Pioneer Feminists Who Changed America Are Great

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I have thousands of photos covering such a wide range of human stories so choosing which set to post first took some contemplation.

I have chosen to share images from several of my experiences documenting the Veteran Feminists of America. Know these women. They are still working hard, still making waves, full of smiles and rage and everything I am they have been.

I bear my respect and admiration for those who've come before me, those who have forged the path. Who have made it possible for me to be here now writing these words as freely as I do.

I turn thirty next month. Not so long ago I would have been condemned to the fringes of society; past my sell-by-date for marriage in my child-bearing prime, almost too old get by on a youthful sway of sex appeal and play.

And although there is a long way to go before we are clear, in the clear, and living in harmony and freedom, yes there is much to do. Still now is a platform, a spectrum. There are so many shades of gray in between how we can live and how we 'should' live? There is so much opportunity at hand; a whole plethora of options. I can weight the benefits and the cost of each in a strategic way to create a life in which my dreams have the chance to flourish.

I have the right not to be silent. I belong to no one, I own nothing. I am neither for society or against it. I live sometimes of this world and other times I am just passing through it. I am challenging my own creation. Baring life everyday through these hips, through fingertips, from mind and out of mouth. I have no one else suckling and so I am free to nurse myself, to milk my own nurturing. See how I grow myself up?

I am my own nuclear family woven into the fabric of a world unfolding...I am offering only my own truths, fears, visions: My art through my eyes.

I seek peace within myself; everything I do is motivated by the understanding that I will never know the whole story, that your prospective is as valid as mine. I will never know you fully, whomever you maybe. Even after a lifetime in one room together we only become more unknowable. I have made peace with this and so now I seek only to know myself and share what I find with reverence and grace. To be open to the stories of others so that we may mix and intertwine...become something greater than the sum of a single self.

Whether chosen or enforced, conscious or unconscious we are all partaking in a collaborative performance. I think we are due some applause. We need no longer wait in single line crawling to center stage but must rather unite forces right where we are standing right now, however imperfect and incomplete we may feel we are not. Now is the time. We need each other now more than ever. We can light-up the world with our unabashed brilliance and our unashamed humanness.

Which brings me back to my tribute:

Thank you Barbara Love, Murial Fox, Jacqueline Ceballos, Gloria Steinem, Zoe Ann Nicholson, Margie Adam............the list goes on and on, and stretches across every woman ever born, every man born of woman, and everyone who has loved a woman and shared energy with her along the way.

They are having events to honor the women featured in Barbara Love's newest book, Pioneer Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975. This week they will be living it up in both Berkeley and LA for all of you folks blessed with West Coast existence. I had hoped to join them in celebration, to continue documenting their story. I have learned much and been inspired without fail. However, I have decided after much contemplation that I must spend the month ahead transforming my intentions into hard-copy. Look for the birth of my first book, Representing Women, come June. For now I leave you to trace your breath to its roots, see how deep you can take it. There are many teachings, there is much gratitude to be found.

*layla


If you are looking for some inspiring summer reading, here is a fine place to start.

VFA

VFA is a nonprofit organization for veterans of the Second Wave of the Feminist Movement. The goals are to enjoy the camaraderie forged during those years of intense commitment, to honor ourselves and our heroes, to document our history, to rekindle the spark and spirit of the Feminist Revolution and act as keeper of the flame so that the ideals of Feminism continue to reverberate and influence others.

Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975

Barbara J. Love's Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975 is the first comprehensive directory to document many of the founders and leaders (including both well-known and grassroots organizers) of the Second Wave Women's Movement. It tells the stories of more than two thousand individual women and a few notable men who together reignited the Women's Movement and made permanent changes to entrenched customs and laws.

The biographical entries on these pioneering Feminists represent their many factions, all parts of the country, all races and ethnic groups, and all political ideologies. Nancy F. Cott's foreword discusses the movement in relation to the earlier First Wave and presents a brief overview of the Second Wave in the context of other contemporaneous social movements.

BARBARA J. LOVE has worked as an editor, writer, and journalist, and is currently a member of the board of the Veteran Feminists of America. She is the author of Foremost Women in Communications and coauthor of Sappho Was a Right On Woman. NANCY F. COTT is the Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University and the Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is the author of numerous books including The Grounding of Modern Feminism.