Interview with Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner

Wagner, Sally Roesch ; McKiernan, Stephen

Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner is an author, lecturer, and activist. She was a founder of one of the country’s first Women’s Studies programs and one of the first women to receive a Doctorate in the United States for work in Women’s Studies. Wagner received her Bachelor's degree and her Master's degree in Psychology from the California State University in Sacramento. She also received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness (Women’s Studies) from the University of California in Santa Cruz.

ND

In copyright

2018-03-29

McKiernan Interviews

158:01

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Sally Roesch Wagner
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: Not Dated
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(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:03):
Testing one, two. Sure. That is very good. All right.

SW (00:00:04):
Okay.

SM (00:00:04):
And when you think of the (19)60s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?

SW (00:00:28):
A door opening into the future.

SM (00:00:34):
Explain.

SW (00:00:35):
And then closing. But the door stayed open long enough that we learned how to get inside. We saw a vision of what the world could be. We saw the way that people could be with each other personally, and also a vision of how the social structure could be transformed to create new human beings.

SM (00:01:10):
When you hear, and this has always struck me, as a person who is a boomer, when you hear people like Newt Gingrich in 1994, when the Republicans came to power, and George Will, I am just using them as examples, who oftentimes in his writings, anytime he can take a shot at the boomer generation, he will do it, is oftentimes is the breakdown of American society that a lot of the problems that we have today, they blame on that time, that era, the (19)60s, the (19)70s, the young people, the drug culture, the sexual revolution, lack of respect for authority, the antagonisms and the deep divisions. How do you respond when you hear people like that?

SW (00:02:04):
They are absolutely right. They are absolutely correct. And it is sort of like, yes, we did that. One person's breakdown is another person's breakthrough. And I think that the analysis that that sort of the facade of a happy family, the facade of a generous and just country, the facade of all of us being the same cracked in the (19)60s. We smashed that facade. And breaking through that then opened the door, we were in the center I think in the midst of a cultural revolution. But I think that it is a cultural, political, spiritual, personal. It is a revolution that I am not sure there has ever been one like this in the world. I know my background really is studying the 19th century, and it is very reminiscent of the mid-19th century in terms of radical reform movements all springing up simultaneously and feeding each other. And I think that in some ways they opened a door and saw a vision into the future, and they set the blueprint for the 20th century, and we know are setting the blueprint, or the 20th century, the (19)60s set the blueprint for all the work that we are doing now. And what is interesting to me is that the people that opened that door and saw the vision now are institutionalized and making institutional changes. Because at some point we realized, and I think this was the strength of the woman's movement, we realized that there were no personal solutions. And if one's to point, I do not know if we ... Point to the one major brilliance of the woman's movement, I do not know if there was one major and is such a powerful transformative engine, but one brilliance of it was women are not messed up, we are messed over. And we actually used the F word, but it was the idea that we were tranquilized. Then it was a more primitive tranquilizer, if you will. What was it then? That women were constantly, if they were unhappy with their situation, they were put on tranquilizers, on meds, and they still are today, but probably in greater numbers. But what we realized was as we began to share our personal stories and break down the personal isolation that we felt, we began to understand that it was not our personal problems, but that it was institutional. And I think that was the moment of understanding that there had to be systematic, systemic, institutional changes before we could create a just world, before we could create an equal.

SM (00:05:42):
One of the questions that I always ask, and just general questions about the boomers, is when boomers, boomers are defined as those individuals born between 1946 and (19)64. But I have also noticed if you know anything about the (19)60s that a lot of the leaders were born in (19)42, (19)43, (19)44, 45. So a lot of people do not like these, got to define a generation and limit it to these particular years. But the question that comes up often is longevity. And this is oftentimes a criticism we hear today toward boomers who are now reaching 62 years of age, first year of social security [inaudible] this year. The front liners. Is did they carry their ideals and beliefs beyond that period when all these movements and these feelings that change can happen, that we can be make a difference in this world? And which was really part of the (19)60s and even in the (19)60s is really up to (19)73, (19)74, and then so much happened after that. But can you separate female boomers from male boomers and just the experiences you have seen of female boomers, have they carried their ideals into middle age and older age, or had they fallen by the wayside as many men had done in careers and making money and raising families?

SW (00:07:10):
I belong to an organization called Veteran Feminists of America, women who were active between (19)60 and (19)73. And what happens in the meetings of that, some of the gatherings that I have attended in this group is that women sit around and [inaudible] about are we the only feminists left? These young women, they do not have any idea of feminism. They are not part of the movement. And then I talked to my students at Zurich University, 18 and 19-year-old women who are reinventing feminism and they wonder if they are the only ones or what happened to all the feminists from before. One of the things we hope to do at the Gage House is to do more intergenerational things. The things we have done have been really effective. And what is interesting is that I teach 19th century at Syracuse University, 19th century women's rights history. What my students really want to hear about is my experience in the (19)60s. So I do back and forth. I talk about what the first wave women did, how far they brought it, and then where we took it, and then here is where you need to take it and make those connections. But we still alive and kicking, are we still? See, I think part of it is a masking. Elizabeth Katie Stanton understood that if she started out her lectures with a story about her grandchildren and her fat, little sausage curls, white hair, she could do the most radical thinking and say the most radical things. On her 80th birthday they had this huge celebration and it was, what was it? It was some big gathering place in New York City and there were thousands of people there. Now this is the moment when she could have said, "Thank you all so much. I am so honored that you are here." You know what she said? Yeah, we were going to get our right to vote pretty soon and we have made some inroads on some of the things that we need. All we need to really do now is look at going after the real enemy, and that is the church. What we need to do is the Bible was not written by God, it was written by man out of his love of domination. She wrote in her women's Bible that year, and she said, "What we need to do, because it is a manmade document like the Constitution or other men made documents, we need to change it to meet the times. So we need to rewrite the Bible." This is on her 80th birthday, and one of her mottoes became, I shall not grow conservative with age. But taking my direction from her, the ideas that come out of my mouth have not changed. If anything, they were more transformational than they have ever been, but I have lost the language. I have dropped the language of division in some cases. I mean, feminism is a word obviously that needs to be held onto, but there was a lot of jargon that we developed that is as unappealing to me as academic jargon. What you essentially are doing is creating a separate isolated group that does not know how to communicate with the masses. So my process personally has been to unlearn academic speak and to write in the language as accessible as possible. My audience has been my grandson for years. He is now 25, but he was my audience when he was 10. If I could not say it in a way that was understandable to him, I needed to go back to the drawing board and make it accessible. So someone listening is going to go, she do not talk like the (19)60s, she do not look like the (19)60s. I know. Adopt protective coloration. And what that means is exactly like Elizabeth Katie said, this gray hair is my passage into passing. It is like I belong to the Rotary Club, and as a Rotarian, there is all kinds of possibilities of making connections with people. And what I find is that the ideas of the (19)60s just simply makes sense. And if they are presented in a way that does not frighten people or that does not create separateness, join my club and you have to accept all this. And I have learned a lot of this from my grandchildren and from younger people to speak in a language that really... I mean, I seriously go through this process with my grandkids every time I am with them. I listen to their music, I watch their movies, I go shopping with them to see what page they are on with that. I ask them to bring me up to speed technologically. And in the process of that, I learn what they care about, what their issues are, what their vision is, what they want to see happen in the world. And I take direction from that.

SM (00:12:42):
When you look at the boomers, again, one of the things that was awful often another criticism of the boomers is that even though they were a generation of 70 to 74 million depending on what book you read, is that only really only 15 percent really participated. So you are talking about 85 percent that were not involved in any capacity and in the anti-war movement, the women's movement, the civil rights, the environmental, gay and lesbian, all the movements, and people like to use that as a criticism. But I have always looked upon it as a positive because when you consider 15 percent of 70 million, that is a heck of a lot of people. But have you heard that criticism?

SW (00:13:32):
Yeah.

SM (00:13:33):
And often-

SW (00:13:33):
And it is silly.

SM (00:13:33):
And actually they may even be doing it today's generation, they always try to put percentages under.

SW (00:13:38):
And it is percentages and invisibility. How do you stop a revolution that is already in progress? Well, you deny it is happening. And today it is going on, bingo in front of our eyes. And what is wonderful is that I think because it is under the radar screen, the advantage of it is that there is this whole infrastructure that is being created, that once the old tumbles, the infrastructure will be in place. Everything from what we eat to how we interact with each other, to how we live in our houses, to how we... I mean, the infrastructure of the important stuff, how we educate, that is in place. And when the trappings fall off, if we survive, I think the infrastructure is tight. But there is a couple of things about that. The silliness of, come on, how many people made the American Revolution? That was a disgustingly small-

SM (00:14:41):
Very small.

SW (00:14:43):
...Of leadership, and it was not diverse. Now the (19)60s was more diverse, but what is wonderful about the movement today is it is so diverse and it is so multidimensional that nobody can get a handle on it. It cannot be destroyed. It cannot be sought out and systematically deconstructed or attacked the way that the government attacked the (19)60s. You identify the leaders. You place drugs in there, you send out bogus information about them, all the stuff we know the government was doing now through COINTELPRO. We know that the government systematically, and we know that they systematically murdered the Black Panthers at the same time that they are destabilizing governments all over Central America. I mean, now that was in the (19)60s. Shocking news that was like, could it really be true? Could it really be true? And we had to have it proven to ourselves every way until Sunday before we believe it, I think. But we were the canaries in the mines. We were the ones who were saying first, it is going on, it is going down. And I think now that is general knowledge. But I think the other thing about the (19)60s and about it being a small percentage, Samuel J. May, who is one of my favorite dead guys, I love this guy. Somebody, I think it was Garrett Smith, said, "Heaven is sweeter with May's presence." After he died. Samuel J. May was one of the most principled, thoughtful, progressive men that I have ever known.

SM (00:16:41):
When did he live?

SW (00:16:42):
19th century. But he wrote a book after, he was the Unitarian minister here in Syracuse, and a good friend of Matilda Jocelyn Gages. He wrote after the Civil War, a book called Recollections of our Late Great Anti-Slavery Conflict. And he is furious because people did not step forward when they should have, including the Unitarians. And he names-names of people who voted the wrong way on the issue regularly. And his contention is there never would have been a civil war if enough people would have stood up, and especially if the churches would have opposed slavery. And so he is holding the, as a minister, he is holding the church's feet to the fire. But the standard thing he talks about and that everybody that does 19th century anti-slavery history talks about, is that after the Civil War, everybody's home was a station on the Underground Railroad. And similarly today, everybody was involved in the (19)60s. And my question to people who say, "Yeah, I was there." Is can I see your FBI file? I should have brought mine.

SM (00:18:03):
I have never gone down to look at mine. I know one of my friends did and he was very disappointed because he said it was all marked up and he could not read anything.

SW (00:18:14):
Yeah.

SM (00:18:14):
He could not read anything.

SW (00:18:15):
No, mine is about this thick. And I take it in and show my students. I did the FBI and CIA both, and I really encourage you to do it. You need to do it for this book. You need to ask for your FBI file to see if you have a record. And it is really important. And my kids looking at it, it really helped them to frame what was going on during that time. And I take it in to show my students. They are so afraid, they are indentured servants today because they are indentured to their parents. If they are at a private college like SU, and their parents are investing that much money in their education, they have to perform and they feel like they are very constrained to do anything. And I say, "Look it, there is life after, and you keep doing it. You keep doing it." But I think it is this idea that everyone after the fact wants to jump on the bandwagon, but what it felt like to be in that moment and the fear of it, my kids will testify to that. We had to leave our house two weeks before Christmas because the local newspaper in Sacramento, the Sacramento Union, which no longer exists, it was a very conservative paper. They did a front-page story on an underground newspaper that we were doing, and they got it confused with, we had gone through a split and then there was Weatherman, and they said that the Weatherman paper was being published at the house where we were.

