Pink State Politics

First airing

2009-06-21T18:36:00.000-07:00

Tonight WHUT/PBS/Howard University in Washington, DC, showed the premier of Pink State Politics, which we started filming in September 2008 -- a nine month process from conception to screening. There are many, many people to thank, and we are especially appreciative of the many women in Virginia who gave their time to us. In all, we interviewed more than 100 women for the 30 minute film.

If you missed tonight's airing, WCVE/PBS/Richmond and WHTJ/PBS/Charlottesville will show the documentary on July 2nd at 8.30 p.m.

Pink State Politics to Air on WHUT/Washington, WCVE/Richmond and WHTJ/Charlottesville

2009-06-04T11:29:00.000-07:00

Pink State Politics will air on WHUT/PBS/Howard University on June 21 at 8 pm and again on July 2nd on WCVE/Richmond and WHTJ/Charltottesville at 8.30 pm.

Screening of Pink State Politics At Avalon Theater

2009-06-04T06:51:00.000-07:00

The Avalon Theater in Washington, DC, previewed Pink State Politics: A New Virginia on May 28th. (Top photo) Filmmakers Laura Hambleton (left) and Laura DeBruce in front of the Avalon marquee. (Bottom photo from left) A few women featured in the film: Melinda Lewis, Phyllis Randall, Andrea McGimsey Laura Hambleton, Patti Maslinoff, Anne Whipple, Laura DeBruce, Paige Alexander and her daughters, Rachel and Carly Grand inside the Avalon.

Pink State Politics trailer

2009-02-06T01:12:00.000-08:00

Edited by John Warnock

Music by Cathy Pickar

Director of Photography, Allen Moore

Additional Photography, Brian Edwards, Elliot Klayman, Pat Flynn

Location Sound Engineers, Pat Flynn, Kevin Beyer, Josh Balster

Film narrated by Kathryn Klvana

Edited at Kepferle Productions

Produced & Directed by Laura DeBruce and Laura Hambleton

End of editing!

2009-01-31T12:07:00.001-08:00

Yesterday we finished the rough cut of PINK STATE POLITICS: A New Virginia. Our amazing editor, John Warnock, still has a day or so of polishing and we need to send it out to be mixed; but the two of us are done with the actual work of editing.

Our film is thirty minutes long. It could be much longer, and, who knows, we may end up making a more in-depth version one of these days. We will post a trailer soon so stay tuned!

Of Hockey Moms & Health Care

2008-11-24T18:23:00.000-08:00

With Sarah Palin embracing the hockey mom label and bringing the term front and center in the political arena, we visited a group of hockey moms in Virginia to find out what issues had been the most important to them in the election.

For Sally, the most important issue was the government's increasing role in all sectors of life, including health care. "Our government keeps becoming more and more socialist," she said. "It's nice, warm and fuzzy to say everyone's entitled to health care, but what does it mean for the doctors, patients and choice of care?"

We hope that the new Obama administration will eventually answer that question, for Sally and for the thousands of her fellow Virginians currently without health care. We met with one woman who could offer some advice. Richmond attorney, Phyllis Katz, founded the organization LINC, www.cancerlinc.org, to provide assistance to cancer patients who are overwhelmed by the thicket of business and legal issues currently entwined with their care. She says, "My passion is to open doors, cut through red tape, negotiate with hospitals." Send this woman to Washington.

Election Day - Obama Headquaters

2008-11-24T04:33:00.001-08:00

Across town, Phyllis Randall was busy working at the Obama headquarters in Leesburg, where the buzz of anticipation filled the offices and spilled over to the sidewalks outside. "For the most part of the day, I've been driving, taking people to the polls," Phyllis said. "I took a 94-year-old woman who said she hadn't had this feeling since Kennedy." She also brought her two boys, 14 and 12 respectively, to help out. "I said to them, you're going to want to tell your children, your great-grandchildren, that you helped Senator Obama get elected."

And indeed they will be able to do that.

The boys' great-grandfather, Phyllis' grandfather, was a Pullman Porter who traveled to Washington,DC in August 1963 to mark with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Phyllis had both grandparents on her mind a few days after Barack Obama's historic win.

"I'm driving down Constitution Avenue and there's a place you can look back and see the White House. I burst into tears. I was sobbing over the enormity of it all, that African American slaves laid the first bricks. And I thought, Oh my God, Grandma and Grandpa, look what we just did. It was an amazing thing that we just did."

She added, "We didn't do it as African Americans. We did it as Americans."

