TRANSCRIPT:

Somehow the Arab delegation to the United Nations, there in New York City, got wind that the Socialist Worker’s Party was running a candidate for Senate who didn’t support the United States’s support to the Israeli government, and that that candidate was a Jew. Well, also, I don’t know how they felt about this, that candidate was a woman and that didn’t stop them from doing what they did.

They invited me to come to address a gathering of the Arab delegates to the United Nations, and they put together that meeting. I had one presentable outfit of clothes at that time. I used that in my fund raising meetings, etc. I’m sure that must be what I wore. It was a pinstriped pantsuit, no, it wasn’t a no, I think it was a skirt. I wasn’t yet liberated to wear pants. It was happening around that time though. So I went to the United Nations building the only time I’ve ever been there, not for a demonstration outside, but actually invited inside with the pass to go to a meeting space there. And I was with a couple of my comrades went with me, too, of course, and we went inside and went into one of the – I can’t even really remember exactly what they look like–but I remember coming into a room and looking around me and seeing all of these faces almost entirely male and people who had skin that was darker than most that you would see at United Nations meetings unless they were delegations of Africans. But people who were wearing various kinds of garb, some people in working in clothes that were more representative of their cultures back home, and others in suits and ties. Looking at me, here I am, and I had no fear. I felt completely comfortable there and I was introduced as the Socialist Worker’s Party candidate for Senate, and I introduced myself also as a Jew who supported Palestinian rights and who was against um the United States support to the repressive Zionist regime in Israel.

That was enough to have ears open to me, although I think these guys were probably a little amazed at what was going on around them, not quite sure how to take it, but that as I remember the atmosphere, you know, you can have physical body memories of things? My physical body memory is that the atmosphere became warm and inviting and I don’t remember anything more about what I said.

I can make a guess, but I’ve certainly talked about being a part of the opposition to the war in Vietnam and thanking the governments that had stood together with the Vietnamese people in that war, and also probably welcoming the Nicaraguan revolution and thanking the governments that were supporting it. I don’t know for sure, but that was a new thing that was going on. And the governments that were standing in solidarity with Cuba against the blockade that the United States government had had in place against that country for 11 years by that point, ten years at least. But the most important point of communication was “here is a Jew, an American Jewish woman speaking in solidarity with the people of Palestine.”

And that was the only bridge that was necessary in order to be able to build a communication in that meeting. So that was the kind of thing that could happen when socialist organizations were running candidates for office. It wouldn’t be, it would not have been that kind of invitation otherwise. And it was a great thing.

It was exciting to me. Did not make history, but who knows what kind of impression it might have made on some of the men, among other things, in the way that they looked at women. Perhaps. Perhaps because certainly from the very beginning, women had been leaders in the Palestinian struggle and continued to be. But to see a Jewish woman reaching across those barriers, it seems to me that was an important thing to do, and I’m really glad that I had that opportunity.