Being Controversial with Betty Nixon

Betty Nixon started her work career as a high school teacher in Anniston, Ala. and eventually became a Metro Councilwoman and two-time mayoral candidate in Nashville/Davidson County; Videos during the time of her campaign: http://youtu.be/aFzqJG7sU6c, http://youtu.be/Egn2zgckYLU, http://youtu.be/ZojONV4X7dw.  She was Deputy press secretary to Tenn. Gov. Ray Blanton; Managed a few campaigns: including the state campaign for Mondale/Ferraro presidential campaign, state campaign manager for U.S. Sen. Jim Sasser for his successful 1988 re-election campaign and served as as a professional staff member of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations.  She chaired the board for the Metro Election Commission.  She worked at Vanderbilt University as the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Community, Neighborhood and Government Relations. Betty also attends West End UMC and was willing to host my Modern Day Flapper release and 30th birthday party – all my friends were inspired by her!

 

· She is the fourth generation to be college educated (and for someone born in the late 1930s that is incredible to me)!

· She went to college to find a husband and had to figure out something else… how much of my non-traditional script is because life didn’t work out like I thought it would?

·  Mary Catherine Bateson author of Composing a Life.

·  Is the idea of balance a privilege afforded to me because of women like Betty?

·  Betty’s daughter Mignon Nixon teaches at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, UK.  She studies sexuality and aggression in art since 1945, focusing in particular on questions of feminism and gender politics. She is the author of Fantastic Reality: Louise Bourgeois and a Story of Modern Art (MIT Press/October Books, 2005) and the editor of the Eva Hesse October File (MIT Press/October Files, 2002). She is a co-editor of October magazine (New York).

· She explains the privilege to be involved at the tipping point of feminism and civil rights in 1960s.

· Rural Women experience power – The 50s model verses pre-50s model

· Powerhouse meeting for the 1984 election talking about Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to run for vice president on a major party ticket.
   o Betty Friedan – women’s rights activist and author of Feminine Mystique (1963):

   o Carol Bellamy

   o Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority and the Feminist Majority Foundation.

   o Mary Landrieu -- United States Senator from the State of Louisiana

   o Sharon Percy Rockefeller – wife of West Virginia Senator John Davison "Jay" Rockefeller IV.

·  Amendment One in Tennessee

·  Hume Fogg in Nashville:   My school was Rochelle School of the Arts in Lakeland, FL

·  We need to learn to live out diversity in our lives!

·  A discussion of fear and scarcity: economic disparity in the US.  Video I referenced: http://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM

·  Gloria Steinem – a leader of the women’s movement in the 1960s and 70s

·   Bella Abzug -- New Yorker, feminist, antiwar activist, politician and lawyer: