Use Your Voice Even If It Shakes? Trust The Answer

Maggie Kuhn, fully Margaret E. Kuhn, (born August 3, 1905 in Buffalo, N.Y., USA – died April 22, 1995 in Philadelphia, Pa.), American social activist who played a central role in the group’s founding, which became known as the Gray Panthers, who campaign for the rights and welfare of the elderly.

Kuhn was raised up north so she wouldn’t be exposed to the racial segregation her southern parents had experienced. In 1922 she enrolled at Case Western Reserve University’s Flora Stone Mather College, where she majored in English and sociology while organizing a collegiate chapter of the League of Women Voters. After graduating, she took a job with the Young Women’s Christian Association in Cleveland, where she remained for the next 11 years. Working with the members, many of whom found low-paying jobs and began forming unions, Kuhn developed an interest in social activism.

After resigning from the YWCA in the late 1930s, she began working for 25 years at the United Presbyterian Church in New York City, where she served as assistant secretary in the Office of Church and Society and program coordinator in the Church and Church Department Race served , and as an editor and writer for Social Progress, the church magazine. An activist on social issues such as women’s rights, medical care, housing and the elderly, Kuhn drew on her own experiences of church ministry to write Go Out and Do Something About Injustice (1972) and Maggie Kuhn on Aging (1977). who argued that the church “should launch a massive attack on ageism in all its oppressive and restrictive forms.” She opposed the church’s mandatory pension policy and, after being forced into retirement in 1970 at the age of 65, began meeting with other pensioners about social issues.

They formed an organization dedicated to bridging the gap between the young and old, initially dubbed the Consultation of Older and Younger Adults for Social Change. However, it was dubbed the “Gray Panthers” by a television journalist who compared them to the militant Black Panthers, and the name stuck. From their office in a Philadelphia church basement, they launched a crusade to end ageism and other social injustices, including through the group’s National Media Watch Task Force. In 1973, Kuhn’s organization merged with Ralph Nader’s Retired Professional Action Group and began a study of nursing homes, culminating in Nursing Homes: A Citizens’ Action Guide (1977).

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Speaking about the problems of providing medical care to the elderly, Kuhn accused “doctors of taking advantage of the infirmities of the elderly.” She later attacked social reform and the generally negative portrayal of older people on television. The Gray Panthers continued to call for the elimination of the profit motive from the US health care system; The group presented position papers and staged protests at meetings of the American Medical Association. The Gray Panthers met every two years and attracted delegates from as many as 70 local chapters. The conventions recommended legislation for free health care and passed a resolution calling for the right of all people to express their sexuality.

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Kuhn and the Gray Panthers were focused on maintaining Social Security benefits in the 1980s when they were under attack from the Ronald Reagan administration. In the early 1990s, a campaign for a national health system was her top priority. Other issues for the 1990s included government support for housing, reduced military spending, and a clean and safe environment. Kuhn remained the organization’s national convener.

On September 18, 2020 we shared these words on Instagram:

We’ve all just heard the news that longtime Supreme Court Justice (and a gender equality and women’s rights powerhouse) Ruth Bader Ginsburg has passed away after a long battle with cancer.

Not only has she treated cancer throughout her career, but she was also the second woman ever to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. During her time on the pitch, she has been primarily and passionately committed to promoting gender equality, women’s rights – and true equality for all.

Especially the underrepresented and underserved members of society. All the while, she maintained bipartisan friendships with people with whom she had strong disagreements.

Her life and leadership certainly speak for themselves, but she also served as a volunteer attorney for the ACLU in the 1970s, as a member of its board of directors, and as one of its general counsel. Before that, she was a trailblazer, one of only a few women in law school.

To say RBG has broken barriers – for themselves and for others – is the understatement of 2020.

Tonight, many are mourning this significant loss, on the pitch and across the US (and we’ll likely be watching the RBG documentary again). May we wake up tomorrow and continue the RBG’s fight for equal justice in America.

