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The militant state of mind organizing the Congressional Union, Inc.
Women's Studies Int. Forum. Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 101-105. 1989 Printed in the USA.
0277-5395/89 $3.00 ÷ .00 ~. 1989 Pergamon Press plc
THE MILITANT STATE OF MIND ORGANIZING THE CONGRESSIONAL UNION, INC. PAM ELAM New York. U.S.A.
Synopsis-This article discusses the experiences of the Congressional Union (CU), a U.S. organization formed in 1980 to recapture the spirit of U.S. militant suffragists. Through civil disobedience actions primarily at the White House, the CU attempted to seize the offensive and to change the political dynamics in the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment. Based on an analysis of the CU's organizing efforts, the article suggests organizational and tactical questions to be considered in forming feminist direct action groups.
In 1980, a half dozen women from the Sarah Lawrence College Women's History and Women's Studies Programs organized the Congressional Union (CU).' Named in honor of the militant women's suffrage group created by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns which split with the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1914 and later became the National Woman's Party (NWP), the new Congressional Union was formed to recapture the spirit of those courageous women. The historical parallels between the drive to enact the woman suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the struggle to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment were striking. The Congressional Union wanted to learn from history and to build creatively upon it. We certainly did not want to repeat the major mistakes of the suffragists-the exclusion of women of color from the suffrage campaign and the failure to integrate all • women's issues into suffragist platforms/perspectives. We wanted the CU to represent the diversity o f womankind and to be a multiissue group, even though our initial actions would focus on the Equal Rights Amendment due to the June 30, 1982 deadline for ratification. A May 20, 1916 editorial in the CU-NWP newspaper, The Suffragist, said, "One thing is plain. If women do not put their freedom first, no one else will do so." The new CU membership pledge put it this way: "Traditionally, as women, we have been taught to place the needs and concerns of others ahead of our own. The members of the Congres101
sional Union believe in a woman-first political strategy and will work nonviolently to implement it." This woman-first philosophy was soon to become as controversial as the civil disobedience actions we proposed. Time and again we were accused of ignoring the "really important" issues of the day (control of nuclear weapons, intervention in Central America, racism, classism). We responded, time after time, that a feminist vision of the world is inclusive not exclusive. Women's issues inelude all of the concerns just cited and m o r e - l i k e fighting homophobia, ageism, and other forms of discrimination. Militant suffragist Doris Stevens once wrote that "militancy is as much a state of mind, an approach to a task, as it is the commission of deeds of protest." It was that militant state of mind that we wanted to bring back to the women's movement, that fire, that pride, that passion. Our actions would be directed every bit as much to the women already in the feminist movement as to the press, the politicians, and the general public. The most important contribution which the suffrage militants made to the campaign for the 19th Amendment was to seize the offensive. They shifted the focus of the suffrage argument from appeals to action. The militant state of mind centered the potential power to achieve change for women within the soul of each woman. That was the historic message the women of the CU wanted to bring to the women's movement of the 1980s. For a new group having little money, few
102
PAMELAM
members, and facing a June 30, 1982 deadline for ERA ratification, the odds were against us as we began planning our first actions in the fall of 1980. The leadership of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the National Woman's Party (NWP) were unsympathetic, and the political climate, with a right-wing resurgence, was hostile.' However, we were making contact with interested groups and individuals from across the nation through letters, articles, and announcements in the feminist press about the formation of our new Congressional Union. We began hearing from women who were anxious to join such a nonviolent, militant struggle and from nationally-known women in the movement who were willing to lend their names to our Advisory Committee in a show of support. Our first actions were simple and direct. On January 19, 1981, the day before Ronald Reagan's inauguration as President, one hundred CU women marched around the White House in support of the ERA and in silent tribute to the women who have come before us. This silent procession sought to serve as the formal announcement of the rebirth of militancy in the women's movement and to recapture the spirit of the March 3, 1913 woman suffrage procession