"Your Blood Turns Green" - Why The Right Can't Derail The Girl Scouts

[DinahMoeHum]

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/04/your_blood_turns_green_why_the_right_cant_derail_the_girl_scouts/

Boy Scouts can't avoid controversy, but conservatives can't divide Girl Scouts.


(snip)
“When you have a leadership brand like Girl Scouts, it’s natural that we would have some critics,” said current Girl Scouts CEO Anna Marie Chávez. “We’re proud of our inclusive approach because that is what has always made this organization strong.”
(snip)
Being fundamentally secular, the Girl Scouts can partner with anyone they like. In this way, they could not be more unlike the Boy Scouts of America. The Boy Scouts were founded as a Christian organization (their first partnership was with the Mormon church in 1913) and they’ve never shaken the conservative horse blinders that go along with that. A decade ago, while the Girl Scouts were standing strong in the face of the Planned Parenthood connection, the Boy Scouts were fighting all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to discriminate against gays scouts (they lifted their long-standing ban on openly gay members this past spring but still have years of stigma to overcome). Then there are the infamous abuse lawsuits. . .
(snip)

The article chronicles the author's journeys through the "Rock The Mall" event in Washington, DC, and the Girl Scouts chapters and leadership in Texas (I wonder if filibuster heroine Wendy Davis grew up as a Girl Scout - wouldn't surprise me). And no - they are not politically partisan or exclusive. There appears to be an equal sprinkling of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents among them.

There's much more at the link, but I'll close my observations with what the Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon "Daisy" Low herself said about being a woman and finding herself:

(snip)
Stacy Cordery’s biography, “Juliette Gordon Low: The Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts.” As a child, Low wrote about the burdens of fitting in, both in her diary and in letters. Beyond her numerous illnesses, she felt pressure to find meaning in the day-to-day business of being a woman. Her frustration at the lack of opportunities for girls was palpable. “Society is very hollow,” she once wrote, “it’s very unsatisfactory and a very shaky nail on which to hang one’s happiness.”

A century later, this personal sentiment has morphed into the public purpose of the Girl Scouts. It is the essence of why they have not merely survived but flourished. Because they have figured out the answer to Daisy’s riddle — become the nail.
(snip)

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/04/your_blood_turns_green_why_the_right_cant_derail_the_girl_scouts/

[Scurrilous]

1. K & R

[brer cat]

2. My granddaughters' scout troop

meets in a United Methodist Church. They church has never had anything to do with the troop except to make space available at no charge, and that is how it should be. The troop has racial and ethnic diversity, and includes a lesbian parent.

[txwhitedove]

3. Girl Scouts are awesome! Now wondering if this is what helped me be so indepenent

all my life, and gladly so.

[pinboy3niner]

4. Nobody puts the Girl Scouts in a corner!

Famous People Who Were Girl Scouts




http://www.ranker.com/list/famous-people-who-were-girl-scouts/marc-cuenco?format=SLIDESHOW&page=1

[rurallib]

5. Big rec from a girl scout family

Our two scouts are in their 30s and about as fiercely independent and tolerant as they come.
Not to mention those in our scout troop.

[populistdriven]

6. After my newly married parents discovered an island stripped of trees in the BWCA

by the boy scouts 35 years ago. No one in our family has even considered the boy scouts.

[DinahMoeHum]

7. A letter after the article mentions Peter Drucker

(in the Comments section):

(snip)
Thirty or so years ago the management guru Peter Drucker wrote an excellent book on non-profit management. He repeatedly cited the Girl Scouts, based on technical metrics and management analysis, as the model. I still remember what he said about the GSs: They focused unrelentingly on their mission without getting distracted by money, politics or ideology as so many other non-profits do. He found that by referring everything back to helping girls grow, regardless of their background or beliefs, that the requisite dollars would come. He was right.
(snip)

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/04/your_blood_turns_green_why_the_right_cant_derail_the_girl_scouts/#comments

[KG]

8. powerful article.