SM (00:19:55):
Oh my gosh.

SW (00:19:56):
So at the end, they basically say the cops cannot do anything. The judges are too liberal, their hands are tied, the newspaper is preaching drugs and murder, and it is published in a gray frame house on the corner of 23rd and L Street. Was like-

SM (00:20:15):
Wait-

SW (00:20:15):
...When it was a call for vigilante action. So no, going through that kind of a fear thing with two little kids and then having the FBI come to visit, and having the FBI try to talk... The FBI went to the landlord and tried to scare him about who I was. I had never broken a law. I opposed the war, and was part of an underground paper, but the kind of political... To live through that kind of... I developed asthma at the age of 26, and it was purely from the pressure, the fear of that time. Now I am white. Imagine what the Panthers were going through at that time. And so for someone to come along now who did not put themselves on the line and say, "I was there in the (19)60s." Really offends me. I think it is a deep offense to claim a part of something that you never really put yourself through.

SM (00:21:21):
That is the same thing about veterans who are lying that they served in Vietnam, because that has been a big issue. Stolen Valor, which was the book that came out that Vietnam vets, they kind of hid themselves when they first came home. And now it is very popular to be a Vietnam vet. And well, we have even seen Joe Ellis, the great historian, why? Why would he lie to his students at Harvard about him? And he has got a Pulitzer Prize. People were shocked, of course, he is such a great historian. He admitted his wrong and he is back. But it is interesting, you raised some really good points there. Talk the talk and walk the walk. And that is the most important thing.

SW (00:22:01):
And that is a real important connection that it is like I feel like I am part of... I am a veteran. I belong to the Veteran Feminists of America. And I think it is important we call ourselves that because we have battle scars from being in the front lines of the feminist revolution and the anti-war activist's the same thing. We carry, and I do not mean to put my work as extremely important. I was not arrested. I was in a number of demonstrations, but I did not do CD. I had little kids. But I think to put a perspective on it, is to look at people claiming once something becomes sort of in that they were part of it, whether it is the innless of having fought in Vietnam or the innless of having fought against the Vietnam War, it diminishes the work of those who actually were there and doing that.

SM (00:23:13):
Those are very important points. And when you look at the boomer generation itself, what would you list as some characteristics, some of the strengths, qualities that both male and female and all ethnic groups had at that particular time? Just their strengths and maybe some of their weaknesses.

SW (00:23:33):
I think an openness to new experience. I left the conventional marriage. I was raised in a Republican household in a small Midwest town. My parents were high in the church, my dad was a banker. And the openness to change, the recreating ourselves, could not have done it without the support of each other. There is nothing individual about the revolutionary. And it was a leaderless movement in many significant ways. The women's movement really just emerged spontaneously, through spontaneous generation. We were all doing the same stuff all over and sometimes did not even know it until later. But I think that openness, a willingness to really go through major changes. A connectedness, a sharing, a creation of community, understanding ourselves out of the individualism of the (19)50s as community creatures, as creatures of community. And then as in the 19th century, the influence of Native Americans is extraordinary. Extraordinary. My work is on the influence of the Haudenosaunee women on the women's rights movement. And I am doing a longer book now on the influence generally on the basics of life on Native Americans. I mean, other people have done a lot of this work. I am focusing it specifically on women and looking at it through that dimension. But I think in the (19)60s there were ways that, as the movements sprang up and the connection between them, the learning from each other and the outsider voices coming together and sharing experience, I think there was a significant Native American influence on our sense of who we are, creatures of community rather than individuals. And I think that some of the weaknesses were a joy, another strength, joy. The marijuana for me was an opening into a world of spiritual that I did not get in the congregational church in Aberdeen, South Dakota. It was that passing of the roach in community that you took one puff, you did not Bogart, you shared with your neighbors and you experienced. It took us out of the framework that we were in as drugs have always done, psychedelics in a spiritual way. Once the mafia took over and once the neighborhood drug dealers were driven out by the big drug dealers, and once the paraquat was sprayed on the marijuana in Mexico, and once people started, and most significantly for me, once people started smoking marijuana by themselves, that was the end of the drug revolution. A lot of people that I knew got really injured by drugs and got strung out and it was not all good, but there was a moment of spirituality with it, a moment that opened us to another dimension that we sure as hell did not have growing up in the (19)50s.

SM (00:27:51):
Do you feel, I am going to get into the question on the (19)50s in a minute. Do you feel the feelings that a lot of boomers had, including [inaudible] and others, even when I was at Binghamton, that we were unique? We were different than any other generation in history, but I kind of already knew a little bit of history because I knew what went on in the (19)30s and there were a lot of student protest movements at that time too. And so I knew we were not unique in every way because there was an anti-war at that particular time. But that, do you think that is a weakness or a strength? The uniqueness. I have gotten unbelievable responses to this question when I asked. The boomers thought they were the most unique generation in American history because they were going to change everything. They were going to end... They were going to bring equality, they were going to end injustice. They were going to be the cure-all to all the ills of the world. They are going to bring peace to the world, love, brotherhood and all the other things. But in reality, that has not happened, so.

SW (00:28:55):
Well, it has not happened yet. It is still in process. Revolution, I think we were essentially right, but I think our timetable was off. We believed in instant revolution and they do not happen that way.

SM (00:29:14):
That could be a weakness, the concept of instant revolution.

SW (00:29:17):
Yeah. And I think that was, we were wrong about the timing. The thing about seeing ourselves as unique, I think was both a strength and a weakness. And as a strength, I think it allowed us to break from tradition and create our own path. And that is what I think is young people are doing that and continuing to do it and have continued to do it from the (19)60s. I mean, the punk movement in the (19)80s, that was another wave, another reinventing. And now into the fourth wave of feminism and feminisms, each group of women coming from a different culture, finding their own description of and their own way of feminism. And that uniqueness, that sense of we are doing something different, we are, was part of the energy that drove us. But I think there is a pain that comes in when you ask that question, because I go immediately to some of the meetings when some of the old lefties who had been hanging in there from the (19)30s and (19)40s when we would be in a meeting with them. And the arrogance of youth, the arrogance of what do these people have to teach us anyway? I mean, now I hang out with dead people all the time. Because I learned so much from them and learn constantly about vision and endurance and focus and the perspective I need. When I was arrested for my grandson, when he was born at the Seneca Army Depot, I did CD by myself as Matilda Jocelyn Gage because I had to do it quickly. I had to get back to teach two days later. So I had to do it right then and there was not anybody else quite ready. There was one woman that thought she might, so they arrested me and I was dressed as Matilda Johnson Gage and gave her name, but I had a picture of Michael in my clothing and they strip searched me and all that stuff. But Michael was right there by my heart. And when I was in the detention area, they kept me for about several hours and I was handcuffed and it gets uncomfortable after a few hours and was not the ones that I could... When I did CD at the Nevada test site, I could slip my hands out, because I-

SW (00:32:03):
...slip my hands out because they handcuffed me and I had on a thick, you know the trick, you have on a thick sweater and so you pull the sweater up and you are out of the handcuffs. I went back and got arrested a second time, but once was his gauge and once was his [inaudible]. But anyway, so when I was arrested and I am by myself in this holding tank and this is in the (19)80s, (19)84, and I cannot sit down because there is no chairs or anything. And I am standing and it is hot and I have got this 19th century costume on and my hands are behind me and I do not know what the hell's going on in the other room. And I am getting a little nervous. I am really isolated. There is nobody with me, nobody is singing strong songs with me, like you need to when you are doing CD. And then there was a moment when one of my hands I realized was reaching back to Matilda Joslyn Gage and one of my hands was reaching forward to my grandson who had just been born. And I thought, I am just a conduit. That is all. I am just the conduit between the past and the future. I am just passing through. And in that moment, I knew who I was and what my place was. [inaudible] ever known, ever known in life. And that was one of those transforming moments. My grandson now has become the person that I am passing everything on to. He is my favorite person in the world. He is a writer and we write together, we are doing some projects together, but he has grown up with the idea that his grandma loved him so much that she was willing to be arrested to make the world safer for him. And the only problem with it is that I have two other grandkids that have been born since, and I have not been arrested for them yet. And so at one point my daughter said, Alex thinks that you love Michael more than you love her because you have been arrested twice for him and you have never been arrested for. So what I am doing with them now, they are teenagers, is asking them to think about what issues they care most about. And I am not going to do it while I am the CD or the ED of the Gage Foundation, but when I finish this work, then I want them to have something that they want me to make a stand for in their name, in their honor.

SM (00:34:46):
That is beautiful.

SW (00:34:47):
And Michael actually wants to do CD of the Nevada test site again, since they have started underground nuclear testing.

SM (00:34:53):
You remind me so much of just in the conversations I had with Daniel Barry and Philip [inaudible] and Elizabeth McAllister from Jonah House down in Baltimore. We never saw Phillip very much because he was in jail most of the time. I took students down to Jonah to meet Elizabeth, but I can remember at school some of the Catholic workers that were just secretaries in the department could not understand why I was taking students to go meet these terrible people who would go to jail knowing that [inaudible] had, not Daniel, he never married, but Philip and Elizabeth had three kids at home. Well, and they got mad at me just because I was introducing them to them and they did not like their lifestyle and they were not being good parents. But when the students met them, it was an experience they will never, ever forget. It was about commitment, it was about risk taking. And it was also what Dr. King used to always profess for those in the nonviolent movement is you oftentimes have to pay a price for your beliefs. And those prices are you must be willing to go to jail.

SW (00:36:09):
And Matilda Joslyn Gage said, you must be willing to give up parents, family reputation, and you will not see the end. You are planting the seed and those who come after you will enter into the harvest.

SM (00:36:25):
Wow. That is her right there, is not it?

SW (00:36:29):
That is her. Yeah. And this is her granddaughter, Matilda Jewel Gage. This is a woman that I worked with for 17 years, organizing her grandma's papers, taking her, recording her stories. She remembered her grandmother. And this is me as a graduate student at the University of California.

SM (00:36:54):
Oh yeah, I saw that. Yeah. I have been out there.

SW (00:36:57):
Writing my dissertation on Gage, and I was standing on the front porch of the Gage home the first time I had ever been there. Came on a research trip. And I keep this here because I remember that young woman standing on those steps being photographed by the Fayetteville historian, local historian, and thinking this house should not be privately owned. It was privately owned, and this needs to be, there is so much history here and this woman is so important. This house needs to be open to the public. Never in my life thought that I would be the one to do it, but when the house started becoming rental property, I came back every year to kind of check on it and do lectures here and keep in touch with Gage and the upstate radical reform. Dead people that I love and hang out with. And as the house was starting to go downhill as rental property, something had to be done about it. And so I moved back here and started the Gage Foundation to raise the money to save the house. And as we sit here, the house is owned by the Gage Foundation and the restoration will be completed by the end of next month, by the end of December. And then we start doing the interpretation. And this is a center where the ideas of Gage will... The (19)60s, the reincarnation of the 1850s and (19)60s and (19)70s and (19)80s. The ongoing struggle for justice is the story of that house. And that is my life's work. My legacy. Gage has been my life's work.

SM (00:38:50):
Is there a biography? Has there been an in-depth, like there is a brand new one out on Elizabeth Katie Stanton.

SW (00:38:56):
Not the long one. I have not written it yet. There is one out that is not very good. Gage and I wrote a short piece. What I will do when I finish up this work, you know how hard it is to be doing and raising the money to do this house and also doing the restoration and keeping everything going with programming and everything. I do not have much time to write, but I have started at the suggestion of Ken Burns, script writer, Jeff. Cannot think of his last name.

