WGBH Journal; International Womens Day 1978

And we're feeling the answers growing more clear, so where, where do we go from here? Here we are and the singing is ___ and we're feeling the answers grow Good afternoon and welcome to a special edition of GBH Journal. I'm Amy Sands. Today is International Women's Day, declared in 1910 following massive strikes by the women textile workers of New York and Chicago and celebrated by feminists everywhere. As a day honoring women strength and determination as part of WGBH's station-wide three day observance of International Women's Day, GBH Journal today brings you a close up look at the state of the women's movement in Boston, highlighting feminists who are organizing for the rights of battered women, institutionalized women, and office women, as well as those working to keep abortion

legal. [singing]Here we are and the singing is fun. Here we are and we're loving as one. And we're feeling the answers growing more ?inaudible? Where do we go from here. The women's movement has seen a number of legislative defeats this year. Congress and all but eight state legislatures have cut off all government funding of abortions. The federal ERA has been defeated in so many states that feminists are lobbying Congress for a seven year extension of the ratification period. Lesbian and Gay Rights legislation failed to pass the Massachusetts legislature and was repealed in Dade County Florida following Anita Bryant's widely publicized campaign. But in the midst of all this, and partly because of it, the women's movement is in many ways coming of age. Take last November's International Women's Year Conference as one highly visible example. People who do not in their everyday work lives and political

lives work together did come together for the conference. Lisa Leghorn, a Boston delegate to the International Women's Year Conference: This is both in terms of people who would identify themselves as radical feminists who've been doing different kinds of organizing in the community as well as people who might not have before then identified themselves as feminists, and that we all came together and were able to work together because we had a common vision and a common goal that was stronger than our perceptions of our differences. And I think that that was again a reflection of the maturity of the movement as a whole that we are getting past that stage where we're more aware of our differences and kind of settling in for the long term struggle. I mean the second wave of the movement has been going strong for at least 10 years now. And I just think that people early on, that we had a real need for visibility. You know we all pulled together and had a lot of mass

demonstrations and that was when we were more aware of- of our similarities. And there were several years, um, in the early 70s when people were like doing community organizing which was a reflection of people's political differences. And, um, I think now that- that we've gone like on both poles and we really see that we, that there's a need for both things and that we do have differences but our similarities are more important, and it's the similarities that are really the strength of the movement. If the International Women's Year conference was a reflection of all the work feminists have done in the past 10 years, Boston is one place where much of that work has been ongoing. Beginning with the formation of such radical feminist collectives as Cell 16 in 1968, the Boston Women's Movement has developed into a community of feminists working in a wide variety of political projects and supporting a number of feminist institutions including a bookstore, a restaurant, a health center, four newspapers, and a credit union. Among the political

projects there are no less than four separate groupings of feminists involved in combating violence against women and in supporting the women who have been the victims of violence. The alliance against sexual coercion has support groups and a crisis line for women who have been sexually harassed in their workplaces. Women Against Violence Against Women is protesting violent images of women in record album advertising through a boycott of the giant record conglomerate Warner Elektra Atlantic. The Red Crisis Center maintains a 24 hour hotline and offers ongoing personal support groups. Finally support services for battered women are springing up all over the state in Natick, Lowell, Springfield, Brockton, on Cape Cod, and in Western Massachusetts. In Boston there are two shelters for battered women, Transition House and Casa Myrna Vasquez in the South End, along with several support groups run by Respond in Somerville. The feminist trend toward recognizing similarities while respecting differences is clearly evident throughout this movement opposing violence against women. Feminists are forming coalitions

within each separate issue and across all four issues. These coalitions are growing in part out of a movement developed analysis of how any kind of violence against women serves to keep women down and build men up. Gail Sullivan of Transition House explains. I start from an assumption that, that male supremacy exists and that it's not just some kind of arbitrary thing or incidental, but in fact it's a system, it's a system of oppression of women that exists for a number of reasons, including that it builds up men as individuals, and socially builds them up in terms of their power in this society. That in order to enforce and maintain that power, they have certain ways of using it including, and most importantly I think, violence against women there really is a way of exerting any man's control over any woman. For instance when you when a woman walks down the street and she can be harassed or attacked or raped by a man, that's him exerting his control over her, it's him saying I have the power

