The Good Words Podcast celebrates Women's History Month with the word, "obstreperous"! Host Lynn Hickernell explains how activists, like suffragette Christabel Pankhurst, were forced to break rules in order to get women the vote. Host of new Kids Listen podcast "Activist, You!" Lindz Amer tells about why modern-day activists like Greta Thunberg need to be uncooperative, and family therapist Bonnie Witmer helps think about how to cope with an unruly little brother in a "Do Over" called, "The Board Game." The episode concludes with Stephanie Pepper's poem about some obstreperous felines, "Catfight."
SHOW NOTES:
This episode is part of the Kids Listen celebration of Women's History Month! Here are the other shows that are participating:
Be Calm on Ahway Island
The Past and the Curious
Girl Tales
Book Power for Kids
Timestorm
This Week in the Multiverse
(and don't forget to check out all the other wonderful podcasts at KidsListen.org!)
Christabel Pankhurst: "The reason I was forced to adopt the mode of assault that I did was because my arms were firmly pinned down so that I could not raise them. There was no other course open. My conduct in the Free-trade Hall and outside was meant as a protest against the legal position of women to-day. We cannot make any orderly protest because we have not the means whereby citizens may do such a thing; we have not a vote; and so long as we have not votes we must be disorderly. There is no other way whereby we can put forward our claims to political justice. When we have that you will not see us at the police courts; but so long as we have not votes this will happen."
Learn about more obstreperous kid activists on Lindz Amer's podcast, Activist, You!
Closing poem:
In the yard across from mine,
as dusk settles in, two
of the street’s stray cats–one
orange, the color of apricot jam, and the
other white with black patches (or black with white,
whichever you prefer)–hiss and screech,
roll around end over end
in the uncut grass raising a
terrible ruckus. And I think of
my high school cafeteria, and
two girls yelling, and painted
nails clawing and scratching,
snatching fistfuls of teased up
hair held high by AquaNet while a
dozen kids circle as witness—
FIGHT! FIGHT!
I didn’t intervene then either.
©stephanie pepper, 2019