SM (00:39:35):
He was in Philadelphia last week, Ken Burns.

SW (00:39:39):
And his script writer. I wrote the faculty guide, Not for Ourselves Alone, you know the story of Stanton and Anthony and I was in that film and... Is it Jeff Warren, who writes all Ken's scripts, he suggested, well, at the opening, at the grand opening of the house of the film at the Waldorf Historia, I sat with the folks from Florentine Films because I had gotten to know him when I did the faculty guide. And Jeff said, I sat by him and he was kind of a quiet guy, and he said, I am sorry we did not include more about Gage in the film. And I said, yeah, I wish you would have. And he said, well, not having a biography was the problem. And I said, well, now the problem is that with Stanton and Anthony becoming one word with this film and becoming perceived as the leaders of the movement and you do not bring a third one in. If I write the biography, she is going to be this non-sequitur out here and it is going to be, oh, that is really interesting. Now let us get back to the real story. He said, do a triple biography. So I have got about a half a book written just from their childhood, looking at the differences between these three women.

SM (00:41:11):
This leads into a question on the tape. I will turn it over here in a second. But the question of movements that that is another quality, but what I consider to be a strength of the (19)60s generation is the involvement in many movements and the creation of some of the movements. Of course, the Civil Rights Movement was already ongoing. And then of course the Women's Movement, the Gay and Lesbian Movement, the Chicana Movement, Native American Movement, the Environmental Movement, they all kind of looked, and the Women's Movement. They all kind of looked to the Civil Rights Movement as an example and a role model.

SW (00:41:48):
That was the only one I really wanted to get because...

SM (00:41:51):
On the movements, a lot of these movements came about women, one of the big sensitive issues in the civil rights movement, and I know this from reading a lot about Dr. King, was the sexism within the movements and African-American leaders at that time. But even scholars have come to our campus have talked about it. It is a very sensitive issue. And obviously in the anti-war movement is the same way that women were oftentimes treated as second class citizens. There were the Dorothy Heights of the world. There were people like that that were a little different than a lot of them. But so those two particular movements kind of looked at women's secondary roles and I think away a lot of students of the (19)60s or people that studied it, looked at, well, the women's movement came about as a result of the bad treatment they received in the anti-war movement. So they went off and created the women's movement on their own. Could you correct that myth? Because there is a lot of perceptions out there that since women were not treated equally in those two movements, they had to create their own movement. And then looking at all these movements, because Native American Movement was very important, [inaudible], we have had several scholars on our campus talking about that particular movement. Certainly Ward Churchill's been a controversial figure with things he has written. But even the Native American, the Chicano movement and the Gay and Lesbian movement, and of course the Environmental Movement and Earth Day, he said, what is the truth in terms of what I just mentioned about the break and the creation, that was the greatest impetus for the movement was the way they were treated in civil rights and the anti-war movement. And where is the link between women and boomer women in particular, in all these other movements? Were they male dominant in the Native American movement, in the environmental movement? I know you think of Gaylord Nelson, who I interviewed for this project and Dennis Hayes, but I do not see any women that were in the organizing group. And I see Russell Means I see these male names coming out in just about all the movements. And just your thoughts on...

SW (00:44:06):
I think there is so many different paths to so many different directions to come at to begin to look at what is going on in the center of that question. So let me just come at it from a couple different ways. One, the 19th century movement came about because women were excluded from the world Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840 in London. That is the simple answer. And the simple answer is that the same thing happened in the 19th, in the 20th century. Women were, as you said, second class citizens in the civil rights movement. And there is some truth in that. That is the simplest level of explanation. But I think beyond that, that once you get a sense of liberation, once you get out of the box and you start seeing this is what it would feel like to be free, you realize that you are not free. And so I think it was not just male, female, the race dynamic entered in each of those movements in the Women's Rights Movement, the Gay and Lesbian movement, while gender entered into all the ethnic movements. The contradictions begin to become apparent once you are in motion. If you are in stasis, if you are just sitting tight, if nothing is going on like the (19)50s when there was essentially not a strong movement of change, those contradictions are not as apparent. But once you are in motion, and the truth for me personally, from that comes when my daughter that I just got off the phone with Beth, was at a women's rights meeting with me, women's liberation meeting in (19)69 probably. And we were talking about what do we need on campus? What do we want on campus? Well, we should get a childcare center. Well, how are we going to do that? Well, let us get kids to come in and take them into the administration building and the administrators will then see the need for it. And well, not too many of us have kids. How are we going to get kids? Well, let us rent them, let us see if we would rent kids. And everybody is laughing. Beth comes up to me and says, I want to talk to you.

SM (00:46:40):
Okay, there you go.

SW (00:46:47):
So Beth comes up to, and there is like tears in her eyes and she says, I want to talk to you. And I said, sure, honey, what do you want? She said, no, and this was a child that I did not know, and there was a change in her. We went outside and she said, you are talking all the time about women being liberated from men. You are talking about women being, I cannot remember her exact language, respect and being their own people. And now you are talking about renting kids. If you are going to talk about renting kids, I am no longer part of women's liberation. And I tried to comfort her. She said, no, it is like you got to listen to me. And that was the start of my kids forming a children's liberation group in Sacramento. And they lectured, they came up with a bill of rights of children. We formed an alternative school, the Sunshine Children's Collective, and the children were involved in the decision-making process. We would be in a meeting altogether and the kids would say, kids caucus. And they would go outside and go gather themselves and come back in and say, the children demand that. And they would say, you are treating us in this way and we do not like this. This is what we want to have happen. And that changed the way that I did, how I raised them, everything that happened with them, we ended up dividing our money each month after the bills were made and they made their own decisions about their own money. And then it is like once you get the concept of liberation, you immediately apply it to your own life. And I think that is the deeper truth that happened with each of these. And the wonder, and I think the strength of it was that I do not think that was an uncomfortable or an unfortunate or a problematic part of the movement at all. I think that was the richest part of the movement and continues to be. Where we in the woman's movement are constantly looking at our racism. And it becomes a working principle. Is racism at the heart of the woman's movement in the 19th century? By 1890, it was, and that is a story we tell at the Gage house that is not told elsewhere. The racism of the conservative women was allowed into the movement, and it was allowed to reign. And so in those parades in the teens, 1912, 1913, the Negro women are marching at the back of the parade if they are allowed in at all. And the white women are in front wearing white. I will never appear in white in any sort of reenactment or anything because it is an absolute call to white supremacy. And the movement was making the argument give women the right to vote because white women outnumbered Negroes and immigrants and women's suffrage is a way to maintain white, native foreign supremacy. Now, that is a truth that has to be faced head on. The racism and movement in the (19)60s needs to be faced head on and acknowledged and that is how you work through it. And my work became, in the (19)80s and especially in the (19)90s, I started doing a lot of work with Native American folks, just being friends and figuring out, ended up moving back to South Dakota for a time, take care of my dad after my mom died and did workshops on racism and cultural awareness with Lakota friends. And that has been a real training ground for me, recognizing the depth of my own racism. And for me now, it is like become a recovering alcoholic. I negotiate my racism day to day, but I wear it out there. It is not like I am not racist. Yeah, I am racist. I live in a racist culture. So denial is a way of avoiding it. And I think we did a lot of denying in the movement. The men did a lot of denying of sexism. White women did a lot of denying of racism. White men did a lot of denying of everything. And I think that the power structures, once we began to understand this is all about who has the power, and of course men are going to be sexist unless they are fighting it. And of course white women are going to be racist unless we own it, acknowledge it, and deliberately work against it. And I think that was the strength, was the confronting of all of our prejudices that were built on systems of power. And not just prejudice, but the power to maintain those. That is what racism is. It is not just prejudice, it is the power system. And so examining those power dynamics and I think realizing they have to be destroyed. And ultimately you have to remove power as a concept.

SM (00:52:16):
I think what you are saying, you remember Dr. King gave that speech on Vietnam. He was criticized in the African American community, but he saw the whiter picture. He saw all colors yellow over in Vietnam and black here in the United States. And so that I can remember the movement, the anti-war movement in the late (19)60s. And I think Kent State is the epitome of it in terms of that African-American students did not want to be seen or had their picture taken at that particular protest. And I think it was mostly it was all white students. And there were very few African-Americans at that particular time. They were separating from the anti-war movement and they were going strictly toward the civil rights movement and toward issues of racism whereas the white steels were continuing to be involved in the anti-war movement. So there was a big break at that time too. And the historic moments like Stokely Carmichael standing next to Martin Luther King, your time has passed. And the debate between Byard Rustin and Malcolm X, which was another one, your time has passed by Rustin, who was from Westchester, we had a national conference with him. He was one of those rare individuals that put white women in positions of responsibility in the march on Washington. Because Rochelle Horowitz, another great female leader, was a young, early twenties person who was in charge of all the buses coming in. And he was not very good at giving direction, but he had inherent faith in young people. And he went to President Kennedy, and I think it was President Kennedy asked Byard Rustin, who was in charge of all of the buses and everything? Oh, Rochelle Horowitz. He had never heard of her, but he was proud of her because she was given a heavy responsibility. So you can make a very relevant point here. What question that comes up that is a very important part of the interview process and that is this healing. Now, I want to read this to you. I have to read this to make sure I do not miss any point here. I want to preface this by saying several years back I took a group of students to visit Senator Edmond Muskey down in Washington. This is about a year and a half before he passed away. And he had just gotten out of the hospital. He was not feeling well. He had seen the Ken Burns series and he talked about it during that meeting. And we were able to get these meetings with the former senator because I knew Gaylord Nelson and Gaylord helped us meet nine senators. I am a big fan of Gaylord Nelson, former senator from Wisconsin. But here is the question, do you feel boomers are still having problems from healing from the divisions that tore this nation apart in their youth. Divisions between black and white. Divisions between those who support authority and those who criticize it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not. What role has the wall played in healing the divisions, not only within the veteran population, but in the nation as a whole? Do you feel that the bloomer generation will go to its grave, like the civil war generation not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has 40 years made this statement "time heals all wounds" the truth. And I just want to say that I have asked this to everybody, and I have had unbelievable responses to this, but I will mention what Gaylord Nelson said to me. He said, people do not walk around Washington DC on their sleeve that they have not healed. But in terms of the body politic, it changed Washington and the United States forever. That is the way he responded to it. But just your thoughts on the healing. Is there an issue still in this country on this issue? And should we care about people going to their graves with still issues?

SW (00:56:18):
I think that I cannot speak for what everybody is experiencing. I can speak for what I am experiencing and what I have experienced. The healing for me has been going through those contradictions. That has been the healing process. The healing process is the process of negotiating, how do I continue to fight sexism without always taking a confrontational stand as the only mechanism? And I employ a whole arsenal now, humor from native women. I have really learned to, it is like, you just got to tease these guys. It is like if you come from a position of power as native women do a position of real authority, you just kind of tease them a little bit. And I have watched native women bring down, I will not even name names of men, but just they know these women are in charge and all it takes a little bit of teasing and boom. There. So that is one tactic that I have learned. But I think that the healing of, it is to assume that it was healthy before. It is to assume that it was and something happened that now has to be healed. Well, it was really unhealthy. The healing needed to happen out of the (19)50s. It needed to happen out of that false unity and the breaking of that. And did we do it perfectly? God no, we broke each other's hearts. We hurt each other terribly. Those are some of the scars that we all carry. But what did you do past that point? We did not know because we did not know better. We have better skills now. People have better skills. They work with things better. Native Americans have always been able to really deal with contradictions in very respectful ways, in my experience. Just the people that I have known, the communities that I have been part of or been allowed to participate in, I should say. I have really learned other ways of dealing with difference that are not [inaudible], are not like the confrontational politics. That was what we were fed. That is what we learned. That is the only way we knew to deal with difference. That is not the only way to deal with difference. And that is really a very patriarchal way to deal with difference. There are a lot more effective ways and hearing each other, we are doing dialogue in the Gage home. And that is where you sit down with people you really disagree with and you hear what is going on with them. And you make a commitment that you are going to listen and that person makes a commitment. They are going to listen to you and you are going to hear each other. That is where healing happens. You do not necessarily come out agreeing, but you come out understanding and remembering the humanity of each other. And so I think that the healing is the process. The healing is the, we are healing not from the (19)60s. We are healing from the (19)50s. We are healing from the healthy breaking of the idea that we are all one and that everybody is equal and everybody is not equal. There is no level playing field. We have got to create a level playing field. And that means going through culturally and personally our own prejudices and the desire to hold onto the power that we have that those prejudices support.

