called the Boston Women's Web, which aims to make information about organizations like yours easily available to the community..."

And so began hundreds of phone calls I made -- and continue to make -- since March of 1996. The idea had begun to form one month earlier, as I was chatting on the phone with Jean Entine, the Executive Director of the Boston Women's Fund. She suggested I present a workshop for nonprofit women's organizations which would explore ways they could benefit from the Internet. After discussing some of the ways the Internet was useful to nonprofits -- the extensive resources, the efficient communication, the facilitated networking -- the conversation turned to ways our local community might unite and grow using new technology. By creating a networking center on the Internet for Boston women's organizations, we could utilize the Internet 's unique capacity to broadcast information to large numbers of people and foster dialogue among smaller groups and individuals .

At the time, I had been exploring the vast potential for nonprofit organizations to benefit from the Internet in my role as the Nonprofit Industry Specialist for a young Internet consulting company. BeeLine Internet Resources is a socially-conscious business which had allowed me to create a special nonprofit division to work with nonprofit organizations. It was a perfect fit: I presented the idea of creating a Web site which would foster local community-building to my colleagues at BeeLine and received backing for the project. BeeLine's Web Design Team would build the site and I would organize the content and update the site regularly. If the site was successful, we hoped to partner eventually with another socially-conscious business in sponsoring it.

Phase 2: Sharing the Vision

"... the site is a unique application of Internet technology -- it will be like a one-stop shop for women interested in getting involved in the community..."

Next, I needed the support of women's organizations in the community. The upcoming workshop for nonprofits seemed the perfect occasion to propose the concept. On a cold February morning, representatives from over 60 women's organizations in the Boston area gathered to hear and discuss the unprecedented opportunities for outreach, communication, and research afforded by the Internet. I concluded the workshop by explaining how these features could converge in the form of an information and networking center on the Internet: the Boston Women's Web. The idea received an enthusiastic response.

Phase 3: Making it Happen

"I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas for the project and the ways it might best serve the needs of the community..."

After follow-up letters to the organizations represented at the workshop and individual meetings with those most interested, I met with 13 dedicated representatives from nonprofit organizations to hammer out the details of the project. We agreed on an outline for the Boston Women's Web: the site would include an event calendar; articles and background information from the organizations; volunteer/internship/job listings; a pledge form which could be used for any organization; news articles and action alerts; a database of women's resources in Boston which could be searched by name, keyword, address, etc.; an arts section including essays, poetry and articles of interest to women; and a discussion area for users. Each organization would submit items for each section, and I would post it on the site.

Phase 4: Overcoming the Obstacles

"Oh yes, hi Erica, I'm so sorry I didn't get back to you... it's been so crazy here with grant deadlines approaching..."

Even with an outline and submission process in place, a few weeks passed without receiving any submissions. Though many organizations supported the idea in theory, many of them had never actually seen the World Wide Web; convincing them to dedicate time and resources to an idea that they couldn't visualize was no easy task. Though enthusiastic about the idea, when it came time to submit information, each organization seemed to have other priorities -- an upcoming event, a new staff hire, the deadline for their newsletter. I made phone calls, sent letters, made more phone calls. With each call, I fine-tuned the description of the project and my request; what started as "the Boston Women's Web aims to strengthen our community using new technology and facilitate communication between community members and nonprofit organizations" eventually turned into "the Boston Women's Web is an opportunity to publish information on your organization for free and reach new audiences with your message; right now, we're especially in need of news articles, so if you have an article from your newsletter please pop! it in the mail and it will be featured prominently on the site..." The focus shifted from ethereal vision to concrete actions and benefits.

In addition, I started to send "Boston Women's Web update" memos to every organization who had ever uttered an interest in the project. Each memo thanked those organizations who had sent submissions thus far, described the progress in the site's construction, indicated which areas of the site were undernourished, and reminded the recipient of the projected launch date and how to submit. By letting the participants know that the site's development was moving forward -- with or without the participation of their organization -- I hoped to give the project a contagious energy and impetus of its own.

