|
(L-R) Ethel
Painel, Stuart Buice, Eleanor Piel, Blanche E. Lawton,
President, WCCNY |
Women’s City Club’s 90th Year
By Dorothy Davis
The feisty Women’s
City Club of New York is 90 years young. Suffragists started
it in 1915. In 1920 they got the vote. In the 1920s Eleanor
Roosevelt joined and began a public service career that changed
the world.
The nonpartisan, nonprofit,
volunteer group fights for the poor, homeless, ill, elderly,
immigrant, for better schools, women’s rights, voting and legislative reform. In recognition
of all this civic virtue New York politicians flocked recently
to the CUNY Graduate Center in Manhattan for the conference
kicking off WCC’s anniversary year. The topic was “Revitalizing Citizen [translation: Women’s]
Participation for the 21st Century.”Gifford Miller, the
youthful looking Speaker of the City Council, arrived early
to present the Council’s proclamation praising WCC “for
90 years of outstanding public service.” He assured them, “Involving
women in the leadership of the city at greater levels is important.” He
agreed “with every single plank” of WCC’s
action agenda. He then praised the leading women in his own
life: his mother, public garden designer Lyndon Miller; and
his lawyer wife. But he received the most applause when he
lauded “our great State Senator Liz Krueger who is here,
who is helping to shake up Albany.”
Blanche E. Lawton,
President of WCC, read from the mayor’s
proclamation a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, “The future
belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Councilmember
Gale Brewer, whose district includes WCC’s headquarters,
was supposed to present the Council proclamation along with
Gifford Miller. She apologized for arriving too late to do
that. She’d been at the budget briefing with the Mayor,
she said, while Speaker Miller had been able to see the budget
the night before. But she managed to one-up him by throwing
out a new bone for the eager women to gnaw on. She was concerned
about the Mayor’s $1 billion proposed “savings” from
the education budget, and predicted “some dialogue” about
that between then and June. Liz Krueger, the battling State
Senator, didn’t bring a proclamation either, but the
crowd greeted her with resounding applause anyway. She was
glad to see so many young women in the audience, “When
you drive up [to Albany] you feel like you’ve gone back
about 30 years in history particularly from a woman’s
perspective. It is critical that young women get more and more
involved in civic participation and in government!” #
For more about WCC go to www.wccny.org