Those words were true then – and they are true now, on her 89th birthday.

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Here are our favorite inspirational quotes from Ruth Bader Ginsburg –

Famous RBG quotes about making a difference in the world

“Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that draws others to join you.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Real change, lasting change, happens step by step.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Judges think ahead and can change. I am always confident that if the court has a blind spot today, its eyes will be open tomorrow.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“I strongly believe in listening to others and learning from them.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Whatever you decide to do, leave a mark. That means don’t do it just for you. You will want to leave the world a little better for having lived.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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To her legacy

Ruth Bader Ginsburg on how she wants to be remembered:

“Someone who used every talent they had to do their job to the best of their ability. And to help mend tears in her society, to make things a little better using her skills. Do something outside of me.”

“I’m just trying to make the best of the good work I have and I really don’t think about being inspirational. I just do my best.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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About feminism and equality

“Women belong wherever decisions are made. It should not be that women are the exception.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“When women come into power, the barriers will come down. When society sees what women can do, when women see what women can do, there will be more women doing things and we will all be better off.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“We’ve made great strides… but we haven’t reached nirvana yet. There is still rampant discrimination based on race, gender. It is true that most explicit classifications – men are treated this way, women this way – have disappeared from the statute books. But what remains is what is called unconscious bias. An excellent example of this is the symphony orchestra. In my adolescence I never saw a woman in a symphony orchestra, except perhaps a harpist.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“I pray that I may be everything [my mother] would have been if she had lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and daughters are valued as much as sons.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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About democracy, justice and law

“A constitution, important as it is, will mean nothing if people do not yearn for liberty and liberty.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“The Constitution begins by saying, ‘We, the people of the United States, to form a more perfect union.’ Think about how things were in 1787. Who were “We the People”? Certainly not people held in human bondage because the original constitution maintained slavery. Certainly not women of any color, and not even men who own no property. It was a rather an elite group, “We the People,” but I think the genius of our Constitution is what Justice Thurgood Marshall said: He said he didn’t celebrate the original Constitution, but he did celebrate what the Constitution has become, well over two centuries now. That is, the concept of We the People has become more and more inclusive: people who were initially left out – slaves, women, men without property, Native Americans – were not part of We the People .Once excluded people are part of our political constituency and we are certainly a more perfect union as a result.”

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at a 2019 event in Little Rock, Arkansas

“When viewed in the extreme, almost any power looks dangerous.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“I’m optimistic in the long term. A great man once said that the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle but the pendulum, and if the pendulum swings too far in one direction, it will swing back.”

– Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaking to BBC Newsnight

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More short RBG quotes

“Responding with anger or irritation will not improve your persuasiveness.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“When you have a caring life partner, help the other person when that person needs it. I had a life partner who thought my work was as important as his and I think that made the difference for me.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading has shaped my dreams, and more reading has helped me make my dreams come true.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“So often in life, things that you see as obstacles turn out to be great luck.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020 at the age of 87. The diminutive powerhouse broke barriers in both her personal and professional lives to become a Supreme Court Justice and a pop culture icon. This is what makes RBG’s achievements so groundbreaking.

She fought tirelessly for gender equality before the law. She fought against sexism in her own life and career. While studying law, she juggled motherhood and caring for her husband, who was suffering from cancer. As a Supreme Court Justice, she was a role model of what any young girl (and adult woman, by the way) can achieve. She is Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

What makes RBG, as it’s called, such a force of nature? “She understood exactly what kind of change she wanted to make—and be—in the world because she had experienced it so personally,” says Katherine Franke, a professor at Columbia Law School and director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, who a Part of a 2013 symposium honoring Justice Ginsburg. In their book Notorious RBG, attorney Shana Knizhnik, who created the viral Tumblr Notorious RBG, and journalist Irin Carmon write, “RBG is a woman who, to use another expression, was very important to her , defying stereotypes… RBG was already a radical just because she is herself – a woman who has conquered all odds to make a name for herself.”