to do this to you, I have power over you. And by telling you that, by making you know that and putting you down I build myself up, because the system really based on that the only way that men can build themselves up, feel good about themselves is by putting women down. That sounds like a philosophy which would tend to encourage the uniting of the rape and the battered women movements. Is it the development of that analysis which is leading to the coalitions that you're talking been talking about? Yeah. I mean, right now like the state coalition that we're working on right now is only a coalition of battered women service providers and women active in dealing directly with battered women. But eventually most of us, I believe, want to connect organizationally with women working against rape, with women working against sexual harassment in the workplace, with women like the Women Against Violence Against Women group which works on things like record boycotts you know against advertising that perpetuates violence against women, so that the analysis is that all

of those things are connected. Right now organizationally what we've got is the beginnings of a coalition of battered women groups, and then there's a parallel kind of coalition of rape groups nationally, and eventually some of us hope that those things will merge. And that's happening, like on one level it's happening right now. The national communication network which was started as a newsletter for battered women groups is now in the process of merging with the feminist alliance against rape newsletter, for rape groups, anti-rape groups. So it's already starting to happen. And definitely I think on both sides of that there's a real sense of the connectedness of the two issues. ?Joann? leader She's my sister, ?Joann? leader, she's our mama, joann leader, she's your

The Boston feminists who are opposing the violence suffered by women in the streets and at home have close ties with feminists who are concerned with violence suffered by women locked up in prisons and mental institutions. Until a year and a half ago, most of these latter feminists were working separately. Some on prisoners' rights and some on mental patients' rights. But when Massachusetts officials proposed a new maximum security ward for so-called violent institutionalized women, these feminists quickly came together to form the Coalition Against Institutional Violence, which has maintained a very vocal presence in the press, the legislature, state agencies, and the streets ever since. According to coalition member Connie Breece, the women in this coalition, like the women in the rape and

battered women alliances, are tied together by a common analysis developed partly as a result of working together. One of the things that's been the most important in the coalition this year is taking the abuses and the struggles of women in mental institutions and women in prisons and more recently, uh, mentally retarded women, and relating those all under one umbrella of institutional violence. And then in turn, relating that to violence against women has been crucial. Um. Can you talk a little bit about institutional violence, how that analysis ties together the three groups of people? In institutions, um, are going to be subjected subjected to the violence that goes on within those institutions. There are physical violences that you know can occur. A women can be beat up or a woman can be abused, a woman can be given you know severe drugging which affects her physically, a woman can be given shock treatment in mental institutions. Women can be given lobotomies, to remove parts of their brains.

Then there are thousands and thousands of other smaller violences which happen to women in their day to day lives. Violences such as not being able to make their own decisions about what they do during the days. Violence is about not being able to be given, um, proper work training. Proper education, um, is needed for work in the labor force. Having their children taken away from them, having their children designated to foster homes or to the courts without their control. Violence of having to work at state job eight hours a day for 50 cents. Violence of, um, you know poor prison food. Violence of poor prison health care. The list goes on and on. The connections are being made though that what essentially is violence is not just the physical violence that we know of and that we think of, and that we're afraid of, but it's also the psychic violence which comes in the forms of violations to the way that we live our lives and the control that we have. Had you worked with women who were concerned with women in mental institutions before you were part of the coalition against institutional violence? [guest] No and that's been a very strong growing point for me personally. And now it appears that the

coalition will probably be working closely with people who do advocacy and political work for mentally retarded people and -- and particularly the women in those institutions. And what it does, um, what it's done for me is to make me see very clearly that the connections are there and that the similarities are there and that it isn't doesn't matter if a woman is labeled criminal or if she's labeled insane. But as long as she's institutionalized that's all that matters. And if the violences that are gonna -- that are gonna happen to her are very similar in either of those settings. [music] [Host] Many Boston feminists are now organized around the issue of abortion rights, but the priorities of their organizations vary widely according to the political perspectives of the women

