 This first hour We're going to be talking with For women who belong to the very same consciousness raising group nearly 50 years ago, and they're still friends and They've had lots of experiences since then but reflecting back on that experience Is important they all belong to the same group because they Worked in the same general vicinity and got to know each other They also all had significant others who were in the movement and that was kind of their their the thing they had in common my friend Judy gumbo is going to be leading this conversation and The conversations as much as her friends will allow her I'm sure Because they all have lots of opinions to share with you, so thank you again and welcome Well, thank you all for coming. I want to Especially extend kudos because of the smallness of our Group here, but we could be an affinity group in any demonstration and perhaps who knows when we're done We'll decide we want to take some kind of action so my name is Judy gumbo and We that we on this panel have a total of 45 minutes and I want to kind of just set the stage about the group that we were part of Give you a little information about it, and I'm asking the panelists to speak for only five minutes That I don't have however way of stopping people from speaking, so we're just going to see how that actually works And so Alta is going to start then after that Jane and after that Ann and you know can we'll know who they are from Both this presentation and also the program that's there But this is what I know Slash remember about the group first of all it was by no means the first women's group in Berkeley There were a number of others before that It but this one and that was part of what we now call the second wave of feminism And but I think that started maybe 1966 67 possibly earlier our group began in March of May perhaps February of 1969 We met at the house that I lived in with my then lover now late husband Stu Albert at 2917 Ashby Avenue in Berkeley It's apparently now I believe owned by one of the guys who invented electric cars It was definitely not at that level when we lived there instead. In fact, there was very little furniture They were bare light bulbs And it was under FBI Surveillance and I know this for a fact because here is a little memo from the FBI about this They say subject. That's me is now residing as a Paramore That's the FBI right as a paramore very courtly right of Stuart Albert at 2917 Ashby Avenue Berkeley, California where other young radicals live including Thomas Hayden who is currently awaiting trial Offenses occurred during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Now that is in fact a false fact Tom was paying the rent. He actually didn't live there. I believe he lived at the time on Bateman Street This house goes the FBI goes on is frequented by members of the Black Panther Party BPP and white radicals Obviously nefarious subversive and definitely worth Surveiling and of course given that the FBI are misogynists. They did not mention women So anyway one day in March Anne and I sat down and we and we decided that we wanted to form a women's group And I don't remember and maybe you do whether we were consciously aware that we wanted to do to go beyond Consciousness raising but in my mind the group remains as one that was both raising consciousness our consciousness as women and doing actions And but we started Anne and I we had we had a stack of fashion magazines And we cut out pictures of women who in what we called what we called and what in fact were and sadly still are subservient roles and We pasted them on red construction paper and we they you know, they had bouffant hairdos They were standing in front of washing machines. They were cooking all the typical stereo stereotypical images of women We sent these invitations out basically. I think to everyone who we could Who we knew and lo and behold there was our first women's group now what I've discovered in The course of now a lot of years is that everyone who was in the 60s has their own 60s everyone has their version of it everyone has the positives the negatives the critiques the kudos It's it's every one of us We can be in all at the same event and our interpretation of it is different and that's what I hope we will have at the panel today So what we're going to do is everyone's going to speak for five minutes And then if we assuming we have time we're going to see I'm going to ask the panelists if they have any question at one question of the other panelists and then obviously we'll open it up for For everyone so Alta, would you begin? I Nick means Alta and I'm a publisher of the poet and I started publishing in 1969 with the support of my friends I've published Susan Griffin who was also In the women's group with me in Ruth Roots and so I brought copies of the original books from the 60s and 70s These are not for sale, but if you have clean hands and you're honest you can look at them at the table Also, we have my most recent book which I picked up from a copy man this morning And it's free. So this little four-page thing is free so one of the Authorities I published was into the psyche shun gay And she wrote for color girls who have considered suicide and when the rainbow is enough it became a big hit on Broadway and Became a film a few years ago, but it was directed by a man who made the biggest scene a rape scene I think they did a terrible choice of director and Yeah, how her book