By the time she died, the eighty-year-old showed no signs of slowing down. Take a look at some of Justice Ginsburg’s amazing achievements.

She graduated top of her class from Columbia Law School

Encouraged by her mother to continue her education, Ginsburg graduated from Cornell University in 1954, where she met her future husband, Martin, then married and had their first child. Two years later, she entered Harvard law school, one of nine women in a class of 500, and transferred to Columbia when her husband got a job in New York. “Studying law was unusual for women of my generation. For most girls growing up in their 40s, the most important degree wasn’t your BA, it was your MRS,” Ginsburg said, according to the ACLU. She decided to study law for “personal, selfish reasons”. I thought I could do the job of a lawyer better than anyone else.” RBG wasn’t wrong: She placed first in her class at Columbia.

She personally fought sexism – and overcame it

But her educational achievements were not without struggle. “Ginsburg comes from the generation of women who had to be three times better than men to get half the recognition of the average man – that was certainly her experience at Harvard and Columbia Law Schools,” says Franke. “Your law school professors were certainly unfamiliar with having an outstanding student in their classrooms.” One professor even offered to give Ginsburg answers on a test in exchange for sex. But unlike many women of her time, she did not accept this type of treatment as unfounded. “I went into his office and said, ‘How dare you! How dare you do that!’ and that was the end,” she said at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, where the documentary RBG premiered.

She was the first person on the Harvard and Columbia legal exams

While in law school, Ginsburg experienced sexism not only from her professors but also from her fellow students. “I imagine that the harassment she received from her male classmates was even worse than the discriminatory treatment she experienced from her professors,” says Franke. “They would not tolerate a woman excelling in their classes.” Nonetheless, Ginsburg was the first person, male or female, to become a member of both Harvard and Columbia Law Reviews, two student-run legal journals.

She became the second female law professor at Rutgers – and fought for equal pay

John Duricka/AP/Shutterstock

Despite all her honors in law school, Ginsburg faced more discrimination when looking for a job after she graduated. “I did it for three reasons,” she said in 1993 of her difficulties getting hired. “I was Jewish, a wife and a mother. The first raised an eyebrow; the second, two; the third undoubtedly made me inadmissible.”

Eventually, when she was hired at Rutgers Law School in 1963, she became one of a handful of female law professors in the country — but as the second female law professor there, she still had to fight for equal pay. When asked why a male colleague is paid more, “the dean replies, ‘Ruth, he has a wife and two children to support. You have a husband with a well-paying job in New York,'” Ginsburg said on Sundance. “That was the very year the Equal Pay Act was passed, that’s the answer I got.” So she and other female employees filed a lawsuit challenging the Equal Pay Act — and won.

She was co-founder of the first legal journal on women’s rights

In 1969, at the request of her students, Ginsburg began teaching a seminar on women and law. “Rutgers students sparked my interest and helped me plan the course I took,” Ginsburg said in a short film produced by the university. As she began to find her niche in women’s legal rights, she was a co-founder and faculty advisor to the first law journal focused on the subject, the Women’s Rights Law Reporter. “As a faculty advisor, Professor Ginsburg devoted many hours to writing and editing, advising staff, attending meetings, and inevitably mediating with administration when problems arose,” writes co-founder Elizabeth Langer on Columbia Barnard College’s website. “Forty years later, it’s still published at Rutgers Law School — the first of many recent legal publications dealing with women’s issues.”

She became the first tenured law professor at Columbia University

Ginsburg became the first tenured professor at Columbia Law School after joining the faculty in 1972. “It must have been exciting for the female students at Columbia when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hired as a tenured professor,” says Franke. “It’s so important for the students to see themselves in the person at the front of the room.” At the same time, “The pressure on Professor Ginsburg to be a role model for their gender was certainly heavy. It’s never easy to be the first and only representative of your class.” While at Columbia in 1974, she co-authored the law school’s first casebook on sex discrimination.