involved. Liberal feminists, many of whom work with the Massachusetts Citizens for Choice Coalition, tend to focus their efforts on lobbying and writing legislators, and concern themselves with few issues outside abortion. Radical lesbian and socialist feminists ?allied? in the Abortion Action Coalition are more likely to favor street demonstrations and community education. The AAC links abortion with issues like sterilization abuse. Sherry Winegard of the Women's Community Health Center is a member of the Abortion Action Coalition. The Abortion Action Coalition, um, is a coalition of various groups and individuals that have a very good combined analysis of the attacks on welfare and the attacks on abortion and the attacks on third world women in particular and low income women of all -- of all races. And this is the coalition that I feel is really on the move right now. We've, um, begun making some very good alliances with health care providers and hospital workers and, um,

state workers and the, uh, various people who are both affected by the bills and in charge somewhat on perhaps lower echelons in carrying out the results of the bills i.e. the workers in hospitals and institutions. And, uh, this is a very exciting phenomena because that's who I think this speaks to maturity on the part of a movement that it can retain its integrity and yet coalesce and work around an issue that is somehow greater than its own particular focus. In spite of their differences, the Abortion Action Coalition and Massachusetts Citizens for Choice, along with the Framingham based abortion rights coalition, have all been working together to some extent. This is a significant step for past relations between liberal and left feminists in Boston have varied from shaky to nonexistent. Linda Sholay of the Choice Coalition. In the past I think there's been a lot of suspicion and there probably still is, uh, but I think

everybody realizes that abortion right now, the right to continue to be able to choose is really on the line. And this is kind of the first of the battles in which we're going to have to save that right for women in the future, um, and we've got to work together in order to preserve that right. Um, and that this just creates a sense of cooperation of being able to sit down and have a dialogue about tactics and strategies. Have you been doing that sitting down with the Abortion Action Coalition to discuss tactics and strategies? Occasionally an- not nearly as often as we should. But there is a dialogue that's going and, um, as one example of cooperation, Abortion Action and Abortion Rights both participated in Choice's January 22nd commemoration of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions. And that was a very important symbol, I think, of our attempts to cooperate with each other. [Host] What are the other ways that you've worked together? [Guest] Well we have discussed tactics, abortion action and abortion rights have both been

extremely cooperative in getting people to write letters to their legislators. They've also both set up tables in shopping centers and other public places trying to get people to sign petitions. And again trying to write letters. So we're very much together on that, I know that abortion action and abortion rights have contacted us for advice on reaching the media, for advice on which legislators are especially important to pinpoint. So there is definitely an ongoing dialogue. [Host] Maturity in a movement can be expressed partly through the willingness of its activists to combine into coalitions around certain issues. A solid working knowledge of legislative people and processes is also important. And according to Linda Sholay, many women in both the Choice Coalition and the Abortion Action Coalition have been active in enough Massachusetts court and legislative battles to have developed a sophisticated sense of legislative strategy and tactics. [new speaker] The Supreme Court and many many state courts dealt us a severe blow last June.

And I guess that we should have seen it coming, there had been a number of judicial decisions which began to erode the right beginning in about 1976. The people had to turn to the legislature because the legislatures were beginning to legislate bad abortion legislation that the courts were not going to overturn, like the Medicaid stuff. And-- That in itself I think showed a sense of realism and political sophistication that in Massachusetts I think women had been working towards through a number of other issues, through the ERA issue in the early 70s, through the ERA issue last year, a lot of women were on their own lobbying to get through the ERA legislation, through other issues like pregnancy disability, violence against women, refuges for women, women in transition legislation, all of these different issues which women are still working on very very hard. But they provided in a sense a training ground for a lot of the people who are now working on abortion issues to learn how to use legislature just to learn what the legislative process is:

how you get a bill introduced, how you defeat a bill, how you talk to your legislators. What the most effective way of getting to various legislators is. [Host] What are the other things the people learned through those campaigns? [Guest] I think also a sense of organizing. Again, I cannot stress enough that organizing individuals was and is so important on this particular issue. And people definitely, through all the other political battles that we've been fighting over the years, did learn how to get out the troops, so to say, you know, how to make sure that people wrote their legislators, how you set up telephone trees, something as basic as that, which was done very effectively by the campaign to ratify the ERA and Choices built much on that type of experience. [music] A criticism frequently leveled at the women's movement during its early years was that it was too

