Pharr, Suzanne - interviewed by Rose Norman
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | I'm starting the tape then, might as well. | 0:00 |
- | Okay. | 0:02 |
- | I don't know if you checked your email | 0:03 |
since I sent that, since I, after I read | 0:05 | |
that Smith College Voices of Feminism interview, | 0:08 | |
I rewrote most of my questions. | 0:13 | |
Because I felt like, you know, | 0:14 | |
we oughta just reference that, since it's online, | 0:17 | |
it's really good, and long and thorough. | 0:20 | |
- | They do a good job, don't they? | 0:23 |
- | They really do. | 0:24 |
- | Yeah, the woman who did that is, | 0:26 |
she was just, you know, very careful, very good. | 0:29 | |
- | Whoops, I just, speaking of which-- | 0:33 |
- | And one thing that was kind of hilarious | 0:35 |
about that interview is I have a, I have a couple of dogs. | 0:36 | |
You know, I'm one of your classic lesbians. | 0:40 | |
And one of them's this beautiful, | 0:43 | |
kind of a mixture of a blue heeler and something, | 0:47 | |
that looks like a Blizzard ice cream. | 0:50 | |
You know, all black and white and beautiful, big dog. | 0:55 | |
And it had a seizure while she was here. | 0:58 | |
We had to throw her in the car and take her to the, | 1:02 | |
take her to the vet. | 1:05 | |
So, that I did that interview was good. | 1:06 | |
It's actually quite remarkable. | 1:09 | |
- | Truly. | 1:10 |
When you consider that it got interrupted-- | 1:12 | |
- | It got interrupted like that. | 1:14 |
- | You know, I forgot to say, I need to say this | 1:16 |
to the tape, so I can document it. | 1:17 | |
This is Rose Norman, March 28th, 2013. | 1:21 | |
I'm interviewing Suzanne Pharr by phone. | 1:24 | |
She is in Knoxville, Tennessee. | 1:27 | |
For the Southern Lesbian Feminist Herstory Project. | 1:29 | |
I have to remember to say that every time, it's hard. | 1:33 | |
- | Right, can I just say how glad | 1:36 |
I am that you're doing this project? | 1:37 | |
- | Thank you, we just love doing it. | 1:39 |
It's gotten to be a lot of fun. | 1:41 | |
- | And Rose, where are you from? | 1:44 |
- | I'm from Alabama. | 1:46 |
- | Alabama. | |
Down there, Mount Seacrest country. | 1:48 | |
- | Well, I live in North Alabama, | 1:52 |
which is very different from Mab Seacrest, Alabama. | 1:53 | |
- | Oh yeah. | 1:56 |
I know that whole area pretty well, you know, | 1:58 | |
I've been such a lifelong Southerner myself. | 2:03 | |
- | Yeah, I love hearing your Southern accent. | 2:06 |
It's surprising how few of the people | 2:09 | |
I've interviewed have a Southern accent. | 2:10 | |
- | Is that right? | 2:13 |
- | They're Southern, you know, | |
and grew up in the South. | 2:15 | |
Okay, let's see. | 2:19 | |
Let's talk a little bit about what we'll cover. | 2:21 | |
I want to focus maybe half of the interview on SONG. | 2:23 | |
And I'm thinking it'll be about an hour. | 2:28 | |
Unless we decide we need more time. | 2:31 | |
But, you know, my original set of questions | 2:34 | |
was just modeled on what I had sent Mandy. | 2:36 | |
And I mean, when I found that interview, | 2:39 | |
I thought of all these other questions. | 2:41 | |
It covers your childhood and youth, | 2:43 | |
and growing up on a farm, in a very white farming community, | 2:45 | |
and goes into a lot of detail about your work | 2:48 | |
in Arkansas with Head Start Vista, | 2:50 | |
and starting the Arkansas Women's Project, | 2:52 | |
and I think we need to mention those things, | 2:54 | |
but we don't really need to do much with them. | 2:57 | |
Except I want to try to connect | 2:59 | |
some dots that I thought needed to be connected. | 3:02 | |
And the fact that you don't talk about SONG too much | 3:07 | |
on that interview is good for us. | 3:09 | |
That way we won't be replicating much. | 3:12 | |
And get you talking about it here. | 3:13 | |
So the first question I want to change, | 3:17 | |
the original question was when in your life | 3:20 | |
did you realize that you wanted to work | 3:21 | |
on sexual orientation along with the race | 3:23 | |
and class issues that SONG addresses. | 3:25 | |
Were there specific life experiences? | 3:27 | |
And you talked in that Voices and Visions | 3:30 | |
about growing up always knowing you were different, | 3:34 | |
the family saying there were four boys, | 3:37 | |
three girls, and Suzanne. | 3:38 | |
Cutting your hair, liking boys clothes, | 3:40 | |
knowing you were attracted to girls and boys, | 3:42 | |
knowing you shouldn't let on about that, | 3:44 | |
but having a relationship with a girl in high school | 3:46 | |
while double-dating football players. | 3:48 | |
- | Right. | 3:50 |
- | Not being very attuned to civil rights issues. | 3:51 |
And then you went to a small state women's college | 3:55 | |
that your aunts had attended, and heard the word | 3:57 | |
homosexual for the first time aimed at you, | 3:59 | |
and then you got a little more aware of how various | 4:03 | |
forms of closeted lesbian culture worked, | 4:05 | |
and about civil rights. | 4:07 | |
And then the path is harder to follow. | 4:09 | |
And I'm wondering, you know, how you came | 4:11 | |
from that very sheltered, you know, | 4:15 | |
not very political upbringing | 4:19 | |
to that women's college, which, I went to a women's college | 4:22 | |
in Alabama, and it was about as apolitical as you can get. | 4:26 | |
Maybe yours was not. | 4:31 | |
How did you, how did you, you came back from New Zealand | 4:34 | |
ready to just dive into the movement. | 4:39 | |
And be a part of every single thing. | 4:41 | |
And change your whole mind about whether to be | 4:44 | |
a teacher and an academic, and do something? | 4:46 | |
How did all that happen, I don't understand. | 4:49 | |
- | Okay, I don't 100% sure I do. | 4:51 |
But let's take a go at it. | 4:54 | |
Like I just wrote a note to someone today, who's doing, | 4:57 | |
a little bit of history research too for a class of hers. | 5:03 | |
And she wanted to know how I moved from, | 5:09 | |
how the civil rights movement impacted me in the '60s. | 5:12 | |
And I, she wanted it in a few words. | 5:17 | |
And I just said that I think I was moved initially, | 5:19 | |
well first of all, I think probably the most compelling | 5:26 | |
motivator in my life growing up was the fact | 5:30 | |
that I was so rebellious. | 5:33 | |
You know, I think that was a good thing. | 5:37 | |
That I, I think I was shocked | 5:39 | |
all of my life by injustice. | 5:43 | |
You know, as little kids are. | 5:45 | |
And some of us maintain it and some of us don't. | 5:47 | |
And for me, it stuck. | 5:50 | |
I don't know if it came from having seven | 5:53 | |
older brothers and sisters, or, you know, where, | 5:55 | |
if you're the youngest kid in that family, | 5:59 | |
you're always looking to see if the pie is cut | 6:01 | |
in exactly even slices. | 6:03 | |
(women laugh) | ||
Does that make sense? | 6:07 | |
- | Yes, right. | 6:09 |
- | So that probably fed some of my sense of injustice. | 6:10 |
And then I saw the contradictions within the church. | 6:14 | |
You know, I grew up in the rural Methodist church. | 6:16 | |
Where there was huge contradictions | 6:22 | |
between belief and behavior, as there are in, | 6:26 | |
you know, many, so many places. | 6:29 | |
And the, I can't say I had great awareness | 6:32 | |
of the civil rights movement at that time. | 6:35 | |
Except in conversation, 'cause I lived in an all-white, | 6:36 | |
you know, out in the country. | 6:42 | |
But the conversations among my family members, | 6:45 | |
and the conflict within the church over whether, | 6:49 | |
even though no one was knocking on the door, | 6:53 | |
whether or not they would let black people in. | 6:55 | |
- | And the church-- | 6:58 |
- | so that was one | |
of the enormous contradictions, | 6:59 | |