SM (01:00:22):
We all know about the generation gap between the (19)60s and the World War II generation because lot has been written on it. I would like your thoughts on it, but the key thing I want to ask is, and I have asked this too, is what was it about the (19)50s, say you are a white... I grew up in Cortland, New York as a little boy. I grew up in Cortland through sixth grade and moved down toward Binghamton. And I did not see an African-American in any of the Parker schools where I went to school. And so when I think of the (19)50s though, I still think of very good times. My parents were always there. We had great Christmases, Thanksgiving, birthdays, PTA, everybody, even though we had the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation that did not seem to affect any of the kids that I remember. We played baseball. Everything was hunky dory, everything felt great. We had black and white TV, we had the Mickey Mouse Club. We grew up with Howdy Doody. We saw the first Cowboys and Indians or everything we were raised on. Of course, the Indians from Penn, you know, read later on. They were always the bad guy. And I saw Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, oh, Hop Along Cassidy, all the things that the kids in the (19)50s grew up with. And the question I have always asked myself is if it was such a great, when parents tried to give everything to their kids, and we were not talking about every ethnic group here now, because in the African American community, obviously it was different in some communities, but it seemed to be in all these issues of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation, you were cognizant of McCarthy. Some of the bad things even happened in Washington as a little kid. Why did this young people rebel in the (19)60s? Because in their elementary school years, right up to about 1960 is when they were first going to seventh grade, the front edge boomers, why did they, all of a sudden, why did these things rebel? Why are they rebelling against their parents who tried to give them so much? And I only reflect upon it because I was pretty, must be pretty naive and pretty ignorant. And I think a lot of people were, because I never put two and two together as a little boy until I started getting seventh, eighth and ninth grade. And I started putting two and two and together on a lot of issues that were happening in the world. But what was it about those (19)50s that was showed really no sign that these kids were going to be rebellious?

SW (01:03:07):
I think you experienced it from the privileged position of a white male in a racially segregated community where you did not hear your mother's frustration, maybe, at not being able to fulfill herself. My mother was a very frustrated woman. My father was the patriarch of the family, and that was the way it was supposed to be. My mother should have been out there doing all kinds of things in the world, and instead she was on Valium. How many women during the (19)50s were on Valium? The privilege that we experienced, I grew up in a middle class family, had everything I wanted. Totally dysfunctional family, but everything was provided for, and my brother grew up in the sort of family that you grew up in. My brother grew up, it was hunky dory, it was...

SW (01:04:03):
...You grew up in. My brother grew up, it was hunky-dory. It was joyful. It was fun. It was playing out here, doing all this. That is the white male experience of the (19)50s. My sister and I experienced a totally different childhood in the (19)50s. And I think that the discontent that grew, what you are describing was not a universal experience. That was a white male middle class experience. And you were kept in a privileged position where you did not have to hear other voices. My brother had no idea my mother was a despondent, frustrated, desperate woman. He did not know that. He totally did not. He was totally protected from that knowledge. My sister and I experienced it daily. I think that the 50s, for a certain group... And it was not that it was either great or it was awful, but I think that the contradictions were there of the unhappiness, the injustice, the things that were not right. I was watching for communist airplanes flying over Aberdeen, South Dakota. The Girl Scouts had duty up on the top of the Sherman Hotel, which was the tallest building in town, which was five stories. And when I screwed around and was not watching this skies carefully at night was certain that I was going to be responsible for the destruction of the United States because I failed to see that communist aircraft coming through. We did the duck and cover. We did the... And all that is funny now, but there was an earnestness about it. It was like we were the greatest country in the world. I did not know until I was in high school that there were concentration camps for Japanese in this country. Once you start getting the information, once you start knowing about the McCarthy era... I had nightmares in my childhood, and the nightmare was that my father was being chased by communists. And then it was a recurring nightmare and there was one that was even worse. It was the same nightmare, but at the end, my father turned around smiling and joined the communists/ and years of therapy, I could never figure out what was going on with this. But you know what it was? Once I figured out, my parents were friends with Karl Mundt, who was Senator McCarthy's right hand man. And my dad, as a Republican banker was saying, "Well, communism is just another economic system and it is one that makes most sense in developing countries". And my mother would weep in whale and say, "Fred, do not let anybody hear you say that. You are going to go to prison." There was a hell of a lot of shit going on in the (19)50s. And my brother was oblivious to it. My brother continues to. And my brother never became part of any movement. He went on to become a Republican banker himself. And I love him, I adore him, and he is very generous spirited, but he took a different path because he had a different childhood. My sister and I, in varying degrees have, become involved in social justice movements. And I was the one in the family who went the furthest out, and I think it was because I was the most discontent. And then tried to do a marriage in a traditional way, and that did not work.

SM (01:08:12):
Well as a kid, my dad used to win trips to Florida because he worked for Prudential. And I can remember something was not right, because all of a sudden as we drove to Florida, I saw all this poverty in the south. Well, that was a shocker to me. And since I was a history kid from the beginning, I started putting two and two together and I did it for the rest of my life.

SW (01:08:34):
So you can [inaudible] those kind of... For me, being in the fifth grade and traveling south, and there were drinking fountains with colored water in them. I go, "Whoa, that is so cool. I am want to drink colored water." So I went up to the drinking fountain and the water was not colored. And that was when I learned that there were different drinking fountains for... I was like, "Come on, what is this?" So yeah, those kind of experiences of seeing...

SM (01:09:09):
Do you think the beats had anything to do, in terms of a lot of the boomers, were they cognizant of this-

SW (01:09:17):
I sure was.

SM (01:09:18):
...Beats and [inaudible]

SW (01:09:19):
I mean, I cannot talk about Boomers in that respect, but I can talk about beats.

SM (01:09:23):
How important were the beats in the (19)50s?

SW (01:09:25):
Here I am in Aberdeen, South Dakota in high school reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti on the school grounds to my friends dressed in... I had blonde black stockings and I got a false long braid to put on my blonde hair. And I got kicked out of school. I am reading... You know Ferlinghetti.

SM (01:09:53):
Oh, yeah. He still runs the bookstore out there.

SW (01:09:53):
Yeah, City Lights. And I am reading this really, really wonderful poetry about "To taste still warm upon the ground, the spilled sperm seed". And what are they going to do with me? I am the daughter of the banker in town. So they sent me home because of the false ponytail, because of the false braid. What could they bust me on? But my brother introduced me to the Beat Poets, and I am reading Ginsburg, I am reading Ferlinghetti. I was really influenced by the Beats, by the Beat Generation and by their writing. I longed to go to San Francisco.

SM (01:10:40):
Yeah, he is still out there. I think he is 92 years old now.

SW (01:10:43):
Is he really?

SM (01:10:44):
He still runs the bookstore. It is amazing.

SW (01:10:47):
Is that true?

SM (01:10:48):
Yeah, he is-

SW (01:10:48):
I have got to take my grandson there, my younger grandson, because he is doing a report right now on beat.

SM (01:10:54):
Well go into the computer and hit City Lights Bookstore and you will see it. I knew Ferlinghetti was still alive, but I did not know he was still connected to the store. He is.

SW (01:11:07):
I am taking my grandson.

SM (01:11:09):
And Pete Seeger is 91, and they see these great people that are...

SW (01:11:15):
And still going.

SM (01:11:16):
Oh yeah, Pete's-

SW (01:11:17):
The Ruth Putter Welcome Center here has named for a woman, who I am not going to tell you her exact age because she does not come out with it, but she is in Pete Seeger's sort of generation. She is a social justice activist and she funded the building of that, and she has been a social justice activist her whole life. And she is now photographing it because she is a photographer. And so when the house opens, there will be a Ruth Putter exhibit of the creation of the Ruth Putter Welcome Center. Of course you know what she is photographing: the workers. The workers in that house, I have been meeting with them, take stuff for them to eat and drink since they started the work. And do you know about Gage and do you know about this? They are now Gage scholars.

SM (01:12:06):
Are you going to have a big opening here?

SW (01:12:08):
Yeah. October 8th through 10th, the weekend.

SM (01:12:11):
Ah, I will come.

SW (01:12:11):
Oh, wonderful.

SM (01:12:12):
I will come.

SW (01:12:12):
That will be wonderful.

SM (01:12:13):
And I will ask my niece and her husband to come, and I will say hi to you and I will be here.

SW (01:12:18):
And you know who the featured guests are going to be?

SM (01:12:20):
Who?

SW (01:12:20):
The workers.

SM (01:12:22):
They should be.
SW (01:12:22):
So that is where... So is the (19)60s dead? Do people from the 60s still carry a consciousness? In everything we do.

SM (01:12:32):
Have they done a good job with their kids and grandkids in terms of sharing? Obviously you have, so you-

SW (01:12:40):
You know what-

SM (01:12:41):
But do you think that as a generation, they have done a good job of educating their kids and now their grandchildren?

SW (01:12:47):
You are going to be the answer to that. When you interview 120 people, you are going to have a better sense of it. Because who knows this? You will find this out through asking us, and I will tell you my story, which is all I can tell you. My Christmas present I already got for... One of the Christmas presents for my 16-year-old grandson, the one I am going to take to City Lights, is a subscription to Z Magazine. That is what he wanted.

SM (01:13:14):
Howard Zen is in there a lot.

SW (01:13:18):
Yeah. And I am going [inaudible] he has got a teacher that is turning him onto this. I rented through Netflix, the last film I saw was Flow about the destruction of water and the commercialization of water because my grandson told me to watch that film. So now he and I will have a conversation about that. It is my grandson, Michael, is the one who I pass all this on to. My granddaughter, Alex, fiercely independent young woman. My daughter Beth has established her own nonprofit, does animal rescue in California and large animal rescue, horses, saves the lives of horses. And then does programs with kids at risk, autistic kids, brings them together. Also, the sheriff's department keeps their horses there. So she does these programs that bring together the kids that are getting arrested with the cops, working together with the horses and brings together all kinds of class, race, gender, diversity, differently abled. It is like, here is the vision of the world. And this is the girl who said, "I am never going to be like my mother."

SM (01:14:57):
I will let you get your [inaudible] or something.

SW (01:15:01):
So my daughter, she went through this whole period where she said, "I am never going to be like my mother". The (19)60s were really hard on her. She was scared through a lot of it with the kind of pressure we were under. My son... And that way the kids would have totally different experiences, the (19)60s were the best time in my son's life. So what traumatized my daughter empowered my son, and he went on to, for a number of years, had a coffee house because he loved going to the coffee house in the (19)60s. So in the (19)80s he has a coffee house where he created community in the way that the coffee houses in the (19)60s did.

SM (01:16:00):
Now I am going to cough. I got a cough too.

SW (01:16:02):
The cough is catching.