white, too middle class, and too heterosexual in its orientation. Certainly the International Women's Year conference in Houston represented a solid response to these criticisms with conference delegates enthusiastically passing resolutions supporting the rights of lesbians, minority women, women on welfare, and women employed outside the home. Again, much of the Solidarity exhibited at the Houston conference was a reflection and result of work that feminists have been doing in cities like Boston for several years now. Women organizing around violence against women, for instance, have been centrally concerned with reaching out to women of all races and class backgrounds. And certainly there are plenty of statistics now to show that rich as well as poor women are battered; that executives as well as secretaries are sexually harassed in their workplaces. The work of the women involved in the coalition against institutional violence also reflects a concern with reaching out to meet the needs specifically of poor and third-world women, who make up most of the populations of prisons and mental hospitals. Besides such ongoing political organizing, there has been some

effort made in the last year by white middle class women in the Boston movement to probe themselves on a very personal level for racist attitudes towards their black sisters. The Women's School in Cambridge sponsored several small group discussions on racism during the summer, and poet Adrienne Rich, in an unusual speech in January, urged the importance of white and black women working together and separately to end their historical alienation from each other. Pivotal in pushing and encouraging white feminists to examine their racism has been a small black feminist collective here in Boston. The group has been organizing retreats for black feminists from other cities, as well as giving speeches and workshops at colleges and feminist institutions in this area. Beverly Smith is a member of the collective. [Beverly Smith] When we talk about racism in the women's movement, we talk the history of racism in this country in general, and the experience of racism in this country and, you know, and then we talk about some of the effects that racism has had in the women's movement itself. One of the things is that because of the elitism and the racism of the women's movement in

earlier years, some black women became discouraged with working in the movement. Another result was that black feminist organizations were formed sometimes in reaction to these painful experiences. Another thing that I think is quite important that we try to point out is that you can think of racism as taking at least two forms, and one of the forms of course is institutional racism which is you know how an institution discriminates against black people or other third-world people so it gets down to things like hiring. It gets down to economic discrimination. It gets to educational opportunities. Things of that kind. But the other level on which racism operates is the personal level. What I think of as, how should I put it, well the racism, you know, that involves feelings and personal interactions between black and white people and black and white women. Now one of the things that we talk about then is to suggest that white women, they do almost a form of consciousness raising around racism. [Host] What do you mean when you say consciousness raising? [Smith] I think it would take a similar form to

what happened in the early feminist consciousness raising groups. But you would be asking different questions in a different area. So you would ask questions like you know when was the first time you became aware of race, or racial differences, or that racial differences had importance? Another question you might ask yourself is "do you have any black friends? Or what is your herstory of having relationships with black people? A real fascinating thing we found out when we did these kinds of questions with one of the groups is that some of the women had had contact with black men but had never had contact with black women, which I thought was very interesting because it's like a sexual-racial- political kind of thing. And then I think there are some questions that are just so difficult, you know, that it's all very very hard here for people to admit that. But I think one of the things that should happen in a group like that is for white women to admit their racist feeling, you know, to say "oh you know I don't like sitting next to black people on the bus, and you know sometimes I get upset over that." But those are the kinds of questions that you can ask. The other thing to do of course is to look at the institutional forms

of racism and then of course try to make some impact into that, but we feel are the two things are very close together that if a person hasn't dealt on a very emotional and deep level with the racism within herself, her activities around institutional racism, like her demonstrations that you might go to, are going to be kind of shallow and in fact may not even work because maybe she hasn't overcome enough in herself to be comfortable working with black or other third-world people. [music] [music] [music] [Host] The charge that the women's movement is too middle and upper class in its membership and perspectives