caused a huge split, you know, in the church. | 7:01 | |
And, | 7:04 | |
you know, I'm pretty much a lifelong atheist. | 7:06 | |
And so, but was very much affected by the, | 7:10 | |
you know, the kind of spiritual religious teachings. | 7:14 | |
And then when I went to college, | 7:18 | |
well, I was in the Georgia State College for Women | 7:19 | |
down in Milledgeville, which is a little school of 600, | 7:21 | |
you know, mostly for children of farmers | 7:25 | |
and store owners, you know, small town people. | 7:27 | |
There was a woman there who was head of religious affairs, | 7:32 | |
and her name was Izzy Rogers. | 7:36 | |
I think it was actually Isabelle Wood Rogers. | 7:39 | |
And she was very progressive. | 7:44 | |
You know, we didn't have a framework | 7:50 | |
to put that in, students. | 7:52 | |
But all of us who thought we were rebelling against | 7:54 | |
whatever status quo existed anywhere. | 8:00 | |
And I think many of us who were | 8:02 | |
lesbian went in her direction. | 8:04 | |
Single woman, very smart, very compassionate, | 8:06 | |
and held these great discussion groups, | 8:09 | |
where you actually got to talk in very real ways | 8:12 | |
about things that were going on. | 8:16 | |
And so she was the one who introduced us to the idea | 8:18 | |
of this great thing that was happening around civil rights. | 8:21 | |
And so she, | 8:26 | |
she helped to, | 8:28 | |
wanted to get us to have some critical | 8:31 | |
conversation and vision about it. | 8:34 | |
And then she also engaged us in some things. | 8:37 | |
Like, it was in Milledgeville where the school was, | 8:39 | |
that I first saw the Klan ride through town on horses, | 8:42 | |
you know, | 8:46 | |
carrying torches. | 8:50 | |
But, it was very kind of scary stuff. | 8:51 | |
It was an all white school, as they were | 8:55 | |
in 1957, '58, '59, '60, '61, as so many, colleges were. | 8:58 | |
But also, it was the first time I'd even worked | 9:06 | |
with black people, as I was working | 9:08 | |
as a waitress in a restaurant | 9:11 | |
across from the school. | 9:14 | |
But she involved us in the good things | 9:16 | |
going on in the state at that time, | 9:18 | |
about whether to close public schools | 9:20 | |
because of the possibility of desegregation. | 9:22 | |
And so she took, she organized with us to go | 9:26 | |
to a very large meeting, where the Grand Dragon | 9:31 | |
of the KKK spoke, you know, against desegregation | 9:34 | |
and for the closure of schools. | 9:40 | |
And we testified, you know, in the favor | 9:42 | |
of keeping schools open. | 9:46 | |
So that was-- | 9:49 | |
- | Wow. | |
- | I couldn't even tell you what year, | 9:50 |
it was somewhere between 1957 and '61. | 9:51 | |
- | That's when you were in college, '57 to '61? | 9:54 |
- | And so, I wouldn't call myself anywhere near | 9:56 |
the center of the civil rights movement. | 10:00 | |
Very much on the edge of things. | 10:01 | |
But when I was at the University of Buffalo, | 10:04 | |
there was a raging conversation about civil rights, | 10:08 | |
I was in the presence of black students for the first time. | 10:11 | |
I was in the presence of Jewish students for the first time. | 10:15 | |
And I was really off that, way off the country to Georgia. | 10:19 | |
And, | 10:25 | |
I'd had no experience with people other than, | 10:27 | |
you know, kind of white Protestants all my life. | 10:29 | |
And so there was, it was in that debate, | 10:33 | |
Malcolm X came, spoke at Buffalo. | 10:35 | |
We were also under the whole scare around Communism. | 10:40 | |
You know, | 10:45 | |
one of our huge political moves at the university, | 10:47 | |
I was a teaching fellow there. | 10:53 | |
- | This is your masters degree? | 10:56 |
- | Pardon? | |
- | This was your masters degree? | 10:58 |
- | Yeah, I was one of those go to school, | 11:00 |
drop out, go to school, drop out kids. | 11:02 | |
Once I got out of college. | 11:05 | |
So in that first year, | 11:07 | |
so Malcolm X was there, | 11:10 | |
and then there was this whole debate about whether | 11:12 | |
teaching fellows and faculty were gonna sign | 11:17 | |
the loyalty oath which was demanded of us. | 11:19 | |
So there was organizing around that. | 11:23 | |
There was, so there's lots of conversation going on. | 11:24 | |
And I was actually in, | 11:28 | |
I don't know what you would call it. | 11:31 | |
The discover the world part of my growth. | 11:32 | |
You know, I had not been anywhere. | 11:35 | |
I had not, you know, seen or heard | 11:37 | |
or talked about all these things. | 11:39 | |
That was happening, and then I did one of my dropouts, | 11:43 | |
went to the Young Harris College in south Georgia, | 11:45 | |
and taught as an English teacher there. | 11:48 | |
Then back to Buffalo, and then I ended up teaching | 11:50 | |
at Mary Washington College. | 11:54 | |
And at Mary Washington, it was interesting. | 11:56 | |
It was | 11:59 | |
more buffered I think from the civil rights movement. | 12:01 | |
So there was, there was activity and conversation going on. | 12:03 | |
I would say what was moving there | 12:09 | |
more than anything was feminism. | 12:10 | |
There was just that beginning of, | 12:14 | |
you know, '64 to '67, there was that beginning | 12:16 | |
of conversations about feminism. | 12:20 | |
And I was teaching 19th century literature. | 12:24 | |
You know, during the first round of the women's movement. | 12:28 | |
And so, | 12:34 | |
I and all the other faculty members | 12:36 | |
were engaged in that, in that conversation, | 12:41 | |
both outside of the class and in class. | 12:44 | |
And then I was also getting more and more engaged in, | 12:48 | |
reacting and protesting, and taking action | 12:56 | |
against the Vietnam War. | 12:58 | |
So all those things kind of worked together, | 13:01 | |
and the same time, I was trying to figure out how, | 13:03 | |
how you could be a lesbian in the world. | 13:09 | |
You know, coming to that recognition and not knowing | 13:11 | |
what and how to do with that. | 13:15 | |
And I think one of the, | 13:17 | |
one of the good things that happened to me | 13:20 | |
was going to New Zealand. | 13:22 | |
And you know, I went there out of, | 13:24 | |
great rebellion and search for freedom. | 13:27 | |
And profound ignorance. | 13:30 | |
Which is an interesting, (laughs) | 13:34 | |
sometimes volatile combination. | 13:36 | |
My, my partner and I, girlfriend, | 13:39 | |
I guess I would have called her then, | 13:43 | |
we went so that we could be lesbians, you know? | 13:45 | |
And we went also because we were sick of this country. | 13:48 | |
We just felt that, | 13:52 | |
that it was, you know, a country without a, without a soul. | 13:55 | |
But I would say that most, the thing that propelled | 13:58 | |
us the most was, we didn't know how to be | 14:01 | |
engaged with each other as lesbians and have a life, | 14:06 | |
without escaping out of the life we had here. | 14:10 | |
And so the profound ignorance is we didn't really | 14:14 | |
know anything about New Zealand, | 14:16 | |
we kind of chose it out of books, you know, | 14:18 | |
I think we thought it was an undeveloped | 14:22 | |
English-speaking country where we could help | 14:26 | |
build it rather than be, | 14:30 | |
(laughs) | 14:31 | |
being like, being in the heart of the Empire. | 14:33 | |
You know, they were one step out of the heart of the Empire. | 14:36 | |
But what was good for us there was that we, | 14:39 | |
we were in the position of having to explain the US. | 14:43 | |
Every time we moved, we were both teaching there. | 14:49 | |
I started out teaching in a high school, | 14:53 | |
and then I taught at the, | 14:55 | |
at the university. | 14:58 | |
And, | 14:59 | |
she, | 15:02 | |
she and I both, everything that we did was social. | 15:04 | |