Phase 5: Web Design

"Now, for the really important question: the color scheme for the site..."

It seemed to work. Submissions finally started to roll in, and I was faced with the new challenge of implementing the technical side of the project. Fortunately, I had the support of Amy Walsh, BeeLine's lead Web designer, whose dedication -- combined with her superb design skills -- created a site which is not only cheerful and visually appealing, but also conveys the feeling of a real-life community. By incorporating photos of real women who are active in Boston organizations into the design of the Boston Women's Web, visitors to the site can associate faces and human warmth with the content; in fact, those who are already active in the community may be pleasantly surprised to see familiar faces!

Phase 6: The Launch!

"Congratulations! We did it!"

Roughly six months from its conception, the Boston Women's Web was born. Today, over two thousand Internet users have visited the site and many return on a regular basis to view information supplied by nonprofit women's organizations. Possibly the only site of its kind, the Boston Women's Web won the Best of WWWomen Site award and was recently featured in WebActive, an online magazine.

But in my mind, the most important achievement of the Boston Women's Web is its utility. When I hear that people have found information they were seeking or learned about resources they hadn't realized existed, I know the site is truly a success. And finally, these days more organizations call me to get involved than the other way around!

E-mail Erica at: egoldman@beeline.net

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I wanted to cancel the doctor's appointment. I didn't have the car that day, it was the worst rainstorm I'd ever seen and I didn't feel like walking those few blocks. When I called to cancel the receptionist hurriedly put the doctor on the line and the doctor, using her most serious voice and said, "I think you'd better come in."

"Can you give me the biopsy results over the phone?" "No", she said, "I really think you should come in."

So at four pm I slogged through the deep puddles, bent down against the rain and heard the word in my head, over and over again, "Cancer, cancer, cancer..."

She gave me my options: mastectomy and chemotherapy or lumpectomy and radiation.

She encouraged me to get the mastectomy. "It's what I would do if I had breast cancer." I told her I needed time to think about it; she said there was no time. It was right before Christmas and it was difficult to book the operating room at this time of year.

"Well, I'll wait until February then." "No! It's an emergency! You have to decide right away." I went home and cried.

At seven p.m. a surgeon called me. I didn't know what questions to ask. He pressed for the mastectomy and three and a half hours after getting the diagnosis of breast cancer, it was decided that I would get my breast chopped off.

I spent a lot of time on the Internet over the next week, checking each incomprehensible term in the biopsy report, joining a breast cancer mail list. A couple of weeks earlier, after the mammogram but before the biopsy I wrote in my journal, "So I go to the surgeon today armed with many questions and three strongly held beliefs: I will not have a mastectomy, I will not have radiation, I will not have chemotherapy."

How things change is such a short time. The night before the mastectomy I sat in the tub crying and saying goodbye to my breast. How could such an important part of me, a part that gave me so much sexual and breastfeeding pleasure, now be my enemy? Why is this beloved and functional part of myself going to end up thrown in the garbage?

A year later I'm still reeling from the blow - no cancer was found in my breast - they got it all during the biopsy. I allowed myself to be mutilated for nothing. I started finding facts that I had needed as soon as I was diagnosed, facts that I wasn't given. For one thing, a cancer diagnosis is rarely an emergency. It takes so long for a tumour to grow large enough to be detected, that by the time it is found, it has probably been growing for years - no one should have to make a decision about a mastectomy in only three hours.

I found that chemotherapy does reduce tumour size, but there is no correlation between reduction of tumour size and life expectancy. There are no studies anywhere that show that chemotherapy will cure me or even increase my life span. Cancer kills when it kills the cells of vital organs, not when it grows a lump in a breast.

