December 5, 2001

REDSTOCKINGS LAUNCHES NEW BOOK, NEW WOMEN’S LIBERATION OFFENSIVE
AT DECEMBER 7TH PARTY

On December 7th, less than a mile from Ground Zero and on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the radical feminist group Redstockings will launch a new women’s liberation offensive at a kick-off party for its new book, Women’s Liberation and National Health Care: Confronting the Myth of America.

The event will be hosted by longtime National Organization for Women (NOW) activist and community leader Carol De Saram at her TriBeCa loft at 76 Laight St., #1, from 6-10 pm.

The party will kick off a fundraising drive for an organizing campaign based on the ideas in the book, which the authors believe have even greater urgency in the aftermath of September 11th. Food and drink will be served.

The book will be for sale at the party, and two of the book’s authors, Kathie Sarachild and Amy Coenen, will be on hand to sign copies. The book makes a feminist case for national health insurance, proposing a tactical shift for American feminism. Winning national health insurance, the book argues, is a first step in a larger strategy for advancing economic independence for women and equality between the sexes.

A change in feminist strategy
The book argues that under the conditions American feminism is now facing, the movement needs to shift its emphasis to identifying and raising consciousness about the women’s liberation component of more general economic and political issues of democracy. The work [details why] national health insurance as the place to start with this new strategy.

Such a change does not mean abandoning the current women’s liberation mission of consciousness-raising and organizing. The Redstockings authors urge continuing to raise and spread feminist consciousness and continuing to build a women’s liberation power base of organized feminism.

Nor does it mean calling a halt to the movement’s nailing male chauvinist behavior, on the job, in the home, and in political life. Feminism needs to keep on kicking male chauvinist butt, even as we expand the fight for women’s freedom with such new tactics as fighting for national health care.

Is the U.S. really #1?
The work also takes aim at the widespread notion of U.S. superiority in virtually every area, from the quality of health care to equality between the sexes. The authors show this to be a debilitating myth that is one of the main obstacles to progress in both women’s equality and the nation’s health care.

Now more than ever
As the Redstockings book went to press, another myth of America was shattered—the myth of the ocean bound republic safe from the horrors of war and foreign attack on its soil.

The most important battlefields of a homeland defense against terrorism are public services, and it is mainly civilians who are in harm’s way. The case for “federalizing” health care, in post-September 11th parlance, is now stronger than ever — a matter of national security, as well as national welfare and a springboard toward women’s liberation.

Now more than ever, we must continue and expand our fight for women's liberation, nothing less--and for more democracy at home in the U.S.A.

ABOUT REDSTOCKINGS
Coined in 1969, the name "Redstockings" combines "bluestockings," the term pinned pejoratively on educa ted and otherwise strong-minded women in the 18th and 19th centuries, with "red" for social revolution.

Redstockings was one of the influential but short-lived radical feminist groups of the Sixties that produced many of the expressions and actions that have become household words to people in the United States-- Women's Liberation, Sisterhood is Powerful, Consciousness- Raising, The Personal is Political, The Politics of Housework, The Pro-Woman Line, The Miss America Protest.

In 1973, veterans of the original group reformed Redstockings and incorporated as a non-profit educational and scientific organization for the furtherance of the women’s rights movement and the organized efforts of women to better their situation.

Today Redstockings is organizing very much in the original spirit, as a different kind of "think tank"-- grassroots-oriented and down-to-earth ----for defending and advancing the women's liberation agenda. Archives for Action is a project Redstockings established in 1989 to make the formative and radical 1960's experience of the movement more widely available for the taking stock needed for new understandings and improved strategies.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Kathie Sarachild, Jenny Brown and Amy Coenen have collaborated across the feminist and Redstockings generations.

Sarachild is one of the 1960's Redstockings veteran organizers and theoreticians. Brown and Coenen began their association with Redstockings in the late 1980's and early 1990's as young college activists in the National Organization for Women and Gainesville Women's Liberation. Gainesville Women's Liberation, founded in 1968 and the first Southern women's liberation group of the movement's rebirth years of the 1960's, also collaborated closely with the New York- based Redstockings during those rebirth years, a collaboration which continues today.

Jenny Brown continues to live and work in Gainesville, Florida. As co-chair of the local Labor Party, she helped lead a successful campaign in the 2000 elections in Alachua County, Florida that garnered 65 % of the vote for a referendum backing universal health insurance. She has been a paid staffer for both Gainesville Women's Liberation and Redstockings and is a co-editor of The Gainesville Iguana, an alternative newspaper.

Amy Coenen now lives in Clarksville, Tennessee. She is a nurse and is actively involved in NOW, Gainesville Women's Liberation and Redstockings. In the last year, she helped finish the Redstockings book and founded Clarksville Women's Liberation, a feminist consciousness-raising group in Clarksville, Tennessee. She also had a baby.

Kathie Sarachild is director of the Redstockings "Archives for Action" project. She was an editor and major contributor to the 1975 Redstockings book Feminist Revolution, republished by Random House in an abridged edition in 1978. In the late 1960's, she coined the slogan "Sisterhood Is Powerful" and was a major architect of the program for consciousness-raising groups that did so much to spread the movement during its rebirth years.