organized by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, held on the eve of Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, which recharged the campaign for the vote. On February 4, 1981, the CU began an ERA picketing campaign at the gates of the White House based upon the silent sentinel woman suffrage picketing campaign of the militants which began at the White House on January 10, 1917. The CU ERA picketing at the White House continued every Wednesday and from June 3rd on expanded to include a coalition of other women's groups. Our first act of civil disobedience occurred at the July 4, 1981 CU celebration of National Women's Independence Day at the White House. The theme of this July 4th celebration.was "Relighting Feminist Fires," referring not only to the burning of antiwoman statements in the tradition of the suffragists, but also to the fires burning in each of us, fires of the spirit, of activism, of commitment, of sisterhood. Five hundred women participated in the celebration, which was held despite a blinding rain storm. Those
present signed a Women's Declaration of Independence calling for the inalienable rights of women (including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; justice and equality under the law; control over our lives and our bodies; and freedom from violence) and for implementation of the 1977 National Women's Conference Plan of Action. We heard inspiring speeches by Gloria Steinem (MS. magazine), Sonia Johnson (Mormons for ERA), Gracia Molina Pick (Comision Feminil Mexicana Nacional), Charlotte Bunch (National Gay Task Force), Czerni Brasuell (Third World Center, Princeton University), among others, and music by Margie Adam. The first step of our nonviolent, militant campaign was taken when 50 women, led by Sonia Johnson, blocked traffic across Pennsylvania Avenue by joining hands and kneeling in the street. Excited by the response to this July 4th event, we began planning for an even bigger CU action on August 26, 1981 (Women's Equality Day), the 61st anniversary of the ratification of the woman suffrage amendment to the constitution. We staged a demonstration at the White House under the banner "Without ERA All Women Are In Chains." Twenty CU women were arrested during this action, which included speeches, songs, and picketing, as well as civil disobedience. Prior to their arrest for blocking traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue, the CU women chained themselves to the White House fence and held a sit-in in the White House driveway as over one hundred CU supporters looked on. This August 26 action gained considerable attention. Photographs of women chained to the White House fence in support of the ERA appeared in newspapers and magazines as well as on television news programs all across the country) In October of 1981, CU members attended the national conventions of both the National Woman's Party and the National Organization for Women. The NWP leadership refused to let us participate even though we were dues-paying members, but the NOW convention saw over 700 women attend two CU workshops on direct action tactics. On November 11, in honor of Abigail Adams's Birthday and the November 12th Birthday of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, CU women lit watch fires for freedom at the
Militant State of Mind
White House and in Lafayette Park, just as the suffragists did over sixty years ago. While the CU “Watchfires for Equality” blazed across the evening sky. Congressional Union members burned President Ronald Reagan’s meaningless words on equality, just as the suffragists burned President Woodrow Wilson’s speeches on democracy. On December 17 at the national Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Washington, DC, CU women staged a “No Celebration Without Ratification” protest in support of ERA. As the CU began growing in terms of members and influence so did our organizational problems. The most crucial problem involved our organizational identity. Early in the existence of the CU, feminist theorist Charlotte Bunch, a member of our Advisory and later Executive Committee, posed a fundamental question which our group was never able to fully resolve. She asked what kind of organization we wanted the Congressional Union to be: a national organization with a multi-issue focus -a more radical alternative to NOW-or a smaller, single-issue “zap action” group primarily engaged in civil disobedience actions? Our group, rather schizophrenically, was attempting to operate as both, to be all things to all feminists. Another problem, which all groups face, was the challenge of choosing a flexible yet effective structure. Many feminists view formal structure with great distaste, if not downright hostility. Yet there must be some up-front, agreed-upon guidelines for conducting the business and carrying out the purpose of the organization, particularly when it is something as serious and potentially dangerous as civil disobedience/direct action. There has to be some accountability, some clear understanding of where the responsibilities lie. Questions of forming a notfor-profit corporation to meet issues of legal liability in case of accidents, of obtaining the necessary tax status so that financial contributions to the group are tax deductible, of providing information to women interested in forming chapters in their home areas, or of coordinating activities and communicating with a membership extending across the nation all have to be carefully and thoughtfully considered. Even questions of who is or is not an actual pledge-signing/dues-paying member, who votes, who does the contingen-
