GIVETHEGIFT of Glory, Guts& Glee! Give Tickets to Live Theatre a t its Best! For as little as $30 CALL 467-6000 P E R F O R M A N C E C A LEN D A R DECEMBER 3 - 1 3 W ITHO UT LAW, W ITHO UT HEAVEH A multi-media music/theatre performance based on the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the trial of the Gang of Four. Created by Norman Durkee and Ping Chong. JA N U A R Y 1 0 - 1 1 1 2 M INUTES M A X - A PERFORMANCE EXH IB IT IO N The Winter edition of the ongoing showcase of original and in-progress performance pieces. JA N U A R Y 2 2 - 2 3 IN TERM ISS IO N IMPOSS IBLE A non-stop performance celebration of On the Boards' 9th Anniversary, featuring more than a dozen different performers each night. FEBRUARY 4 - 7 * STEPHEN PETRON IO COMPANY The daring New York choreographer who's turning heads in the dance world makes his Seattle debut. M A R C H 1 0 - 1 3 * PSYCHO OPERA A frantic multi-media performance from Solo L.A. performer/vocalist John Fleck and Director David Schweizer. A P R IL 7 - 1 0 * PAT ORANEY An evening of new work by the Seattle choreog- rapher/director that HIGH PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE calls "one reason name acts from out of town have an increasingly difficult time looking good in comparison to Seattle work." M A Y 5 - 8 * NEED TO KNOW NEEDCOMPANY, an explosive Belgian theatre ensemble takes a controversial and theatrical look at U.S. politics abroad. M A Y /J U N E 1 9 8 8 NORTHWEST NEW WORKS FESTIVAL The region's only annual festival of contemporary performance works. ( * = PART OF THE NEW PERFORMANCE SERIES) THE GROUP THEATRE COMPANY PRESENTS Conceived & Directed by RUBENSIERRA Musical Director SUZANNEGRANT IN THE INTIMAN PLAYHOUSE AT THE SEATTLE CENTER NOV. 28 THRU DEC. 27 CALL-543-4327 2 Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1987 THE GROUP THEATER COMPANY PRESENTS AN AMERICAN FARCE BY STEVE TESICH. DIRECTED BY JOHN SCHWAB. OPENS NOV. 19. FOR TICKETS CALL 543 -4327 OR 628 -0888 (TICKETMASTER)
VOL. 9 NO. 4 L‘T;’ WINTER 1987 ^ ■ h s.v & A ^Zo-Editors David Milholland Lenny Dee Associate Editors Jim Blashfield, Paul Loeb Washington State Coordinator Judy Hines Bevis Art Director David Milholland Designers Candace Bieneman, Tim Braun, Reed Darmon Proofreader Walt Curtis Contributing Artists Margaret Chodos-Irvine, Stephen Leflar, Carel Moisiewitsch, Musicmaster, Isaac Shamsud-Din, Lisa Stone, Melinda Thorsnes Account Representatives — Washington Cameron Hopkins, Philip Minehan Oregon Rhonda Kennedy Ad Production Robert Williamson, Stacey Fletcher, Lisa Springer, Qualitype Typesetting Harrison Typesetting, Inc., Luria Dickson, Lee Emmett, Marmilmar, Qualitype Camerawork Laura Di Trapani, Craftsman Lithoplate, Inc. Cover Photographer Bill Bachhuber Cover Separations Portland Prep Center, Inc. Printing Tuala !n-Yamhill Press Editorial Assistant Margaret M. Dunn Thanks Judy & Stew Albert, Dave Ball, Randy Clark, Helen DeMichiel, Dru Duniway, Jeannine Edelblut, Anne Hughes, Maria Kahn, Craig Karp, Lawrence Gallery, Deborah Levin, Peggy Lindquist, Kimbark MacColl, David Madson, Julie Mancini, Theresa Marquez, Melissa Marsland, Doug Milholland, Kevin Mulligan, Julie Phillips, Sherry Prowda, Jeremy Rice, Julie Ristau, Missy Stewart, Sandy Wallsmith, John Wanberg, The Clinton 500 W ON THE COVER As the winter rains settle into the Pacific Northwest, erasing all The Snap Revolution— James Fenton On the scene in Manila as Marcos falls. Was he tripped or did he pull the strings? Women, Feminism & Social Justice—Sevin Hirschbein A look at the state of current feminism and how feminists can build coalitions and produce needed change. Cover image: “Sunday at the Alibi.” Art- ist Melinda Thorsnes, a native and resi- dent of Portland, studied at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. She’s had re- png cent one-person shows in Philadelphia ! ; >jp and Portland. In Seattle she’s repre- sented by the Lynn McAllister Gallery, p/i-j This is a self-portrait. i r ?1 The Clinton St. Quarterly is published in Oregon, Washington and National editions by CSQ—A Project of Out of the Ashes Press. Oregon address: P.O. Box 3588 , Po rtland , OR 9 7 20 8—(503) 222-6039. Washington address: 1520 K Western Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101— ^ 2 0 6 ) 682 -2404 . Unless otherw ise Tnoted , all contents copyright ®1987 g Clinton St^Quarterly. ml mi mi mi IK<H Iv.i’i1 ?: * &» ■ m // w ' Monodological JusticeMark Schoofs A philosophical inquiry into the way of thinking that condemns a far higher ratio of blacks to death for murder than whites. Si memory of the drought, a siege mentality seeps into our bones. In many cases people become distinctly para- n o id . In o th e r s , th e o p p o s i te emerges—a need to settle accounts, smite the devil and expose villains. With the greyness filling our souls, it ’s u n d e rs ta n d a b le , bu t i t can be irresponsible. A surprising case emerged a few weeks ago. Willamette Week, a Portland newspaper of generally liberal disposition, unveiled a heavy attack on Michael Stoops, who has worked for years with the down and out, and created something of a one-man empire of the poor. In years previous he has been deeply involved in anti-draft counseling. In short, he’s been a very effective activist. He spent this past winter in Washington D.C., living outside in protest of federal policies toward the homeless. On his return, having moved Congress, he was treated as a conquering hero. Heroes are never perfect. None of us are. Few of us rise to prominence, however. This past year has seen a series of revelations exposing to public scrutiny the private lives of such national figures as Senators Hart and Biden, judges Bork and Ginsberg and TVangelist Bakker. Gary Hart even had the affrontery to ask the media to find him out. It’s become a field day for the press, with the Miami Herald, the NY wl ’ll See America— ’ \ Musicmaster / \ A roadmap for the open-minded adventurer. Why leave