Self-Portraits of Activism Introduction by Michael Bronski Nobody is born an activist. Like kindness, empathy, compassion, malice, love, hatred and even great sexual technique, activism is learned. Obviously childhood experience and circumstance influence who we become later in life. Reactions to harsh realities such as poverty, racial prejudice, gender prohibitions or queer baiting are all likely to shape our later lives. But this process is inexact and often mysterious. Not every person who grew up poor becomes a socialist, not every person of color becomes a staunch fighter for racial equality, not every girl who was denied a place on the soft-ball team becomes a feminist. It is mysterious because frequently the events and situations that spur activism are counterintuitive. In the testimonies that follow several women and men credit aspects of their Roman Catholic upbringing with their later political activism, which surprised me, a Catholic. My own political awakenings were prompted by the nuns who taught me in grammar school. They were members of an Italian-based order, the Order of St Lucy Fillipini, and the school was located in an Italian and Irish-American parish. In third grade Sister Gilda told us that many Americans were prejudiced against Catholics. The example that stays with me is that when a Catholic-school student got into trouble, the newspapers always printed the name of his school, while public school students were never so identified. We were frequently reminded that many people thought that Catholics couldn't be good American. It took a few years but by seventh grade--when I understood more of how the world, and even out ethnically and economically mixed townworked--I understood that the nuns were talking about not (only) anti-Catholicism, but anti-immigrant and anti-working class sentiment. Memories of Sister Gilda's passionately defensive, statements about Catholics came to mind when I was writing a chapter on the histories of paradoxes of assimilation for my book "The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom." I'm sure this isn't the book she ever intended her remarks to inspire, but as with many things in life the present can have often has unforeseen effects on the future. The kaleidoscopic sources of, and paths to, social activism are unique to each of us. It is hard to imagine a straight and narrow path to enlightenment of any sort. What follows is a sampling of recollections of how some of us got to where we've arrived today. Michael Bronski is a regular contributor to Artery. He is the author of "Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility" (South End Press, 1984) and "The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash and the Struggle for Gay Freedom" (St. Martins Press,1998). He has written extensively on gay culture and art for thirty years. by Robbie Conal, except where noted • Kate Clinton, comic The mother of my best friend in high school was a doctor's wife. Unlike my own mother, she had help, "mad money" and time. She would sit me down and we would listen to Mike Nichols and Elaine May, early Richard Pryor, and Moms Mabley records. From them, I knew early the power of laughter but it wasn't until I read Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Mary Daly that I got the analysis, angle and anger that shaped my current work. • Nan D. Hunter, Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School For me, it was all about race. I grew up as a white kid in a mildly religious, Southern Baptist family in North Carolina in the 1950s and early 1960s. When racial issues surfaced, I felt like I had joined the cast of "the emperor has no clothes." All these people who professed a belief in Christian concepts of love and charity dug in their heels to defend segregation. One particularly vivid memory is of sitting in the church fellowship hall listening as the congregation voted not to accept African-American members. Even a child (perhaps especially a child) can understand how deeply wrong and dishonest that is. At some emotional level, I vowed that I would join the other team. by Gran Fury • Alex Pirie, Director of the Community Conversations program in Somerville, Massachusetts My parents were mild mannered, middle-class folks in rural New Hampshire who led their lives putting energy into their community: serving on the school board, leading the Girl Scouts, teaching Sunday school. They came from a long line of social reformers--we had cousins who were anti-vivisectionist ‚-who felt it mandatory to effect your community in a positive way. My first act of protest against injustice took place at the age of three while visiting Santa at Macy's in New York. Santa read each child's gift list into a phone with a direct line to his elves. I noticed, while on his knee, that the phone cord was disconnected. I announced to the whole store that the phone didn't work. This sort of behavior continued into high school-‚ 1956 or 7--when I led a big protest which I was almost suspended for demanding that the school library acquire novels by Ernest Hemingway. And again at graduation when I discovered that fact that all the students in our fairly poor New Hampshire high school were forced to buy expensive school rings simply to underwrite the yearbook which was published by the same company. • Sarah Schulman, author of "The Child" and "Shimmer" It seems that a number of factors contributed to my ability to be proactive, and my resolve to apply that to some kind of freedom vision. I would point to 1) the overwhelming presence and awareness of the Holocaust in my family, 2) my mother being a social worker, 3) living in Greenwich Village as a young child in the sixties, 4) a clear, analytical mind that enabled independent thought (Is this nature or nurture?), 5) Karmic factors: birth order (the oldest), zodiac sign (Leo), the legacy of my Hebrew name (Sarah, Abraham's wife, was the first Jewish woman) • John Gordon, attorney Growing up with a mentally retarded younger brother in the late-fifties exemplified how cavalierly the culture can decide who is entitled to certain rights and protections. Until Massachusetts passed the law that extended the right to a public education to all its