Read. Think. Act.

Catherine Read

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Network NoVA with Stair Calhoun – Your Need to Know

(Dec 6, 2017) Catherine Read interviews Stair Calhoun, founding member Network NoVA. Dedicated to involving women in politics, Network NoVA was founded by Stair Calhoun, Katherine White and other activists who had participated in the Women’s March of January 2017. These grassroots activists organized women in support of Democratic candidates for the Virginia House of Delegates election of 2017.

Following the 2016 Presidential election local women, including Stair Calhoun, sought to find ways that they could make their voices heard in politics. Seeking to make the biggest difference possible, they organized themselves into Network NoVA. Their organization has since gone from strength to strength organizing a Women’s Summit in June of 2017 and backing Democratic candidates in the 2017 election. Dedicated to keeping local people involved, their summit was organized by a group of 7 women in less than 70 days, but still had hundreds of attendees, including 30 state delegates or delegate candidates and a number of sponsorships.

Stair Calhoun attributes their success to both their willingness to innovate and the inability to take no as an answer. Network NoVA’s newness aided them in providing a place to try new ideas without the inertia of the old. They agreed to back any candidate whom they believed best represented the women of their district, regardless of their perceived chance of winning, and tried new techniques to encourage women to vote. They involved children in making personalized reminder cards, which encouraged women to make voting plans in advance to support of their motto “When we vote, we win.” Further, they produced more than 17 different short videos in support of various candidates.

Currently, Network NoVa is working on contacting newly elected delegates to find out how to best support them, as well as creating plans to keep constituent pressure on legislators in Richmond on a range of topics including gun reform, the ERA amendment, Medicaid expansion and redistricting reform. To do this Network NoVa is creating VAPLAN, the Virginia Progressive Legislative Alert Network, a centralized way to keep people informed about what the state legislature is doing. They seek to create a system where people can check on what their legislators are doing on the issues important to them in an easy manner without being inundated with other information.

Network NoVA has partnered with a number of other organizations, including Democratic Promise, in order to try and reach out to rural Virginians. Democratic Promise is an organization based around the idea of reverse constituent services. They contact people in rural Virginia and seek to learn about the issues and problems they currently face, then put them in contact with the services that could solve them. They seek to keep politicians focused on local issues even between elections.

Going into the future, Network NoVA is seeking to expand their membership. They’ve already begun preparations for their 2018 Women’s Summit, and signups are already available. Topics at their June 23rd summit are planned to include how to get out the rural vote, Democratic Promise and the involvement of new technologies in elections. Network NoVA has also begun their initial planning for the 2018 congressional elections, where they seek to back Democratic candidates in the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th, 9th and 10th congressional districts, and even hope to support candidates in every district. Overall, they seek to get people involved in politics, while also seeking out the ways they can use Network NoVA to serve the needs of all Virginians.

To learn more about Network NoVA visit them at their website at networknova.org, you can follow them at Facebook, join their events via Meetup or email them directly at [email protected]

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The Future of Women in Virginia Politics – Inside Scoop

Virginia has a weak track record in electing women to office. Women make up less than 18% of the legislature, there are no women elected to statewide office (only one has ever been elected – Mary Sue Terry in 1989 as Attorney General), and there is only one woman Representative out of 11 Congressional Districts in 2016.

The first guest is Kate Hanley, former Chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, former Secretary of the Commonwealth, and a principal instructor for Emerge Virginia – a candidate training program for Democratic women.

Amy Laufer is the Chair of the Charlottesville School Board and the founder of the Women Leaders of Virginia PAC that supports Democratic women running for state office with early money and fundraising support.

Delegate Jennifer Boysko was elected to office in the 86th House District in November 2015. She previously ran against the long term incumbent in 2013 narrowly losing by 32 votes. This year she ran in an open seat. She was not endorsed by the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce or The Washington Post, but prevailed with nearly 60% of the votes cast.

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The State of Women in Virginia Politics

(July 28, 2014) As a sometimes guest host on the cable show Inside Scoop Virginia, I am given free rein to choose both my guests and the topic of the show. This is the second show I have done in the past year on the subject of women in Virginia politics.

My guest for this show was Stephanie Dix Clifford, a Democratic activist and former candidate for the House of Delegates from Arlington. That’s one of many things we have in common: being former political candidates who were unsuccessful in our first ever campaigns for public office.

There is no shortage of opinions on why we don’t have more women in public office. The fact remains that here in Virginia we have made no substantive gains in women representing us in state and federal offices. There has been only one woman who ever served in a statewide office: Mary Sue Terry who was elected as Attorney General in 1989. Her subsequent run for Governor was unsuccessful.Read More

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The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance – What Women Should Know

The Confidence Code(May 13, 2014) I think this is singularly one of the most important books written in the last several years. Journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman have done an amazing job in both researching this subject and writing about it in a thoughtful and productive way. The Atlantic’s May 2014 cover story entitled “The Confidence Gap” is a great in-depth article based on the research done for this book.

I was fortunate to hear the authors speak about their book with James Bennet of The Atlantic at an event held in DC in May 2014. Their research is quite enlightening and their conclusions resonate with me. They manage to boil down the definition of confidence to this: “Confidence is the stuff that turns thoughts into action.” They interviewed many women in positions of leadership to get their assessment of what women need to focus on in order to build confidence. One insight is the fact that women often over-think things where men have a bias to action. Women also tend to be perfectionists – if we don’t think we can do it successfully, we often will not attempt it. This ranges from skipping questions on a test to not applying for a promotion. They remind us that people who succeed aren’t always “naturals” – they are “doers.”
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