Floating U.S. feminists dock in Belize

This morning the cruise ship M.S. Veendam anchored in the Belize City harbour, but instead of the usual vacationers, the Holland America ship carried over a hundred U.S. based feminist leaders and activists. The women are all participants in the third annual Ms. Magazine Cruise. We caught up with the magazine’s publisher–and former President of the U.S. National Organization for Women–Ellie Smeal at the Radisson as they were hearing presentations from a number of Belizean health service organisations.

Ellie Smeal, Publisher, Ms. Magazine
“learning about not only family planning, but the treatment of AIDS and other social causes here in Belize. We visited the family planning clinic and we are going to visit some other places like the Y.W.C.A. The cruise — we have a lot of women’s rights leaders on it and women who are interested in advancing the rights of women worldwide.”

Kendra Griffith
“And your objective, particularly here is Belize, is?”

Ellie Smeal
“Well we wanted to see how the family planning clinics were working. We are supporters in the United Nations Family Population Fund and they contribute to that clinic and of the International Family Planning Federation.”

Kendra Griffith
“With an objective to do something here in the future?”

Ellie Smeal
“Of course, we want to spread women’s rights everyplace we can go and improve the conditions of living for women.”

The women left Belize this evening. They will make stops in Guatemala and Mexico before returning to the United States.