People were really like, what is this thing about race, | 15:07 | |
what is this thing about you all and Vietnam, | 15:10 | |
what is this, what is this, what is this. | 15:12 | |
And there's nothing like that to, | 15:15 | |
to make you have to think. | 15:19 | |
You know, there's, | 15:21 | |
I'm sure neither of us had ever been asked | 15:24 | |
piercing questions before. | 15:26 | |
And neither of us certainly had ever been put | 15:29 | |
in the position that we had to either, | 15:31 | |
offer a critique of our country or defend our country. | 15:35 | |
You know? | 15:38 | |
And then the thing that sent us back was the deaths of, | 15:41 | |
we thought we had, we thought we were gonna be (laughs) | 15:46 | |
the expatriates, you know, we had a lot of, | 15:49 | |
all my life I've read way too many novels. | 15:54 | |
(cellphone rings) | 15:57 | |
Sorry, let me turn | ||
this phone off. | 15:59 | |
And so, | 16:03 | |
we just felt like we just couldn't live there anymore. | 16:06 | |
And, | 16:08 | |
and so the, | 16:09 | |
the shift from that to decide to come back | 16:11 | |
and then to do a trip that was a gift to us, | 16:14 | |
at that time you could buy tickets, | 16:18 | |
and as long you were in a forward progression, | 16:20 | |
you could stop anywhere you wanted to. | 16:22 | |
So we had saved a little bit of our teaching money, | 16:24 | |
which was not very much. | 16:27 | |
But thanks, we were able to stop in a number of countries, | 16:29 | |
and one of them was India. | 16:33 | |
And one of the places in India was Calcutta. | 16:35 | |
And it was, it was a transformative moment for us. | 16:37 | |
For me in particular. | 16:41 | |
Around thinking I had seen poverty, | 16:43 | |
and knew what poverty was. | 16:45 | |
And thought that I knew a little bit about colonialism. | 16:47 | |
And, you know, it was, | 16:50 | |
it was quite, | 16:54 | |
quite staggering for me. | 16:56 | |
And at that point I just said, you know, I'm gonna go back, | 16:57 | |
and I'm gonna figure out a way | 17:00 | |
to spend my time working. | 17:03 | |
I didn't have the language of social justice issues, | 17:04 | |
but if I'd had that language, I would have said that, | 17:07 | |
what I said was, | 17:12 | |
changing things so that we don't have the poor. | 17:14 | |
That we have of them in the US and elsewhere. | 17:17 | |
And then, Rose, I stepped off the plane | 17:22 | |
into the women's movement. | 17:24 | |
And there you have it. | 17:27 | |
And you know, worked with another woman to create the first | 17:28 | |
conscious-raising group in New Orleans. | 17:34 | |
And had that moment of recognition, | 17:36 | |
I guess I write about it in the homophobia book. | 17:39 | |
You know, that recognition that I couldn't be in this thing, | 17:43 | |
this consciousness-raising group unless I talked in a real | 17:47 | |
way about my life, 'cause that was the point of it. | 17:51 | |
You know? | 17:54 | |
And I couldn't talk about my life unless | 17:55 | |
I talked about being a lesbian. | 17:57 | |
So here was the first time. | 17:58 | |
New Orleans, Louisiana. | 18:00 | |
You know, me, age, | 18:01 | |
30 I guess, 29 or 30? | 18:04 | |
Saying those words for the first time | 18:07 | |
in a group of eight other people, seven or eight. | 18:09 | |
And, you know. | 18:13 | |
Huge changing point in my life. | 18:15 | |
That was a long answer, but I don't know, | 18:17 | |
did that give you what you needed? | 18:18 | |
- | Yeah, it did, I think there's a lot that's good there. | 18:20 |
I want to go back to one thing. | 18:22 | |
And that is, Izzy Rogers. | 18:25 | |
- | Yeah. | |
- | In a way she's your Quaker | 18:28 |
American Friends Service person. | 18:32 | |
- | That's right. | 18:34 |
- | Like Mandy had. | |
I wondered, | 18:37 | |
if she was Southern? | 18:39 | |
- | I don't think so. | 18:41 |
But I, | 18:43 | |
just, just in the last year, | 18:44 | |
I had enough curiosity to look her up. | 18:46 | |
You know, 50 years. | 18:48 | |
But I had the curiosity to look her up. | 18:52 | |
And some of it, she, | 18:54 | |
after, | 18:57 | |
after being at the women's college, | 18:59 | |
was, | 19:02 | |
Union Theological in New York. | 19:04 | |
And she also became like the highest | 19:06 | |
ranked woman in the Presbyterian church. | 19:09 | |
- | Really, wow. | 19:12 |
- | You should Google her, there's this great picture of her, | 19:14 |
looking for the world, like a great lesbian of that time. | 19:19 | |
(women laugh) | 19:24 | |
You know? | 19:26 | |
We had all these single teachers that, | 19:27 | |
you know, that brought such power to our lives, | 19:30 | |
who were, you know, fairly closeted. | 19:34 | |
And just gave their all to transforming | 19:39 | |
the lives of young women, in wonderful ways. | 19:42 | |
- | Well, that is truly remarkable. | 19:48 |
- | Yeah. | 19:49 |
So yes, she, so she comes out of what I would think | 19:50 | |
of as a very progressive church theology. | 19:54 | |
- | Okay, all right. | 20:01 |
Okay, I also wanted to ask you about | 20:06 | |
the term lesbian feminist activism. | 20:08 | |
Your interview, the woman who interviewed | 20:10 | |
you for Voices of Feminism, | 20:13 | |
I think it's the last tape, and you're probably | 20:16 | |
about worn out with that interview, but, | 20:18 | |
she says, well, now we're moving into the '90s, | 20:21 | |
and that's the end of your lesbian feminist activism, | 20:25 | |
and now you're doing other kinds of political activism, | 20:28 | |
and all that in Oregon and everything. | 20:30 | |
And I wondered, I would have said that was | 20:32 | |
all lesbian feminist activism, in the way we're defining it. | 20:35 | |
But I wondered how you see it. | 20:39 | |
Do you see yourself as a lesbian feminist activist? | 20:40 | |
Or some other term? | 20:43 | |
- | If, | 20:44 |
either that or lesbian feminist revolutionary. | 20:46 | |
I don't know which. | 20:48 | |
- | Okay, I like that. | |
- | I'm teasing, I wish I were a revolutionary. | 20:51 |
But, yeah, I'd say a lesbian feminist organizer, activist. | 20:54 | |
That that's the, I would actually put another word in. | 21:00 | |
I would say, | 21:04 | |
lesbian feminist and anti-racist activist. | 21:05 | |
That has been for years my core. | 21:09 | |
And I'm like a number of people that, | 21:13 | |
in what I consider | 21:17 | |
the kind of lesbian feminist, | 21:19 | |
I don't know whether you'd call it a movement, | 21:23 | |
or wing, or whatever it is you would call us | 21:25 | |
that I love so much, I think so many of us were formed | 21:27 | |
and shaped in strong ways by the Combahee River Collective's | 21:32 | |
statement, you know, Barbara Smith | 21:39 | |
and Audrey Lord, and that group, | 21:42 | |
also by Kitchen Table Press. | 21:44 | |
And, | 21:47 | |
you know, and some of that, you know, | 21:49 | |
essential writing of Adrienne Rich. | 21:51 | |
And I still carry those things. | 21:56 | |
I've been listening to this DOMA and marriage debate, | 21:57 | |
and I keep thinking about Adrienne Rich | 22:01 | |
and Compulsory Heterosexuality. | 22:04 | |
I keep thinking about Audrey Lord, | 22:06 | |
and the uses of the erotic. | 22:07 | |
It's like, wow. | 22:10 | |
And everyday in my work, I talk about intersectionality, | 22:11 | |
and you know, where'd I get that idea? | 22:15 | |
I got it from the Combahee River. | 22:17 | |
- | Way back then. | 22:18 |
- | Collective statement. | |
- | You know, and that's another question I have. | 22:21 |
Let me, | 22:24 | |
I want to, I have an anti-racism question here. | 22:26 | |
I want to know how you got, | 22:30 | |
okay, it was in college, it was, | 22:33 | |
Izzy Rogers that got you into civil rights, | 22:36 | |
and understanding civil rights. | 22:39 | |
But when did you start having black friends, | 22:41 | |
