1,600 men take out NY Times ad in support of Dr. Christine Ford and pay homage to Anita Hill
A NY Times ad featurs the names of 1,600 men who support Dr. Christine Blasey Ford has been printed in the New York Times and pays homage to Anita Hill.
Twenty seven years ago, 1,600 Black women banded together and took out a full page ad in the New York Times in an effort to support Anita Hill, who testified in front of a Senate hearing about the sexual harassment she said she faced from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Now almost three decades later, men are following their lead.
The women whose names appeared in the ad were adamantly opposed to then nominee Thomas and felt Hill had been “maligned and castigated for daring to speak publicly of her own experience of sexual abuse.”
Wednesday, as a very similar debate raged on about Brett Kavanaugh the Supreme Court nomination amid allegations of sexual assault and lewd behavior in his past, a nearly identical advert was published in the same newspaper; this time featuring the names of 1,600 men who support Kavanaugh’s primary accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.
https://twitter.com/Moore_Darnell/status/1045060928507695105
According to ADWeek, the strong political statement was organized by numerous organizations and companies, including Godfrey Dadich Partners, which designed the ad, and ColorBox Industries, which created the digital assets.
It was also crowdfunded by more than $134,000 contributed by nearly 3,000 donors.
“For generations, men have taught boys to disrespect girls,” says W. Kamau Bell, one of the men who signed the ad and host of CNN’s United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell.
“Worst of all, boys have been taught that it’s ‘manly’ to disrespect women. Then those boys grow up and teach the next generation the same thing, and the cycle continues. Right now, men who know that is a toxic environment for all have to speak up, believe women, and break the cycle.”
Other groups involved in the ad’s creation include the Phenomenal Women Action Campaign and Futures Without Violence, whose male board members published their own statement of support. All of the money raised above the cost of printing will be donated to Futures Without Violence, an organization that supports violence-prevention programs in middle schools and high schools.
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The online petition for this effort accumulated signatures from more than 4,200 men, far exceeding the goal of 1,600 needed.
