Joan Blades is best known as the co-founder of the popular progressive politics site MoveOn.org, but her contributions as a feminist in the media extend far beyond MoveOn's legacy. A graduate of UC Berkeley and Golden Gate University Law School, Blades wrote two books after finishing her law degree, Mediate Your Divorce and The Divorce Book, and soon after (perhaps ironically) met her future husband, Wes Boyd, while playing recreational soccer in San Francisco.
Blades's adult career began in what she refers to as "high-tech geekdom." Before devoting her life to politics, Blades founded Berkeley Systems, a computer software company, with her husband. At Berkeley Systems, Blades and her husband used their political conscious to do good deeds within their own far-removed-from-politics industry: the company made money early on by making modifications for Mac computers that would allow low-vision and blind individuals be able to use them. One of Blades and Boyd's programs, "Outspoken," enabled Mac computer screens to be read aloud for the blind, and won an award from the Smithsonian in 1990. The company was so successful that Blades and her husband were able to sell it for a cool $13.8 million in 1997. Blades and Boyd then used that money to found MoveOn.org.
MoveOn.org began as a website meant to circulate a petition that Blades and Boyd created. The petition pleaded with Congress to "move on" from the hoopla surrounding that year's Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal, which had become a media circus and which both Blades and Boyd were extremely frustrated with. By the time of the impeachment process, MoveOn had gained over 500,000 members. Today, MoveOn has over 3 million members. The site has also evolved over time: MoveOn.org now includes the MoveOnPAC (Political Action Committee), which works to fundraise for MoveOn-approved politicians. The site also includes an "Action Forum" where members can choose which political issue the site's members should focus on next. The site probably gained the most attention during the 2004 election, when it worked tirelessly to elect John Kerry instead of provide George W. Bush with a second term, and also campaigned diligently against Congress's funding of the Iraq War.
While MoveOn.org does not aim itself towards solely women and has a membership of both genders, Blades has incorporated feminist issues into MoveOn's mission. In 2003, during Arnold Schwarzenegger's gubernatorial campaign in California, Blades became so outraged at reports of Schwarzenegger’s treatment of women that she rounded up MoveOn's members and helped raise $500,000 in 24 hours for an ad campaign to let women voters know what kind of man they could be electing.
Blades also runs another political action website, this time directly focused on women. She founded MomsRising.org with her friend Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner as a site focused on grassroots campaigning on behalf of mothers' political rights. In addition to MomsRising, Blades and Rowe-Finkbeiner co-authored The Motherhood Manifesto: What America's Moms Want - And What To Do About It, and directed The Motherhood Manifesto film documentary, which both further advocate for political policies that will protect America's mothers.
Currently, Blades blogs for another female-founded political website, The Huffington Post. According to her HuffPo bio, she holds positions on various political leadership boards and is an artist in her spare time.
Great post, very informative!!
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