- One of the early activist movements
coming out of the late 1950s
combines the anti-war movement
with ban the bomb movement from the 1950s,
and much of what we know about those movements
we know because of activists in the movement,
Amy Swerdlow, who then became a historian,
has actually written a book that summarizes them.
So, we now know about Women Strike for Peace,
an enormously effective organization.
Talk to us a little bit first
about that Women's Peace Movement.
- Let me just, I want to talk about the network, okay?
Because Bella and Amy and Mim Kelber,
- [Alice] Bella Abzug
- [Alice & Blanche] Bella Abzug and Amy Swerdlow
- And Mim Kelber were pals, were friends at Hunter College.
Bella was the president of the student government,
Mim was the editor of the student paper,
and Amy is a student radical with the American Student Union
and they become very great friends.
This is 1941, 42.
- [Alice] At Hunter College.
- At Hunter College, okay?
And they stayed really good friends.
You know, they grow their families together.
They are best friends, and then comes the bomb
and all that we know about radiation, I mean,
is your milk filled with radiation?
Can we have pure food?
Or are we all gonna die of radiation poisoning?
Which is really a question to ask now with a president
who wants to have little, usable atomic bombs.
But it's right then.
- [Alice] But it's worth noting that in the 1950s,
which was a decade we remember for duck and cover,
that is when we were all afraid of the bomb,
but we were ducking under desks
- As if that would prevent
- Would help, but it was a mother's movement if you like,
or a women's movement which said, "Hey, wait a minute.
"What about the radiation?"
- [Blanche] "And what about the children?"
- Strontium 90 it was.
- [Blanche] And Cesium 137.
- Right, and Bella and Amy and Mim were all involved
in that Ban the Bomb,
what we now call Ban the Bomb movement.
- Right, and I meet them when I'm doing my dissertation
on the American Union Against Militarism,
and I start to interview people who are now with WILPF,
the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom,
they say, "You should also talk to those women,"
so, that's how I meet them, about 1962, '63.
- So, here's again that link.
You, the budding historian,
are working on the World War I Peace Movement,
the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom,
and that connects you with the activism of the,
- Of the 1960s,
and it's really, I mean,
I'm dazzled, and they are doing great work,
and they're part of the Civil Rights Movement, so there are, you know-
We're going South for freedom.
We're marching on Washington
when the war in Vietnam happens.
There's the Women's Day at Congress, and there we are,
and Bella's in the front lines, but this is
Yes.
- Just, Women's Strike is a peculiar organization,
you might say, and it's peculiarly feminist in the days
before that word was really used in the second wave.
Can you talk about that?
- I mean, all of the peace women were aware that we needed
to have a woman's movement for gender justice,
and it's connected, and a lot is going on.
I think that we forget how much is going on.
There are the beat poets,
which includes Audre Lorde, and Diane di Prima,
so they're in the Civil Rights Movement, and then
there's some awareness that the guys aren't treating
the women with any respect, okay?
So, the women's movement, our feminist movement,
is a reaction to the disrespect of the guys in the movement,
and that really is important.
- I was actually thinking about the way
in which Women's Strike confronts that reality directly,
by refusing leadership or refusing to have any kind
of hierarchical leadership, and they used to respond
to press inquiries by saying, "We are all leaders."
- "We're all chair." - "We're all chair."
And that itself was, nobody labeled it feminist,
but it was certainly a unique way of fighting for peace,
or for anything else, for civil rights,
and it, I think, opened the eyes of people
in the Civil Rights Movement, to saying,
"What is a leader," and, "who is a leader,"
and, "why is this male person giving me,
"this female person, instructions?"
I think there, there is a coming together of motive.
- Yup.
You know, there's something sort of splendid
in the evolution of it,
because there's so much bigotry against lesbians
on the part of Betsy Friedan,
but Bella didn't share that bigotry,
although, it's like, "Would this hurt us
"if you all started to come out and be?"
So, it's in stages
and it's very interesting how the stages unfold.
- Before we move there,
let's just follow Bella for a little bit.
So, Bella comes out of the peace movement,
into the Civil Rights Movement.
- But she's really a civil rights attorney.
- She's a civil rights attorney, right.
So, she's both, and then she moves
into the National Organization for Women,
and then Congress, and,
- Right, and in Congress, she is such a powerhouse.
She is really a political leader,
who is galvanizing movements all over the country.
- [Alice] But she's not very much liked, is she, by
congressional leaders? - Well, not by men.
- Not by the men.
- Not by the men, but by women leaders,
like Sissy Farenholt in Texas.
There really is a big movement going on,
and Bella is part of that movement of women
in political life, so there are other women.
Shirley Chisholm is in Congress in 1968,
the first black woman in Congress,
and Shirley Chisholm and Bella are allied.
There's just, a lot is beginning to change,
but it's just beginning to change, and these are our heroes
who are making the change happen.
- Fascinating, and yet when Bella runs for mayor of New York
- Or Senator, she loses.
- Right, she loses, right?
So, it's a moment when women are allowed to participate,
- But not rule. (laughs)
- Not to rule, not to wield power.
- But then comes We Do.
First comes the National,
She and Mim Kelber start a National Women's Leadership group
and they do a lot of publicity and a lot of journalism
about national women's leadership.
- When does that begin, We Do?
- I guess it begins in the 70s,
80s. - So, after she's,
- After she's defeated.
- After she's defeated for the Senate.
- Right, for the Senate.
And the Women's Environmental Development Organization
becomes this really critical, global movement
for environmental sanity, for conservation.
Can we save the planet, it's endangered.
And women all over the planet,
Wangari Maathai, the tree huggers of Kenya,
are part of this global movement to save the planet,
to save the trees, to plant trees, to make it green.
Absolutely urgent, urgent material.
- It's fascinating to me that when we look
at the work that Eleanor does, and it sort of rotates
around the fulcrum of social justice,
and we look at the work that Bella does,
which also rotates in a different way,
but still around
this issue of social justice. - Social justice.
And survival.
- And survival, and it's reminiscent in some ways of,
not work that women have always done,
but work that some women have always engaged in
back to abolitionism, perhaps.
- And education.
And how do you fuel the future
that is intelligent, and concerned, and cares?
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