Pat
Mitchell
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to Quotes from Women, Power & Peace
 Pat
Mitchell is the president and CEO of
the Paley Center for Media (formerly the
Museum of Television and Radio) in New York
and Los Angeles and the International Media
Center. Mitchell came to the Paley Center
from the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS),
where she was the first woman and first producer
and journalist to hold the position of President
and CEO. Previous to PBS, Mitchell achieved
success both in front of and behind the camera
as a reporter, news anchor, talk how host,
White House correspondent, and documentary
producer. She was a special contributor to
NBC’s Today and CBS’s Sunday
Morning.
We
want to understand how each of us walks out
of here not doing it alone, but it doing it
collectively.
How
do we get women lined up with each other?
We’ve
heard from a lot of young women, and I hear
from a lot of young women who come in and out
of my life, there is still this huge disconnect
between women and power inside our own minds,
and bodies and hearts. We have a disconnect
of head and heart on this issue.
What
connects them to seeing power as a positive
thing?
All
of us here are seeking somewhere, somehow to
tap into the power to change the reality of
either our own lives or the lives of women
around us. So let’s agree that there’s
a good power. So using that power to change
a bad reality.
Part
of the reason that women aren’t in that
group, and a lot of other groups, where decisions
are being made today is that we will still
move away from power.
There’s
nothing that feels better than tapping into
the power that each of us has to make a difference.
If you ever feel it, and you see a life changed
or someone’s situation improve or your
community better, that’s a power you
want to feel again….We do have the power.
And we just change the nature of it by going
out together and making a world a better place.
And
where the decisions are made, they are made
by a patriarchal set of values, and unfortunately
those are values that fail to recognize a couple
of essential things, and I think these are
things we need to repeat...If you change girls’ lives,
you do change the country, you change the community,
the family first, then you change the state,
as Jane did, then you give a model for other
states and other countries. But this is evidence – this
is fact-based evidence. Nobody needs to debate
this – go to the world, go to Harvard
University, go wherever you want, you can find
research. If you change a girl’s life
you change the future of our country.
If
we are going to change girls’ life, then
give her a right to resist violence, give her
a right to safety, to security, to finding
her own voice, to education, to real education.
But
now we can’t have girls running these
countries without shared power, because it’s
not sustainable, so how do we teach boys that
message...Empowering girls and keeping boys
connected to their head and their heart.
You
have a voice as a consumer of the media. Never
forget that...It’s not right that a woman’s
network does stories about girls behaving badly.
It’s not right that CNN does endless
stories about Paris Hilton when there are people
dying. It’s not right...We have the power.
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