Dana Bash, CNN’s senior congressional correspondent, has joined Jewish Women International as a trustee. Here’s the announcement:
Dana Bash is CNN’s senior congressional correspondent, responsible for covering the activities of both the U.S. House and Senate. Named to this position in December 2008, Bash has covered the U.S. Congress for CNN since March 2006. As a member of the Peabody Award-winning “Best Political Team on Television,” Bash covered the candidates on the trail for the network’s America Votes 2008 coverage. While at CNN, she also has served as a White House correspondent, the Capitol Hill producer and an editor in the Washington bureau. Bash received the prestigious Dirksen Award from the National Press Foundation in 2002 and 2010. She was a recipient of JWI’s Women to Watch award in 2010.
This seems to me to be exceptional.
JWI quite openly describes its "advocacy." This for the most part is parve — uncontroversial — to the degree that "uncontroversial" is a function of a political time and place.
At the grassroots level, at the United Nations and on Capitol Hill, JWI’s advocacy agenda is centered on violence prevention and reproductive rights. We convene the Interfaith Coalition on Domestic Violence, gathering the larger faith community as a key partner in education and prevention. And JWI engages Jewish women across the country in creative grassroots efforts – working with their members of Congress through our national advocacy network, and lending their unique energy to JWI programs that educate their communities about critical issues.
Empowering girls and women and combating domestic violence are precepts that — in 2011 — could easily find their way into conservative or liberal, Republican or Democratic manifestos.
For the most part.
"Reproductive rights" is a term that generally crops up among Democrats. And abortion and access to it is a major hot button Hill issue.
Before I go: There are some folks who will, refelexively enough, bring up the Israel issue.
Not much there. JWI is an outgrowth of B’nai B’rith Women, but split from the larger organization in 1995. It maintains a charitable relationship with institutes its predecessor established in Israel — having to do with protecting women (who’s gonna objecto to that?) — but its website is otherwise bereft of much that could be construed as Israel advocacy.
