Yesterday was the day of the Applebee’s nationwide nurse-out. By all accounts, it was a success! In Kentucky, at the Applebee’s location where Brooke Ryan was rudely asked to cover up at the behest of another customer, about 200 people showed up to show their support for nursing in public. Ryan herself was not in attendance, for reasons of her own.

A couple of news stories to make you feel all warm and fuzzy…

• A Wichita, Kansas Applebee’s protest was covered by KAKE, a local station (unfortunately, the report mistakenly says Brooke Ryan was in Knoxville, Tennessee at the time of the original Applebee’s incident, but other than that, it’s a really spot-on article with great quotes — and a video).
• A Madison, WI station reported on a local protest there, and had this quote from an Applebee’s representative over the phone, “Applebees restaurants are individually owned and operated and this protest misrepresents the company.” That may be all well and good, but unfortunately, Applebee’s headquarters, which oversees all Applebee’s stores nationwide, gave the official statement that Applebee’s would make an effort to provide blankets to breastfeeding moms in the event that a similar situation (like the one Brooke Ryan went through) were to happen again. A statement like that completely ignores the underlying issue at hand: that a woman who is protected by her state’s law to breastfeed in public may do so with or without a blanket, at her discretion, not a manager’s and certainly not another customer’s. Hence, the nationwide nurse-outs that were held yesterday.
• Normally I don’t watch FOX News, but I have got to hand it to Alex Savidge, the reporter for FOX who covered the Applebee’s protest in Phoenix, AZ: this video report rocks!! (Obnoxious ad at the beginning… Wait it out to watch the report.)
• Another report (with video) from a successful protest in Naples, FL.
• Report from Post-Tribune, in Indiana.

I will continue to update this page as I learn about more news reports.

• A woman who organized one of the nurse-outs, in Indianapolis, IN blogs about her television news interview (with video of the report).
• Women’s Health News has more news reports and blog links which covered this national event.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 9th, 2007 at 8:58 am and is filed under Lactation, Breastfeeding, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.