50% of women diagnosed with breast cancer will die within five years. The death rate for breast cancer, in fact for most of the 200+ cancers, is the same as it was at the turn of the century. The only difference is that they are finding it sooner, therefore able to do their nasty little hack, burn and poison experiments for a longer period before you die. (Hack, burn and poison are the terms oncologists use when talking among themselves.)

The oncologist, surgeon and my family doctor all admitted that there is no proof or guarantee that chemo will increase my life span or cure me. They did say that chemo causes organ damage (heart, lungs, liver, etc.), destroys some vision, kills the bone marrow (deaths occur during chemo from pneumonia, etc. - the immune system is destroyed) causes ulcers of the mucus membranes, makes you extremely sick and tired, and of course there's the baldness thing, the chemical taste thing and other effects that seem minor compared to what it does to the inside of your body.

The chemicals used in chemo were banned by the Geneva Convention for use as chemical weapons in war. If the chemo solution is splashed on your skin you will need skin grafts. Chemotherapy itself is a known carcinogen.

I was offered chemo on the off chance that there might be a cancer cell somewhere in my body. They wanted to kill many very useful cells, ones I am especially fond of, in order to maybe, possibly kill that hypothetical cancer cell. The oncologist said I have a 50% chance of getting cancer again. After the chemo I would have a 38% chance of getting it again. All that torture for a lousy 12% gain? I don't think so.

I wanted to share the controversial information I was finding with other women, so that they could make informed decisions about a course of treatment. I already knew that the Web was a great way to reach people - my breastfeeding page has been visited by over 100,000 people. I was shocked when an acquaintance who had also had a mastectomy, but refused chemo and radiation pulled her shirt up to show me her scar, then shook my hand and yelled a hearty, "Welcome to the Amazon!" That benediction transformed me from a victim to a strong fighting woman and I knew I found the title for my web page.

Welcome to the Amazon: Alternative Therapies for Breast Cancer can be found at http://www.islandnet.com/~bedford/cures.html

It has reviews of some of the many books written by cancer victors, uncensored descriptions of the different treatments people are trying, a growing list of studies showing the effectiveness of different therapies, a web-based newsgroup for asking questions, the story of the Medicine Quilt made for me by 58 online friends from seven different countries, and a private mail list for for discussing all aspects of breast cancer and alternative treatments, without worrying about being attacked for "disobeying" doctor's orders.

I am putting chat software on the Amazon page and a bulletin board for messages. This is a place for support, information and sharing.

There are many newsgroups and websites for people with cancer and one maillist for breast cancer, but the focus of all these places is on chemotherapy and radiation. So the Amazon list was created for women who are using alternative therapies as the primary treatment for breast cancer. It is a safe and supportive forum for women to discuss any aspect of the disease: physical, mental, spiritual, sexual, body image, treatments they are trying and treatments they are interested in learning about.

To insure the privacy of list members, the list is not archived. No member of this list will ever have to defend her decision to refuse chemotherapy and radiation. The topics include any alternative therapy such as herbs, supplements, diet, meditation, journal keeping, fasting, etc.; family; doctors; depression and pain; medical studies pertaining to breast cancer and friendly chatter and pure fluff. After all, until the only people who really understand what it is like to have breast cancer, are those of us who have already joined that "club."

Locally, there are a few people turning down orthodox medical treatment, but the Internet has connected me to a world-wide support group, and I don't feel so alone.

E-mail: bedford@islandnet.com

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In an era of backlash, perhaps the greatest setback to women's equality with men is the economic havoc wreaked by globalization of trade. International agreements such as NAFTA and GATT have put US and Canadian workers in competition with workers in less developed countries, and this in turn has allowed transnational corporations to undermine minimum wages and labor standards everywhere. Low-wage jobs where women predominate have been particularly hard hit.

Although mainstream media tend to view globalization as inevitable, the Internet is full of resources for those who would oppose, protest, resist and refuse to be governed by unelected corporations whose avowed and only purpose is to make profit. Postings appear regularly from organizations such as the Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, the International Forum on Globalization, the Multinational Monitor and CorporateWatch.