was in the outgoing file L Because it's my husband who was the co-editor Say that oh that book snooker that lets in the back I said I need to look at it first and he said that's no good. Don't bother I picked it up and it was for colored girls Which became one of our most important books Another book at that time I discovered from gifts from friends Who had the rare copies of the original historical society publications? Of calamity chains letters to her daughter As you know if she lived in the wild west She married both little bill And sorry I got her wrong She married while Bill Hickock, but then she traveled with both little bill to new york and london Her life was so rough when she had a child She decided not to raise her child in the wild west And she adopted her to a wonderful couple on the east coast And she kept letters Which were to be given to her child at her death She was still in touch with the adoptive parents and they honored her wish And the daughter got the letters And I'm very honored to republish this book by popular demand if you can imagine from 1976 to 2016 So we have this book here. We're selling it for five bucks at the table Okay It published as we got more successful the book stopped looking like this And started looking like this And this is one of the ones that's not for sale But it's by a young lesbian who built her own cabin And kept a record of it and showed us how to build a cabin And so my newest book came to me I meditate and my newest book is just what I heard from meditating on august 3rd And this is the one that's free and that's out there This group as other groups that I was in in the 60s was very important to me And what I learned that I still treasure All I had to do to write a book was to write it down All I had to do was publish a book was to make copies As I became a writer as how I became a publisher And I had great support from the women And they were my friends and a lot of antagonism from the rest of society Include it and one woman who instead you're embarrassing all of us I saw her recently at the movie and called she's beautiful when she's angry and she came up and she said Hi, remember me and I said yes Okay, I know people are upset about the current political situation I'm not going to talk about it What I'm going to say is we didn't have many women in politics when we were young But now we've got three really good women if you insist on voting democratic We do have Elizabeth Warren, Barbara Brilly and Kamala Harris just focus on the future That's it. Thank you My fellow panel members have devoted their lives to actively working for social justice on many fronts I have not though. I am in full sympathy with them What I contributed to the women's movement was max share The founder and publisher of the notoriously sexist berkeley barb I was his enabler He was so sexist and abusive of the staff that an early women's liberation group formed in the margins of the newspaper Women who wanted to write for the paper were not encouraged No woman ever had a regular column or any column I was max's partner at the time and I was compromised by my connection with him That said Let me tell in an abbreviated way how it happened When the korean war ended in 1956 I remember being very impressed by an article in the reader's digest It Concerned korean war brides that were coming To america with their gi husbands The writer claimed that the korean brides would create better marriages Than better marriages Than men had with american women In the article it said these brides were completely dedicated to making their husbands happy They were devoted and obedient Oh obedient to their husbands The writer went on to say that american women were aggressively demanding and argued that American husbands were oppressed by their self-centered wives I resolved not to be demanding or self-centered As a consequence, I found myself in a relationship that was degrading and abusive At the berkeley barb my status was similar to that of an indentured servant When I joined this group of women Some associated with the berkeley barb who formed one of the early women's liberation groups I was amazed by them. They were fearless intellectual and witty I was elated and intoxicated by their ideas But not galvanized. I couldn't relate their brave and visionary ideas to my plight I could not become a new woman nor did I find the courage to become an activist for the social causes in which I believed Reflecting on my life. Let me say that feminism is not just about women As the women's movement matured Some fair-minded men joined the ranks of working for women's issues Many were genuinely feminist fathers husbands friends and I would like to honor my late husband don gelenech who was one of the best Thank you. Thanks Thank you. Alta. Thank you Jane now Ann Well, it's five minutes and it's very hard to wrap up 50 years in five minutes Thank you for coming Well, I wanted to just pick up I was involved in an or the earliest women's liberation group in berkeley in 1967 and What what brought us to that state was the vietnam war many of us had been in the civil rights movement and active as women and Um, and in the anti-war I could go it's not enough time to go into all the organizations But ultimately in the vietnam day committee, which was a very powerful anti-war organization berkeley at the time Where we actually were stopping troop trains going to vietnam in downtown berkeley the train tracks