FB Nurse-in Press Release

Media - Event Notice January 30, 2012

World wide protests to call on Facebook to leave breastfeeding photos alone

- Daily image deletions and account suspensions continue

- Facebook has removed 257,000 supporters from the official petition group

- Protests planned at Facebook offices around the globe

The  Facebook v. breastfeeding showdown continues with moms around the globe planning to protest at Facebook offices February 6th. After once again having her account suspended over posting a breastfeeding image, Canadian breastfeeding activist Emma Kwasnica said she couldn't accept the company's apology until they truly fix the problem. Kwasnica spoke with Facebook staff last week and said despite some accommodations, the bottom line is Facebook says they cannot prevent breastfeeding images and account suspensions from continuing. This morning Facebook removed 257,000 supporters from the “Hey Facebook! Breastfeeding is Not Obscene” official petition group, which has been active since 2007. In a statement after her meeting Kwasnica expressed her frustration: "It is obvious to me now that Facebook really has lost control of their network, especially when their written policy clearly states they support the sharing of breastfeeding images, yet they say they cannot control the actions of their employees who keep removing breastfeeding images and who block accounts of the users who post them – usually “in error.” This is exasperating to me." Kwasnica says Facebook must simply leave all breastfeeding images alone. Late last week the Wall Street Journal reported Facebook is about to launch an IPO which would value the company at between $70 and $100B. Facebook's advertising revenues last year topped $3B. Facebook offers advertisers the ability to carefully target audiences. The so-called "influential mom" demographic is highly sought after. Some of the influential mom demographic is planning to flex their muscles by telling their friends and family on Facebook, and by telling the world at protests around the globe, they want Facebook to stop harassing breastfeeding mothers. Nurse-ins are planned Feb 6 at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California and at Facebook offices in other US cities including Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Prineville, Oregon, and Seattle. Similar protests are planned around the globe in Amsterdam, Dublin, London, Paris, Toronto, and Sydney. For more information contact:
-----------------
Emma Kwasnica

604-215-0433

emma.kwasnica@gmail.com
Jodine Chase

780-938-5208

jchase@mediaworks.com
@jodinechase
Facebook Protest details: http://www.facebook.com/notes/fb-stop-harassing-emma-kwasnica-over-her-breastfeeding-pics/locations-for-facebook-nurse-in/324817760874621 or http://on.fb.me/nurseins
Link to official petition site: http://www.facebook.com/groups/2517126532/ or http://on.fb.me/HFBBFINO
Link to blog post with daily updates since Emma’s account went down Jan 8th. It includes recent images that have been deleted, screen snapshots showing the membership numbers in the official petition site before Facebook removed members, and more: http://www.jodinesworld.blogspot.com/2012/01/fb-harasses-women-for-breastfeeding.html
or bit.ly/Jan30fbbf



If you are local to the Bay Area, you can email me (hrfarley at gmail dot com). I am willing to talk to the press about my part in organizing this nurse-in. If you want to participate, I can get information to you about a carpool leaving Alameda and other information about gathering in Menlo Park, CA.

FB Nurse-in, part 2.

So three years later, I find myself organizing another nurse-in at FB. There is a FB page for the Menlo Park, CA one, but because it's international, there are many others and you can check to see if there is one near you here.

The FB! Stop harassing Emma Kwasnica over her breastfeeding pics page is going to host a live chat with me tomorrow at 2pm PST (5pm EST) answering questions about my involvement in the first nurse-in if you want to go and watch that.

In the meantime, I guess all I have to say is keep on keepin' on! Nurse your babies! And your toddlers! And even your preschoolers (does that include Margaret now?)!

Counting

Counting makes me cringe. It really does. I know a lot of parents do it, my own parents do it. And it was a threat, a threat that if I didn't do what they wanted by then time they got to "3," then I would get spanked. I've talked to other parents who do it and have said they've never gone to 3, so they've never had to carry out any threat. But the threat is still there and that irks me.

And then there are times when I find myself really really wanting to do the counting thing. I was successfully patient the first 50 times, but this time, I am NOT patient and I am not feeling nice. Last weekend I got to that point and I did indeed start counting, even though I didn't know what I'd do if I got to "3."

But then mid-way through my count, I remembered something someone said about counting that I really liked and I don't even remember who the person was, but I'm grateful. They said, "Think of it as counting up to something really exciting." So I did. Instead of stopping at three, I went to five and at five I picked Margaret up and flew her around the room and shouted, "Blast off!" 

This did a lot of things at once: got Margaret distract from climbing the shelf again, kept the connection between us, gave me a few seconds to be patient, and it was fun. And I didn't need to threaten her or punish her.

This can be used for a lot of things: counting down to buckling in the car(but make it fun!), getting ready to leave, I've even used it in nursery class when a child doesn't want to come over for a snack or music time.

Also, kids really like to "Blast off!"

So that's something that's in my parenting bag of tricks. It doesn't work all the time. Times it hasn't worked have included times when my kids wanted me to acknowledge their upset instead of distracting them, and I've apologized for not being respectful of that and re-connected in a different way. But it's a good one to have in my pocket when I don't have patience and something needs to be done Right. Now.