has been countered very strongly by the work of 9-to-5 and other organizations for women office workers in other cities. 9-to-5 was founded in 1973 by Boston feminists who were very specifically committed to addressing the needs of office women and their activities around affirmative action enforcement, as well as sexual harassment in the workplace, have drawn some 500 office women in Boston to join the organization. Significantly 9-to-5 does not define itself as a feminist organization, and in many ways the group has remained on the outskirts of the Boston Women's Movement, consistently declining to participate in coalitions or marches supporting feminist causes like abortion rights. As a result a number of feminists have criticized the organization for being too narrow in its focus. Suzanne Detha. [Guest] The major problem is that we represent such a broad group of women some of whom -- they're only tie to each other is the fact that they all work in offices. We have women who are incredibly conservative, women who are very very liberal, and

we have to constantly remember that we're representing this really mass group of women and if we for example took a stand on something that all of us would consider so basic to women's lives, like abortion, we might offend some of our membership. That's a really sticky, hard thing to deal with. It's a -- it's a problem that probably confronts every organization at some point. But we have decided that it's the most important thing at this point, for us as a viable organization, to to confine ourselves to workplace issues. [Host:] Does 9-to-5 consider itself a feminist organization or is it an organization for women? [Guest:] I think we phrase ourselves as an organization for working women, because a lot of women come to us and they say, their first line is always, "I'm not a women's libber, but-" you know, and there's always like 7 million "but-s". I think the thing is though although we probably don't don't phrase ourselves as a feminist organization, what happens when women get involved with us is that they become feminist.

They may not ever even label themselves feminist, but they learn how to be assertive, they learn how to speak publicly, they learn not to take it from their bosses anymore. And I think that kind of empowerment is one of the most important things that we do. [music: Can we be like drops of water falling on the stones] [music: smashing, breaking, dispersing in air. We have a song that (unclear), that as time goes by (??) will wear away] The empowerment of women, the process by which a woman discovers that the problems in her life are not all her fault, that she has a right to be angry and act on those problems, is a process that began in the consciousness raising groups of the 60s and early 70s,

found expression in the mass demonstrations of the early 70s, and is carried on today in the battered women's shelters, the abortion rights organizations, the study groups, the books, and the mass conferences of the women's movement. For many women, the sense of joy and strength they have found through working together in the movement has translated very naturally into a lifestyle in which women are primary; in which they depend on each other for support, both as friends, coworkers, and lovers. Lesbian feminists are very important in the Boston movement, making up a large proportion of the city's active feminists, particularly in groups which focus around community organizing and education. Lesbian feminists are also central in the writing, production, and performing of feminist music in Boston. There are two lesbian feminist music production collectives in the city, as well as a mixed lesbian-heterosexual women's band, and several individual lesbian feminist musicians. Emily Culpepper is a member of the Artemis Collective, which has produced a number of highly successful concerts of women's music.

[Culpepper:] I do think it's unifying, I think it's unifying in several ways. Just to talk locally for a minute. One of the things I like about producing women's music is that it's a place for us to cross paths with each other when often we're scattered into very diverse lifestyles and very diverse political work and it's very energizing and unifying, I think, to have a place where we come together and see how many we all are and how beautiful and wonderful and strong we all are. [music:Here we are] [music:and singing is fun. Here we are] [music:and we're hearing the answers, and we're more clear. Where do we go form here?] The state at the Boston Women's Movement is good and Boston feminists are maintaining strong organizations and a strong culture. They are beginning to form coalitions and they are building on their experience with the press, the legislature, and the courts. But a reaction to the women's movement is setting in nationwide. The second edition of Maribel Morgan's "Total Woman" book is

out, Right to Life groups are challenging legalized abortion in every state and in Congress, the Supreme Court is considering the validity of the concept of reverse discrimination in the Bakke Case. And the Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan are proclaiming the immorality of lesbian and gay lifestyles. The question now facing the women's movement in Boston and across the country is how to organize effectively enough to counter the growing power of these conservative and right-wing movements. [music: here we are, signing this song. Here we are and we're loving as one. And we're feeling the answers and we're growing more clear, so where do we go from here?]] This program was produced by Amy Sands, Leslie Clipper and Lisa Fruitt, with critical support and encouragement from Tia Cross and Marsha Hertz. The engineer was Margo Garrison. Happy International Women's Day.

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