One acronym that's popped up a lot in 1996 is APEC. The Asian-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit--potentially an 18-national free trade agreement--played in major media for maybe a week, with protesters appearing mainly as a sidebar. Women's publications (such as Vancouver's Kinesis) gave APEC more space because of the implications for women. On the Internet, APEC has popped up regularly from October through December, and the messages are still coming. This should continue to be a hot topic, with the next APEC summit planned for September 1997 in Vancouver.

So who cares if corporations make money? It's a question of balance. Let's start with an analysis: the world's 200 largest corporations grossed almost twice as much as the poorest 4.5 billion people (80 percent of the population), according to a report from the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. Together, sales by the top 200 equaled more than a quarter (28 percent) of the world's Gross Domestic Product. Only 21 countries had economies greater than the largest corporation, Mitsubishi of Japan. The IPS report was reviewed in the November 9, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World, a New York publication which regularly places articles on the misc.activism.progressive newsgroup.

In contrast to that economic clout, according to the Multinational Monitor Ten Worst Corporations of 1996 list, the top 200 corporations provided employment for less than 1/3 of one percent of the world's population. Founded in 1980, Multinational Monitor appears as a monthly magazine and also may be viewed at http://www.essential.org/monitor/monitor.html

"Women have been most adversely affected by the new economic forces sweeping the globe," states the Interhemispheric Resource Center, introducing two reports on how trade agreements affect women in industrialized countries and less developed countries too. The IRC site at http://www.zianet.com:80/irc1/index.html focuses on US-Mexican relations.

The Toronto-based Gender, Science and Development program has published two studies on women and globalization, developing strategies for women and social activists to use in demanding their place at the negotiating table during trade talks. GSD's home page is at http://www.ifias.ca/GSD/GSDinfo.html (IFIAS stands for International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Studies).

More than jobs are at stake here. "The globalization process, driven by Northern tastes and marketed everywhere in the name of Northern culture and capital, offers formidable challenges to food security goals...The world needs a shift away from cheap export-led food policies towards local production for local use everywhere," argues an article from British professor Tim Lang, posted by the Third World Network Features to the PNEWS mailing list (listserv@sjuvm.stjohns.edu).

What isn't spelled out in that particular article is that usually, in developing countries, local production is led by women's subsistence farming. That's one reason that the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) has established the Gender-CG email network, with a mailing list (listserv@CGnet.com) and a newsletter, back issues of which which can be read at http://www.cgiar.org:80/ifpri/GENDER/GENDER.HTM

Does globalization cause famine? Well, fingers have been pointed at structural adjustment programs, which are closely related. In fact, the Women's and Gender Studies course offered by the University of Saskatchewan includes "an in-depth discussion of debt and structural adjustment, changes in East European countries, and globalization." The WGS site also offers a page of links to international sites, from http://www.usask.ca:80/wgst/etc/rlink.htm#interesting sites

That's right: food, clean water, jobs, human rights, equality rights...all are on the table when transnational corporations prod national governments to negotiate trade agreements--in North America anyway. As the GSD information papers emphasize, European trade agreements include recognition and protection for human rights. European social activists made sure their concerns were heard from the very beginning of trade negotiations.

Like it or not, globalization of trade may be the biggest and most urgent threat facing the global sisterhood of women. Fortunately, the Internet offers women a way to share experiences and strategies to implement our own visions of the global community.

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Women are organizing and changing the world

We're not just information consumers - we're information creators. We're taking charge of electronic communications networking and publishing technology to get the word out about the work, ideas, agendas, experiences and needs of women around the world.

Through email, Internet mailing lists, electronic conferences, gopher, World Wide Web and other online cyberspaces, we are telling our stories, sharing our research findings, galvanizing people into action around our campaigns, challenging mainstream "truths" and defining the world according to our own visions.