Parenting Resources

A couple of months ago, I promised I'd do a post of linking up to various sites/resources I've found useful in parenting. And I was going to, but in the holiday and New Year rush, I never did, but PhDinParenting did a toddler-focused post on discipline that contained many of the links I was going to include, so I'll send you there: 3 Rs of Toddler Discipline: Repetition, Reaction, Reassurance.

One book she didn't mention, but I want to is Respectful Parents, Respeciful Kids 7 Keys to Turn Family Conflict into Cooperation, which is based on Non-Violent Communication, which I absolutely love.

I also like Teacher Tom's creative ways to handle conflict and discipline. Check out that blog sometime.

Hi

Popping in and saying "hi" since it's been a week since I've posted here. I had lots of ideas this morning, but forgot all of them, so I'm winging this post.

I've been very busy. The early days this week were taken over by knitting and designing. I'm intend for most of the year to be commandeered by knitting and designing. That's the direction I want to go in right now.

Breastfeeding took up the last half of my week. Lots of stuff has been going on in lactivism lately: most importantly is the FB nurse-in scheduled for Feb. 6. The link to the Bay Area one is here, but this is a combined effort and includes FB offices worldwide. Perhaps there is one close to you!

In Mormon-ness, I posted today on the Exponent about a new blog called It's Time for Sharing, focused on Primary lessons. Check it out!

In food, I've really been enjoying January in California: ORANGES! Our CSA box has given us 3.5 pounds of oranges every week for the past 3 weeks. Some recipes we've tried recently include Orecchiette with Rapini and Goat Cheese, Broccoli and Mei Qing Choi Stir Fry (we also added fennel), Schinkenroellchen (leeks wrapped in ham and then baked with eggs and cheese on top), Spinach Salad with Mandarin Oranges, Collards and Rice, and Garlic Parsnip Fries (added rutabaga to this as well). We are trying a couple new ones this next week, too: Delicata Squash with lime butter and Quinoa linguini and romanesco (though, with just quinoa, not quinoa linguini).

In feminism, Are Women People? is a blog post that includes some suffragist poetry. Very fun to read.

We finished catching up with Dr. Who. It's over, alas! The Silence haunts my dreams: and I only know because tick marks show up on my arms in my dreams. Tonight's Netflix is 2001: A Space Odyssey, so I anticipate getting a lot more knitting done.  I should go start the pizza dough for pizza night. And that's all I remember right now. Happy weekend!

Friday Fill-ins and update

1. When I looked out the window this morning the sun was shining and the fog was clear.
2. My blogging ennui doesn't make sense to me.
3. Remind me to actually plan my nursery lesson earlier than Friday next week.
4. Dreaming is something I love to do!
5. TP is "vulva" according to Isaac. When I ask Margaret if she'd like me to wipe her vulva after she goes potty, I also grab some toilet paper at the same time. Now Isaac associates the two!
6. I cleaned the refrigerator recently and I found some leftovers from New Year's.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to pizza night, tomorrow my plans include laundry and running and Sunday, I want to knit and write!

  

Ennui. That's a good word for it. For the past two weeks, I simply haven't felt like writing. I had writing projects I had to do: guest posts for other blogs, small updates to Mutual Approbation, and some very important emails with people I can't talk about. I sat down and forced myself to write all these things, but I couldn't shake the haze my brain was in when I tried to write. And looming in the background was an invitation to a writing group.

This writing group intimidated me. It was being set up by an editor. A real one. Who's edited books. That I've read.

So I forced myself on Tuesday to spend the afternoon writing a two-and-a-half page memoir piece. Miraculously, both children took naps so I was given a couple of hours to myself. Wonderful! Of course, as soon as I finished the piece I decided to no longer pursue it and toss it, but I brought it to the writing group anyway.

And talk about more intimidation, as everyone introduced themselves, there were writers who had been published, who were getting feedback on cover letters to publishers, writing screen plays, novels, the whole shebang. And me?

"I write on a lot of blogs and I brought something that I don't even want to pursue."

They asked me about what sorts of things I would like to pursue publishing.

Um? Nothing? Well, I want to publish more knitting patterns, but I don't know if reading, "K1, p2tog, K to end" was something I could really get feedback on.

My little piece was well-received, though. And that surprised me. I'm very self-conscious about my writing despite the fact that I regularly throw up blog posts on the Internet. They gave me ideas of where to go for publishing what I had written or where to go next if I want to explore adding on to it.  I left with a mental list of writing I had been meaning to do, but had forgotten. Maybe I'll have something for next time.

I don't have a real direction for my writing; I'm just writing because I have ideas, but I don't have any clue on what sort of venues to seek out for publishing. And I'm not sure if I want to publish.  I already have a couple of big projects in the knitting section of my life that are going to take a huge portion of my energy.

We'll see. It was fun, though.

Pinterest

I made this image using Justin Liew's photo from flickr, which is licensed under the Creative Commons license allowing sharing and remixing of the photo. So here's my remix and I'm sharing it.

To be honest, I'm only posting it here so I can pin it on my Pinterest page.