TRANSCRIPT:

I think we should remember that the backdrop to the women’s strike for equality, which was in 1970, was demonstrated in a big way by the Congress to Unite Women in 1969, which we talked about last week, and the passion there and the excitement there of women coming together at an invitation that was put out– I had forgotten this– by the National Organization for Women and turned into an event where women from all kinds of different starting points came together and discovered one another. And in the process of discovering one another, discovered themselves in their own power. My own coming out as a lesbian is a result of that. It was just one small, in the big sense of things, but for me, a big part of what was going on and it was a flowering of, blossoming, it was spring. It was spring. And so, the National Organization for Women was at that point the only real known organization of women who were taking on women’s issues and had chapters. Pittsburgh was one of the central places that now existed. There were a bunch of chapters here in Pittsburgh. But there were chapters of NOW in many places around the country. And Betty Friedan was the public face of NOW for most people. She was someone who had had the courage to write about, to write The Feminine Mystique and which got recognized as a coming out of the closet in the sense of housewives saying, “We are more than what you think we are.”

At that point, it was appropriate that people thinking about women’s liberation would think of her. However, she was an older woman whose experiences were limited to her, class base, the fact that she was white, the fact that she lived the comfortable lifestyle and were different from in many ways from the experiences and the foundation from which other women were coming into action.

It was, and one could have in her position, it was understandable but wrong that she was motivated largely at that time to hold on to her titular position and the position that the National Organization for Women had as being THE women’s movement. It was kind of a contradictory thing that NOW had called a Congress to Unite Women.

And maybe, I don’t know what her image of that was and at the same time NOW wanting to hold on to the authority that it had struggled to gain as it spoke as a group that had stood up for women’s rights. So, there was that kind of creative fiction that was going on all the time back then.

In an effort to hold onto its central position NOW, called for a continuation of women coming together under their umbrella, essentially, and following the rules that they were used to having, but saw the need to take the spirit and the excitement that was all around NOW and bring us together in the streets. So, to the credit of NOW, to the credit to Betty Friedan, she inspired a call for a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of women winning the right to vote, which was 50 years ago

The suffrage amendment, 19th Amendment to the Constitution had passed in 1920. And so, 1970 the 50th anniversary needed to be taken note of at the same time that women were still trying to get an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee women’s equality. And it had still hadn’t passed of course, it hasn’t passed yet. So there was an excitement, enthusiasm, and it took the shape of meetings to build this demonstration happening under the auspices of NOW in Betty Friedan’s living room in the Upper West Side of New York City.

The organizations who had enlisted it, I think I mentioned them last week in the report on the first Congress to Unite Women, were all invited to send representatives to Betty Friedan’s home. And that’s how I was there. I was representing probably the Social Workers Party because at the same time, I was a candidate for the United States Senate and for the Socialist Workers Party.

But there were people there from other places, at various times in building this. The Young Socialist Alliance was also represented by a young woman who did most of the work, actually, in getting the word out on this demonstration. Her name is Ruthann Miller or was then. And she is actually working on writing the history of all of this, which will be invaluable.

She was a young mother who was enthusiastic, to say the least, about what was going on. But other people who gathered in Betty Friedan’s sunken living room – I can still see this place – included Bella Abzug, who was there quite a bit. Gloria Steinem was a participant, Shirley Chisholm, who was in the process of announcing, or maybe she had already announced candidacy for the presidency of the United States was a participant in this. Kate Millett, who had written her magnificent book, Sexual Politics, which is literary criticism, you can’t tell by the title, an outstanding breakthrough piece. Kate Millett was part of this. There was a woman named Flo Kennedy who was a radical Black lesbian attorney, who was an amazing woman, would come to some of these meetings also. And then there were women who were just the heart behind the scenes. Not a big name. Women who did the work, who were involved in NOW, who came to these meetings as well.

And what was decided was to have a march which would bring together women under three demands. Now, these demands were: free abortion on demand, equal pay for equal work, and free 24 hour daycare for all who need it. It’s funny to think of these demands because, of course, none of them has been met. And of course, we’ve had to take defensive action to try and hold on to any of these things that had started to become even legal or institutionalized. They’re all in danger now. They’re still endangered now. But back then, it seemed because of the passion and the dynamism in the way that we were all seeing people in the streets around this and other things, which I’ll mention in a minute, it made sense to raise what we really wanted. And so, calling for legalizing abortion, that was not enough for us, recognizing that even if it were legal, many women could not afford medical care of any kind.

And so if abortion were legal, that would surely be a big step forward. But we could see in New York, where it had been somewhat legal, that there were still blocks. So, we wanted all women to have what we were seeking. The same thing for childcare. I mean, childcare still is a huge and, as we’ve seen during the pandemic especially, it’s a huge unmet need for people. But we didn’t want it just for women who work 9 to 5 jobs. That would have been a tremendous step forward. We wanted it for women who serve us at McDonald’s. We wanted it for women who work in coal mines or building buildings. We wanted it for women who didn’t have a regular job to go to, but were on call at different jobs. We wanted it for doctors who served us and we wanted it for everybody. And men, too. So why not ask for what we really wanted? And that was free, 24-hour childcare as a right to parents, a right to children, a right for society to treasure our children and give children, and their parents, what was necessary for them to be able to grow up.