home when so many things are up in the air. A Call for Economic Justice For All—Rev. Jesse Jackson^ f Opening the “progressive coalition” to all those Americans who wonder why they're falling behind during our nat io n ’s longest period of economic recovery. R p i Between the Covers Brief takes from writers and presses of the West. Break Dancing in the Lam o f j Sandino—Patty Somlo Michael Jackson meets the Sandinistas on their stomping grounds. The beat goes on; the Revolution learns to pop and sway. ww vw Times and your hometown rag competing face up with the gutter tabloids. So when Willamette Week unveiled Mr. Stoops’ “ pedophilia,” a charge largely based on claims of disgruntled ex-employees, every local TV station and even i t ’s slow-moving competitor, the Oregonian, rushed into the fray with claws bared. The serious underlying charge, abuse of authority, is of course deserving of scrutiny. In this period, however, with the AIDS epidemic bringing homophobia out of the closet, the timing is suspicious. Now, apparently, homosexual behavior is fa ir game. “ Good people” are of course sympathetic to the plight of AIDS victims, but with rare exceptions, public policy has remained dormant as the disease ravaged the gay community. In Portland, no less than any U.S. city, hundreds of young men survive by going to “ The Wall,” but no family newspaper has seen fit to exam- ine the p l igh t of those inv is ib le victims. S im ilar a llega t ions aga inst Mr. Stoops were dismissed three years ago, but no media outlet saw f it to bring the case forth then. It does seem odd that the story appears just as Baloney Joe’s, Mr. Stoops' most visible project, has put down i t ’s first payment on a building that would bring that home of the homeless back into the downtown core area. What better time to sully if not destroy the reputation of the project’s figurehead and J ’S >21 >- ; v w ; S T OI-*.The Motorcycle Accident— Walt Curtis A Christmas story of life pulled from the abyss. % Max—Rick Mitchell§ Max Gordon, owner of the world’s greatly est jazz club, the Village Vanguard, % fondly reminisces on youth in the North- $ west and success in the Big Apple E principal fundraiser. This kind of attack threatens us all. It effectively eliminates not only homosexuals but anyone who has ever used illicit substances, had an abortion, or ever taken an unsafe political position, from the public forum. It encourages only the most circumspect, and thus the blandest, to speak out or run for office. It virtually guarantees mediocrity in our political process, something we can at no time afford. In the meantime, my cousin, a lovely young woman in her mid-thirties, is ravaged with the Elephant Man’s disease, neurofibromatosis. She’s had literally dozens of operations to remove tumors, two of which involved major brain surgery. She's one of the thousands of young people who grew up in the Hanford area. Only now, 40 years after radioactivity began pouring into the sky and water, is the plight of her peers, who are suffering from cancer and other life-destroying diseases at rates far beyond the national norm, a concern of the media. There are dozens of similar situations to be exposed and explored, far more compelling than the private behavior of public individuals. We reap what we sow. It is a critical time to plant the seeds of hope, to struggle actively for a better world. Happy holidays. DM St. Quarterly—Winter, 1987 3
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{ J a m e s Fenton, who was present at the fall o f Saigon, found himself drawn to The PhillipinesJust as President Marcos called a “snap election. ” Though disappointed to be there with the rest o f the world press, Fenton pursued his own storg and suddenly found himself a part o f the most exciting chapter o f recent Phillipine history. This excerpt is from the tail o f a much longer account which appeared in Granta 18, copyright ®1986, Granta Publications Ltd., 44a Hobson Street, Cambridge, England. Reprinted with permission. Maximum Tolerance 1 1 arcos,” said the taxi-man, “ is in Guam.” “ Bullshit,” I replied. “ I saw him on the television late last night. About one-thirty. He can’t be already in Guam.” “ It was probably a recording,” said the taxi-man. He was the type I would normally have assumed to be working for the secret service. “So where did you get this information?” “Oh,” he said conspiratorially, “military sources.” He tuned in to the rebel radio. Unconfirmed reports, said a voice, have it that Marcos has been seen arriving in Guam. “ I think we’d better go to Malacahang as quickly as possible,” I said. The soldiers at the gates were wearing white arm-bands. Journalists had been asking them what these were for, but the soldiers weren’t talking. Everyone looked faintly shifty. I met an old colleague I’d last seen in Korea. “ You’ve heard of course,” he said, “ Marcos is already in Guam.” He had some more convincing details. We asked the commanding officer if we could come in. By now a small crowd had gathered and the soldiers were getting nervous. They moved us 6 Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1987 gently back down the street as a couple of limousines came in through the gates. Then a very confident journalist arrived and said to the commanding officer: “ General Ramos has called us to a press conference here. Perhaps you will let us through.” The man let us through and through we rushed. “What was that?” we asked this fine man. “Oh,” he said, “ I made it up. I was just bullshitting him. Something very odd was happening. Where the vegetable garden had been (it had been planted on Imelda’s instructions, as part of some pet scheme), they were now laying a lawn. And the sculpture garden too—all the concrete statues were being smashed and carried away. The workers watched us as we passed. There were tanks by the next gate, and the security check was still in operation. “ It ’s extraordinary, isn’t it,” someone said, “ the way they keep going on as if nothing had happened. That platform— they must have been told to put it up for the inauguration. Now Marcos has gone and they’re still putting it up.” As we came through security, a voice began to speak over the public address. It was giving instructions to the military to confine itself to the use of small arms in dealing with attacks. It was outlining Marcos’s supposed policy of the whole election campaign—Maximum Tolerance. “Whose voice is that?” I asked. “ It’s Marcos. It must be a recording.” We ran up the grand staircase and turned right into the ante-room. And there saj Marcos himself, with Imelda and the family all around him) and three or four generals to the right. They had chosen the ante-room rather than the main hall, for there were only a few journalists and cameramen, and yesterday’s great array of military men was nowhere to be seen. I looked very closely at Marcos and thought: it isn’t him. It looked like Som ebod y asked Marcos whether he was going to leave the country. “No, ” he said, “as you can see, we are all still here. ” And as he said these words he turned round to discover that there was absolutely nobody standing behind him.
ectoplasm. Like the Mighty Mekon. It was talking in a precise and legalistic way, which contrived to sound both lucid and utterly nonsensical. It had its left hand under the table, and I watched the hand for a while to see whether it was being deliberately concealed. But it wasn’t. So Marcos was still hanging on. Indeed he was back in his calm, lawyer’s frame of mind. I remember somebody asking him whether he was going to go ahead with his inauguration the next day, as planned. Marcos replied that it was his duty to do so, as laid down by the constitution. The inauguration had to take place ten days after the proclamation by the National Assembly. If he’d been pressed any further in the matter he would have started quoting acfs and statutes. That part of his brain was functioning perfectly. The bit that wasn’t functioning, it appeared, was the bit that should have told him the game was up. At first I felt embarrassed, as if I had been caught red-handed by Marcos, trespassing in the palace. Then I felt embarrassed because, there being so few pressmen around, I might be expected to ask the president a question. And I i f AP Back to Malacanang Clinton St. Quarterly— Winter, 1987 7 couldn’t think of a thing to ask. People hovered around the microphone, and whispered to each other, “ D’you want to go next?” Very few people did. One journalist actually went to the side of the room, sat down and buried his head in his hands, as if overwhelmed by the irreality of the occasion. General Ver was quivering and in an evident panic. He stepped forward and asked for permission to bomb Camp Crame. There were two government F-5 jets circling over it, he said. (Just outside the palace someone had told me that the crowd at Camp Crame appeared to think that these jets were on their side, for they cheered every time the aircraft came over.) Marcos told Ver they were not to be used. Ver’s panic increased. “The air force, sir, is ready to attack were the civilians to leave the vicinity of Camp Crame immediately, Mr. President. That’s why I come here on your orders so we can immediately strike them. We have to immobilize the helicopters that they g o t . ” (Marcos had sent he licop te r gunships against the camp, but the pilots had come out waving white flags and joined the rebels.) Marcos broke in with tired impatience, as if this had been going on all through the night and He was sick and tired of Ver. “ My order is not to attack. No, no, no. Hold on; not to attack.” Ver was going wild. “Our negotiations and our prior dialogue have not succeeded, Mr. President.” Marcos: “All I can say is that we may have to reach the point we may have to employ heavy weapons, but you will use the small weapons in hand or shoulder weapons in the meantime.” Ver said: “Our attack forces are being delayed.” The Christian Science Monitor, at my elbow, said: “This is absurd. It’s a Mutt- and-Jeff act.” Ver said: “There are many civilians I looked very closely at Marcos and thought: it isn’t him. It looked like ectoplasm. It was talking in a precise and legalistic way, which contrived to sound both lucid and utterly nonsensical. near our troops, and we cannot keep on withdrawing. We cannot withdraw all the time, Mr. President.” All this was being broadcast live on Channel Four, which Marcos could see on a monitor. Ver finally saluted, stepped backwards and left with the other officers. I forget who they were, just as Marcos, when he introduced them to us, had forgotten all their names and needed prompting. Now the family withdrew as well. An incident then occurred whose significance I didn’t appreciate at the time. The television began to emit white noise. A soldier stepped forward and fiddled with the knobs. The other channels were working, but Channel Four had been knocked off the air. The rebels had taken the government station, which Marcos must have realized. But he hardly batted an eyelid. It was as if the incident were some trivial disturbance, as if the television were simply on the blink. For me, the most sinister moment of the morning had been when Marcos said that if the rebels continued they would “ be chewed up by our roaming bands of loyal troops.” Someone asked why the troops at the gate were wearing white arm-bands. They had said, he told Marcos, that it meant they would surrender to the rebels. Marcos explained that this was not so. The arm-bands were a countersign. A soldier in the audience said that the countersign was red, white and blue. The questioner then said, “ No, these were plain white arm-bands.” Marcos said, a trifle quickly, “The colours are changed every day.” Somebody asked him whether he was going to leave the country. “ No,” he said, “ as you can see, we are all still here.” And as he said these words he turned round to discover that there was absolutely nobody standing behind him. s I came within view of the palace I saw that people were climbing over the railing, and just as I caught up with them a gate flew open. Everyone was pouring in and making straight for the old Budget Office. It suddenly occurred to me that very few of them knew where the palace itself was. Documents were flying out of the office and the crowd was making whoopee. I began to run. One of the columnists had written a couple of days before that he had once asked his grandmother about the Revolution of 1896. What had it been like? She had replied: “A lot of running.” So in his family they had always referred to those days as the Time of Running. It seemed only appropriate that, for the second time that day, I should be running through Imelda ’s old vegetable patch. The turf C an da ce B ie ne m an