and how did you begin to make anti-racism | 22:44 | |
such an important part of your activism? | 22:47 | |
- | I think it began in New Orleans. | 22:49 |
And the women's movement there. | 22:52 | |
As we were, you know, building it. | 22:54 | |
And that was, that was fairly limited, you know, | 22:58 | |
but I, | 23:02 | |
part of it came through reading. | 23:04 | |
But it came through feminism. | 23:08 | |
It didn't come as much through, | 23:10 | |
civil rights, there was a lot of reading involving that. | 23:14 | |
But it was where these two kept coming together, | 23:19 | |
and being able to see them linked through particularly | 23:22 | |
black women's thinking and bodies. | 23:26 | |
And, | 23:30 | |
it was a gradual increased awareness, | 23:31 | |
understanding, analysis, probably the writings, | 23:38 | |
the books of Kitchen Table Press more than anything. | 23:42 | |
In terms of the real, real bringing everything together. | 23:46 | |
I think, | 23:50 | |
you know, the, | 23:54 | |
the people who were going back and forth across country, | 23:57 | |
in the '70s, what I call the Great Lesbian Migration, | 24:01 | |
where, | 24:05 | |
you know, | 24:06 | |
it was not only the Olivia music folks, | 24:07 | |
and all the other music folks that were going back and forth | 24:10 | |
to little towns, and you know, we would, | 24:13 | |
we would have somebody great, like Linda Tillory. | 24:17 | |
In Fayetteville, Arkansas. | 24:21 | |
You know, and it'd be in a little | 24:23 | |
tiny auditorium, or, maybe a big room. | 24:26 | |
You would have 50 women in and get to hear | 24:31 | |
someone like that, and be in relationship in some way. | 24:34 | |
And then I think my work in Head Start | 24:41 | |
for a couple of years, | 24:43 | |
it was a place where I was really able | 24:47 | |
to put it on the ground, and the work in, | 24:48 | |
helping to develop the first shelter there, | 24:51 | |
in northwest Arkansas. | 24:55 | |
- | Were you getting-- | 25:00 |
- | We were already working to, | |
you know, to be engaged with black women. | 25:02 | |
You know, we weren't seeing multiracial. | 25:06 | |
You know, we weren't seeing people of color. | 25:09 | |
It was black and white, seeing life in that way. | 25:12 | |
And you know, that had the, | 25:17 | |
there were a lot of folks beginning to, | 25:20 | |
a lot of white people beginning to catch on to anti-racism. | 25:23 | |
In Arkansas, I mean, all during the '70s, | 25:26 | |
even if people weren't living in racially mixed situations, | 25:31 | |
in what I would think of as kind of the left, | 25:36 | |
or the women's movement there was that constant | 25:39 | |
conversation of analysis, and, | 25:41 | |
trying to figure things out. | 25:45 | |
- | But you do mention on that other interview | 25:49 |
that all the CR groups in New Orleans were white. | 25:51 | |
- | Yes. | 25:55 |
- | So there's something Mandy talked about, | 25:55 |
the importance of making it interracial from the beginning. | 25:59 | |
And not just something that you look around and say, | 26:02 | |
oops, where are the white people, we better find one. | 26:04 | |
- | I totally agree with that. | 26:07 |
But that was not where we were in 1969. | 26:08 | |
- | Right. | 26:12 |
- | In New Orleans, you know. | |
- | You were finding your way then. | 26:15 |
- | Oh, very much so. | 26:17 |
I mean, I feel like that's been the story of my life. | 26:19 | |
You know, it's not like, | 26:23 | |
I'm so interested in hearing some people | 26:26 | |
talk about their lives, | 26:27 | |
who either imply or virtually say | 26:30 | |
that they had their political, | 26:33 | |
their politics all their lives. | 26:36 | |
That would not be true of me. | 26:38 | |
You know, my life has been evolving. | 26:40 | |
And political analysis evolving. | 26:44 | |
Political awareness evolving. | 26:49 | |
You know, all of that. | 26:51 | |
That's why I believe in social change. | 26:53 | |
I think if a person such as myself | 26:54 | |
can change in my view of life and my commitments, | 26:57 | |
into, you know, my relationships. | 27:02 | |
Then there's a little bit of hope for everybody. | 27:05 | |
- | (laughs) Right. | 27:07 |
- | You know? | |
- | I do know. | 27:08 |
- | Lucky those of you who were just born with this awareness. | 27:13 |
I don't know how it happens. | 27:16 | |
- | I don't know | |
how it happens either. | 27:18 | |
- | Yeah. | |
- | When you go back, | 27:20 |
when you look at some of the-- | 27:22 | |
- | And that what it's been, is that growth. | 27:23 |
But I remember, when we had the first | 27:26 | |
meeting in Fayetteville, probably 1975 or '76 | 27:27 | |
to talk about battered women, it was a racially mixed group. | 27:32 | |
- | So what do you think, when I talked | 27:38 |
to the Gainesville Women's Health Center people, | 27:39 | |
which, one of the three founders | 27:42 | |
of the Gainesville Women's Health Center | 27:44 | |
was Byllye Avery, an African-American. | 27:45 | |
And, | 27:49 | |
they mentioned that about half | 27:51 | |
of their abortion patients were black. | 27:54 | |
But they offered many other services, including CR groups. | 27:59 | |
And almost no black, African-American women went to those. | 28:02 | |
They had a hard time reaching across | 28:06 | |
that racial divide in Gainesville. | 28:08 | |
And I asked Byllye-- | 28:12 | |
- | I can understand that, | |
can't you? | 28:13 | |
- | Well, yeah, in 1969, | |
'70, yeah, for sure. | 28:16 | |
- | Yeah, who would, | |
who would trust that, you know? | 28:19 | |
Or actually feel that it was gonna actually speak, | 28:22 | |
even maybe your life? | 28:25 | |
I think that was also true of a lot | 28:30 | |
of low-income women as well. | 28:34 | |
White women. | 28:37 | |
It's like a CR group, I don't know. | 28:39 | |
- | Like your father not wanting to sign those loan papers, | 28:43 |
because he didn't want to tell you how much he made, 'cause. | 28:46 | |
- | That's right. | 28:48 |
- | Yeah, I can see where that would be true across the board. | 28:49 |
- | Yeah. | 28:53 |
- | Oh gosh, when you think back to that period, | 28:56 |
and, | 28:59 | |
you know, it's such a long time ago in a way, | 29:00 | |
but like when you look at movies, | 29:02 | |
or go in the Civil Rights Museum, | 29:04 | |
and you see the TV from that day, and you remember, | 29:07 | |
you wonder how we ever got out of it. | 29:11 | |
- | Isn't it true | 29:14 |
that we've, I mean, I think in some ways, | 29:15 | |
it feels as though we've inched ahead, | 29:18 | |
because it's not as great and as thorough, | 29:21 | |
and desegregation but not necessarily equality. | 29:24 | |
And there's a great income | 29:31 | |
and equity and injustice, that gap, | 29:35 | |
is still based so much on race. | 29:39 | |
But at that same time it's been with the speed of light | 29:43 | |
that some things have changed. | 29:46 | |
- | Yeah, marriage equality seems | 29:48 |
almost like the speed of light to me. | 29:49 | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 29:51 |
And it's really interesting. | 29:54 | |
- | Okay, I have another question here, | 29:58 |
and this was one I was about to ask a minute ago, | 29:59 | |
about models of organizing, is that? | 30:01 | |
I think one of the most important things about SONG | 30:04 | |
is how that organizational model works, | 30:05 | |
with codirectors and 50-50 black and white, | 30:07 | |
reaching out to non-gay groups about non-gay issues. | 30:10 | |
And that seems to be model that you were | 30:13 | |
working on when you started The Women's Project. | 30:15 | |
- | That's right. | 30:17 |
- | So your interviewer asked if you had a model for that, | 30:18 |
and you said you don't think so, and that you think. | 30:21 | |
So can you talk about if you brought that model to SONG, | 30:23 | |
or others were working with that model, | 30:27 | |
