Donate by this Sunday so you can see Amelia in the skies this Labor Day!

In order to put Amelia back in the skies this Labor Day, we must order the balloon this Sunday.

We are still short the cash needed to place the order. But we’re almost there!

We only need 11 more people to join our 99 Club by Sunday. That’s not much more. WE CAN DO IT!

Please join the 99 Club today and invite all of your friends to do the same. And remember—your contribution is tax-deductible.

How exciting! In just 6 weeks, we could see our new Amelia Earhart balloon in one of the Labor Day parades!

See also: Uppity Women and Subversive History.

Uppity women and subversive history

You know what I like best about our balloon project? That it’s so subversive.

As women and feminists, we’ve always had to find ways around the entrenched power structures to get our stories told. Remember the Guerrilla Girls in the 80s? Remember the “This demeans women” stickers in the 70s?

The establishment institutions are biased against women and girls, which of course is why EVE exists in the first place. And it’s unavoidable that a big part of our work is focused on effecting change in those institutions: stamps, currency, statues, street names.

But the balloon project gives us an opportunity to go rogue. It’s a wildly subversive way to get women’s history right there in front of people, bypassing the corporate media and the official textbooks and the documentaries and the museums and the memorials—all that male-centered, woman-denying stuff that dominates the landscape. Think of it: a 40-foot helium balloon of Amelia Earhart—or Harriet Tubman, or Susan B. Anthony, or Clara Barton—sailing down the street. Impossible to miss. And the television announcers will be reading the script we’ve supplied, explaining what the balloon is all about, who the woman was. Millions of people will be exposed to real women’s history. Millions of people will hear our message.

I admit, it took me awhile to see the beauty of the plan. When Lynette Long first presented the idea to me, I was like, what? Parade balloons? I’d never thought about it. But the more we talked about it and the more I learned, the more I realized what we could do with this. We are incredibly lucky to have hooked up with Toni McKay, whose StarBound Entertainment is one of the top two balloon suppliers in the country. She totally believes in this project, and is chomping at the bit to get these balloons designed and built. And because of her position in the industry, she has the ability to make sure our balloons fly in some of the biggest parades in the country.

My fantasy now is to some day have parade balloons of all those women who ought to be world-famous, but aren’t. Can you imagine? I want to hear the TV announcer introducing these balloons:

Admiral Grace Hopper: the woman who invented modern computer programming.
Buffalo Calf Road Woman: the Cheyenne warrior who killed Custer.
Mercy Otis Warren: the woman who conceived of the Bill of Rights.

But first we need to get Amelia Earhart launched. If you haven’t chipped in yet, please consider giving if you can. As we point out in the Q&A about the balloon, it’s a great value for the money. The balloon will last for 20 years and be seen by millions of people every year—and all for less than $10,000.

Put Amelia Earhart Back in the Skies!

A couple of weeks ago I promised that we had two big announcements coming, both related to Amelia Earhart.

Well, here’s the first one: EVE is sponsoring a giant helium balloon of Amelia Earhart to appear in parades all over the country! Actually the balloon will be a replica of her famous red Lockheed Vega, with an oversized Amelia in the cockpit.

The Amelia Earhart balloon is going to be the first in a series of parade balloons featuring American heroines, which we’re developing with StarBound Entertainment, one of the top balloon suppliers for parades all over the country. Here at EVE we’ve talked about the way character balloons are overwhelmingly male; the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, for example, has only had 10 female balloons in its entire 85-year history. Our “great American women” series will bring heroines to parades all over the country. Can you imagine how cool that will be for families and kids? Can you imagine how inspired little girls will be?

“Mom, who’s that?”

“Amelia Earhart! She was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic! She was the first person ever to fly solo over the Pacific!”

Read more about it here, watch the slideshow, and check out the press release we issued this week.

We need to raise the money to finance the balloon, so we’re asking people to chip in $99 — that’s in honor of Amelia Earhart’s Ninety-Nines, the organization she founded in 1929 for women pilots. Our goal is to raise $9,801 (that’s 99 people x $99 each). Donors will be inducted into EVE’s 99 Club and have their names listed on the Wall of Fame (unless they want to be Howard Hughes or something, in which case we promise not to tell).

If you have a blog or a website of your own, you can help by posting the widget in your sidebar; just click the “Get Widget” tab on the bottom. The progress meter will update automatically as our total goes up. (Send us an email at admin@equalvisibilityeverywhere.org if you need help.)

Notes on holidays

An EVE staffer offers the following research on U.S. holidays honoring women:

Florida allows state employees to take Susan B. Anthony’s birthday as a paid holiday, even though it is not a legal Florida holiday. I did find Susan B. Anthony’s Birthday as a legal holiday in Wisconsin. I think the schools recognize it as a school holiday there.

I discovered that New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced H.R. 856 The Susan B. Anthony Birthday Act (to celebrate her legacy on the third Monday of February) for the first time in 2007; it has never been passed to date by Congress.

However, I just searched every state’s legal holidays on FindLaw.com and discovered that 16 states (Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin) recognize election day(s) as state holidays. “Women’s Equality Day” has been recognized annually for 39 years by joint resolution of Congress since Bella Abzug introduced it in 1971 and the phrase, Women’s Equality Day, is familiar to most Americans. I don’t believe that anyone has ever proposed Women’s Equality Day as a national holiday. Sadly, no state has adopted Women’s Equality Day as a state holiday yet.

Three states (Wyoming, Idaho and ?) recognize MLK day as “Wyoming Equality Day” and “Human Rights Day” in Idaho.

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