there and We would have the steering committee of this group which had a few women on it which was myself Was one and I can remember having going to meetings where we're figuring out strategy and tactics and Oops, we're in a circle about 15 20 people and they go around and raise your hand What about this? We're going to have this tactic to do this and that and I would say xyz Silence and then like two people down that man would say exactly what I said and And everybody said oh, yeah, good idea. You know, so there was this We were invisible even though at that point in our lives were white female educated College, you know educated most for the most part and yet in our own organizations with our male counterparts We were clearly second-class citizens and as you many of you know And this is again 67 I got pregnant with my first husband Robert shear and So we had agreed before I had christopher that he would do 50 50 domestic labor for the baby, right? And you know and lo and behold, he's born in october or september actually Tomorrow is his 50th birthday if you can imagine and uh, so um, so bobby, you know, it was it was during the six-day war in israel and in egypt and and uh In palestine and he he was the editor of ramparts magazine So he went off to do that leaving me behind with his baby and I had my mother was Told I was fully alienated from my parents. I was his radical child growing up in marin And a super tomboy and anyway really rebellious So I had no women friends as the oldest woman in my group to have a baby. So so anyway, ultimately contradictions develop with his absence and That I we broke up and then But having a child even though we were these white privileged females in a way in the middle class and all You're treated all of a sudden you're a different. You're in a different category You know, you have this baby to take care of you have people treat you differently and within the marriage you become even more oppressed objectively in terms of the amount of chores to love and support a child, right and so Ultimately that brought me In many ways I was in this there were a lot of you know young women radicals who were civil rights women communist organizations and so we began to have a few meetings and Then we began to try and figure out why why why are we second-class citizens? What's going on here? And so we spent months sort of peeling off the layers of our false consciousness In terms of our Sense of inferiority. I mean and you know, you'd be across You know the table with a woman you could never think would be feeling inferior that something's wrong with her She's not this enough. She's not that enough. She's not smart enough and um in that Cauldron of 67 a lot of us our marriages broke up We became stronger and stronger as female Advocates we we were then becoming women's liberation There was throughout the united states in that period a lot of women similarly situated as we were It was almost like an electric light bulb going off I'm I'm sorry. Um, I hit the camp. I made this And so we nationally began to meet across the country in our in our local, you know women women's liberation groups and dealing with issues of marriage equality civil rights We got and we basically began to take over leadership in the anti-war movement There's so many examples, but we began to feel our own power and then when we get to This uh, so I went there was a number of women's groups I was involved with and we had a red witch group where we uh firebomb the playboy club in san francisco along with a lot of other, you know actions of various kinds And so the group that that I formed we formed Judy and I Was a more radical direct action based women's groups So people kind of found the group that made them feel comfortable and sort of to focus on the things that were important to them But at that point people's park was raging that summer Um, and so we formed this group basically to enter into the fight with the university of california And to take the park for the children and for the people that had built the park And um the night I remember the night our first big action was okay The night this is the night that you see police put up a fence around people's park and um And we didn't really realize it till about four in the morning I mean they just did this, you know nighttime attack on the park So we our organized group of women went down to campus to sprawl hall to basically, you know With with a lot a lot of children actually who used to play and work in the park And um, we had decided we were going to take the park But unfortunately Tom Hayden and Dan Siegel were right up there with us fighting for the mic And so they get to say take the park But then we all you know actually ran to the park and tried to pull down the fence and a lot of you people know that history But um, you know the the women's movement of that period was There's it was like a whole spectrum of political attitudes even as radical feminists there were those of us who were like anti imperialist as myself and You know on the more radical side of things and then there was women, you know all the way kind of to the middle who basically focused on legislative and and and basically laws to create moral quality in our society in our lives so but um Maybe I think you know best use of maybe this time given the numbers here is it for people to ask questions You know in terms of the area of interest that you might have about this