103
cy planning can be explosive if the structure of the group is not clearly defined and agreed-upon. Attempts to make the structure flexible enough for members of the group who believe that all decisions must be reached by consensus are often doomed to failure. Zap action groups can work by consensus, national organizations cannot. In addition, personal risk questions involved in nonviolent militancy and direct action can be problematic for many women. This poses a special challenge to organizers who want to provide many alternatives for the participation of women. Many women who want to make a contribution to the work of the group may not choose to take part in activities culminating in arrest or imprisonment yet would be willing to participate in other phases of a civil disobedience action. Each woman must make her own decision regarding possible arrest/imprisonment; the organization’s responsibility is to provide emotional, financial, and legal support for that decision as well as basic CD training. In civil disobedience/direct action planning, momentum is hard to maintain. It may become a question of “topping” each action and escalating the level of risk. On the one hand, it’s a challenge to just how creative you can be; on the other hand, it may not allow time to evaluate past actions. A danger signal for groups organizing civil disobedience actions involves growing levels of fatigue and frustration if the goal sought seems no closer and the actions undertaken seem to have little effect. As this danger level mounts, it inevitably has an effect on the tactics proposed to implement the group’s strategy. It is a very pressurized situation which can often erupt into devastating arguments over what is or is not an effective tactic that will bring you closer to your goal. 1982 began with a growing sense of frustration and fatigue. Time was running out for the ERA and differences of opinion as to the effectiveness of proposed tactics began to surface. But we continued sponsoring civil disobedience actions. To protest the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ involvement in opposition to the ERA and Mormon Judge Marion Callister’s anti-ERA court decision, 30 members of the CU chained shut the main gates of the Mormon Temple in Kensington, Maryland on Carrie Chapman
104
PAM ELAM
Catt's birthday, January 9. The CU action blocked access to the temple, the largest in the U.S. outside Utah, for nearly an hour until the Temple President Wendell Eames gave in to CU demands to come to the gates and listen to our ERA statements. On Alice Paul's birthday, January 11, over 50 CU members braved wind chill temperatures of twenty degrees below zero in Lafayette Park to express "the burning indignation of women" by burning effigies of President Reagan and Mormon Judge CaUister. This action was patterned on the February 9, 1919 protest of President Wilson's failure to support woman suffrage by the militant suffragists who burned him in effigy in Lafayette Park. Seventeen CU women were arrested for blocking traffic. The last CU sponsored action of civil disobedience was conducted by the Congressional Union's Washington, DC Chapter on February 15, 1982, the anniversary of Susan B. Anthony's birthday. Twenty-four CU women were arrested; ten were arrested for scaling the north fence of the White House in an attempt to deliver ERA letters and petitions to President Reagan and fourteen were arrested for blocking traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue renamed "Susan B. Anthony Boulevard." As plans for our February 15th Susan B. Anthony Day action at the White House were being made, fundamental issues over group identity, structure, and tactics were coming to the fore. With over a year of nonstop direct actions conducted primarily by the same CU women (many of whom had to travel great distances to each CU event in the Washington, DC area), who also had to juggle the added responsibilities of jobs and family, fatigue and frustration were inevitable. Issues, which in a calmer atmosphere might have been resolved, now appeared insurmountable. In such situations there is a dangerous tendency to let the media dictate your tactics. The media have, in general, always ridiculed women and misrepresented women's direct actions. Even in the best of cases, reporters are rarely willing to do the necessary background work to cover a nonviolently militant act of civil disobedience for women's rights. Even though we constantly provided media kits explaining the purpose and historical