looked sorrier than ever. We ran over the polystyrene boxes which had once contained the chicken dinners, past the sculpture garden, past where people were jumping up and down on the armoured cars, and up onto the platform from where we had watched Marcos on the balcony. Everyone stamped on the planks and I was amazed the whole structure didn’t collapse. We came to a side entrance and as we crowded in I felt a hand reach into my back pocket. I pulled the hand out and slapped it. The thief scurried away. I t was absolutely possible to believe that, instead o fjoining the revolution, Enrile and Ramos had hijacked it. And everyone was clearly still in the habit o f believing in the genius o f Marcos, however much they hated him. I t seemed to me that in every room / saw, practically on every available surface, there was a signed photograph o f Nancy Reagan. But this can hardly be literally true. I couldn’t believe I would be able to find the actual Marcos apartments, and I knew there was no point in asking. We went up some servants’ stairs, at the foot of which I remember seeing an opened crate with two large green jade plates. They were so large as to be vulgar. On the first floor a door opened, and we found ourselves in the great hall where the press conferences had been held. This was the one bit of the palace the crowd would recognize, as it had so often watched Marcos being televised from here. People rah and sat on his throne and began giving mock press-conferences, issuing orders in his deep voice, falling about with laughter or just gaping at the splendour of the room. It was all fully lit. Nobody had bothered, as. they left, to turn out the lights. I remembered that the first time I had been here, the day after the election, Imelda had slipped in and sat at the side. She must have come from that direction, I went to investigate. And now, for a short while, I was away from the crowd with just one other person, a shy and absolutely thunderstruck Filipino. We had found our way, we realized, into the Marcoses’ private rooms. There was a library, and my companion gazed in wonder at the leather-bound volumes while I admired the collection of art books all carefully cataloged and with their numbers on the seines. This was the reference library for Imelda’s worldwide collection of treasures. She must have thumbed through them thinking: I ’d like one of them, or I ’ve got a couple of them in New York, or That’s in our London house. And then there was the Blue Drawing Room with its twin portraits of the Marcoses, where I simply remember standing with my companion and saying, “ It’s beautiful, isn’t it.” It wasn’t that it was beautiful. It looked as if it had been purchased at Harrods. It was just that, after all the crowds and the riots, we had landed up in this peaceful, luxurious den. My companion had never seen anything like it. He didn’t take anything. He hardly dared touch the furnishings and trinkets. We both simply could not believe that we were there and the Marcoses weren’t. I wish I could remember it all better For instance, it seemed to me that in every room I saw, practically on every available surface, there was a signed photograph of Nancy Reagan. But this can hardly be literally true. It just felt as if there was a lot of Nancy in evidence. Another of the rooms had a grand piano. I sat down. “Can you play?” said my companion. “ A little,” I exaggerated. I can play Bach’s Prelude in C, and this is what I proceeded to do, but my companion had obviously hoped for something more racy. The keys were stiff. I wondered if the piano was brand new. A soldier came in, carrying a rifle, “ Please cooperate,” he said. The soldier looked just as overawed by the place as we were. We cooperated. When I returned down the service stairs, I noticed that the green jade plates had gone, but there was still some Evian water to be had. I was very thirsty, as it happened. But the revolution had asked me to cooperate. So I did. Outside, the awe had communicated itself to several members of the crowd. They stood by the fountain looking down at the coloured lights beneath the water, not saying anything. I went to the parapet and looked across the river. I thought: somebody’s still fighting; there are still some loyal troops. Then I thought: that’s crazy—they can’t have started fighting now. I realized that I was back in Saigon yet again. There indeed there had been fighting on the other side of the river. But here it was fireworks. The whole city was celebrating. That Morning-After Feeling Q ^ ^ i t t i n g at our table was a politician who had supported the Aquino campaign and who was now fuming: there had been no consu ltation with the UNIDO members of parliament about the formation of the new cabinet. He himself, he said, had told the Aquino supporters that he did not want a job. But they would find that they needed the cooperation of the parliament to establish the legitimacy of their new government. Parliament had proclaimed Marcos president. Parliament would therefore have to unproclaim him before Cory could be de jure as well as de facto head of