period But that's up to judy. I mean oh Thank you. Thank you all. Oh, oh the power. Oh the power So I just would like to just add a add a little bit um about my own experience and then we'll do exactly what and Said so most of us my recollection is that most of us at the time we're in relationships with male People we called heavies because they were well known I was as I said in a relationship with stew albert And who I broke up with and later married but what what we were also surrounded with was what I Think of as a sea of liberation struggles, right? There was a struggle of the vietnamese for Independence there was the black liberation struggle, especially as exemplified by the black panther party But there was a struggle for liberation for all people of color for even the eight chicago conspiracy Defendants of the fbi refers to there was even a sexual freedom league led by a man struggle for sexual freedom But not at that time at least in my life for women and that's what the women's group Managed to do for me was to make it. Okay. It's all right. It's a good thing You must fight if you're going to fight for freedom. It also includes freedom for yourself Now what I remember us discussing is that all the liberation movements had enemies, right? The panthers had the pigs and racism. The vietnamese had american imperialism What and I remember us just talking about what were women's who were women's enemies We had one example. We had valerie salonis who by that time had shot andy warhol What that we I remember we talked about that did was that the kind of thing we wanted So we spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out who was the enemy who were we opposed to I'm not sure we ever came up with an answer But the discussion itself helped leverage and raise consciousness About what needed to be done or what did not need to be done And for me what that meant was empowerment So I have two Brief stories. I'd like to tell one was I was asked to speak at The uh, there's a free Huey rally on mayday in here in san francisco and So I was I was standing up at the stage I was just about to open my mouth and I heard stew's voice and also big man Who was a panther at the time and they called out gumbo gumbo and I said to myself I turned my back, you know, I was against my better judgment But I turned my back to the audience and shouted back to them. What the fuck do you want? And they said very Sweetly but patronizingly. Are you okay? Do you know what you're going to say? And I said shut up you idiots. Let me talk and that was like a Huge that was for me to do that in front of 10,000 people was very very affirming it was part of feeling liberated and I I know that I got the strength and passion to do that from this group And then there's sort of a story number two about Two weeks later before there are people's park You know going on the march that was essentially didn't happen. I wrote a piece about what I had Was thinking about women's liberation at the time for the bar and Max Shear Titled it why the women are revolting Now that was a double entendre and I got rally mad. I didn't see any humor in it whatsoever So I remember marching down the the barb had the office I think right next to the theater at that point and I marched down to the end where his his desk was and I sent him Max or I thought I may not have been very loud. I said max you are a two-faced sexist pig and he just went Go away go away I want to actually just You know because I want to Read you the last paragraph of what I wrote because it actually is instructive about I think about what we were thinking at the time Or at least certainly what I was thinking at the time It went like this And remember this was the the macho heterosexist mom. Oh, Jesus Sorry, whoever it is by maybe it's the FBI I'm sorry. I should really should have shut that off. I forgot about it. All right Uh, so this is what I wrote at the time We don't we don't hate men Bracket we dig them But when men continue to oppress us After they have become conscious of what they are doing And that's actually really important after they have become conscious of what they are doing Then they are part of the enemy We will fight against our oppressors. Oh good. I like that We will fight against our oppressors Regardless of their class race or sex We are part of the solution and we will ally with everyone who wants to overthrow this rotten system well I'd like to redefine revolting this to me is revolting the good Revolting the revolting that all of us have to do Unlike the actual revolting of the current administration and you know who thank you So my first question to the panelists is do you have any questions of your sister panelists? Yes Since we were married men And did not talk about how our husbands treated us It's very courageous. I think to talk about now How they treated us And do you wish you had been able to reach out to us at the time? Anybody want to respond to alta? So alta the question like How did they treat us at the time and Why we left them or said no Do you wish you had been able to share with us The reasons that you were having problems and the way that you were being treated by your husband Well, I think actually I think for a number of us in my earliest women's liberation group That we did three of us were married at the time And I think the consciousness raising figuring out all the inequities of the relationship our own oppression our own self Image