base of each CU action, reporters rarely even read the material. There also was the constant question of whether anything we did nonviolently would be considered "news" by the media. Yet the media would, in large measure, control how our actions would be perceived by others and perception is key to the success of any undertaking. The women of the Congressional Union sought to create actions of affirmation that spotlighted women as positive, strong, and in control of their own destinies. We aimed for actions which empowered women. In the closing months of the ERA campaign, it could be argued that the perception of women's nonviolently militant actions turned from acts of affirmation into acts of desperation. This issue of perception finally led to a split in the Congressional Union over tactics. After the CU action on February 15, 1982, the continuing differences over tactics led to a parting of the ways. Suggestions for ERA actions involving the destruction of public property (similar to the tactics of the Pankhursts in the English Suffragette campaign for the vote) were now being made and it seemed only a matter of time until such actions occurred/ It was the opinion of a vast majority of the members of the CU Executive and Advisory Committees that such actions so close to the June 30th ratification deadline would be perceived as acts of desperation rather than acts of affirmation and that such tactics would not be effective in the fight for ERA. In addition, they felt that such actions were directed mainly toward gaining media attention or arose out of a total sense of frustration rather than out of the underlying concept of nonviolent civil disobedience, and that such actions would be counter-productive. On the other hand, the women who went outside the framework of the CU to engage in defacing public property, hunger strikes, and other acts of militant protest for the ERA were persuaded that these actions were necessary and consistent with the tradition of suffrage militancy. The Congressional Union has survived to do further work in support of the ERA and other women's issues, but has staged no other acts of civil disobedience/direct action. It is hoped that in the near future, the chance to try these tactics will come again. We have learned from our own history as an organiza-
Militant State of Mind
tion as well as from the history of our foremothers. We have learned that we must be clear about our organizational identity, structure, and message at the outset. We have learned that the incredible strain of working under limitations of time, energy, and money can create inevitable tensions and differences. We have learned that relatively few women will make a commitment to women-first politics and that it is unrealistic to expect large numbers of women to join such an effort. We have learned that we have a long way to go in reaching out to all women and in fighting to overcome racism, homophobia, classism, ageism, and discrimination based on religion or physical disability. We have learned that in a very short time with little money and few members we could still achieve attention to the issue we were fighting for and show that women were serious, determined, and tired of waiting for the justice and equality we deserve. We have learned that we as women must challenge each other to go farther, be stronger, be braver and at the same time respect the differences of opinion which may come from the interaction of such strong, brave women. We have learned that when nonviolent civil disobedience actions work, there is nothing more powerful, more empowering, or more energizing and effective in working for social change.
105
ENDNOTES I. Eventually, the CU membership was drawn primarily from (a) disenchanted NOW (National Organization for Women) members who felt that NOW was moving too cautiously and conservatively; (b) women of faith who were bitterly disillusioned with their churches’ anti-woman attitudes (Mormons and Catholics) and women of faith who had a history of being inwlved in social issues(Quakers and Methodists); and (c) studems of women’s history and historians who saw the potential of this approach to social change. 2. The summer of 1980 had been spent contacting NOW and the NWP and offering to work through their groups in order to restore a militant state of mind to the women’s movement. The national leadership of NOW simply ignored us with the implied message that NOW had its own way of working for the ERA and that He were misguided at best. The ultra-conservative NWP leadership found our proposals very threatening; they viewed the legacy of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns as a kind of historical relic rather than as a living, energizing political heritage. 3. Three Congressional Union members of the CU Northwest Chapter were arrested at Seattle’s Federal Building as they and fifty other women demonstrated in support of our White House action on August 26. [Ed. now These actions of the Congressional Union in 1981 were preceded by similar actions when women chained themselves at Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC on August 26, 1980 and ar the Mormon Temple in Bellewe, Washington, on November 17.1980.1 4. In the final months of the ERA campaign, protests involving the defacing of public property and hunger strikes were initiated in Illinois. On July I, 1982, women in Washington, DC defaced public property to mark the death of the ERA.