state. She could have a revolutionary, de facto government if she wanted. But in that case her power was dependent on the military. She would be vu lne rab le . The po lit ic ian was haunted by the fear that corrupt figures would again be put in key positions, and that the whole thing would turn out to have been some kind or sordid switch. The television announcers were congratulating the nation on the success of People’s Power. But all three of us at the table were wondering how real People’s Power was. The previous night, Enrile had made a most extraordinary speech on the television. It had come in the form of a crude amateur video. It looked, in a way, like the plea of some kidnap victim, as if he were being forced to speak at gun-point. And what he had said was so strange that now, the morning after, I wondered whether I had dreamed it. So far I’d not met anyone else who had seen the broadcast. Enrile had begun, as far as I remember, by saying that Marcos was now in exile, and that he, Enrile, was sorry. He had not intended things to turn out this way. But he wanted to thank the President (he still called him the President) for not attacking the rebel soldiers when they first went to Camp Aguinaldo. At that time (and here I am referring to a partial text of the speech) “The military under his control, or the portion of the military under his control, had the firepower to inflict heavy damage on us.” But 8 Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1987
it did not do so. “And for that alone, I would like to express my gratitude to the President. As officers and men of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, we want to salute him for that act of compassion and kindness that he extended to us all.” I asked Helen and the po litic ian whether they had heard this, and they hadn’t. By coincidence, at that very moment, the television in the foyer broadcast an extract from the speech. The politician was shocked. “ He’s only been gone a few hours, and already the rehabilitation has begun.” I then tried out my theory on the others. When I had woken that morning, the theory was there, fully formed, in my head. In a way I had been quite startled to find it there, so complete and horrible. The theory went like this. We had all assumed that Marcos was losing touch with reality. In fact he had not lost his marbles at all. He had seen that he had to go, and that the only way out for a dictator of his kind was exile. The point was to secure the succession. It could not go to General Ver, but Marcos was under an obligation to Ver, and therefore he could not hand over the presidency to anybody else. In some way, whether explicitly or by a nod and a wink, he had told Enrile and Ramos: you may succeed me if you dare, but in order to do so you must overthrow me and Ver. You must rebel. If you do so, the bargain between us will be: I protect you from Ver, and you protect me; if you let me go with my family after my inauguration, I will permit you to rebel. Marcos was writing his legend again, and the legend was: he was the greatest president the Philippines had ever known. Then his most trusted son, Enrile, rebelled; Marcos could easily have put down the rebellion, but he still loved his son, he loved the Filipino people and he could not bear to shed their blood. It was a tragic and dignified conclusion. The theory explained why Marcos had shown himself, on the television, overruling Ver. It explained why there had been so little actual fighting. And it explained the striking fact that no rebel troops had been brought anywhere near the palace until after Marcos had left. I asked the politician what he thought, and his first reaction was: “ It’s too clever.” But then you could see the theory, with all its ramifications, getting a grip on him, until he said: “My God, I hope you’ re wrong.” Helen was prepared to believe the theory. When I put it to Fred, he brooded over it darkly. His own theory that day was slightly different. “ It was scripted,” he said, .“ the whole thing was scripted by social scientists.” His idea was that this was a copy-book peaceful revolution designed to be held up to other countries all around the world in order to dissuade people from taking up armed struggle. One way or another, the people I met the day after Marcos left were incapable of trusting the reality of the events they had witnessed. Not all of them believed the theory, but very few of them could muster a concrete argument against it. It was absolutely possible to believe that, instead of joining the revolution, Enrile and Ramos had hijacked it. And everyone was clearly still in the habit of believing in the genius of Marcos, however much they hated him. Of course by now it looks different. We know that the flight of Marcos could not have been a clever fix, because the question of Marcos’s wealth was obviously so badly botched. But still one could argue tha t the theory conta ins a core of atavistic truth. We know that Enrile, after he joined Cory’s camp, continued to think of Marcos as President. We know he felt he had to make a tribute to Marcos’s “ compassion and kindness.” The son saw that he had to kill the father. The father saw the son preparing to kill him. And he knew that this was inevitable. He knew that he had to die. Artist Margaret Chodos-lrvine lives in Seattle. 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Allegro! presents From Seattle: s Jeff Bickford and Dancers\ \ Jan 28-30, 1988 From San Francisco: Gregg Lizenbery in Men Dancing Feb 11-13, 1988 Present the picture of the artist from this ad at the box office for $1 off each ticket you purchase. Both shows at Broadway Performance Hall, 8 pm. Call 32-DANCE for reservations. crackerjack. SUPPORT YOUR FAVORITE & w r i t e r s BY SUBSCRIBING TO c s a AVALON FRAME-IT ON BROADWAY free parking NYPP #2 Columbia Center Monday - Friday 10-6 587-0381 Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1987 9