how did that come together? | 30:29 | |
- | Well, I brought a lot of the Women's Project to it. | 30:34 |
There's no doubt about that. | 30:37 | |
We had already been going for, | 30:39 | |
about 11, 11 or 12 years then. | 30:42 | |
And it was, | 30:45 | |
The Women's Project in the '80s, | 30:48 | |
you know, from '81, and SONG started in '92. | 30:52 | |
It was, | 30:56 | |
that was for many of us who worked in it in Arkansas, | 31:00 | |
and almost for all of us, I would say, it was just | 31:04 | |
so amazing and so life-changing for us. | 31:06 | |
And I had | 31:10 | |
not only brought my politics to it, | 31:13 | |
but it built, | 31:14 | |
all those, my politics there. | 31:16 | |
But I think the, | 31:19 | |
the big thing that, | 31:21 | |
that I probably brought to it, | 31:24 | |
that was a sense of political integrity. | 31:26 | |
That your organization and what you do in your organization, | 31:30 | |
and how you treat each other should mirror | 31:34 | |
what you're demanding of society. | 31:37 | |
So, don't demand racial justice, if you're going to insist | 31:40 | |
that white people be in the majority. | 31:46 | |
Don't demand economic justice, if you're gonna pay people, | 31:49 | |
have huge differences in salaries. | 31:54 | |
You don't demand equality if, | 31:57 | |
people don't have the full share of decision making, | 32:00 | |
and control over resources, you know, all of those things. | 32:06 | |
So, I think that's, | 32:10 | |
that's what I brought, and then that's what people built on, | 32:13 | |
and built it far more than I had envisioned or dreamed. | 32:18 | |
But we, we knew that. | 32:24 | |
And I think I came in with this, | 32:27 | |
that we have such a history of racial injustice, | 32:29 | |
and it's so ingrained in every fiber of the, | 32:36 | |
of our society, that you can't change | 32:40 | |
that just by fighting it, that you have to actually create | 32:43 | |
models of living where, I used to call it, | 32:46 | |
where you would tilt the balance | 32:50 | |
toward the equality and the, | 32:53 | |
the full self-determination | 32:57 | |
and wholeness of people of color. | 33:00 | |
And so that was why it was always, | 33:03 | |
not that we have, 50-50 could never work. | 33:06 | |
50% white people and 50% people of color | 33:08 | |
because white people carry-- | 33:12 | |
- | more than their weight. | |
- | Yeah, so much greater share of privilege, | 33:15 |
and greater share of power. | 33:18 | |
That to even begin to making that tilt, | 33:20 | |
you've got to have a majority | 33:22 | |
on your staff, on your board, you know. | 33:24 | |
And it can't be just, | 33:27 | |
what my friend used to call color me up. | 33:29 | |
You know, like I have a board and make sure | 33:32 | |
we get some people of color on it, | 33:33 | |
so that we'll look great, as opposed to, | 33:35 | |
let's have something where people have | 33:38 | |
full decision making and power and authority. | 33:39 | |
So yeah, and then the people who came | 33:45 | |
into The Women's Project were just, | 33:49 | |
just great, great folks. | 33:53 | |
And we were just so committed to, | 33:54 | |
and it was, you know, it was lesbians and straight women. | 33:57 | |
And it was black and white. | 34:01 | |
And then it became multiracial. | 34:02 | |
And then in the, | 34:04 | |
in the '80s, we begin to have trans women come in, | 34:07 | |
and volunteer with us or work with us, | 34:09 | |
and we always had sex workers engaged with us. | 34:13 | |
And, you know, so it was a very rich place. | 34:17 | |
You know, kind of following this idea that, | 34:19 | |
we can, we can keep racism and sexism linked together. | 34:22 | |
Because they are linked together. | 34:28 | |
And we can always work on the two simultaneously. | 34:30 | |
So that was. | 34:35 | |
- | Well, you'd already written the homophobia book, | 34:38 |
linking racism and sexism. | 34:40 | |
- | Yeah, I didn't do that, though, until the late '80s. | 34:43 |
- | But you'd written that before SONG, so. | 34:46 |
- | Yes, yes. | 34:48 |
- | So that would be a big. | |
Yeah. | 34:50 | |
- | And that's why I had the, you know, | 34:51 |
we're friends, and Mab had, | 34:54 | |
an outstanding history of working against racism. | 34:59 | |
And so that was just our agreement. | 35:04 | |
Well, first of all, when we came together, | 35:09 | |
it was at the Creating Change conference in North Carolina. | 35:13 | |
It's a big national queer conference. | 35:17 | |
And, | 35:19 | |
it was a time of, you know, | 35:21 | |
all of the conversation about NAFTA. | 35:22 | |
And so what we did there, | 35:25 | |
and Mab had a huge leadership in this, | 35:27 | |
was to insist that there be, that they're in the South, | 35:30 | |
and we were gonna talk about NAFTA. | 35:35 | |
And so we did this huge workshop, | 35:36 | |
and also got Mab as the preliminary speaker. | 35:38 | |
And it caused a great upset there, | 35:42 | |
because, you know, all these folks, | 35:44 | |
particularly guys, but women as well, | 35:47 | |
were walking around and saying, well, | 35:49 | |
what the hell does this have to do with, | 35:50 | |
you know, my gay freedom? | 35:53 | |
And so we, | 35:58 | |
we knew it before we went in, | 36:01 | |
but we really recognized it then. | 36:02 | |
There was so much controversy, | 36:04 | |
but we badly needed to get people off this single | 36:05 | |
identity politics and to get, at least in the South, | 36:10 | |
LGBTQ people to take on race, class and gender, | 36:15 | |
in addition to, because gender then | 36:20 | |
wasn't the way we think of gender now. | 36:22 | |
In addition to their, you know, | 36:27 | |
homosexual identity, or LGBTQ identity. | 36:31 | |
And then we said, but you know that's not all that's needed. | 36:35 | |
We also need to get the historic | 36:39 | |
civil rights organizations to take on homophobia. | 36:42 | |
And so that was basically our approach. | 36:48 | |
And then, in terms of who was gonna be part of SONG, | 36:52 | |
we were all women, we were all lesbian feminists. | 36:57 | |
Three black women, three white women. | 37:00 | |
And it took us a long time to let men be in leadership. | 37:03 | |
Because our standard was that you can't be part of this | 37:07 | |
unless you are feminist, and you're an anti-racist worker. | 37:14 | |
If you're a white person you have | 37:18 | |
to come in not with talking anti-racism, | 37:19 | |
you have to have a track record. | 37:21 | |
And so that's how Pam and Mab and I, you know, | 37:24 | |
we came in with that track record, and we insisted on it. | 37:27 | |
And, | 37:30 | |
so it was, and that's what made us reluctant about | 37:33 | |
bringing in men, because they had to have | 37:39 | |
a track record around feminism. | 37:40 | |
And to us, the track record wasn't talk. | 37:43 | |
You know, it was something active that you had done, | 37:47 | |
and were doing, and you know, permeated your work. | 37:50 | |
So I think that, that kickoff, you know, | 37:54 | |
and with us all having strong inclination to, | 37:58 | |
carrying an economic analysis along with this, | 38:05 | |
and an analysis around violence. | 38:08 | |
I think that set the, | 38:13 | |
set the political part of it. | 38:15 | |
And also really, really believing | 38:18 | |
in the power of our relationships, | 38:21 | |
the power of our Southern histories and lives. | 38:23 | |
You know, recognition that the South is this extraordinary | 38:28 | |
combination of having this | 38:33 | |
horrible racist history, horrible labor history. | 38:38 | |
The history of slavery, the history of worker, | 38:46 | |
worker oppression, and women's oppression. | 38:50 | |
And at the same time, carries the most | 38:55 | |
outstanding movement of the 20th century. | 39:01 | |