0277-5395/89 $3.00 ÷ .00 ~. 1989 Pergamon Press plc
THE MILITANT STATE OF MIND ORGANIZING THE CONGRESSIONAL UNION, INC. PAM ELAM New York. U.S.A.
Synopsis-This article discusses the experiences of the Congressional Union (CU), a U.S. organization formed in 1980 to recapture the spirit of U.S. militant suffragists. Through civil disobedience actions primarily at the White House, the CU attempted to seize the offensive and to change the political dynamics in the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment. Based on an analysis of the CU's organizing efforts, the article suggests organizational and tactical questions to be considered in forming feminist direct action groups.
In 1980, a half dozen women from the Sarah Lawrence College Women's History and Women's Studies Programs organized the Congressional Union (CU).' Named in honor of the militant women's suffrage group created by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns which split with the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1914 and later became the National Woman's Party (NWP), the new Congressional Union was formed to recapture the spirit of those courageous women. The historical parallels between the drive to enact the woman suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the struggle to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment were striking. The Congressional Union wanted to learn from history and to build creatively upon it. We certainly did not want to repeat the major mistakes of the suffragists-the exclusion of women of color from the suffrage campaign and the failure to integrate all • women's issues into suffragist platforms/perspectives. We wanted the CU to represent the diversity o f womankind and to be a multiissue group, even though our initial actions would focus on the Equal Rights Amendment due to the June 30, 1982 deadline for ratification. A May 20, 1916 editorial in the CU-NWP newspaper, The Suffragist, said, "One thing is plain. If women do not put their freedom first, no one else will do so." The new CU membership pledge put it this way: "Traditionally, as women, we have been taught to place the needs and concerns of others ahead of our own. The members of the Congres101
sional Union believe in a woman-first political strategy and will work nonviolently to implement it." This woman-first philosophy was soon to become as controversial as the civil disobedience actions we proposed. Time and again we were accused of ignoring the "really important" issues of the day (control of nuclear weapons, intervention in Central America, racism, classism). We responded, time after time, that a feminist vision of the world is inclusive not exclusive. Women's issues inelude all of the concerns just cited and m o r e - l i k e fighting homophobia, ageism, and other forms of discrimination. Militant suffragist Doris Stevens once wrote that "militancy is as much a state of mind, an approach to a task, as it is the commission of deeds of protest." It was that militant state of mind that we wanted to bring back to the women's movement, that fire, that pride, that passion. Our actions would be directed every bit as much to the women already in the feminist movement as to the press, the politicians, and the general public. The most important contribution which the suffrage militants made to the campaign for the 19th Amendment was to seize the offensive. They shifted the focus of the suffrage argument from appeals to action. The militant state of mind centered the potential power to achieve change for women within the soul of each woman. That was the historic message the women of the CU wanted to bring to the women's movement of the 1980s. For a new group having little money, few
102
PAMELAM
members, and facing a June 30, 1982 deadline for ERA ratification, the odds were against us as we began planning our first actions in the fall of 1980. The leadership of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the National Woman's Party (NWP) were unsympathetic, and the political climate, with a right-wing resurgence, was hostile.' However, we were making contact with interested groups and individuals from across the nation through letters, articles, and announcements in the feminist press about the formation of our new Congressional Union. We began hearing from women who were anxious to join such a nonviolent, militant struggle and from nationally-known women in the movement who were willing to lend their names to our Advisory Committee in a show of support. Our first actions were simple and direct. On January 19, 1981, the day before Ronald Reagan's inauguration as President, one hundred CU women marched around the White House in support of the ERA and in silent tribute to the women who have come before us. This silent procession sought to serve as the formal announcement of the rebirth of militancy in the women's movement and to recapture the spirit of the March 3, 1913 woman suffrage procession organized by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, held on the eve of Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, which recharged the campaign for the