and kind of collaboration or you know, or I just say you know Collusion with our own oppression Um, I became very alienated and very Distance from my husband. I mean I I was never subject to you know physical Assault, I mean it was more he's it was a he's a serious intellectual. He's still alive And I you know was quite a bit younger And I felt I was not taken seriously even though I was the researcher for half his articles at ramparts But it was like, you know pat on the head, you know, so um But it's a more subtle form of oppression when somebody does respect you And actually says that he really loves you and yet still treats you in a way You're not being loved the way you want to be loved and the way you think you should be loved and respected so Um, but then you know, I ended up jumping out of that relationship and and live with tom hayden for three years During the conspiracy trial where judy and I were very much interacting and um, but What I Have learned and and still in my and I'm married today Uh to another to d.n. Siegel and but what I have Which has run through my whole life and even as an older woman is that you have to always Be struggling for equity in the relationship. You have to always You know power is very subtle and it's complicated because you may have more skills in some way he and others And it's always it's the balancing act But I have always been willing and I think this is because I come from a matriarchal tribe of women, but even I My dignity and my self-worth is is more important than the security of a relationship And I have suffered in some ways because I have stuck to that but At this age, I'm so glad because misogyny is so deeply rooted in this culture. Um, and It's it's everywhere. It's pervasive in our relationships. It's pervasive in I'm a lawyer now and And it's terrible to say but oftentimes women are some of the worst jurors when it comes to deciding the fate of a woman Because we still and I see it with these millennials. I have children grandchildren daughters-in-law and and I see you know, they still Don't have a sense of their own self-worth And they're willing to make compromises in their lives that they shouldn't make and one of my disappointments and I if people have evidence of The come to the contrary I think it'd be nice to know if women's women young women women in their 20s teens are organizing Obviously in different ways because you know, our culture has changed profoundly in many ways positively for women But where they really see the person was political in others. I see so many women Who so want to get married and are willing to compromise their own Rites within the relationship in order to to have a man in their life So anyway, I could go on and on but I don't see enough of In the articles in the newspapers and the magazines. I don't see enough Uh discussion of that fact of seeking a balanced equitable relationship in modern day 2017 and I think you've made a really important point about power disparities and power relationships I think that all of us from what I remember the group experienced that and uh the question of how It translates into the present. You just hit it spot on Diana, how much more time do we have? 14 minutes Well, I I think we should open it up to questions or the other sentence. Yeah. Yes. Yes consensus go When I was doing Q&As at the movie, which is mentioned. She's beautiful when she's angry There were groups of young women from Berkeley High and from cowl who would come and Berkeley High has a group no means no and they gave me one of their buttons So they are fighting The abusive behavior of the boys that they're dealing with and The bullying is a terrible problem I worked with third graders last year in the class that started with 28 students And by April it was down to 17 11 third graders quit coming to school because of the bullying Some of them went to other schools. Some of them got home school and some of them just flat dropped out And I heard screaming this morning I went outside in my bathroom And there was a boy a grammar school boy screaming and screaming and the adult was making him go to class The bullying is terrible. I didn't suffer that when I was a kid Something needs to be done about how children aren't treating children in the school We I think you know so much of this flows and I think you know to some extent You know there's anti-bullying campaign and I think some of the fights around You know white supremacy and the oppression of you know white people over black people people of color A lot of that is these are still I think threads of the civil rights movement and the women's movement Coming to the fore but I do think you know you see it with trump. You see it. There is a toxic masculinity, right? that's I mean in my time it's just over the charts and of course You know the breadth of the bananites. I mean there is a deep fundamental hatred of women That is operating in our culture in a way that it's never been so out front And I think you know the roots of bullying it's obviously a power dynamic and often it's boys bullying other boys or girls I'm not the girls don't bully either but then you have reflective in our media and the video games and you guys all know this I mean the the brutality of our culture and I you know, it's a longer discussion But I think it flows from being an empire We have been at war my whole lifetime with one country after another of course vietnam was horrible Then