WOMEN , FEMINISM A N D SOCIAL JUSTICE: THE PRESENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS AN D THE ABSENCE OF A MOVEMENT crossed the barriers that traditionally hen we look at the sixties Women’s Movement from the prism o f the fifties, it appears to be immensely successful. Women now have abortion rights, whose importance cannot be overestimated in enabling women to take control o f their bodies and leave behind the dark age o f illegal abortions. It is true that under the Reagan administra- tion these rights are being threatened, federal funding for poor women cut, and state referendums used to cut state funding. Women, however, can still count on safe abortions. Women have also joined the work force in greater numbers; and many have excluded them from certain jobs and professions. There are more women doctors, lawyers, mail carriers and bus drivers than ever before. Women now constitute 46 percent of the work force. Affirmative Action legislation that secured these changes was the first fru it of the sixties Women’s and challenge the existing power dynamics between themselves and men, from the most intimate levels in sex and emotions to conventions such as male attendance to women in dating and romance that assumed female weakness and dependence. The nearly sacrosanct division of labor within the household began shifting. It became thinkable, even acceptable for fathers to mother, to take care of the house and children. Women also discovered each other and the slogan “ Sisterhood is Powerful” expressed both friendship and solidarity of Movement. It was also the Movement’s demands that provided the basis for agitation for equal pay for equal work, a living wage for women and finally, equal pay for comparable work. Successful litiga tion in the cases of female municipal workers against the city of San Jose (1981); International Union of Electrical Workers on behalf of some women workers against Westinghouse (1981); and the women employees against the State of Washington (1983) broke new g round towards wom en ’s wage equality. Yes, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was defeated; but some of the rights it proposed to guarantee were already in the books. The Equal Opportunity Act of 1972 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibit all sex discrimination in hiring, pay and promotion. Thus, during the recent Women’s Movement women gained legal equality in the marketplace. The sixties Women’s Movement also changed the landscape of consciousness. Before that time gender was not an issue, and the male domination of women was invisible and/or unquestioned. Subsequently, all aspects of life came under scrutiny. Women began to question women for women. These developments provided the impetus for discovering and recognizing women’s creative efforts and work. Long forgotten women authors such as Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Josephine Herbst were reprinted. A women’s renaissance began in literature, the arts, music, film, and the dance. Writers and artists such as Adrienne Rich, Marge Piercy, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Holly Near, Judy Chicago, and Lucy Lipard achieved national recognition. The sixties Women’s Movement also opened the way for feminist scholars who challenged the methods, standards and content of various disciplines—Gerda Lerner in History, the late Michele Risaldo in Anthropology, Nancy Chadarow in Psychoanalytic Theory, Evelyn Fox Keller in Natural Sciences, and Sandra Harding in Philosophy—among many others. Women’s perceptions, insights, experiences, feelings and thoughts are helping us envision a different future. Female consciousness, because of its proclivity for nurture, peace, feelings and relations, points us to a female future, if we are going to have a future at all. When we turn our gaze, however, and look at these developments from the prism of the mideighties, they appear to be less significant. As the focus of the Movement shifted from political and social struggles to the reformulation of consciousness and the celebration of female diversity, less and less women were drawn into Movement activity. It is revealing that in a 1984 New York Times poll, 65 percent of the women expressed the view that the Women’s Movement had not helped them, while only 26 percent claimed that it had. Though not all that reliable, such polls tell us that the majority of women do not identify with feminist aspirations and achievements. More serious criticism of the Women’s Movement, however, arises from the existing state of affairs. In the last decade, despite the impressive achievements of some women and even the general acceptance of some feminist terms, the actual and concrete conditions of women in both personal and social life have deteriorated. And the “ Movement” has remained more or less passive to this decline. No collective response has emerged against Reaganism, with its economic policies and ideological manipulations against the interests of the majority of women. Could the Women’s Movement at least partially be held responsible for this? Have our concerns in the Movement been wrongly defined and prioritized? Two books, Ruth Sidel’s Women and Children Last and Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s A Lesser Life, inform us about the worsening condition of women and help us to seek answers to these questions. Ruth Sidel points out that according to the Census Bureau, 1984,14.4 percent of all Americans—33.7 million people—live below the poverty line. The poverty rate for the female-headed households is 34.5 percent, a rate five times that of married couples. The statistics show that two out of three poor adults are women. Furthermore, the economic status of female-headed households continues to decline. These facts have given rise to the concept of the feminization of poverty, first coined by the sociologist Diana Pearce, Sidel tells us, and now widely used. In addition to the decline of the general economy