vote. On February 4, 1981, the CU began an ERA picketing campaign at the gates of the White House based upon the silent sentinel woman suffrage picketing campaign of the militants which began at the White House on January 10, 1917. The CU ERA picketing at the White House continued every Wednesday and from June 3rd on expanded to include a coalition of other women's groups. Our first act of civil disobedience occurred at the July 4, 1981 CU celebration of National Women's Independence Day at the White House. The theme of this July 4th celebration.was "Relighting Feminist Fires," referring not only to the burning of antiwoman statements in the tradition of the suffragists, but also to the fires burning in each of us, fires of the spirit, of activism, of commitment, of sisterhood. Five hundred women participated in the celebration, which was held despite a blinding rain storm. Those
present signed a Women's Declaration of Independence calling for the inalienable rights of women (including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; justice and equality under the law; control over our lives and our bodies; and freedom from violence) and for implementation of the 1977 National Women's Conference Plan of Action. We heard inspiring speeches by Gloria Steinem (MS. magazine), Sonia Johnson (Mormons for ERA), Gracia Molina Pick (Comision Feminil Mexicana Nacional), Charlotte Bunch (National Gay Task Force), Czerni Brasuell (Third World Center, Princeton University), among others, and music by Margie Adam. The first step of our nonviolent, militant campaign was taken when 50 women, led by Sonia Johnson, blocked traffic across Pennsylvania Avenue by joining hands and kneeling in the street. Excited by the response to this July 4th event, we began planning for an even bigger CU action on August 26, 1981 (Women's Equality Day), the 61st anniversary of the ratification of the woman suffrage amendment to the constitution. We staged a demonstration at the White House under the banner "Without ERA All Women Are In Chains." Twenty CU women were arrested during this action, which included speeches, songs, and picketing, as well as civil disobedience. Prior to their arrest for blocking traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue, the CU women chained themselves to the White House fence and held a sit-in in the White House driveway as over one hundred CU supporters looked on. This August 26 action gained considerable attention. Photographs of women chained to the White House fence in support of the ERA appeared in newspapers and magazines as well as on television news programs all across the country) In October of 1981, CU members attended the national conventions of both the National Woman's Party and the National Organization for Women. The NWP leadership refused to let us participate even though we were dues-paying members, but the NOW convention saw over 700 women attend two CU workshops on direct action tactics. On November 11, in honor of Abigail Adams's Birthday and the November 12th Birthday of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, CU women lit watch fires for freedom at the
Militant State of Mind
White House and in Lafayette Park, just as the suffragists did over sixty years ago. While the CU “Watchfires for Equality” blazed across the evening sky. Congressional Union members burned President Ronald Reagan’s meaningless words on equality, just as the suffragists burned President Woodrow Wilson’s speeches on democracy. On December 17 at the national Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Washington, DC, CU women staged a “No Celebration Without Ratification” protest in support of ERA. As the CU began growing in terms of members and influence so did our organizational problems. The most crucial problem involved our organizational identity. Early in the existence of the CU, feminist theorist Charlotte Bunch, a member of our Advisory and later Executive Committee, posed a fundamental question which our group was never able to fully resolve. She asked what kind of organization we wanted the Congressional Union to be: a national organization with a multi-issue focus -a more radical alternative to NOW-or a smaller, single-issue “zap action” group primarily engaged in civil disobedience actions? Our group, rather schizophrenically, was attempting to operate as both, to be all things to all feminists. Another problem, which all groups face, was the challenge of choosing a flexible yet effective structure. Many feminists view formal structure with great distaste, if not downright hostility. Yet there must be some up-front, agreed-upon guidelines for conducting the business and carrying out the purpose of the organization, particularly when it is something as serious and potentially dangerous as civil disobedience/direct action. There has to be some accountability, some clear understanding of where the responsibilities lie. Questions of forming a notfor-profit corporation to meet issues of legal liability in case of accidents, of obtaining the necessary tax status so that financial contributions to the group are tax deductible, of providing information to women interested in forming chapters in their home areas, or of coordinating activities and communicating with a membership extending across the nation all have to be carefully and thoughtfully considered. Even questions of who is or is not an actual pledge-signing/dues-paying member, who votes, who does the contingen-
