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PANEL OVERVIEW

Tools of Radical Feminist Analyzing, Organizing and Mobilizing: "Consciousness-Raising" and "History for Activist Use"
Saturday, March 29, at 9:30 am, GSU Metcalf Ballroom

This panel will look at  how 3 collaborating  organizations with roots in 1960s radical feminism --Redstockings, Gainesville (FL) Women's Liberation and the new National Women's Liberation-- have continued to use consciousness-raising, now combining analyzing personal experience with mining the experience--direct and indirect-- that liberation movement history represents, to continue to develop theory on which we base improving strategy.  At some point we realized that this amounted to continuing a radical tradition of understanding the liberation struggle as a learning process or a "science," a science of liberation, or, in our case, a science of women's liberation.  Panelists will  reflect on the effectiveness of different projects or campaigns in which  they've combined consciousiousness-raising and history for activist use  in their organizing and mobilizing.  Using historic experience to develop concepts and tools for organizational structure -- making progress on the organizational or leadership question-- has  been part of the effort. It's also been part of the reason, we believe, for our being able to maintain considerable continuity, organizationally and in radical feminist politics, and defend and advance beachheads, old and new, for women.  This will also be part of  the discussion.

For summaries of the panelists' talks, click here.

For a video of the panel, click here.

 

PANEL PARTICIPANTS:

Marisa Figueiredo serves on the leadership committee of Redstockings and is also a member of NOW, her union at her job, and other organizations.  She moved to the United States in 1978 from Brazil, and soon after she translated the Redstockings Manifesto and Redstockings Principles into Portuguese. She lives in the Boston area and works as a physician assistant.

Click here for a text of her presentation.
For the talk summary, click here. 

Carol Giardina began making referrals for then-illegal abortions from her college dormitory in 1963 and in 1968 was fired from her job for participating in the Miss America Pageant Protest as a member of Gainesville Women’s Liberation the group she cofounded that same year with Judith Brown. Today she is on the leadership committee of Redstockings and active in National Women’s Liberation. She teaches U.S. History and Women’s Studies at Queens College in New York City, is active in her union, and recently published the book Freedom for Women: Forging the Women’s Liberation Movement, 1953-1970.

Click here for a text of her presentation.
For the talk summary, click here. 

Kathie Sarachild has had a lifetime of commitment to "freedom organizing," a phrase she learned as a volunteer with SNCC as part of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. In 1967 she joined New York Radical Women for whose organizing she developed the slogan "sisterhood is powerful" and the program for "consciousness­raising." She contributed (under the name Kathie Amatniek) to NY Radical Women's 1968 publication, Notes from the First Year, as well as Notes from the Second Year and was one of 4 women to hang the “Women’s Liberation” banner inside Convention Hall at the 1968 Miss America Protest. A founding member of Redstockings in 1969, she was chosen (by lot!) to lead off the group’s first public action, a disruption of a panel on abortion reform consisting of 15 men and a token woman, a nun, shouting out “Let’s hear from the real experts on abortion–women”. In 1975 she was an editor and contributor to the Redstockings book Feminist Revolution. She’s currently a member of National Women’s Liberation, NOW, the NAACP, her AFL­CIO local, and works as a volunteer and paid advisor, for Redstockings of the Women’s Liberation Movement, www.redstockings.org.

For the full text, click here.
For the talk summary, click here. 

Annie Tummino is a leader in National Women’s Liberation, (NWL), a volunteer with the Redstockings Women’s Liberation Archives for Action, and a member of the National Organization for Women (NOW).  One of the Morning After Pill Nine— Annie was arrested in a sit-in at the  Food and Drug Association  and  is the lead plaintiff in the Tummino v. Hamburg, the lawsuit that made the morning after pill available  for women and girls of all ages.  Annie works as an archivist in New York City and is the mother of a one year old.

For the full text, click here.
For the talk summary, click here. 

Betty Campbell, Moderator. When I was fourteen years old I was advocating for women’s sports at my high school, and from then on community organizing was in my blood. In the early 1980s, I started the University of Florida Campus Organized Against Rape which grew to national recognition. I’ve been involved with Southwest Advocacy Group (SWAG) in Gainesville, FL, since it began in 2009. This is a child care, health and social services resource center on whose board I currently serve. I took the Gaineville Women Liberation Class in 1991. Recently I participated in National Women Liberation ‘s “flash mob”: actions in the Morning After Pill campaign and helped Restocking organize the Shulamith Firestone Women’s Liberation Memorial Conference on What Is To Be Done. I also organize with the Women of Color Caucus of National Women Liberation.

 

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