and the discrimination of people according to class, race and age, there are specific causes that contribute to the impoverishment of women. These are: the weakening of the traditional family and the rapid growth in femaleheaded households; the “ dual-labor” market that discriminates against women; a welfare system that functions to keep the recipients below the poverty line; unpaid housework and childcare that competes with women’s earning potential; and the reduction and dismantling of programs that assist the poor. Women find themselves cast adrift and alone in a world that still regards them dependent upon and taken care of by men. Thus women’s economic and social conditions continue to deteriorate. Ruth Sidel wants new legislation that would alleviate the improverishment of women. She calls for a “ threepronged family policy” and proposes reforms in the areas of “work, universal family entitlements and the welfare system.” She prescribes that women make a living wage in jobs that traditionally belong to women; and every encouragement be given to women to enter traditionally male-dominated jobs. Only with genuine equality in the marketplace will women be able to free themselves from poverty and dependency. In the area of family life, she urges people to consider society’s responsibility to mothers and children. If Americans want to strengthen the family and ensure the well-being of mothers and children, they must be willing to federally mandate maternity and childcare policies and family By Sevin Hirschbein 10 Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1987
Photos by Lisa Stone Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1987 11
allowances. Furthermore, childsupport po lic ies need to be strictly enforced in order to attribute financial support of children to divorced and absent fathers. In the area of welfare, Sidel recommends simplifying the process of determination of eligibility and raising payments received to at least the poverty level. If these are serious proposals, however, their political reality needs to be considered. Their passage th ro ug h C ong ress would require massive mobilization behind them. Why have women, in fact, been so passive towards their declining conditions? How can men and women be politically organized in order to make these reforms possible? Ruth Sidel does not consider these questions, and she does not connect her proposals with a women’s or a people’s movement. Thus, her analysis ends up being a report, and her recommendations fail to become a political agenda. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, in The Lesser Life, also argues that women need legislation to upgrade their lives as workers and mothers. She claims that a family policy, including prenatal care, maternity leave and childcare, is essential. Unlike Ruth Sidel, however, Sylvia Ann Hewlett writes a politically conscious book, aware of the need for women’s political power to achieve desired reforms and legislation. She critically examines the sixties Women’s Movement in relation to what is happening to women now; judges it to be essentially flawed; and suggests alternative strategies. Hewlett’s analysis starts with the observations that in 1984, one out of every four women earned less than $10,000 a year when working full time, and that 45 percent of working women took prime respons ib ility for themselves and their children. While the median income for fuIlt im e emp loyed women was $14,479, similarly employed men earned $23,218. She asks why such a wide wage gap between men and women persists, when in fact, American women are the best educated in the world. It is true, she admits, that women now hold more executive and professional positions than a decade ago, but she adds that the wage gap in these positions has widened, rather than narrowed, during this time. Women continue to occupy the lower levels of the managerial pyramid. So, Hewlett wonders, why does the genderbased wage gap persist and grow? She recognizes two fundamental conditions: the persistence of occupational segregation and the continuation of family responsibilities on women .She suggests that women’s success in challenging occupational segregation depends upon their changing role in the family. So far, however, women have not been able to change the traditional division of labor at home. After all, what are the incentives for men to take on genuine responsibility for housework and childcare? The declining state of the economy exacerbates the competition in the marketplace and makes men reluctant to take on home responsibilities. Men feel that they must do more on their jobs to retain or advance their positions. Women, of course, have no choice: they have to be good at their jobs, despite enormous responsibilities at home. Women’s double-duty handicaps them in the marketplace. Furthermore, women receive no social assistance in being workers and mothers at the same time. The United States has the weakest family support system and daycare assistance among all the Western industrial nations. In fact, the United States is the only industrialized country with no statutory maternity leave. Most countries guarantee women leave, cash benefits and job protection after childbirth. Hewlett makes the case that the lack of maternity provisions in the United States especially handicaps women as wage earners. The sixties Women’s Movement must bear some responsibility for this state of affairs, Hewlett suggests. She contrasts American feminism with the social feminism of Western Europe. The sixties Women’s Movement aspired for two objectives: equal rights and the emancipation of female subjectivity from male domination. Regarding the women who began to struggle for the latter objective, insisting that the personal is political, emale consciousness, because o f its proclivity fo r nurture, peace, feelings and relations, points us to a female future, i f we are going to have a future at all. she writes . .the participants were too privileged, their concerns were too private, and the groups were too ephemeral for them to develop a unified public voice.” Regarding the former, she contends that the struggle for equal rights in America engendered organizations such as The National Organization for Women, the National Women’s Political Caucus, and the Women’s Equity Action that developed strategies isolating women’s issues from mainstream politics. The struggle for equality remained formal and abstract, unable to deliver materially and concretely. In contrast, Western European women defined their emancipation more concretely and struggled to change their material conditions as workers and mothers. As a result, their material conditions are better than American women’s, enabling European women to move more effectively towards equality. Her figures on Sweden are impressive. In Sweden, women are entitled to nine months of maternity leave with 90 percent of their salary, plus an unpaid leave of six months with job protection. Husbands are also eligible for leave during the birth of children. Sweden also has extensive and high quality childcare and a host of family services that aid women in competing effectively in the marketplace. In 1980, while women in the United States made only 65 percent of the wages of men, Swedish women earned 81 percent of the wages of Swedish men. The British and Italian statistics are not as impressive, but they support her case: that women compared with men are better off materially in Western Europe than they are in the United States. Hewlett is critical of the American Women’s Movement on several accounts. First, since it is primarily concerned with formal equality and regards women generically, it is unable to acknowledge class and race differences among women and to recognize that oppression devolves differently on different women. For most women oppressed by class and race, the discussion and politics of gender oppression in isolation are not concrete enough. Second, she claims that American feminism puts the cart before the horse, focusing on raising consciousness rather than struggling to change social conditions; in fact, it deflects from social change by exam in ing p riva te re la t ions rather than the public domain. Third, it sees gender as a dynamic between specific men and women, dividing women among themselves, since women have a va rie ty of re la t ions to men. Fourth, the rejection of women’s dependence on men, family, and motherhood, claimed to be essential to the realization of equality, excludes the ma jority of women. Fifth, it tends to define equa lity independent of and often in contradiction to wife-and- motherhood. Yet, 90 percent of women have children before the end of their childbearing years. These women are made to feel that they must choose between equality and their families. Hew lett’s crit ic ism s of the W om e n ’ s M o vem e n t have emerged within the Movement itself. Her charge that feminism is hostile to fam ily and motherhood is being confronted. Most women, even those who, in the m id-s ixties, sought independence from family life and motherhood, ended up with families and children. This leads to the double burden of women. Feminist writers are reconsidering their previous rejection of family life and children. Betty Friedan, in The Second Stage, contends that women in the' sixties went overboard in rejecting family and motherhood. Zillah Eisenstein considers this issue more systematically in Feminism and Sexual Equality. The fact that Hewlett does not consider these developments within feminism makes her discussion seem hostile to feminism, rather than being a contr ibu t ion to an on-go ing reassessment. Having c rit iqued American Feminism, Hewlett makes an important observation, that it has divided women into two hostile camps: on one side there are the women who reject domesticity, champion independence and liberation; and on the other side, there are the women who closely identify themselves with family and motherhood, but who are also wage earners because of economic reasons. Their conditions are more or less the same, yet they feel opposed to one another. According to Hewlett, the reason for this is to be found in the feminist preoccupations with formal equality and women’s control of their bodies, issues that do not confront the material and concrete conditions of the majority of women. These women require adequate maternity leave and reliable daycare if they are to successfully move towards equality. Yet feminism, according to Hewlett, remains indifferent to these concerns, which in turn, isolates the majority of women from the Movement, undercutting its potential for delivering concrete benefits to women. Hewlett’s analysis and recommendations should be examined seriously by feminists. It would benefit women and unify them more successfully, if feminists were to agitate actively for maternity and daycare rights. All feminists need to support the maternity leave legislation that is being sponsored by Representatives Pat Schroeder and James Klein. This bill provides for four months of leave for the mother or father, without pay—it guarantees job security without any cash benefits. Therefore, it should be viewed as the first step towards giving women a longer maternity leave and an adequate financial compensation. Of course, a stronger legislation than the Schroeder/Klein Bill would require the political mobilization of women in large numbers. We must ask ourselves why we do not have it, especially at a time when women have been losing ground both economically and socially. Why are we so depoliticized? Has the Movement’s rhetoric satisfied us, despite the failure to generate change at the national level? To seek answers to these questions, we need to examine the larger dynamics of American life, the breakdown 12 Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1987
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