Election Day - McCain Headquarters

2008-11-24T04:28:00.000-08:00

We spent Election Day in Virginia, visiting polling places and talking to women who spent the day making sure the election ran smoothly. Just before the polls closed, we headed to the candidates' offices in Loudoun County. At the McCain headquarters, we met Melinda Lewis, Field Director for the McCain-Palin campaign. Recently out of college, Melinda's clear enthusiasm for her work energized the office. She had become a McCain supporter after watching the YouTube debates during the Republican primary. "I was really passionate about McCain, his stance against torture, the way he stood up for what he believed in," she said. As we left, the callers shifted their focus from Virginia to Colorado, where polls would still be open for another couple of hours.

Drumming for Obama

2008-10-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

We weren't sure what to expect when Arts for Obama invited us to attend a Drum Circle for Obama in the rolling hills of Loudoun County. We arrived at a beautiful old barn that had been converted to an art gallery. Horses grazed under the blue skies.

"They were dancing earlier," one of the drummers enthusiastically exclaimed. "We started to drum and the horses came out and danced."

The drummers reassembled, and, led by Dan, they started to beat their drums. "Vote for Obama. Vote for Change," the drummers chanted, their drums echoing through the countryside.

"Drumming is a way to bring people together," Dan said. "And that's what this election is all about, reaching out to everyone and roping them all in." One woman roped in was Peggy, who told us she hadn't worked on an election since Bobby Kennedy ran for U.S. President in 1968. Senator Barack Obama inspires her in the same way. "He has the same spirit and hope and enthusiasm for everything the country could do," she said.

The horses didn't dance again while we were there, but they did move close. They edged up to the fence, drawn, it seemed, by the excitement generated by the drummers who chanted for an Obama Presidency.

2008-10-30T08:21:00.000-07:00

The Nineteenth Amendment

It has only been 88 years since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment of our U.S. Constitution gave women the right to vote. The wording is simple enough:

"The rights of the citizens of the United States shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

But the passage of the amendment came at a cost to the brave women who fought to ensure women's participation in our democracy.

Throughout the winter of 1917, a group led by Alice Paul protested in front of the White House to urge President Woodrow Wilson to support the amendment. When bystanders harassed them, the police arrested the women for obstruction of justice and hauled Alice Paul and some of her fellow protesters to the Occoquan Workhouse in Fairfax County, Va., where the Workhouse Guards humiliated them and forced the women to perform prison work in conditions of squalor.

We met Dottie O'Rourke, First V.P. of the Western Fairfax Republican Women's Committee, to talk about the current election and discovered her passion for history and talent for acting -- Dottie travels throughout the state reenacting the plight of the suffragists. Casting her eyes to the cloudy skies above, she reminded us of the rough treatment these brave women suffered in their efforts for voting equality.

2008-10-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

Anne Clay Crenshaw

Virginia Suffragist

Anne Clay Crenshaw hosted the first meeting of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia at her Richmond home in November 1909. We met her granddaughters, Anne Warfield Crenshaw Truesdale and Sally Crenshaw Witt in Richmond. Anne shared stories of her famous grandmother, whom she lived with as a girl. Anne Clay Crenshaw and her sister, Laura Clay, recognized how desperately women needed a voice and the power to effect change after witnessing their parents' divorce and its devastating effects on her mother. At one of the League's early meetings, Anne Clay Crenshaw told the assembled members she wanted to bring her children up in an atmosphere of freedom and distinct individuality. On the basis of our meeting with her accomplished and fascinating granddaughters, we'd say she succeeded.

The Nineteenth Amendment became U.S. law on August 18, 1921. It took the Virginia legislature another thirty-two years to ratify the amendment, although that didn't stop Virginia women from exercising their federal right to vote. Now, only 56 years since Virginia's ratification, the pundits say the women of Virginia are going to be the ones who determine whether Virginia remains a red state of swings blue.

Anne Clay Crenshaw would be proud.

Waterford Fair

2008-10-22T11:54:00.001-07:00

October 5, 2008

Waterford Town Fair, Waterford, Virginia

There’s more to our story than day-to-day politics – and women’s reaction to it.

We are also focusing on women who shaped politics in the state years ago. That’s why one day we crouched before rows of worn tombstones looking for John and Emma Dutton’s graves in the Quaker cemetery in Waterford, Virginia. John M. Souders, a local historian, searched alongside us until we found the makers on one row deep into the cemetery.

The Duttons were pacifists during the Civil War. John Dutton ran a store in Waterford, but fled to Maryland to avoid conscription in the Confederate Army. His daughters, Lizzie and Lida, along with neighbor Sarah Steer, stayed behind and published an underground, pro-Union newspaper. The three women smuggled out the newspaper to Maryland, where it was published and distributed from Baltimore. The women wrote in a cheerful, chatty style about living through the war, but the consequences should they have been caught could have been dire.