But RBG did not consider her employer to be above the law, no matter what position he granted her: she championed the rights of the school’s female maids, who were fired before the male janitors; She also fought for female employees to receive the same pension benefits as men. She always won. Ginsburg became one of the inspirational women who change women’s lives.

She co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU

Also in 1972, she co-founded the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) Women’s Rights Project when the organization began referring cases of sex discrimination to her. She took up the mantle of litigating cases of gender inequality with measured, conservative baby steps, tackling law after law because she thought radical change too soon was too much. Still, Ginsburg grew into her role as one of the 30 Pioneers Who Changed the World.

“As we feminists like to say: ‘The personal is the political’ – especially for the RBG,” says Franke. Although gender discrimination still occurs, “What is different now is that the law prohibits these forms of unequal treatment. Her work was instrumental in changing the law to ensure women’s equality in the workplace [and elsewhere] as a legal norm.”

She argued six cases in the Supreme Court – and won five

In the 1970s she brought six cases to the Supreme Court and won all but one. Ironically, “RBG’s distinctive approach to combating sexism has been to file lawsuits on behalf of men who have been treated unequally because of their gender,” says Franke. “She thought that male judges would recognize the injustice in a case where men were the victims, and by winning those cases she built the scaffolding to address the sexism that women suffered from. As the first approach to combating sexism, Ginsburg’s strategy was extremely effective.” For example, in Duren v. Missouri on behalf of a male convict who felt his right to a jury selected from a fair cross-section of his community was violated because there were no women whose jury duty was voluntary.

Ginsburg also said her legal successes stemmed in large part from an approach suggested by her secretary, Milicent Tryon. “I owe it all to my secretary at Columbia Law School, who said, ‘I write all these briefs and articles for you, and the word ‘sex, sex, sex’ is on every page,” Ginsburg said at a 1993 discussion of the Columbia Law Women’s Association. “‘Don’t you know that when these nine men [on the Supreme Court] hear that word, their first association is not what you want them to think of? Why don’t you use the word “gender”?”

She became the first Jewish female Supreme Court judge

Mark Reinstein/Shutterstock

Ginsburg moved from arguing before the Supreme Court to hearing. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her a U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. “My mother followed my father to New York early on, and later he followed her to Washington,” son James Ginsburg, who was born in 1965, told The New Yorker. Then, in 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated Ginsburg for the Supreme Court. She became the second female judge (after Sandra Day O’Connor), the first Jewish judge since 1969, and the first Jewish judge ever.

She is one of only four female judges in history

Ginsburg has achieved other milestones during her lifetime appointment to the court: she became the only female judge on the bench between O’Connor’s resignation in 2006 and the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor in 2009. There are currently three with the addition by Elena Kagan in 2010; But to put this in perspective, of all 114 Supreme Court justices of all time, 110 (96.5 percent) have been men. “I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]? And when I say if it’s nine, people are shocked,” Ginsburg said at a conference in 2012. “But there were nine men, and nobody ever asked a question about it.”

As of 2010, RBG was also the longest-serving judge on the bench.

She had “In the Year of Our Lord” struck off the Supreme Court’s bar certificates

Inside the Adas Israel Congregation synagogue in Washington, D.C. Ginsburg described in 2018 how, early in her tenure as a judge, she was asked to advocate for Jewish attorneys on the Supreme Court Bar Association who did not want “In the Year of Our Lord” written on their membership charter. “Every year they got about half a dozen complaints from Orthodox Jews saying, ‘We’re so proud of our membership in the Supreme Court Bar Association, but we can’t frame our charter and put it on the wall because it says so, ‘In the year of our Lord,’ and he is not our Lord,” Ginsburg said. Another judge, whose name she declined to give, told her the wording was good enough for the five Jewish judges before her. “I said, ‘It’s not good enough for Ginsburg,'” she recalled. After discussion with Chief Justice John Roberts, the wording was simply changed to the year at members’ request. “Now it’s the way it should be — it’s your choice,” she said.