the invasion of iraq and you know all this in afghanistan So we are we are bringing these men home and often women who have been brutalized by war that suffered pthg They're just full of violence and then it it permeates them through our culture But the trump and his cadre of males I mean and the most fascistic Right-wing, you know, nazi clan types and I've been reading a ton about this It is a deep seed of misogyny in all these different groups So I think you know, it's a huge struggle to to do away with misogyny But even in this in the religious aspects of the war In afghanistan and of certain cultures where women are powerless women have no rights So to me the struggle of my lifetime what's left of it is just empower women Internationally because I mean if women internationally could come to some organized Agreement as to how does to deal with the misogynist elements in their own culture their own religions I mean, we would have a much more peaceful world But you know, I I could go on and on but I do think The oppression to fight to understand To understand what it is to be a white person, you know, vis-a-vis other people I think that's a consciousness raising, you know, kind of exercise that we should all be engaged in right now Thank you, alta. Thank you, ann Another one more question Over there behind you turn around. Yeah, there you go I Definitely, you know, I mean I've read so much about misogyny, you know To my detriment maybe but every major religion at its base is a fear of women I mean, you know, you go into the early early tenants and because For a number of reasons depending on you know, we're talking about islam jihadism christianity, but this country was Built and in its early days as the europeans came anyway and conquered the native people. It's deep-seated Calvinism Calvinism is a very harsh Way of thinking about god, but it's all it's it's you know, original sin. It's about punishment It's about women or sinful. I mean, so it does a lot of this misogynist I think outlook which is inculcated which is not even I think people conscious of is this deep-seated You know evangelical, you know Christian culture. It's I just been reading a book about the Ku Klux Klan the source of their Their thinking of how they're being what what their tenants of their beliefs are It's all their view of a very muscular kind of to me a reactionary christ Yes Well, they they take on The role of the men, but no we have a deeply. I think And so we have to look at our culture and the origins of our culture which is Calvinist or you know european christianity I would like to know what you had black elk Black elk is a shaman and native american He said it was in the mind Of the great mystery that all people should learn to live together There are plenty of native american groups that do not oppress and never have oppressed women One more I just want to make one minor comment and and then we'll get to you That exactly reminds me of what I wrote at the end of Why the women are revolting that we all have to if we're going to rise up We have we have to rise up against our oppressors regardless of their class race And sex I which is now called gender So that's it shows you how these themes these keep coming back and the only in my opinion the only way to To stand up to them is to stand up to them to resist and to support all the resistance movements that thank goodness are Blossoming now across the country and across the world. Go ahead No, I think the women's march when trump was day after trump was elected was a You know was basically a very positive wonderful experience to watch and to be I mean oakland was I've never I grew up in the bay oakland has never seen so many thousands and thousands and thousands of people So I am optimistic. I have You know daughters-in-law. I have a lot of women that I work with as lawyers and And I do think you know, but women are taking this is the positive thing is women are taking power everywhere About every organization I'm in women are now in leadership. I mean, you know, you know, when I first started practicing law There was and I'd like to let other people respond Just women were half the ph we're less than half the phd's now There's more women in phd's more women in medical school law school I mean women in this united states anyway, and I think in a lot of european countries are taking power So I think the future is bright Yeah, okay. Thank you. Thank you. It is jane. You really don't have anything to say say one thing Oh say one thing. Let me think well Going back to my korean korean bright example in those days The women's vow to love honor and obey was literal. It wasn't a ceremonial obedience it was a a pretty accepted pillar of The found of society the obedience of women and that has certainly changed in terms of A social discourse. I think that's gone I'll talk. Do you have one last word of wisdom for everybody? Women can talk now that being raped When I was in college, we learned that one in five of the students at cath Were raped often by fraternity boys at frat parties Who had special rooms with couches where they would get the girls drunk And sometimes the girls had to have abortions That's gone Women can say like that wonderful young singer who sued the man got a dollar Just to humiliate his ass Women can say I'm not taking this any more Thank you ladies. It was a wonderful hour. I want to give everybody a break a good 10 minute break So we'll see you at