We have the power to bring about a Sea Change

Virtual Sisterhood is a global network of women committed to enhancing their own and other women's activism through effective use of electronic communications. The network prioritizes inclusion and empowerment of women of color, immigrant and refugee women, low-income women, lesbians, women from the Global South, older women, young women, women with disabilities, rural women and women from other communities, which have traditionally had little or no access to or control of electronic communications technology.

Virtual Sisterhood works collaboratively to develop and promote women's electronic information resources with an emphasis on working with low-income and other traditionally excluded groups, with groups creating multi-lingual resources and with organizations developing innovative information resource models, which could be adapted for use by other women's organizations.

THE MULTI-LINGUAL INFORMATION RESOURCE PROJECT

Virtual Sisterhood has launched The Multi-Lingual Information Resource Project to make a dent in the language barrier that inhibits women's electronic communication across language groups. We wish to reach out to women from various language groups through translation of Virtual Sisterhood's information resources.

Sisters from around the world who have expressed interest in making Virtual Sisterhood resources available in many different languages (e.g. spanish, russian, german, japanese, chinese, hebrew, portuguese, etc.). If you have language skills and/or can help with HTML coding and non-latin character sets, and would like to share in this Multi-Lingual Information Resource Project, please contact: vsister@igc.org

Would you like to be part of Virtual Sisterhood's Multi-Lingual Initiative? Languages included in this project depend on interest from volunteers. We need women to:
• Translate Virtual Sisterhood Electronic Information Resources from English into other language(s),
• Gather links to existing online resources by/for women in languages other than English,
• Work with the Joint Ventures WWW Development Project to get women's information online in other language(s),
• Compile information about non-ASCII character transmission online and related language issues. We discuss and share information about language transmission, translation and related issues on Virtual Sisterhood's mailing list, vs-online-strat.

  WHO ARE THE VIRTUAL SISTERHOOD ACTIVISTS?

  Criteria for being a Virtual Sisterhood activist

  The only criteria for being a Virtual Sisterhood activist is support for and belief in Virtual Sisterhood's mission - to strengthen and magnify the impact of feminist organizing through promotion of electronic communications use within the global women's movement - and a willingness to commit to following through on whatever effort you undertake.

  Where We Meet
  In the spirit of sisterhood and cooperation we organize as a group using the vs-online-strat mailing list as a virtual meeting ground. Vs-online-strat provides a place to link up globally to discuss issues directly related to our struggles and successes in getting women's information, ideas and perspectives online. We discuss where the roadblocks are to engaging our organizations fully in the electronic communications world and share solutions. If you are not already on the list, please subscribe now (no charge).
  Send an email message from the email address you intend to use for list participation to: majordomo@igc.apc.org
  In the body of your message, include *only* this text:
  subscribe vs-online-strat

  You Set the Pace
  Think about your skills, the time you have to offer and what you'd like to do. We can work together. No matter how much or how little time you have, you can contribute. Please try to be realistic about what you can take on at any given time, so we can all enjoy the effort rather than feel burdened.

  Future Projects
  Virtual Sisterhood is a growing group of activists. We develop our ideas and work together to reach our goals. Suggestions, offers and information are always welcome. All of our contributions are needed in the evolution of women’s online activism.

  Please contact Virtual Sisterhood at: vsister@igc.apc.org

  WHAT’S NEW?

  We have encountered a recent problem with our Global Directory of Women’s Organizations & Electronic Communications. Unfortunately, hackers have destroyed all the files at Little Blue, the generous folks who have housed and assisted with the Directory till now. As they now are absorbed in reconstituting their Website and services, we have put a call out for others to assist in the rebuilding of our valuable Global Directory. Very quickly we received a number of offers of help, and we are encouraged once again by the generosity of cyberspace participants. We will be rebuilding The Global Directory shortly, so watch for links from the Virtual Sisterhood Website.

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