She attracted attention for their passionate disagreements

As a Supreme Court Justice, Ginsburg became known not only for her strong majority opinion but also for fiery dissent. (To answer one of the political questions you were embarrassed about, that’s the opinion that goes against the majority.) In her dissent, she wrote and later began reading it aloud aloud, off the bench, in slang that broke with legal tradition and even called on Congress to change unfair laws. Franke’s favorite opposition in Ginsburg was one of those law-changing cases, Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. in 2007. In that case, the majority found that the plaintiff’s claim of sex pay discrimination was invalid because the statute of limitations had expired (she found out about it after working there for many years). “Judge Ginsburg’s dissent for four members of the court was a classic example of a judiciary enlightening its colleagues,” says Franke. Ginsburg “explained to the other members of the court, as well as to the public, how discrimination works and how ridiculous the majority’s approach to the law was given how discrimination works in the real world.”

In 2009, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, which relaxed the statute of limitations on fair pay complaints and became one of the moments that changed women’s history. “I like to think that most of my dissenting opinions will one day be law,” Ginsburg said in 2015 at the University of Michigan.

She was the first judge to consummate a same-sex marriage

RBG has taken their crusade to end gender discrimination even further with their support of same-sex marriage, which was legalized by federal law in 2015. In 2013, shortly after the Supreme Court overturned two laws restricting same-sex marriage, Ginsburg became the first Supreme Court Justice to serve at the wedding of Kennedy Center President Michael M. Kaiser to economist John Roberts in Washington, DC , officiated. “I think of how the Constitution begins: ‘We, the people of the United States, to form a perfect union,'” Ginsburg said in a 2014 interview on constitutional rights. “But we are still striving for that more perfect union. And one of the perfections is that ‘we the people’ encompasses an ever-growing group.”

She and her daughter became the first mother-daughter to teach at the same law school

RBG comes full circle and has inspired the next generation of women to embrace the law – including her own daughter Jane. The younger Ginsburg followed in her mother’s footsteps and became a law professor at Columbia, where she still teaches today. “I believe we are the first mother-daughter law school teaching team,” RBG wrote in a Columbia Reunion questionnaire. On another reunion questionnaire under “Memorable Law School Moments,” the elder Ginsburg wrote: “Now Columbia law professor Jane C. Ginsburg, then four years old, exclaimed from a balcony seat of the Kent Library as I received my diploma: ‘ That is my mom! ‘”

They are also the first mother-daughter couple to attend Harvard Law School (where Jane graduated). When RBG at Harvard received an award presented by Jane, she said, touched, “An award from your kid, as any parent here knows, is something to really cherish.”

She is the only Supreme Court Justice to become a pop culture icon

Cliff Owen/AP/Shutterstock

Before her death, Ginsburg was at the height of her popularity as young people continued to embrace her as a role model of justice, perseverance, and female empowerment. Her signature glasses, bun, and fancy jabots (the lace collars she is very fond of) make her a favorite for Halloween costumes. Internet memes galore began with then-law student Shana Knizhnik’s Tumblr (now a book) “Notorious RBG”: a nod to the late, very big rapper known as “Notorious BIG,” the nickname emphasizing the juxtaposition between the humble nature of the diminutive justice and her tremendous power on the bench. Kate McKinnon’s hilarious RBG impersonation on Saturday Night Live ends with the line, “You’ve been Gins-burned!” nominated documentary RBG, Felicity Jones portrayed Ginsburg in the 2018 film On the Basis of Sex. “I have no doubt that Judge Ginsburg will hold out to her last breath, which I hope will be the case for many years to come,” says Franke. next up? Ginsburg would love an equal rights change.

Read some of Ginsburg’s best quotes now.

Sources:

“Fight for the things that are important to you. But do it in a way that gets others to join you.”

– Ruth Bader-Ginsburg