Laura Flanders next opens it up to the audience for questions, speak outs, thoughts about the unfinished feminist business before us all. No hands go up yet, so Laura provokes us a bit, Laura-Flanders style: “Are we going to let people like Larry Summers set our future?!” While people are thinking of comments, Laura asks Esther what she thought might be different by now.

Says Esther Broner, “I was sure we’d have socialism at the least. Even now, I wonder what they’re waiting for. I never thought the rich would get richer and the poor poorer. That’s not what we were studying for. Women’s Studies is so egalitarian — you don’t see yourself as the final source. You evoke from the people around you. I thought that’s what our country would be like. So I have to draw a deep breath and get out there and work again. And that’s a little scary. I was born in 1927.  I’ll be 82.”

Laura Flanders notes that Esther Broner has been part of every social movement that has existed in her lifetime and asks Ai-jen Poo what she thinks of the current divisions between movements, and the historical silo-ing of movements, that sometimes takes place.

Says Ai-jen, “Each generation has built on previous ones. Now IS the moment for thinking big, and bold, and seizing the day like we haven’t for a few generations. All the groundwork that’s been laid by past generations will provide the seeds. But it’s now for us to reshape the economy, a new deal, a real deal for everyone. We’re going to have to have new coalitions, new alignments, breaking out of the idea that ‘this is the women’s movement’ and ‘that is the labor movement.’ All the pieces — the racial justice piece, the women’s rights piece, the labor piece — needs to build something greater than the sum of its parts.”

Last 5 posts by Deborah Siegel

• MAMA W/PEN: Work, Life, and Repentance - September 5th, 2011
• MAMA W/PEN: Updates from My New Gig - August 5th, 2011
• MAMA W/PEN: A Day and a Half in the Life of an Op-Ed - July 6th, 2011
• Got Writing/Life Balance? - June 22nd, 2011
• MAMA W/PEN: Do Women Shy Away from "Clout"? - April 4th, 2011