SM (01:16:04):
Well, one of the things I wanted to ask you in talking about in influence and qualities that parents pass on to kids is the issue of looking back at the Boomer generation again, I can remember when I was in college in the Psych 101 class and the psychology professor saying to our class, "Let us talk about the issue of trust today". And he would ask the question how important we felt trust was in our lives. Then he said basically, if you cannot trust others, then you will not be a success in life. Trust is an important quality. But then you look at the Boomers because a lot of the Boomers might be defined as a very distrustful generation because of the lies that were told to them by leaders over time. And the lies being obviously Lyndon Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was a lie. The lies of the amount of people that were dying over there. McNamara and the lies that he told. Obviously Watergate and the experiences of Richard Nixon. And then even... And boomers were aware of this too, even though it might have been in the back of their minds, in the late (19)50s, they knew President Eisenhower lied to them because of the U2 incident. It was an on TV... I remember seeing it coming home from school, saying that Gary Powers said... No-no-no-no-no, he was not spying, so Ike lied. And I know Ike wrote later on that he regretted doing that, but still he lied. And then you get a whole lot of others. So one of the qualities is that that boomers did not trust anybody in positions of leadership, that is whether they be a minister, a rabbi, a president of a university, a corporate leader, a politician or anybody in their... They did not trust any of them. And I knew a lot of the college administrators were not trusted. [inaudible] whether this lack of trust is a real negative on a generation. And whether you even say, as some people say, "Well only 15 percent of the activists were activists," but that was a pretty much of a quality that maybe even a 100 percent had toward people and responsibility. Do you think this quality can be defined as part of the generation and is not really as negative as that psych professor said?

SW (01:18:27):
I think it goes both ways. I think that the healthy distrust of authority really democratized the country tremendously, because what it ended was, "Trust me, I know more than you do," from father to priest to minister to president to whatever. No, I am not going to trust you. You give me the information that I am going to make the decision. Matilda Johnson said the greatest lesson of her life was her father's teaching her to think for herself. And then what he did was he empowered her to be able to act on that. She confronted authority. She spoke truth to authority from the time she was a child. And I think that what we [inaudible] later in the (19)80s or (19)90s is speaking truth to authority, that was the democratizing of America for the first time, beginning to happen in the (19)60s. And it was because of that failure to accept on face value, "Just trust me". No, I will not trust you. And that was the healthiest thing that ever happened, that distrust. But it was accompanied by the creation of trust among each other. We could not have done what we did. You cannot be in a demonstration where... I remember the... What did they call it? The squad, it was in San Francisco. And they would bring in the attack squad from Alameda County, and these were mean son of a guns. And they were in full riot gear. You are not going to be walking up to those folks or you are not going to be walking and challenging that authority unless you can trust every single person that you are in that demonstration with.

SM (01:20:35):
You are right.

SW (01:20:36):
So the creation of trust, you cannot put yourself on the line doing acts that the government is going to be coming after you for doing unless you have some level of trust. And that is why the government came in and created the distrust among ourselves, sent out those lying letters about this person doing this and this person doing this. My FBI file, there is tons of it that I cannot read. It is just page after page blacked out. Why did they do that? Because there was a police informer working with us. They tried to destabilize what we were doing. They were pretty successful in it in a lot of ways. But trust was created in a new way in community at the same time that trust in authority was being destroyed, and I think the combination of that was incredibly healthy.

SM (01:21:28):
What do you think was the watershed moment when the (19)60s began and what was the watershed moment when it ended?

SW (01:21:38):
I do not have an idea about that. And I wonder if it is not individual for different people and entering at different moments. For me, the moment was when my kids were sick, and there had been a number of things leading up to this, a number of experiences. But I was divorced, I was a single mom raising these two little kids and they got sick. I went, took them to the doctor. I had been up a couple nights, not sleeping much, going to school and working, and I was really tired. Took the kids to the doctor, got antibiotics, and they were finally sleeping. And I turned on the news and here was that mother in North Vietnam with her napalm baby. And it was-

SM (01:22:33):
Kim Phúc.

SW (01:22:34):
...The floodgate just opened. And it was like, I can take care of my children and they are going to be well, her child is going to die and I am the reason. My government is doing that. And I joined Another Mother for Peace, and that was my first movement into movement. I think each one of us may have our own personal moments. Was there a catalyzing event for everybody? That I do not know. I think it was more people entering at different moments. And once you entered, do you go to the point of origin? Do you go to the headwaters of it? I do not know. But once I entered, I was in flow. There was a movement, there was a river that I joined. And I think the movement quality of it, it was not individual, even though each of us joined at individual moments and came in.

SM (01:23:39):
You may have the same response to this question, but if I were to have in an auditorium 500 people from all over the country, male, female, all backgrounds, you name it, who were boomers, particularly those first 10 years of the boomer generation, and I were to ask them, what was the event that had the greatest impact on your life, what do you think the majority of them would say?

SW (01:24:06):
Cambodia, Kent State. The burning of the Bank of America in Santa Barbara. The Civil Rights arrests. The dogs going after the civil rights demonstrators. The murder of the three. I do not know. A lot of different catalyzing events. Cambodia, Kent State was a watershed. I do not know that it was "the" watershed, and I do not know if there was a watershed, but I would guess that you would get different answers like that.

SM (01:24:48):
Yeah, some people have said, well, the (19)60s began when John Kennedy was assassinated and it ended when Kent State happened because we knew it was ending. I had all kinds of responses to it. To me... And this is not about me, so this is the only time you are going to hear me. For me, the (19)60s ended in 1973 when the streaking happened on college campuses and I knew that something was totally different. Streaking was now the activity of college students.

SW (01:25:22):
There were things like when fashion designers started creating jeans and what had been secondhand store clothing became the designer label. When the tour buses started going through the Haight-Ashbury and hippie became a term. When the woman's movement, a lot of work has been done on when did radical feminism sort of end as a dynamic process or transform itself? And (19)73 is the date that is often used. That is why the Veteran Feminists of American voted that date.

SM (01:26:06):
That is interesting.

SW (01:26:07):
But see, for me, the (19)60s never ended. The (19)60s continue. The (19)60s are the center of my life. The (19)60s are... I saw that door open. I saw that open a crack. I looked inside, I lived in it temporarily, and I would never be satisfied until I could live in that world full time, and I will go to my grave working to create that world that we saw was possible in the (19)60s. And I still believe it is possible. If we can save the planet, if we can turn things around, that is the world we are going to create.

SM (01:26:50):
One other question following up, why did the Vietnam War end?

SW (01:26:54):
We won it. We won the Vietnam War. The people of the United States and the people of Vietnam came together and forced the United States government to its knees and we had the victory.

SM (01:27:12):
How important were college students in that? We saw protests really strong, (19)67, (19)68, (19)69.

SW (01:27:18):
Critically important. The transforming moment, the moment when I think the change happened was when we started, instead " Bring the troops home now," which is stupid. It just "Turn it into an air war". That was a dumb, dead end strategy. But when we started support the Seven Point Peace Plan of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Vietnam, that was when we began to win the war, the anti-war movement. And we won that war. And I hate the history that says anything different. The people of the United States won the war against the United States government and we stopped that war. Our war was never against the Vietnamese. Joining together with the people of Vietnam, we got the United States government to agree to the Seven Point Peace Plan of the Provisional Revolutionary Government, and that was an extraordinary win. And if we taught history with that, what do you think could be happening with Afghanistan right now? If all those students that you have taught, that I have taught, if every student that was taught understood that the United States government was defeated by its own people and brought to its knees, we claimed our government, that was the victory in Vietnam.

SM (01:28:54):
How do you think Vietnam vets would feel about that though? Because a lot of Vietnam vets came back from Vietnam feeling that they were not treated right and they were not welcomed home. And this big controversy within the community, the anti-war movement in fact, that some people say it was never about the troops, it was always about the politicians. But then some vets feel that we should have gone all out and won that war, and the people back home were one of the reasons why we gave ammunition to the enemy, so to speak, to continue the war.

SW (01:29:30):
I distributed up against the Bulkhead, which was an anti-war paper that was done for soldiers. That stupid moment of believing that we were fighting the soldiers and that they were the enemy disappeared really quickly and was replaced by anti-war coffee houses for so soldiers. How come so many refused to? Why were there so many [inaudible] in Vietnam? Why were there... I worked with Vietnam Veterans Against The War. My idea was that if Vietnam Veterans Against The War and the women's movement came together in a coalition, we were an incredibly powerful group. And we were in Sacramento, and we did come together, and we sponsored a piece together and we worked together and we were allies, and we supported them and they supported us and worked with their sexism, dealt with their sexism. It was not perfect, but it was powerful. And the Winter Soldier investigation and those guys throwing their medals over the... This is a bronze, this is a gold star, and you can take them back because I never should have done what I did. That anti-war movement, the Vietnam Veterans Against The War still exist.

SM (01:30:51):
Yeah, that was Bobby Mueller. Do you know Bobby? Have you met him?

SW (01:30:55):
No.

SM (01:30:56):
And Ron Kovic. They were two of the three leaders of the movement.

SW (01:31:00):
They were. But it was a decentralized movement, too. And it was really strong in different parts of the country. It was very strong in Sacramento.

SM (01:31:09):
Just your thoughts on the music of the era, how important was music in the anti-war, and what were students and what were young people reading in the (19)60s, in the (19)70s? What were the books? What were the people reading? So it is a two-part question: the music and its importance within the movements, all the movements, and what were people reading, the books?

SW (01:31:33):
Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone got me out of my marriage. That was my support system. "Once upon a time, you dress so fine. Threw the bums a dime in your prime, did not you?" That was my song. This is the song about white, middle class married woman leaving her life behind in a moment when getting a divorce was a travesty in my family and among everybody I knew. Dylan was my support system. Well, how many other people was he... If he could reach me, good Jesus, who did he not reach? I took my grandson to a Dylan concert when he was five, and I had him on my shoulders and I said, "You will grow up knowing that you saw Bob Dylan when you were small enough to be on your grandma's shoulders". For his birthday last year, I gave him a framed flyer that I had saved from the first anti-war demonstration that I took him to, and I had written on it "Michael's first". He was in a stroller. But the music was an absolutely critical part and it is a critical part of what we share. I share the music of the (19)60s with my grandkids. They play me their music, but we are listening to Dylan, we are listening to Leonard Cohen, we are listening to The Doors, we are listening to... That music was absolutely essential. It was an absolutely essential part. And then when the Woman's Movement created its own music, Holly Near, she is the-

SM (01:33:23):
Yeah, she is great.

SW (01:33:24):
...Major, major figure in the creation of that.

SM (01:33:32):
Testing, one, two, testing. The first question on the second part of the interview here is about the issue of trust. A lot of the boomers did not trust anybody in positions of responsibility when they were young. And I think a lot of that is carried into their adulthood. A lot of them saw presidents and other people who they felt lied to them. And of course they were part of a generation that did not seem to trust anybody of positions of responsibility, whether it is a college administrator, a politician, a corporate leader, even priest, rabbis and ministers. Your thoughts on this issue of trust and whether this is a concern within the generation, that they were a very non-trusting generation and this carried on into their adulthood and how they raised their kids.