In the second edition, the women editors wrote that their mission was to "cheer the weary soldier, and render material aid to the sick and wounded.’’ Abraham Lincoln was one of their many readers -- one of their newspapers was discovered among his belongings.

The Duttons married soldiers and moved away. Sarah, however, stayed in Waterford, and taught African-American children and adults in her home. She helped establish a schoolhouse for African-Americans, which closed in the 1950s. Even without having the privilege to vote themselves, these women found a way to make a difference. Lucky for their husbands that they worked through the power of the pen instead of the power of pain. Another Waterford husband wasn't so lucky -- his wife marched him to the polls on election day holding fast to his ear to ensure he would vote the way she wanted.

Camera crew in Waterford, Virginia

2008-10-22T11:49:00.000-07:00

October 5, 2008

Allan Moore, Pat Flynn, Laura Hambleton and John Souders, a Waterford historian.

Loudoun County Women's Forum

2008-10-22T11:45:00.000-07:00

October 4, 2008

Photo of Andrea McGimsey

Member of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors

We traveled to Leesburg, Virignia to attend a Women's Forums sponsored by Loudoun County Women for Obama. Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower and lifelong Republican, addressed the crowd. She echoed her comments from the Democratic Convention that she spoke not as a Republican or a Democrat but as an American. She endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President.

"If John McCain was really a moderate, he would have chosen someone from my end of the Republican Party," she said, matter-of-factly, and then embarked on a detailed analysis of the defense budget and U.S. foreign policy. The Democratic women present had to wonder if they wouldn't be voting Republican if John McCain had chosen Susan Eisenhower to be his Vice President.

After the forum, we spoke to Andrea McGimsey, one of the newly-elected Democrats to the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. Ms. McGimsey described her party's victory last November that resulted in five of the nine Board Members being Democrats. "We're turning the county blue," she said beaming. Not only that, she added cheerfully, but women from both parties now make up the majority of the board.

From Senator Hillary Clinton's groundbreaking bid for the Democratic nomination and Senator John McCain's selection of Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate to the legions of women joining state and county governing bodies, this has become another Year of the Woman. For a number of women, party allegiance comes first and foremost.

But there are women on both sides of the ever-deepening political divide who applaud the recognition of intelligent, accomplished, hard-working female politicians -- regardless of her party.

Maybe there will come a time when it is unremarkable to have a woman run for US president or vice president, but we're not there yet.

Virginia Awash in Pink

2008-10-22T11:32:00.000-07:00

October 3, 2008

Laura DeBruce takes a break from our shooting schedule to join the Tough Alliance team during part of the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk for breast cancer research. As Reuters reports, this is one issue where Senators McCain and Obama are on the same side.

McCain - Palin Rally in Fairfax, Virginia

2008-10-22T09:50:00.000-07:00

September 10, 2008

In late August, Senator John McCain chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Less then two weeks later, they traveled to Fairfax, Va., to rally the troops. Amid chants of "Sarah," "John McCain," and "USA," men, women and children decorated with colorful proclamations of devotion greeted them.

In the crowd we met a woman named Debbie. Tall and elegant in jeans and a Republican-red T-shirt, Debbie stood with her husband and youngest of three sons. She was reluctant to talk to us at first, she doesn't usually seek the spotlight, but she gradually told us about herself. She said she would vote for the McCain-Palin ticket because they echo her beliefs. "The Constitution intended us to have freedoms and not having the government being the big daddy telling us what to do. We home school and we need the freedom to home school," she said. Debbie's 15-year old son, who accompanied her to the rally, could count on a fascinating lesson that day on politics and history.

When the blaring notes of Barracuda fell silent, and the raucous crowd's applause gave way to eagerness to hear from the man before them, John McCain spoke. He promised to reform government, to fight big spenders in Washington. "I know I can inspire a generation of Americans to serve a cause greater than themsevles," he said. "We will disagree from time to time but I have spent my life in service to this country, and I have always put my country first."

He would find no disagreement from Debbie. Her husband is retired from the Air Force, and her two eldest sons, following in their father's footsteps, could soon be deployed to Iraq. "I think we have a great country," she said with a quiet conviction. "It's an honor to serve it, and I want them to serve it." That her sons will do, and, with her steady devotion to family and country, so does Debbie.

2008-10-22T09:47:00.000-07:00

September 10, 2008

Laura Hambleton talks to Darnesha, a McCain - Palin supporter in Fairfax, Virginia. "I am very pro-life," Darnesha explained. "I believe that having a baby and raising a child is a privilege."

McCain - Palin Rally in Fairfax, Virginia

2008-10-22T09:42:00.001-07:00

September 10, 2008

McCain-Palin Supporters in Fairfax, Virginia

"We're so excited about Sarah Palin. There's something very energizing about having a wonderful model for women and for my daughters."