During their Oct. 24 meeting the Eau Claire City Council voted 7-1 to enact a rule barring children of council members from the dais. This issue came up because council member Catherine Emmanuelle has wanted to be able to breastfeed her new child while sitting normally on the dais at council meetings. This has been brewing as an issue in the council for some time now, and finally came to a vote. Emmanuelle, Kate Beaton, and Andrew Werthmann all abstained from voting, apparently because they believed the issue should not be voted on as it would raise unwanted precedents.
Many council members argued that this is a matter of decorum and giving undivided attention to the workings of the council and to constituents speaking before the group.
The vote has attracted national attention. An AP story on the vote was picked up by major newspapers around the country, and the story has been featured in Huffington Post.
In particular, however, the story has had incredible traction in social media. Reactions have been overwhelmingly in favor of Emmanuelle and the right of mothers to breastfeed in the workplace. Much of this is disappointment that the city council could not find some informal way to deal with this issue rather than bringing it to a vote and exacerbating the division within the council on the issue. Many social media posts have carried the #standwithcatherine hashtag promoted by the VoteRunLead leadership program.
Twelve female members of the Wisconsin State Legislature have sent a letter to the city council, led largely by State Representative Melissa Sargent protesting the decision by the council. Emmanuelle is at the moment considering further legal measures on this isssue, and the news on this decision will certainly continue.
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Julaine Appling on Breastfeeding
Well, okay then, let me see if I understand this:
Fred Risser introduced a bill to ensure that women will not be legally prevented from breast feeding in public. A reporter from the Badger Herald asked Julaine Appling about her opinion on the bill, and printed a (and it looks reasonable to me) truncated quote from her.
Now she is complaining that she was misquoted - because breast feeding is only lewd sometimes and you should only be fined if your breastfeeding somehow crosses the line and becomes lewd. How the hell do you determine that? How much breast shows? How pretty the woman in question is? How happy the baby seems? Is there a community standard for this? Are breasts more lewd in Poy Sippi than in Madison? My mind reels. I'm always amazed at how easy some folks think it is to determine what behavior should and shouldn't be regulated.
If my actual words had been published, the public - including Smith
- would have understood that my position is as follows: Breastfeeding
is a natural, healthy act that should be allowed in public when done
discretely.
Currently, Wisconsin exempts breastfeeding from
public indecency laws, therefore allowing women to breast-feed in
public without fear of criminal prosecution.
However, when a
woman's natural, discrete act crosses the line of being overtly public
and obtrusive, nothing -including a $200 ticket - should prevent an
individual from telling a breast-feeding woman when discreteness
becomes lewdness.
Yes, I know, someone apparently doesn't realize discrete and discreet are two different words, but I'll let that pass.
The question that I really wonder about in this case is - is it more lewd to Julaine if the mother in question is gay? Or less? This all makes my head hurt. I must stop reading what Julaine Appling says.
Milwaukee Radio Talk Show Host Equates Breast-Feeding With Defecation
Want to hear and read a bit more about what passes for talk/entertainment AM radio in the biggest city in the state?
Audio clip and more text here.
Steve is a member of LION Publishers , the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, the Menomonie Area Chamber of Commerce, the Online News Association, and the Local Media Consortium, and is active in Health Dunn Right.
He has been a computer guy most of his life but has published a political blog, a discussion website, and now Eye On Dunn County.
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