SW (01:34:35):
I think trust is earned. And I think I grew up in a generation in which there were very few people in positions of power who earned any trust or who earned a great deal of trust. And I think that the absence of trust was, there was a manifestation of the hell of the generation that we were just simply not taking the crap anymore. And when things happened like the Pentagon Papers, that became an official then who we trusted because this was somebody who was telling the truth. And I think the trust that was lost was because we were not being told the truth. And because there was an authoritarian, leave it to father, father knows best mold that we were breaking out of. And father does not always know best, and what we said was, "Father president, you do not know best about Vietnam". And I think that distrust continues. I will give you a manifestation for me of the continuation of the distrust. Medical profession-

SW (01:36:02):
...trust. Medical profession, 100 years ago, their best treatment was giving people mercury, and bleeding them, and giving them purgatives, laxatives, which killed people. And in my time, when I gave birth to my children in the (19)60s, the medical profession's best judgment was, "We will give you x-rays to see how your baby is situated if everything is okay. And we will put you on diet pills because we do not want you to gain more than 20 pounds." Well, they gave kids leukemia with the x-rays in utero. And babies, we were told by old wives tales, "Should be fat, they will be healthier. Well guess what? Old wives tales, "Should be fat. They will be healthier." Well, guess what? Old wives tales, were better knowledge than the medical profession at the time. So for me, do I trust sonograms now? Hell, no. I am not going to trust those people that have a long history of being wrong. And so my relationship with Western medicine is a very touch and go one. There is times when I will step into it and times I will step out of it. And that is just one example of the president who, when George Bush takes us to war in Iraq, I think that the Boomers had enough knowledge of the untruth of the Gulf of Tonkin to know not to trust implicitly that there really was a reason to go to war. And we were right. There was not. It was based on a lie like the Gulf of Tonkin was. So I think that we are holding out for truth. And when truth emerges, we trust it. And I think that is the hope with Obama is that this is a man who may speak truth. We will withhold judgment a little bit. We will watch, we will make sure, we will see. But there is a sense that I have that this is a man who largely is a truth teller, and that is probably the first truth telling president that I have experienced.

SM (01:39:06):
Why do you think the Vietnam War ended?

SW (01:39:10):
We ended it. I think I told you in the last interview.

SM (01:39:12):
Okay.

SW (01:39:18):
We won. When the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, the NFL ... LF. God, do I still remember? I think so. Of Vietnam and the anti-war movement in the United States joined forces, we brought down the government of the United States. We stopped the war.

SM (01:39:44):
Is there any-

SW (01:39:45):
And we got the government of the United States to agree to, the sixth point, I think was first and then nine points peace plan of the PRG.

SM (01:39:59):
Is there, in your lifetime, particularly when you were young, in the (19)60s and the (19)70s, was there a speaker you saw at a college campus or an entertainment event that had really great impact on you?

SW (01:40:14):
Tons of them.

SM (01:40:16):
Could you describe some of them or list them?

SW (01:40:20):
Going to the Fillmore in San Francisco, and watching Grace Slick spell out, "When the truth is found to be lies, and all the hope within you dies, do not you want somebody to love?" Watching the last performance of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young ... Buffalo Springfield, not Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, when they were Buffalo Springfield. Their last performance as that group. Listening to Dylan transformed my life, Like a Rolling Stone. When I left the middle-class marriage, it was with the support of Bob Dylan singing Like a Rolling Stone.

SM (01:41:08):
Right.

SW (01:41:09):
Became my anthem, like it was for millions of my generation and political people. I was at California State University, Sacramento, and I was on the program committee, and also employed in that office, and I arranged for Tom Hayden to come and speak when he was part of the Chicago 8. And the president of the college canceled the speech because he said to me, when he called me privately into his office, "Free speech is too important to allow it to be used." Or, "Sometimes you have to cancel it to protect it." I think was his line, Otto Butz, President Otto Butz.

SM (01:42:04):
Oh my God.

SW (01:42:05):
"So I am going to have to cancel this, speech, Sally, and I am sure you will understand." Well, it was right after Cambodia and Kent State and we were living on campus. We would set up a Strike City on the campus. And I went back to Strike City and said, "What are we going to do?" Within an hour, we had plastered all over campus that Tom Hayden was scheduled to speak, the time, and we just went ahead. And within two hours we had silk screen posters all over the city of Sacramento, which forced the president to publicly cancel the speech, which then brought in the ACLU, which filed a restraining order against the president of the campus or the chancellor of the state college system, and went into court that morning, and we won-

SM (01:43:00):
Wow.

SW (01:43:01):
...inside, on campus.

SM (01:43:03):
Wow. That is activism.

SW (01:43:07):
Was for a few, but I could go on and on, and Malcolm X.

SM (01:43:13):
Yeah. Since you had that experience, did you have some experience with some other speakers when you were a student?

SW (01:43:21):
Oh, yeah. We brought Gloria Steinem, Flo Kennedy, Malcolm X, I never heard speak in person. Ti-Grace Atkinson, who was one of the most brilliant of the feminist theoretician, Robin Morgan, I could go on and on.

SM (01:43:41):
Okay.

SW (01:43:44):
And it was also reading things, that it was an electric time when there was a paradigm shift going on that was just unparalleled, at least in my lifetime.

SM (01:44:05):
In your very unbelievable credentials, you started the first women's studies program, according to what I have read, and of course you had the first PhD in women's studies. First off, could you describe starting that first women's studies program, where, when, and the reaction, both positive and negative, toward that experience?

SW (01:44:31):
Well, let me clarify. It was, as far as we know, the third, when the studies program in the country, I was one of the founders. None of those things were done by individuals, you know, the creation of programs, it was a movement.

SM (01:44:52):
Mm-hmm.

SW (01:44:53):
And I was a part of that. And I was, I think a very strong, I do not mean to underplay my part in it, I taught the first women's studies class at California State [inaudible]. And I held the meetings that led to the creation of the women's studies program. In my role as an employee in the Honor Center, we had the very first discussion in 1969 on campus that led to the creation of the program. I taught my first class in 1970. I have been teaching women's studies for 39 years. That may be a record, but God, that said, I did play an important role. But that women's studies program grew out of these meetings that I put together on campus in the honors program. They were sponsored by the honors program. I was a work study student employed by honors. I could basically set up whatever kind of discussion events I wanted. So I did series on women's studies, or was not even women's studies. There was not such studies then, it was on women's rights, you know, on feminism.

SM (01:46:14):
Mm-hmm.

SW (01:46:15):
Called it at that time, women's liberation. And so we had a series of talks about it. And whoa, oh, it was amazing. And the faculty that came and just tore us up one side and down another in terms of, "Women are not in an unequal position. Women really hold power and authority. And men are the ones who are really put upon by women." And I do not know, it was a class warfare. And so right from the beginning, you know, the opposition, just dreadful.

SM (01:47:03):
Yeah. That leads right into my, what year was that too, by the way?

SW (01:47:08):
1969 was when we held the meeting. I think (19)70 was when I taught my first women's studies class. And I think, I am pretty sure that was the first one on our campus. And that was early for women's studies classes in the country. And then I think we got the program together in about (19)71.

SM (01:47:36):
If there has been anything that has hurt the movement since the early (19)70s, what would it be?

SW (01:47:44):
There has been all kinds of things that have hurt the movement. I think the backlash was inevitable. And the backlash was predictable, although we did not know it at the time. But that was very painful. I think another very difficult thing was that we want to create a system that was not based on power over, but that was based on power with. And we did not know how to do that. And we did not know how to work with each other. We were forging relationships and building relationships at the same time that we were trying to build a movement and we had political differences, and we did not know how to deal with those in any kind of respectful way. The one model we had was confrontation politics, and we used that on each other. And that was not the most effective thing. That was injurious. We hurt each other. And I think into the (19)80s, when, was it Rush Limbaugh that created the term feminazis? The damage of that. Young women today, "No, I am not a feminist." Even older women today, "I am not a feminist," because they have that right-wing media created image of what feminist is. And then it is just the standard thing, we all know that [inaudible] said, " Well, you believe in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And, "Of course I believe in all those." "Well, that is what feminist is." "Yeah, but I am not a feminist." The word became so-

SM (01:49:46):
Wow.

SW (01:49:47):
...[inaudible]. And that is true of many moves. And that is true of many- [inaudible]

SM (01:49:52):
How do you deal with the criticisms like, well, I know David Horowitz has written about it, but how do you respond to critics who say that, "The women's movement, like all the other movements of that era, is more about indoctrination than education. And it is part of the new left. The new left has taken over."

SW (01:50:13):
That is bullshit. I do not know. How do I respond? It is bullshit. It is reactionary bullshit. Indoctrination? I do not know. I do not like to waste my time with working against those kinds of statements. Spend all your energy matching is just, it is bullshit.

SM (01:50:47):
Who stands out as the-

SW (01:50:49):
It was not a perfect movement. I think to expect a movement to have perfection, it is a crazy expectation. And I think that to make those kind of sweeping statements, there is an arrogance to that that I just find so offensive that I do not want to be in the same room with the person that would make that kind of a quote.

SM (01:51:18):
Right.

SW (01:51:18):
So it is like you just waste your time.

SM (01:51:26):
Well, the other thing here is that, one other criticism might be, do you think that the movement's criticizing the stay-at-home moms has helped the movement in any ways? Because some moms may have wanted to go out and work, but others wanted to stay-at-home and raise the kids. And that is the mothers who were in the (19)40s, (19)50s, and early (19)60s, you know, who raised a lot of the boomers.

SW (01:51:47):
No, I think if you want the indoctrination. Indoctrination came from the way that we were depicted incorrectly in the media. There was this Shulamite Firestone wrote book in which she talked about biological and [inaudible]. I bought that book early on, that was an idea that we played with. And I think our goal was to create options for women. The media created an artificial war between working moms and stay-at-home moms. And the economy is what created, women having to go out into the workforce and not have an option. You know, it is a middle-class luxury for women today, being able to think about being a stay-at-home mom.

SM (01:52:46):
Mm-hmm.

SW (01:52:52):
Most families have to have two people working. And part of the reason is because women do not get equal pay for equal work. And there is no legislation prior to this [inaudible]. And now we have respect better, but we still do not have equal pay or equal rights guaranteed. And seminars still making 78 cents on the dollar to men are making. And we are in the United States, and in economics we are beat up in every single area of work. And if people are being laid off, and, and, and, and. It is a false fight between working moms and stay-at-home moms. And there were some women in the movement who made statements about an end to motherhood, an end to the nuclear family. [inaudible] family being based on male power was one of the things that we went after, not the family unit, but the idea of the fatherhood knows best, the head of the family is going to make all the decisions, and who has the right to beat the wife into submission until she just go along with it. In the (19)60s, wife battering was not a crime. It was not punished. It was a domestic dispute and cops did not want to get in the middle of it. So it was as it should be and it was really not an option. You stayed with your husband. You know, it was your fault. Have to figure out what you should do different.

SM (01:54:57):
What-

SW (01:54:59):
So I think those are the real issues and it is a diversionary tactic to get people looking at some false issue like some division between working moms and stay-at-home moms, which only affects a wealthy, privileged part of the population, anyway, even considers staying at home. That is bogus, in my mind.

SM (01:55:17):
Who stands-

SW (01:55:17):
That is a diversion from the real issue.

SM (01:55:27):
Who stands out, especially for young Boomer women that-

SW (01:55:31):
What?

SM (01:55:33):
Who stands out as the number one role model for Boomer women and-

SW (01:55:38):
For what women?

SM (01:55:41):
Boomer.

SW (01:55:43):
Oh, Boomer.

SM (01:55:44):
Yeah, the female Boomers. So was there one person in that late (19)60s, early (19)70s, through the (19)70s, into the (19)80s that stood out more than anybody else?

SW (01:56:06):
That is an antifeminist question.

SM (01:56:06):
Oh, it is?

SW (01:56:06):
Yeah. We were creating a leaderless movement.

SM (01:56:06):
Okay.

SW (01:56:07):
And I think that we were inventing ourselves, and a movement, and what we wanted. Now, the media created spokespeople, the media created leaders, the women's movement did not.

SM (01:56:25):
Okay, well, that is important. That is a magic moment in the interview, because I just learned something, because I am really into leadership. I am always into, well, what makes a leader, and how do they evolve, and where do they come from, and all that other stuff. And can I ask one other thing, though? If it is a leaderless movement, who were some of the Boomers that may have been in their late teens and 20s that have really gone on to be outstanding leaders today?