And the civil rights movement carries | 39:06 | |
extraordinary work by women, carries on the one hand, | 39:09 | |
and strictly since the '70s, such negative politics | 39:16 | |
out of churches, once politics was moved into churches, | 39:21 | |
at the same time such liberation. | 39:24 | |
You know. | 39:26 | |
So, and that throughout all of that, | 39:28 | |
people who grew up in the South love the smells, | 39:32 | |
and sounds and tastes of the South. | 39:35 | |
And so to carry all of that and sort of believe | 39:38 | |
in our cultural lives as well as our political lives, | 39:42 | |
and how those intertwined, that has been SONG. | 39:48 | |
That continues to be. | 39:52 | |
And so we expand, we expand as our awareness expands. | 39:53 | |
Of now, now we are multiracial, now we are multigendered. | 40:00 | |
Now we are engaged in work around immigration. | 40:07 | |
You know, we, | 40:11 | |
so as the, not just the moment expands, | 40:14 | |
but that our awareness of the moment expands. | 40:18 | |
Our awareness of the conditions, and awareness of, | 40:21 | |
when we talk about we want a place | 40:25 | |
at the center of our work, | 40:26 | |
poor people, | 40:31 | |
people who are so, | 40:34 | |
inviolate gender so much that they are persecuted. | 40:38 | |
For people who are trans, for people, you know, | 40:42 | |
there's a whole list of the people that we place | 40:46 | |
at the center of our work. | 40:50 | |
But our awareness of those people | 40:51 | |
at the center grows all the time. | 40:52 | |
It's not just, oh, we want these people. | 40:55 | |
The people who are experiencing so much | 40:58 | |
of the marginalization of society to be at the center. | 41:01 | |
You have to have, you have to build eyesight, you know. | 41:06 | |
In order to recognize that, | 41:10 | |
and work side by side with people. | 41:14 | |
So. | 41:18 | |
You know, I work on the staff of SONG now, as of last May. | 41:20 | |
- | All right, well that's good to have you back | 41:25 |
in the saddle there. | 41:26 | |
- | Yeah, 20 years | |
of working closely with it in all sorts of ways. | 41:29 | |
And now that I'm getting more than a footstep away from it, | 41:32 | |
now, I'm 73, and I'm back working half time with it. | 41:37 | |
- | That's great, I'm sure they're glad to have you. | 41:43 |
- | It's mutual, definitely mutual, | 41:46 |
it's a great group of people. | 41:49 | |
- | It looks like a pretty young group, too. | 41:51 |
- | Very young group. | 41:52 |
We have me and one staff member over 40. | 41:55 | |
And the rest are under 31 I believe. | 41:58 | |
I believe our youngest is about 22. | 42:02 | |
And it's a really, really strong, strong group of people. | 42:04 | |
And it's grown, it's grown from a very small group | 42:10 | |
to now it has, you know, 10 staff members, | 42:15 | |
half are full time. | 42:21 | |
And has a decent budget. | 42:23 | |
And working in five states. | 42:27 | |
Your state's one of them, Alabama. | 42:31 | |
- | Is that right? | 42:33 |
Who in Alabama is? | 42:35 | |
- | We don't have a person | |
actually living there, yet all the others, | 42:38 | |
we have a staff person in the state, | 42:40 | |
but Mary Hooks from Atlanta and Kate Shapiro | 42:42 | |
have been working back and forth in Alabama. | 42:46 | |
And I believe they're, they just had a meeting, | 42:48 | |
and I think most of the people | 42:51 | |
were from Tuscaloosa and Huntsville. | 42:53 | |
So they're just beginning organizing there. | 42:58 | |
- | You know, | 43:02 |
I've been doing this project for three years. | 43:03 | |
And I haven't interviewed one person from Alabama. | 43:07 | |
- | Is that right? | 43:10 |
- | Well, actually, | |
Donna Burnell now lives near me. | 43:11 | |
She's actually somebody who was one of the directors | 43:14 | |
of the Gainesville Women's Health Center. | 43:16 | |
And I did interview her. | 43:18 | |
And I did set up an interview | 43:19 | |
with somebody who had to back out. | 43:21 | |
But I've, | 43:23 | |
I just haven't hooked into the, | 43:26 | |
I mean, I keep, we're kind of doing, | 43:28 | |
we call it a snowball method. | 43:31 | |
You're just following where people lead you. | 43:33 | |
And it hasn't led me to Alabama yet. | 43:36 | |
- | I guess, you're gonna do a map, right? | 43:39 |
- | Yes, probably. | 43:43 |
To show where we're. | 43:44 | |
This special issue can't possibly cover. | 43:46 | |
- | Yeah, well Mab, you know, she grew up in Alabama. | 43:48 |
So, | 43:52 | |
she could talk at length about that. | 43:53 | |
- | Yeah. | 43:57 |
Actually, I'm not sure we are gonna interview Mab. | 44:01 | |
- | I just, you gotta. (laughs) | 44:05 |
Gotta interview Mab. | 44:09 | |
Mab and-- | 44:12 | |
- | And Minnie Boise. | |
I know, but you know, they're sort of like | 44:15 | |
the figureheads in a way. | 44:17 | |
I mean of course they did wonderful things, | 44:20 | |
but they've written about it already. | 44:21 | |
- | Yeah, that's true. | 44:23 |
- | They've written | |
about it widely, and a lot of what we're trying to do, | 44:25 | |
I mean, you're one of the more famous people | 44:29 | |
that we're interviewing, you and Byllye Avery | 44:30 | |
are the most famous people we've interviewed. | 44:33 | |
- | Well, Mandy Carter. | 44:36 |
- | And Mandy, you're right. | |
And Patty Zang. | 44:38 | |
- | Yeah, she's, | |
she's a much-loved character. | 44:40 | |
- | Although you are way more on the internet than Mandy is. | 44:44 |
Although she is on there, she is on there. | 44:47 | |
- | Yeah, that's because I've written and made, | 44:49 |
you know, I think, | 44:50 | |
once you write a couple books, people are. | 44:53 | |
- | All over you, yeah. | 44:57 |
- | Yeah, you get a level of attention | 44:58 |
that is often more than you deserve. | 45:02 | |
- | Not necessarily, I think you're in every | 45:07 |
women's studies textbook I ever taught. | 45:08 | |
- | Yeah, you know, that's, it's really been interesting, | 45:12 |
Rose, I remember when I first wrote | 45:16 | |
the homophobia book in particular, | 45:19 | |
Barbara Smith said to me, you know, | 45:21 | |
what you need to, you know, | 45:25 | |
being that it's Kitchen Table, | 45:27 | |
she said, Suzanne, what you need to know | 45:29 | |
is that books have a shelf life of five years. | 45:31 | |
And, | 45:36 | |
so, she said, you know, just be prepared for that. | 45:39 | |
And I was. | 45:41 | |
And now it's excerpt for publication. | 45:42 | |
But for years, probably 15 years, | 45:46 | |
it was still being taught as a book. | 45:49 | |
- | Yeah. | 45:51 |
Because nobody else had done it. | 45:53 | |
I mean, really, you want to go get that subject dealt with, | 45:54 | |
that's where you're gonna find it. | 45:57 | |
- | This is what interested me, and there's been plenty | 46:00 |
of opportunities for people to do it. | 46:02 | |
It's like, well, what's up with that? | 46:04 | |
- | Yeah, and you know, I think it's part of this whole | 46:07 |
business of intersecting oppressions, | 46:10 | |
bigger picture, seeing the connections, | 46:13 | |
which people have been talking about. | 46:16 | |
Like you cited Barbara Smith | 46:18 | |
and Audrey Lord talking about it. | 46:20 | |
You have been talking about it forever, but doing it. | 46:22 | |
You know, that next step, there seems to be more energy | 46:25 | |
around single focus, single focus issues. | 46:30 | |
And not-- | 46:34 | |
- | I think that's true. | |
- | Not as much big picture. | 46:37 |
But SONG does that. | 46:40 | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | |
SONG really holds that, holds that close. | 46:44 | |
- | Now, did you know all of the SONG co-founders? | 46:48 |
I know you knew Mab. | 46:52 | |
- | I didn't actually know Pat very well. | 46:56 |
The people I knew the most were Mandy and Mab. | 47:00 | |