103
cy planning can be explosive if the structure of the group is not clearly defined and agreed-upon. Attempts to make the structure flexible enough for members of the group who believe that all decisions must be reached by consensus are often doomed to failure. Zap action groups can work by consensus, national organizations cannot. In addition, personal risk questions involved in nonviolent militancy and direct action can be problematic for many women. This poses a special challenge to organizers who want to provide many alternatives for the participation of women. Many women who want to make a contribution to the work of the group may not choose to take part in activities culminating in arrest or imprisonment yet would be willing to participate in other phases of a civil disobedience action. Each woman must make her own decision regarding possible arrest/imprisonment; the organization’s responsibility is to provide emotional, financial, and legal support for that decision as well as basic CD training. In civil disobedience/direct action planning, momentum is hard to maintain. It may become a question of “topping” each action and escalating the level of risk. On the one hand, it’s a challenge to just how creative you can be; on the other hand, it may not allow time to evaluate past actions. A danger signal for groups organizing civil disobedience actions involves growing levels of fatigue and frustration if the goal sought seems no closer and the actions undertaken seem to have little effect. As this danger level mounts, it inevitably has an effect on the tactics proposed to implement the group’s strategy. It is a very pressurized situation which can often erupt into devastating arguments over what is or is not an effective tactic that will bring you closer to your goal. 1982 began with a growing sense of frustration and fatigue. Time was running out for the ERA and differences of opinion as to the effectiveness of proposed tactics began to surface. But we continued sponsoring civil disobedience actions. To protest the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ involvement in opposition to the ERA and Mormon Judge Marion Callister’s anti-ERA court decision, 30 members of the CU chained shut the main gates of the Mormon Temple in Kensington, Maryland on Carrie Chapman
104
PAM ELAM
Catt's birthday, January 9. The CU action blocked access to the temple, the largest in the U.S. outside Utah, for nearly an hour until the Temple President Wendell Eames gave in to CU demands to come to the gates and listen to our ERA statements. On Alice Paul's birthday, January 11, over 50 CU members braved wind chill temperatures of twenty degrees below zero in Lafayette Park to express "the burning indignation of women" by burning effigies of President Reagan and Mormon Judge CaUister. This action was patterned on the February 9, 1919 protest of President Wilson's failure to support woman suffrage by the militant suffragists who burned him in effigy in Lafayette Park. Seventeen CU women were arrested for blocking traffic. The last CU sponsored action of civil disobedience was conducted by the Congressional Union's Washington, DC Chapter on February 15, 1982, the anniversary of Susan B. Anthony's birthday. Twenty-four CU women were arrested; ten were arrested for scaling the north fence of the White House in an attempt to deliver ERA letters and petitions to President Reagan and fourteen were arrested for blocking traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue renamed "Susan B. Anthony Boulevard." As plans for our February 15th Susan B. Anthony Day action at the White House were being made, fundamental issues over group identity, structure, and tactics were coming to the fore. With over a year of nonstop direct actions conducted primarily by the same CU women (many of whom had to travel great distances to each CU event in the Washington, DC area), who also had to juggle the added responsibilities of jobs and family, fatigue and frustration were inevitable. Issues, which in a calmer atmosphere might have been resolved, now appeared insurmountable. In such situations there is a dangerous tendency to let the media dictate your tactics. The media have, in general, always ridiculed women and misrepresented women's direct actions. Even in the best of cases, reporters are rarely willing to do the necessary background work to cover a nonviolently militant act of civil disobedience for women's rights. Even though we constantly provided media kits explaining the purpose and historical