SW (01:56:55):
I think that if you look for leaders, you miss the movement, then and now. That if you looked for an individual, you look for five outstanding people, you are going to miss that this is an entire movement. And there are some who gained more visibility for whatever reason within the movement. When we first started out in women's liberation in Sacramento, the media was always saying to us, "Who is your leader? Take us to your leader. We want to talk to whoever is in charge." And they were nuts, because we would say, "We are all in charge. You can talk to any of us, because we have to get the spokesperson. We are all spokespeople." And they demanded that we give them a spokesperson. And sometimes we could not get any media coverage if we did not. You know?

SM (01:57:52):
Mm-hmm.

SW (01:57:53):
And I think that there also, I was a radical [inaudible]. There were other tendencies to this feminism. And so you had NOW, which was liberal feminists and that was based more on the-the male model of leadership is power down. So you could come up with women who were presidents of NOW and women who were... Gloria Steinem, to me, has become a leader because... I do not even want to say leader. Nobody follows Gloria Steinem. Nobody follows anybody. But I think where Gloria Steinem has become a really important symbol of the movement, and representation of the same power of the movement, and the continuing growth of thought, she wins out. " I shall not [inaudible] in the age."

SM (01:59:05):
What-

SW (01:59:05):
She is the poster child for that. And she is willing, she is so adept at, you listen to anything she says, or you read anything that she says, and if she gets credited, she always says, "I was part of a movement."

SM (01:59:23):
Huh.

SW (01:59:25):
"I did not do this. I was part of a movement."

SM (01:59:25):
What-

SW (01:59:26):
So she never let the media- [inaudible]

SM (01:59:32):
What do you and what do members of the movement think about people like Phyllis Schlafly, and Anita Bryant, and female leaders, who may not support, conservative leaders support the movement?

SW (01:59:50):
I think every movement has people who do not identify with their class. I think Mark called it false conscious. You know.

SM (02:00:06):
Mm-hmm.

SW (02:00:08):
[inaudible] part. You do not expect that everybody's going be part of what you are fighting for. I think it was Lucretia Mott who said, "The death of the slave is exemplified by how strong he holds on chains." I am paraphrasing, but there is something to that effect- that it is an indication of the degree to which we are oppressed that we embrace our oppression. And there are also women who exploit their anti-ness in this culture because the media is always looking for, "Let us look at the other side." Even when there is not another side, they create one. So they interview a feminist that, "My God, we got to have an anti-feminist, here, and a really good woman. Or we got to have a Black who's opposed to Black rights." You know?

SM (02:01:09):
Mm-hmm.

SW (02:01:13):
[inaudible] will not it? And so they create artificially, these people who nobody in the movement would pay attention to that the media has all of a sudden created them up to be a big giant. What do I think of them? I think it is absolutely to be expected that there will be. There will always be some men who are stronger advocates of women's rights than some women. There will always be some white people who will be stronger advocates of, you know-

SM (02:01:56):
Mm-hmm. One of the things, Johnetta Cole, with- [inaudible]

SW (02:01:59):
...the-

SM (02:02:03):
Johnetta Cole used to be the president of Spelman College. She wrote a great book. And she talked about some of the sensitivities within the African American female community with respect to being identified with the women's movement because they were identified with the civil rights movement. So she brought up, they wanted to be involved in the movement, but they needed to be more identified with the civil rights movement. And-

SW (02:02:34):
[inaudible] That was a piece of an issue. And I think that that also was one that the media picked up. All that stuff is really so superficial that I think the focus on that stuff is really to not understand what the [inaudible] was about. That is really [inaudible] communication in the (19)60s. You know, that is not what it felt like to being inside it.

SM (02:02:58):
Mm-hmm.

SW (02:03:01):
There was always dialogue, there was a racism, of course there was racism. The culture was rampant with racists all of a sudden, because we were involved in the liberation of women. Did that mean that we checked our racism at the door? I do not think so. There was classism. There was sexism in the African American movement. But being involved in the movement, we were working with that. It was in process, it was in dialogue. It was not status. But when it got to be looked at through the static lens of the media, which did not understand what was going on, that this was a process. It was like, "Okay, I am going to take this still photo of this and I am going to freeze this event in time to say, 'This is what is going on.'" And it did not characterize what was going on.

SM (02:04:03):
Two-

SW (02:04:03):
There was a constant looking at racism, looking at sexism, looking at classism, looking at homophobia, looking at ageism, looking at ableism. One thing would lead to another, would lead to drawing awareness of one thing in another. You know, in the last interview I told you how that happened with my daughter-

SM (02:04:25):
Mm-hmm.

SW (02:04:26):
...with my daughter and then my son was children's liberation. That was part of the strength of the movement, was that we were all dealing with these issues. And yeah, people wrote about it when we were in process. But I think to take those writings that were happening in process where we said, "This is what the problem is, we got to deal with it, is to ignore the dealing with it."

SM (02:05:00):
Two things here, reaction to two different areas. The burning of the bras, why did that take place? And did it have a positive effect? And secondly is Playboy magazine, which is Hugh Hefner and the sexual revolution. And I know that it is a very sensitive issue on college campuses today, women's bodies and a lot of them do not like Hugh Hefner, and what he stood for, and everything. Just your thoughts on the women's movement, how they looked at Hugh Hefner in that Playboy movement, and then whole, maybe it was just the media with a burning bras, but just those two things.

SW (02:05:38):
Well, the bra burning, as you know, it never happened. And [inaudible] been, it is done to death, but it never happened. And yet the question keeps coming up. And it is like, "Ho-hum. Come on, ask me something important." But the effect of it was that was very important. It became a way of trivializing the movement. It became a way to not have to deal with it seriously. "They are just a bunch of bra burners." Same thing happened in the 19th century with a bunch of [inaudible] wear." Well, the burning of the objects at the Miss America pageant, which they actually did throw in makeup and whatever. That was a symbolic destruction, a symbol of our [inaudible]. It was, "We are not just sexual objects." And I think that was the whole, Hefner is soft porn. It was the objectification with the violence turned down. Larry Flynt, was not that his name?

SM (02:06:58):
Yes.

SW (02:07:04):
The one who did the woman upside down in the meat grinder. Now, he was pornography with the violence turned up loud. And the violence is there, the objectification is there. What it does is its training manual for young males and perpetually adolescent adult males who connect power and sex, and the connection of power and sex to the culture is very strong. And pornography is the training manual for it, the indoctrination. If the women are commodities to be consumed, and, "I have the power to either violently or with just mild power." You know.

SM (02:07:59):
Mm-hmm. Another question, the Women's Vietnam Memorial was built in 1993. Actually, it was-

SM (02:08:03):
...memorial was built in 1993. Actually it was opened up in 1993. I am sure you know, everything Diane Carlson had to go through and how she was treated on the hill for even thinking of doing this. And the prejudice, even in the Vietnam veteran community in the very beginning was a big roadblock. They seem to forget that now, everything's hunky-dory, but I know what she had to go through. Were the women's movement working at all with a lot of the female veterans of the Vietnam War when this memorial was being built for the idea? Is there a linkage there?

SW (02:08:35):
I do not know about that.

SM (02:08:40):
Okay, because I know that...

SW (02:08:44):
[inaudible] I mean, you are talking about a movement that is so diverse and that is so decentralized now and that is operating in so many different fronts. There is so many different areas. There is no way any single person can have the knowledge of everything that is going on in the United States. I think that is the strength of it.

SM (02:09:04):
Sally, what reading... why did the ERA fail? I remember my boss was Betty Menson at Ohio University on Lancashire campus. She was one of the leaders in the state of Ohio and trying to get this passed. And I can remember sitting in my office, I think it was 1973, and the vote was taking place in Ohio at that time, see if it would be passed. And it did not pass in Ohio. And boy, she was very disappointed. But why did the ERA fail and why was there so much resistance to it?

SW (02:09:38):
The same reason it failed last time through it. It is still on the table. And, with a Democratic majority and Obama's president, we may still join the civilized world and have equal rights to have been protected in the time too, before I die. But the reason that it failed when it went almost to the edge, was the same reason that we are really at risk of not passing a healthcare bill, right now. The insurance company. The insurance company put tremendous amounts of money behind the care, because it is not in the interest of corporations and insurance companies for women to have equal rights. If you can bill women and men in different ways for insurance, your benefit, if you can make more money off women and off their labor. I mean, if you had to suddenly pay women equal with men in this country, look what that is going to do to corporation? If you lose that 25 cents in profit, but you are getting off every woman's dollars. You know, for every man you pay a dollar, pay the woman 78 cents. Who was keeping that profit? [inaudible] And so, it was a well... and that has been well documented. It was a well-orchestrated, well financed, that they hired some token right wing women, Phyllis Schlafly before she became the poster child for Anti-ERA. My God, you are going to have go to the bathroom in the same bathroom. The world's western civilization will crumble as women and men are in the same bathroom. Well, guess what? We are in the bathroom a lot on airplanes and number of other places and the world seems to still be operating. But, it was those incredibly stupid things that were the arguments against it. But Phyllis Schlafly was a spokesperson for... She was a well-recognized right-winged [inaudible] before she became the paid gun of the corporate [inaudible] Still post-ERA.

SM (02:12:21):
What does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you?

SW (02:12:27):
I went there once and I was moved. I am much more moved by the movie the Winter Soldier Investigates.

SM (02:12:42):
And why is that?

SW (02:12:44):
I mean, the Vietnam Memorial is like a senseless death. I mean, okay, here is a death count and here is the names of all those men who died unnecessarily. That is what I see when I go there.

SM (02:13:09):
What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you?

SW (02:13:17):
It was when the government brought the war home against its gun.

SM (02:13:24):
What does Watergate mean to you?

SW (02:13:35):
The truth.

SM (02:13:36):
What...?

SW (02:13:36):
You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. In this case it was [inaudible] Richard Nixon.

SM (02:13:43):
What does Woodstock in the Summer of Love mean to you?

SW (02:13:48):
The Summer of Love means commercialization of something that was much deeper than that characterization of it. Woodstock is the place that the [inaudible] went through.

SM (02:14:10):
The what went through?

SW (02:14:13):
The [inaudible] on the East Coast.

SM (02:14:14):
Oh, okay.

SW (02:14:14):
It just became legendary to most of us on the West Coast.

SM (02:14:20):
Yeah, there were 400,000 people there, but if you talk to everybody, there might have been 10 million. What does 1968 mean to you?

SW (02:14:37):
(19)68 is the Worldwide Revolution State, for me. It means Rudy the Red in Germany. It means Danny the Red in France. It means the moment when we really believed that we could turn the world around, in a brief period of time.

SM (02:15:02):
What does counterculture mean to you?

SW (02:15:06):
A label that somebody attached at a later date.

SM (02:15:11):
What do the hippies and yippies mean to you?

SW (02:15:15):
The yippies! I love that one. Put the yip back and hippy. The hippie again, I mean, once the term was created, the movement was in decline and almost dead.

SM (02:15:34):
How about the Students for Democratic Society and the Weathermen?

SW (02:15:47):
SDS was... boy, you know what comes to my mind? What was the support hearing statement? What was that even called? Was not that the first?

SM (02:15:58):
Yes.

SW (02:15:59):
And it is like reading, okay, here is our manifesto, here is... here is truth. And SDS became legendary, it was much more on the East Coast, early on. And then the split with the Progressive Labor Party - the PLP, and just if you vote. And then the Weatherman. Is it time for an armed revolution? The folks from mild arm struggle is the highest form of struggle. And the arguments over, does that mean it is the most important? Does that mean it is the last-ditch effort when nothing else makes... when all else fails? That is what you have to go through. That means Bob Dylan and Subterranean Homesick Blues, which was our national anthem. "You do not need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." It is the movement growing out of the lyrics of the troubadour of our generation. It means that because of people that died were principled. And it also means to me, personally, watching males pull guns just like the males that were, I do not know, being indoctrinated to carry guns as a symbol of man hooding Weatherman carrying guns, a symbol of manhood. And women trying to be as tough as the boys. Especially, it means to me being told by a weather woman, a weatherman, woman. If you are to be a true revolutionary, you have to be prepared to give up the kids.