And I knew Pam a little and Joan a little. | 47:06 | |
And then Pat. | 47:11 | |
I think I had met her but didn't really, | 47:15 | |
I couldn't say that I knew her. | 47:17 | |
- | So, was Mandy the? | 47:21 |
I'm wondering, who was the person who knew | 47:24 | |
all the other people, really? | 47:26 | |
Was that Mandy? | 47:28 | |
- | Probably. | |
Mandy. (laughs) | 47:30 | |
Mandy is one of the. | 47:32 | |
She really does great relational work. | 47:34 | |
She remembers people and she meets people easily, | 47:38 | |
she chats with people easily. | 47:41 | |
She keeps really good records. | 47:45 | |
- | Yeah, yeah, she can cite dates too. | 47:47 |
- | She can, she can! | 47:51 |
I'm like, damn, where do you get that? | 47:53 | |
Wish I could. | 47:56 | |
- | Do you remember | |
that speech on August 4th, 1960, you know? | 47:57 | |
- | Me, I'm doing well at remembering my birthday. | 48:02 |
(laughs) | 48:03 | |
- | So, one of the questions was your story of SONG. | 48:07 |
Do you think that's what you've just told? | 48:11 | |
- | I think so. | 48:14 |
- | Mandy tells it from the point of view | 48:16 |
of organizing the Creating Change, and then, | 48:18 | |
this coming out of it. | 48:23 | |
- | And that's true, that's what I would say too. | 48:25 |
Is that, you know, that's how we came together, | 48:27 | |
was in that, in that, you know, that moment | 48:30 | |
of really recognizing how much | 48:34 | |
something like this was needed. | 48:38 | |
- | And she also connects it to the sort of anti-Southern bias | 48:42 |
she was getting from the phone calls | 48:46 | |
about having it in the South. | 48:49 | |
- | Yeah, that wasn't in my head. | 48:52 |
But she had gotten, she had gotten those. | 48:55 | |
- | You weren't seeing, and SONG's mission | 49:01 |
is not to make people love the South. | 49:05 | |
- | No. (laughs) | 49:07 |
No, no, no. | 49:08 | |
I don't think so. | 49:10 | |
Our mission is work in the South | 49:12 | |
and change the world by doing it. | 49:15 | |
I mean, I'm making that up. | 49:19 | |
But I mean truly, it's. | 49:21 | |
It's sort of like The Women's Project. | 49:23 | |
We thought, | 49:25 | |
what we did do is really great work on the ground, | 49:26 | |
and then what we learned | 49:29 | |
from that is to use that nationally. | 49:30 | |
So like for years, we documented acts of violence, | 49:35 | |
the killing of women, and the violence and oppression | 49:43 | |
of black people and LGBTQ people. | 49:47 | |
And religious minorities. | 49:51 | |
And we put out quite a long report every year, | 49:53 | |
showing all that documentation. | 49:57 | |
It was from that that we were able to have | 50:00 | |
to do national speeches and national writing | 50:03 | |
about how women should be included in the Hate Crimes Act. | 50:05 | |
You know, how could it not be a hate crime against women, | 50:10 | |
when men were picking women up and taking them out | 50:12 | |
and raping them and leaving them on the side of the highway. | 50:16 | |
That's not a hate crime? | 50:19 | |
- | I interviewed Cal and LaRose Felicity | 50:22 |
about some work they did in Kentucky, | 50:26 | |
and that's one of the things they did, | 50:28 | |
was gather data on how many, on all the domestic violence | 50:29 | |
cases and what happened with them. | 50:32 | |
Which, you know, at that time in the '80s, | 50:34 | |
ended up being acted on. | 50:37 | |
And they got a lot of things done with that data. | 50:39 | |
- | I'll bet. | 50:42 |
- | Okay, SONG and the historical moment. | 50:46 |
This comes at the end of our study period. | 50:50 | |
1994, which is when the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance | 50:53 | |
closed its doors, it's the end of what we're studying. | 50:57 | |
Although we talked about things that happened after that. | 51:00 | |
But it seemed like, that much of the energy | 51:03 | |
and enthusiasm of the women's liberation movement | 51:07 | |
was dissipating by the early '90s, when SONG was founded. | 51:10 | |
Probably because of all those years of Ronald Reagan. | 51:15 | |
And that we had Backlash. | 51:18 | |
And I'm wondering if you've thought about how SONG | 51:20 | |
responded to that, or I mean, | 51:25 | |
how it fits into Backlash, the end of Reagan. | 51:28 | |
I mean, of course we also had the election of Bill Clinton, | 51:32 | |
about the time that SONG was. | 51:36 | |
- | I think we were probably, | 51:38 |
I don't know if we were talking about Backlash, | 51:42 | |
using that particular language as much as we were examining | 51:46 | |
the policies that came out of Reagan. | 51:51 | |
That, you know, all of that anti-taxation, | 51:56 | |
anti-worker, you know, the racialization of issues. | 51:59 | |
You know, all of those, those kinds of things. | 52:04 | |
And then the fact that globalization and privatization, | 52:06 | |
all of that was having on the economy and on poor people. | 52:12 | |
And then we also were doing a lot of analysis | 52:18 | |
of the effect of the rising right wing. | 52:24 | |
That it of course had been rising since 1964. | 52:27 | |
Around '92, '94, '95, we were beginning to feel that impact | 52:32 | |
in a way that people hadn't recognized it so much before, | 52:37 | |
as such an enormous political force. | 52:42 | |
- | And that's, you eventually wrote the book about that. | 52:44 |
- | Right, I wrote that in, I guess, '96. | 52:48 |
- | So this is part of SONG, then. | 52:52 |
What SONG is interested in? | 52:55 | |
- | It's still interested in that, yes, yes. | 52:57 |
You know, 'cause it's had a huge impact, | 53:01 | |
every step of the way in SONG. | 53:05 | |
The policies of Reagan and the organizing of the right. | 53:08 | |
When you think of the taking in, | 53:11 | |
when it's on our own turf down here | 53:15 | |
that we have Jerry Falwell. | 53:18 | |
And that whole initiative to grab up the new evangelicals, | 53:21 | |
and to introduce into faith arenas | 53:28 | |
political, electoral organizing. | 53:35 | |
And moving messages of oppression. | 53:38 | |
That has had an enormous impact in the South, as you know. | 53:42 | |
And in some ways, I know for me, | 53:47 | |
beginning more and more to work on the right wing | 53:51 | |
in the late '80s and in the early '90s, | 53:54 | |
and all the way through now, it took me awhile to, | 53:57 | |
to kind of get myself clear on it. | 54:02 | |
Because, | 54:05 | |
the South has been so much a bastion of the right. | 54:11 | |
Of politics, historically over time, you know, forever. | 54:16 | |
- | You've got something to say about that. | 54:23 |
- | And we're beginning to see some difference | 54:25 |
between this particular incarnation of the right | 54:26 | |
from that of the far right and of just the conservative, | 54:30 | |
conservative states rights, and you know. | 54:36 | |
To be able to begin to parse those out was not, | 54:40 | |
kind of an immediate place that one would go. | 54:45 | |
- | That, that is so relevant to right now. | 54:52 |
And the, | 54:56 | |
the dialogue, it's not really a dialogue. | 55:00 | |
It's more of a sparring match | 55:03 | |
that goes on between, and I'm thinking here about, | 55:08 | |
just friends and relatives of mine, | 55:12 | |
from other parts of Alabama. | 55:15 | |
It's like we've created an alternate universe. | 55:19 | |
For me it's like they've created an alternate universe | 55:26 | |
in which Obama isn't a citizen, he's a communist. | 55:28 | |
- | Right, right. (laughs) | 55:32 |
It is an alternate universe. | 55:34 | |
- | Yeah, and yet, you know, | 55:36 |
I know these people, and they're good people, | 55:39 | |
I mean, they're like my parents, you know, my brother. | 55:42 | |
They're really, | 55:45 | |
they mean well and et cetera. | 55:49 | |
But they're Southern. | 55:51 | |
And whatever happened to me, | 55:52 | |