base of each CU action, reporters rarely even read the material. There also was the constant question of whether anything we did nonviolently would be considered "news" by the media. Yet the media would, in large measure, control how our actions would be perceived by others and perception is key to the success of any undertaking. The women of the Congressional Union sought to create actions of affirmation that spotlighted women as positive, strong, and in control of their own destinies. We aimed for actions which empowered women. In the closing months of the ERA campaign, it could be argued that the perception of women's nonviolently militant actions turned from acts of affirmation into acts of desperation. This issue of perception finally led to a split in the Congressional Union over tactics. After the CU action on February 15, 1982, the continuing differences over tactics led to a parting of the ways. Suggestions for ERA actions involving the destruction of public property (similar to the tactics of the Pankhursts in the English Suffragette campaign for the vote) were now being made and it seemed only a matter of time until such actions occurred/ It was the opinion of a vast majority of the members of the CU Executive and Advisory Committees that such actions so close to the June 30th ratification deadline would be perceived as acts of desperation rather than acts of affirmation and that such tactics would not be effective in the fight for ERA. In addition, they felt that such actions were directed mainly toward gaining media attention or arose out of a total sense of frustration rather than out of the underlying concept of nonviolent civil disobedience, and that such actions would be counter-productive. On the other hand, the women who went outside the framework of the CU to engage in defacing public property, hunger strikes, and other acts of militant protest for the ERA were persuaded that these actions were necessary and consistent with the tradition of suffrage militancy. The Congressional Union has survived to do further work in support of the ERA and other women's issues, but has staged no other acts of civil disobedience/direct action. It is hoped that in the near future, the chance to try these tactics will come again. We have learned from our own history as an organiza-
Militant State of Mind
tion as well as from the history of our foremothers. We have learned that we must be clear about our organizational identity, structure, and message at the outset. We have learned that the incredible strain of working under limitations of time, energy, and money can create inevitable tensions and differences. We have learned that relatively few women will make a commitment to women-first politics and that it is unrealistic to expect large numbers of women to join such an effort. We have learned that we have a long way to go in reaching out to all women and in fighting to overcome racism, homophobia, classism, ageism, and discrimination based on religion or physical disability. We have learned that in a very short time with little money and few members we could still achieve attention to the issue we were fighting for and show that women were serious, determined, and tired of waiting for the justice and equality we deserve. We have learned that we as women must challenge each other to go farther, be stronger, be braver and at the same time respect the differences of opinion which may come from the interaction of such strong, brave women. We have learned that when nonviolent civil disobedience actions work, there is nothing more powerful, more empowering, or more energizing and effective in working for social change.
105
ENDNOTES I. Eventually, the CU membership was drawn primarily from (a) disenchanted NOW (National Organization for Women) members who felt that NOW was moving too cautiously and conservatively; (b) women of faith who were bitterly disillusioned with their churches’ anti-woman attitudes (Mormons and Catholics) and women of faith who had a history of being inwlved in social issues(Quakers and Methodists); and (c) studems of women’s history and historians who saw the potential of this approach to social change. 2. The summer of 1980 had been spent contacting NOW and the NWP and offering to work through their groups in order to restore a militant state of mind to the women’s movement. The national leadership of NOW simply ignored us with the implied message that NOW had its own way of working for the ERA and that He were misguided at best. The ultra-conservative NWP leadership found our proposals very threatening; they viewed the legacy of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns as a kind of historical relic rather than as a living, energizing political heritage. 3. Three Congressional Union members of the CU Northwest Chapter were arrested at Seattle’s Federal Building as they and fifty other women demonstrated in support of our White House action on August 26. [Ed. now These actions of the Congressional Union in 1981 were preceded by similar actions when women chained themselves at Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC on August 26, 1980 and ar the Mormon Temple in Bellewe, Washington, on November 17.1980.1 4. In the final months of the ERA campaign, protests involving the defacing of public property and hunger strikes were initiated in Illinois. On July I, 1982, women in Washington, DC defaced public property to mark the death of the ERA.