SM (02:18:40):
Well, how would you talk about black power and the Black Panthers?

SW (02:18:46):
The Black Panthers, what comes to mind immediately is the government's systematic execution of them.

SM (02:18:58):
Yeah, what were your thoughts on... There is actually seven that really...

SW (02:19:01):
[inaudible] What?

SM (02:19:01):
There is actually seven that really stick out here. Of course, Bobby Seal, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, H Wrapped Brown, Stokely Carmichael and Fred Norman. Those are the ones that are known all over the world.

SW (02:19:24):
But the blunt... but in Oakland, they were feeding the people. They were really enhancing the lives of people. And I think that the media created leaders, and to some extent they were leaders of the movement. I think to concentrate on their activities, is [inaudible] what the Black Panthers were doing in the community. And they were feeding the people first and foremost. They were taking care of the needs of the people.

SM (02:20:10):
The other one here is the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

SW (02:20:14):
Yeah, VVAW. My vision, my dream was that there would be a political coalition between VVAW and the Women's State. And we did that in Sacramento, we worked together really closely and did a lot of stuff together. That was a powerful, powerful coalition.

SM (02:20:33):
They took over when SDS was failing. They kind of rubbed up the anti-war movement. And the last one word here is enemy's list. When you hear about that enemy's list.

SW (02:20:47):
Yeah, that does not conjure up anymore [inaudible] enemies.

SM (02:20:57):
That was the Richard Nixon's enemies list.

SW (02:21:00):
Oh, okay. And that is important. That is indicative of how it was sort of like Richard Nixon is the President of the United States. Richard Nixon is a corrupt man who I do not recognize as a lead...as my leader. It was like, Richard Nixon's going to go off and do whatever he is going to do. I am going to be part of a movement to stop before I could be part of the movement to turn this country around. And so, it is not focusing on Richard Nixon. I was focusing on the work I was doing in that. But we were...

SM (02:21:46):
You, you have made comments on Richard Nixon and I was going to ask what you thought of him. Now I am just going to mention some names. This is toward the end of the interview here. You have men made comments on Richard Nixon. What about Spiro Agnew?

SW (02:22:00):
Oh man. They were just so indicative of everything that was wrong with the country.

SM (02:22:14):
And what were they indicative of?

SW (02:22:22):
Of power that was not used for the good of the people. Of corruption that was just a given and a normal part of daily life. Of a level of lying that was standard procedure.

SM (02:22:46):
Okay. Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the yippes.

SW (02:22:50):
Yeah, they were funny guys. I liked it when they threw dollar bills at the on the floor at, what is it? Wall Street?

SM (02:23:05):
Yep. Dollar bills. And of course Jerry Rubin, remember the story in his book 'Do It!', when he went into a bank and wanted to use a restroom. Do you remember that story?

SW (02:23:17):
I do not.

SM (02:23:19):
Well, I will mention it here. In his book, 'Do It!', he went into the... you know how he always looked with a bandana and the beard and everything. And he went into a bank and they might have been having a rally someplace, but he had to go to the bathroom and he went in and the policeman said, "you have to leave." "Well" he says, "I got to use the restroom." And he says, "No, we are not going to allow you to use the restroom." So he put his pants down and did a dump right in the middle of the bank. Unbelievable. How about Timothy Leary?

SW (02:23:56):
The opening of consciousness.

SM (02:24:00):
Eugene McCarthy?

SW (02:24:03):
Liberal.

SM (02:24:05):
George McGovern?

SW (02:24:08):
Liberal. But with more integrity.

SM (02:24:15):
How about John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy?

SW (02:24:25):
You know, that was a different time. That was an earlier time. That was the time when, for me it was the horrible time.

SM (02:24:44):
How about Lyndon Johnson?

SW (02:24:48):
Hey-hey, LBJ how many babies did you kill today?

SM (02:24:52):
Hmm. How about Hubert Humphrey?

SW (02:24:57):
Bah. That is my response.

SM (02:25:03):
Okay. Robert McNamara?

SW (02:25:08):
McNamara, watching that movie of him coming to grip to some extent with his behavior during that time. You know the movie I am talking about?

SM (02:25:21):
Yes.

SW (02:25:21):
About a couple of years ago? Yeah, That was dangerous.

SM (02:25:27):
George Wallace?

SW (02:25:30):
George Wallace, the poster child for Southern rights.

SM (02:25:37):
Ronald Reagan?

SW (02:25:45):
A man who had Alzheimer's when he was President of the United States and nobody pulled him out.

SM (02:25:55):
How about Gerald Ford?

SW (02:25:59):
He could not walk and chew gum at the same time.

SM (02:26:01):
Jimmy Carter?

SW (02:26:20):
A man whose integrity has grown geometrically in my eyes, and I think he is since he was President.

SM (02:26:21):
Dwight Eisenhower?

SW (02:26:25):
A guy who we quoted about the Military Industrial Complex. And maybe it was still possible to be a Republican with integrity before Nixon.

SM (02:26:48):
How about Benjamin Spock?

SW (02:26:55):
Well, he had a hell of an impact on [inaudible] and not all of it good, but a lot of it good.

SM (02:27:06):
Daniel Ellsberg?

SW (02:27:11):
Truth teller.

SM (02:27:14):
Daniel and Phillip Berrigan?

SW (02:27:19):
I think the reason I do not hold the entire Catholic Church in contempt. Examples of how even in an obsolete and corrupt institution, there can be [inaudible] integrity and goodness. And that would be true, the whole Dorothy Day of which they were part in arm.

SM (02:27:53):
Barry Gold...

SW (02:28:06):
The guy who cut my hair now in Syracuse is a product of that world in friends [inaudible] but still does not work in our area.

SM (02:28:08):
Barry Goldwater?

SW (02:28:17):
If you think Goldwater, I may be liberal, but to a degree I think everybody should be free. But if you think I am going to let Barry Goldwater move in next door and marry my daughter, I would not do it for all the tea in Cuba.

SM (02:28:30):
How about John Dean?

SW (02:28:40):
Well... what do you say about being able to live through a [inaudible] The crooks get caught and the crooks are held accountable, and the crooks are in the highest office [inaudible] It was a vindication.

SM (02:29:13):
William Buckley?

SW (02:29:21):
A smart conservative.

SM (02:29:26):
Okay. George Bush Sr?

SW (02:29:27):
Yes. And arrogant. Who?

SM (02:29:32):
George Bush Sr? Who said the Vietnam syndrome is over, took us to the Gulf War.

SW (02:29:40):
Hey you know, it is just more of the same. I think that at some point it starts looking like is the Principle President and oxymoron? Is there something inherent about the land between the office and the political processes embedded in a for-profit world, where it is impossible to have all these communications. Because it just becomes another farce.

SM (02:30:26):
How about, lastly here, George Bush and Bill Clinton, because they are the only two Boomer presidents. Do they define the Boomer generation by their actions, even though they are both...

SW (02:30:39):
They define what I just was talking about. The impossibility of principle politics in a for-profit system.

SM (02:30:52):
How about, and again, even though...

SW (02:30:54):
The accident of their time of birth does not have a whole hell of a lot to do with their behavior.

SM (02:31:02):
Gloria Steinem?

SW (02:31:05):
I think I have talked about her.

SM (02:31:08):
Okay. Bella Abzug?

SW (02:31:10):
Yeah, she is another person that got a lot of spotlight and was doing good work along with thousands and millions of other ones.

SM (02:31:21):
Betty Friedan?

SW (02:31:22):
Same thing.

SM (02:31:24):
And Shirley Chisholm?

SW (02:31:26):
She opened the door...Betty Friedan opened the door with her book, to a lot of reflection. And the book was important.

SM (02:31:41):
When the best books are written about the legacy of the Boomer generation. It could be... it is usually 50 years after an event or a period and we are approaching that, but particularly after Boomers have passed away, what do you think historians and sociologists will be saying about this Boomer generation when they are writing it in books for future generations?

SW (02:32:08):
I think it depends on how many voices from that time period they witness and the variety of voices that they witness. That will depend... that will be how good their history is.

SM (02:32:25):
All right, I am looking and see if I have anything else here. I do not think I do. Is there any questions I did not ask that you felt I should have asked?

SW (02:32:35):
I cannot think of any.

SM (02:32:37):
I think I have covered about everything. I wrote a whole extra set of questions here. I know one person who... A critic of the women's movement wanted me to ask a question, I have not really been asking it, but I will... Why have the women's movement not made more criticism of Muslims for how they treat women, instead of trying to defend their rights constantly here in the United States?

SW (02:33:08):
I think there has been a lot of criticism of the behavior and the criticism makes me a little observant, because we are criticizing a religious tradition where women had property rights 500 years before they had them under Christianity. And it is also an easy target to point to another culture and say, "that religious exploits women." "That religious is bad." When I think, the absence of looking at the effects of Christianity in our own culture, might be a more productive use of our time.

SM (02:33:55):
And my very last question is something that you have heard before and it is just a general comment that I have heard for a long time, is when women take over leadership roles, they will take on the same qualities of men and they will start getting sicker earlier. They will die of the same illnesses. It is just part of the nature of the human species. When you hear that, what do you say?

SW (02:34:25):
I think that is not got anything to do with the human species. I heard clueless about what the human species is. If we generalize from our particular society at this particular moment in history, I think that the goal of the revolution in its largest, broadest form of this social, cultural, economic, political, spiritual revolution is to do away with power-over, and to establish a system of power-with. And that means leadership takes on a very different form. And that price that you are talking about, the level of stress is the function of a system of power-over, is the price that the oppressor pays. Will women move into that? Yes they will, black. Yes they will. Will gay and lesbians? Yes they will. There are people that will move into that and are moving into, and we will see that as progress. I think a deeper progress is a real transformation of human relationship is when we end the system of power-over. End the price that both the oppressed and the oppressor pay in that system. The leader and the lead, if you will. To end that we move to a system of power-with. And then those stress things fall away, work with people. It is a very good model.

SM (02:36:24):
But you finally, my last, I have said this twice already, but this thing about the Women's Movement, as particularly when Boomers were young, the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, right through to today, the role that the women's movement has played in linking up with the GLBT movement, the Chicano movement, Native American movement, the Anti-War, Civil Rights, Environmental Movement, Disability Rights, ageism, and even mental health issues now, which is a big issue with women. Because there is a lot of movements. David Oaks, I do not know if you have ever heard of David, you ought to link up with him. He is really leading the mental health issue. He was a former student in Harvard, he is out in Oregon. Just your thoughts on how the Women's Movement has worked with these groups over the last 40 years. General thoughts.

SW (02:37:18):
Well, I think it is not just the Women's Movement. I think that of the linking of the struggles, that is what I was talking about earlier. The interplay. That we all needed to deal with each other's issues if we were to work together. And I think that has been one of the real strengths of this movement in its largest sense. And it is an imperfect thing, it is one that he keeps raising contradictions, but out of those contradictions comes transformation.

SM (02:37:57):
Very good. Well that is my.

(End of Interview)

ND

Stephen McKiernan

Sally Roesch Wagner

158:01

English

Binghamton University Libraries

audio/mp4

Sound

Audio

Authors, American; Lecturers; Civil rights workers; Women's rights; Women's studies; Wagner, Sally Roesch--Interviews

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