maybe it was because, you know, being a lesbian, | 55:57 | |
didn't happen to them, and they can't see it. | 56:01 | |
They cannot see, we cannot talk about any of this. | 56:04 | |
None of it. | 56:07 | |
- | And not only, they can't see it because of what | 56:08 |
didn't happen to them, but they also can't see it | 56:12 | |
because of what has been fed them. | 56:14 | |
You know, and the right bought up | 56:17 | |
all the little radio stations in the '80s under Reagan. | 56:19 | |
And you know, the great right wing thinktanks in the '70s. | 56:25 | |
It began all of that messaging. | 56:31 | |
And then you've got your Limbaughs, | 56:33 | |
and you've got your Fox News, | 56:35 | |
and you've got it through your churches. | 56:36 | |
If you can create this sort of nonstop messaging, | 56:40 | |
and then link it to, you know, | 56:45 | |
church, hearth, and, you know. | 56:49 | |
So-called values, | 56:53 | |
then it really builds that barrier | 56:56 | |
that keeps people from being able to see. | 57:01 | |
It becomes a sea change in their own thinking. | 57:04 | |
But you know, I have family all over the South. | 57:08 | |
Not all over, that's not quite true. | 57:10 | |
But I have a lot in Georgia and a lot in Florida. | 57:13 | |
And a few other places. | 57:16 | |
And I've seen them make remarkable change. | 57:19 | |
And they're country folks that now live | 57:23 | |
in these little towns and cities. | 57:25 | |
But they've changed not just on LGBTQ issues, | 57:28 | |
they've changed enormously on that. | 57:33 | |
They, some of them, not all of them, but some of them | 57:36 | |
have really changed on their ways of thinking politically. | 57:39 | |
So that, | 57:45 | |
now I can sit down with most of the Republicans | 57:47 | |
in my family and have a conversation. | 57:50 | |
That's a step forward. | 57:52 | |
- | Yeah, that is a huge step. | |
- | Yeah. | 57:56 |
Because, and then a couple, I'm like, | 57:58 | |
there's no need for me to bother. | 58:01 | |
I mean, they got the, | 58:04 | |
they're Tea Party, you know? | 58:06 | |
They don't want conversation. | 58:09 | |
I'm like, okay. | 58:12 | |
I don't want it either. | 58:13 | |
And this kind of conversation, you know. | 58:15 | |
- | So, is SONG, from what I've been reading | 58:20 |
and talking with Mandy about SONG is working | 58:25 | |
with other organizations, or is SONG working | 58:28 | |
on trying to reach those, across those barriers, | 58:32 | |
and deal with the messaging? | 58:36 | |
- | We're trying to do some of the messaging. | 58:39 |
But what we're about to do is more on the ground | 58:43 | |
solid organizing than we've done before. | 58:46 | |
So we're beginning to initiate a campaign | 58:49 | |
to work on transforming education. | 58:52 | |
And so that's gonna have, | 58:58 | |
it'll have a lot of local organizing in it as well as, | 59:02 | |
we're gonna do it under the overall framing | 59:10 | |
of building beloved community. | 59:12 | |
And you know, we take that right out of the last two years | 59:16 | |
of thinking of Martin Luther King. | 59:19 | |
And, | 59:23 | |
so we're working both at cultural change, | 59:25 | |
and trying to move the way people frame and see and think | 59:30 | |
of things as well as trying to figure out some concrete | 59:34 | |
things to do in terms of education and what's happening | 59:38 | |
to our children across the board in that. | 59:42 | |
- | That makes me-- | 59:48 |
- | Go ahead. | |
- | That makes me think of a line from the other interview. | 59:51 |
Toward the end, you said the center | 59:53 | |
of your political thought now is, | 59:55 | |
how do we resist and how do we create vision and action | 59:57 | |
that is connected both to resistance and vision. | 1:00:00 | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 1:00:04 |
You know, so it's kind of how do you hold one | 1:00:07 | |
in one hand and one in the other. | 1:00:11 | |
You've got to resist, | 1:00:14 | |
but you've gotta create at the same time. | 1:00:15 | |
And what are we resisting? | 1:00:18 | |
Are we resisting the messaging? | 1:00:19 | |
Are we resisting? | 1:00:20 | |
- | We're resisting | |
the oppression, resisting the violence. | 1:00:22 | |
Resisting the conditions that we live under. | 1:00:25 | |
You know, so, in some ways it's kind of slammed at people. | 1:00:31 | |
You know, that's, this is the level of violence, | 1:00:36 | |
remains high in this country. | 1:00:39 | |
In every aspect of people's lives. | 1:00:42 | |
And it does, and so it does. | 1:00:45 | |
And then there's homophobic violence mixed in that. | 1:00:47 | |
So that's resistance. | 1:00:51 | |
It's like stopping the bad laws, | 1:00:53 | |
the don't say gay law in Tennessee. | 1:00:57 | |
All these, we have these now, super majority | 1:01:00 | |
legislatures in the South that are just wildly passing | 1:01:04 | |
such repressive laws, so that's resistance. | 1:01:09 | |
But the creation is creating | 1:01:13 | |
ways of living or ways of schooling, | 1:01:18 | |
or ways of, you know, ways of worshiping, | 1:01:21 | |
or ways of whatever it is that hold within them | 1:01:25 | |
a whole different set of values. | 1:01:31 | |
- | Our hour, we have used our hour. | 1:01:40 |
I kind of feel like at least we got | 1:01:44 | |
to the end of my questions. | 1:01:45 | |
- | Well good. | 1:01:48 |
- | And I will, as fast as I can, type up excerpts. | 1:01:49 |
What I do is not transcribe, because it takes | 1:01:54 | |
way too long, and it's boring. | 1:01:57 | |
I pull out pieces from the tape, I listen to the tape. | 1:01:59 | |
And I edit it as I go along. | 1:02:04 | |
And then I send it to you. | 1:02:06 | |
- | Okay. | |
- | And you can do anything you want to it. | 1:02:09 |
Including, you know, just create another document. | 1:02:12 | |
- | All right. | 1:02:17 |
- | Add anything we didn't say. | 1:02:18 |
We can have another interview if you wanted to. | 1:02:20 | |
But I want to warn you, I will edit it, | 1:02:24 | |
I will move things around, so that they come together. | 1:02:25 | |
I could ask you to do that, but you probably | 1:02:30 | |
wouldn't feel like it. (laughs) | 1:02:31 | |
- | No, I don't think I would quite have time to do any of it. | 1:02:34 |
- | Right, okay. | 1:02:37 |
So that's what I'm gonna start doing right now. | 1:02:39 | |
And it went really fast with Mandy, | 1:02:42 | |
so maybe I'll get that turned around quickly. | 1:02:43 | |
- | Okay, well I look forward to seeing it, | 1:02:46 |
whenever it does come. | 1:02:47 | |
- | Okay, and we are working | |
on trying to have a draft ready for Sister Wisdom in May. | 1:02:51 | |
So we're trying to get these things turned around in April. | 1:02:55 | |
But our final deadline is later than that. | 1:02:59 | |
But they're gonna tell us whether we have | 1:03:01 | |
a single issue or a double issue, | 1:03:03 | |
after what we send them in May. | 1:03:05 | |
So we want to get everything we can by then. | 1:03:06 | |
- | Great. | 1:03:09 |
- | Okay. | |
- | Sounds terrific, I'm so glad you're doing it. | 1:03:12 |
- | Thank you very much, I'm enjoying doing it. | 1:03:14 |
And I enjoyed talking with you. | 1:03:16 | |
- | And where are you living now? | 1:03:18 |
- | I live in Huntsville. | 1:03:20 |
- | In Huntsville. | |
- | That's where I'm living. | 1:03:22 |
- | So, it might be good | |
for some of our folks to get in touch with you. | 1:03:25 | |
- | Sure, sure. | 1:03:27 |
- | When they're working | |
over that way. | 1:03:28 | |
- | I would love to be | |
in touch with some of them. | 1:03:30 | |
- | I'll give them your email. | |
- | Good, that would be great. | 1:03:32 |
- | Great, well, thank you so much. | 1:03:34 |
- | Okay, thank you. | 1:03:36 |
- | You bet, bye now. | |
- | Bye-bye. | 1:03:38 |
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