citizens in the early seventies (Chapter 766), there was no such thing as special education in the public schools. Fortunately, my parents had the means to send my brother to an expensive out-of-state school. And although this met our family's needs (albeit imperfectly because of the distance), we were all made aware that there were other families who were not as lucky. My parents worked hard to get Chapter 766 passed. As a result, not only could my brother come home and attend the public schools, but other families were spared the excruciating lack of services that had existed previously. Seeing them fight for a right that benefitted not only us but others, demonstrated how important it was for those with a voice to advocate for those without it. This lesson extended to other areas in my life and has heightened my concern for those whose rights historically have been unprotected and at risk: civil rights, gay and lesbian rights, and even (as a vegetarian for 25 years) animal rights. by ACT UP • Neil Miller, author of the forthcoming "Sex-Crime Panic" I grew up, one of the few Jews in the then-staunchly Republican city of Kingston, New York. I can remember at age six being very upset over the coverage of the Rosenberg trial and executions. While I was not completely aware of all of the issues I did know that my mother's maiden name was "Rothenberg" and that simple connection was enough to worry me. Later, in Miss Brophy's sixth grade class I was the only student in the class's 1956 Presidential straw poll to cast a ballot for Adlai Stevenson; the other 27 votes were cast for Eisenhower. I had the last laugh, though--Miss Brophy cast a Stevenson vote as well. • Bill Andriette, features editor of "The Guide" When I was 14 years old, living in Levittown, Long Island, I finally got my hands on a copy of the NAMBLA [National Man Boy Love Association] Bulletin. I had it mailed to my lesbian girlfriend's home up the block because I have the same name as my father and he, by default, opened all my mail since there wasn't very much. The Bulletin was a dream come true. I had been trawling New York City's newsstands and gay bookstore for a year looking for anything about boys, and now I had finally found what I was looking for. • Geeta Patel, activist around gender and queer issues in South Asia One of the major influences in my life was basically being brought up by my grandmother in Bombay in the sixties. She was very involved with nationalist politics. My grandmother was from near Dehli, the heart of the nationalist uprising, and was a stanch Gandhian. Politics were, for her, a daily thing. She took a very strong stand on the kind of violence that attends politics--what it means to face down a crowd and protect someone who might be lynched. She questioned large political issues in a very ethical, but everyday fashion. Particularly issues of discrimination. She spoke to me about Angela Davis and the Black Panthers. She was born in 1900, and one of her relatives spoke in black churches in the US in the twenties, so this concern about how racialization informs disenfranchised communities was long standing. As an18-year-old undergrad in this country I began to work--as a foreign student--in coalition with students of color. Usually this work was about how the intersections of race and class in the U.S. produce different sites of political contest‚-much like what I thought about when I was a kid. This is also the way in which I now teach and do programs at Wellesley. Interestingly, even though my parents were upperclass they came from a groups of people--lefties--who thought and talked in terms of class. My parents are somewhat different now, but I am a child of their youth. • Kath Weston, author of "Families We Choose" and "Long Slow Burn: Sexuality and Social Science" I was born in 1958 and was growing up during the Viet Nam war and Johnson's war on poverty. Learning how to read meant learning how to read the newspaper. We lived in a suburb of Chicago, and when I was ten years old the Democratic Convention and the trial of the Chicago Seven took place. And, of course, the larger world came into the neighborhood as well. This was a working class neighborhood--post-war housing on landfill, with very small, brick, tract housing-‚and kids who got drafted pretty much had to go. Not kids my age of course, but the older brothersofI kids I played with. Because of this a lot of us felt engaged with anti-war activity. In school when we passed notes to each other we would sign them "peace" and would beg our older cousins and relatives to take us with them to anti-war demonstrations. There were riots in the city, and we knew that the poorest neighborhoods were the black neighborhoods. We also knew that the poorest neighborhoods were more likely to be targeted by block busting real-estate brokers. My neighborhood was a majority white neighborhood with Latino, Indonesian, Romany families, but no African-Americans. When one family in the neighborhood was selling their house other people found notes under their door saying "you will lose your life savings if you don't sell soon." That house was sold to an Asian, South Indian, family, who had darker skin than our other Asian neighbors. Other neighbors began throwing stuff in their yard. I was raised Catholic, and while I didn't get my ideas about what politics to pursue from the church I did get a sense from my religious background that I should try to change things that were wrong. One of the things that I could do well was that I could write. While I've done different kinds of activism most of my energy has been devoted to activist writing. Writing can be an activist life, not a flight from activism. • David P. Becker, writer and founder of the Out Fund for Lesbian and Gay Liberation I have begun to realize lately that listening to folk/protest music--Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Odetta--was the first time that I ever heard about labor problems or people of color. This was in the sixties when I was at Bowdin. I came from a very uptight, WASPy, corporate family and questioning wasn't part of our upbringing. The first record I bought was "Joan Baez" (also her first record) containing songs like "House of the Rising Sun," "Silver Dagger," "Fare Thee Well," "All My Trials," and "Henry Martin, which Baez on album notes said was about a gentle pirate, sort of a Robin Hood of the Seas. I had already been to an Odetta concert in high school, and I loved it. "I Got My Mind on Freedom's Sweet Potatoes" was very important to me. Now, I think that these were the moments, the songs that made me question my privilege especially around class. Then in college I read about workers who wanted the nuclear power plants to be built and I thought "Oh, god, this is more complicated than I realized." But I still listen, sometimes, to those old records now. • Edward Stein, Associate Professor at Cardozo Law School and author of "The Mismeasure of Desire: The Science, Theory, and Ethics of Sexual Orientation" I was incredibly lucky to be very inquisitive as a kid, for reasons I am not quite sure of. I never accepted simple answers, which was very frustrating for mother and father. I was considered sort of a trouble making kid who wanted to complicate things. At nursery school, when all of my classmates were saying that they were Christian or Jewish--we were discussing Christmas and Hanukkah--I said I was an atheist. The teacher called my mother who, used to my doing things like this, explained that I probably didn't know what it meant. But I was already questioning labels even then. And then when you combine this with the sense of sexual difference I was feeling, that's probably at the root of what I do now--as a philosopher and teacher. by Gran Fury • Ann Pellegrini, author of "Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race" My feminist consciousness was honed in front of the TV watching Billie Jean King defeat Bobby Riggs in 1973's "Battle of the Sexes." But it was also sparked by an unlikely source: the Catholic Church. It is not an exaggeration to say that, just as "Charlie's Angels" (and Kate Jackson's Sabrina in particular) made me gay, so too did the Catholic tradition in which I was raised lay the foundation for my feminist protest. From an early age, I received contradictory messages from the Catholic Church. On the one hand, I was being taught the post-Vatican II message of liberalization and social justice. On the other, I was also learning that the Church had a "special role" reserved for girls and women. But that special role did not feel so "special" to me; complementarity was no compliment. No one could satisfactorily answer my question, why couldn't women be priests? Why couldn't I even be an altar "boy"? I suppose what my 11-year-old self was asking was, how could the Church square its message of social justice with its practices of exclusion? I have long since left the Church, but I have not forgotten the lessons learned there--among them, the lesson that contradiction need not be the end of social conscience and hope but their springboard for action. • Kate Bornstein, performer and author of "My Gender Workbook" I think it was when Arthur Rabstein and his buddies tied me to a tree and left me there. I was in grade school and they were in high school. The idea of meanness was so devastating. That was the first time when someone was super-mean to me. Why I do what I do is to stop people from being mean. Mean is an interesting word. It implies that you are stingy with your spirit, stingy with your soul, and unable to give to others. It doesn't necessarily mean cruel or violent. It just means not giving: greedy, greed. It boils down to: I'm going to take and your're not going to have. I don't really call myself an activist. There is so much meanspiritedness in activism. For example people who focus far too much attention on a gay day at Disneyland rather than fighting for the safety of gay and lesbian youth. by Visual AIDS Artist Caucus • Bill Dobbs, member of Queer Watch and Sex Panic What made me become an activist? It took a while. It was a process, I didn't just turn into one overnight. One important ingredient was getting lots of encouragement, when I was young, to think critically. Another ingredient was the idea you didn't have to just go along. I soaked up lots of things from protests on TV and going to demonstrations. As my political consciousness grew, I was lucky to see people creating resistance. Looking back on one of my early projects--pouring over public records to assemble information about lousy landlords--that work would not have been possible without the inspiration of others who had the nerve to challenge power. It turned out to be exhausting, scary and fun. There's always got to be some rewards in doing activism even if you hit a brick wall. Now, seeing what a movement can do is a lot harder---AIDS activism, for example, has ebbed. ACT UP collectively has lots of accomplishments. To its members--even those who only went to one meeting--seeing a group like that in action is a great gift. • Chris Bull, Washington correspondent for "The Advocate" and author of "Perfect Enemies: The Battle Between the Religious Right and the Gay Movement" When I realized I was gay in 198--as a high school student in Marin County, a suburb of San Francisco--I was overcome by dread. "The San Francisco Chronicle," delivered to our doorstep every morning, was filled with stories about the emerging "gay plague." This was my only understanding of homosexuality--sex, suffering and death, inextricably linked. As appealing as the sex part was, I just couldn't imagine at the young age of 16 and 17 how I could navigate the rest. But when I finally went away to college I was delighted by the supportive gay and lesbian community: it taught me how to survive the epidemic, prevent its spread, and the moral value of helping those with the virus. I can't describe the enormous relief; it was beyond my wildest dreams. I vowed to try, in some small way, to pay back those who had invested so much in making this community available. I quickly fastened onto the idea, having always wanted to be a journalist, of reporting and writing about gay life and gay politics. In part to combat the misrepresentations and falsehoods I struggled with as a frightened gay kid. • Gerard Cabarera, attorney working with families affected by life threatening illnesses such as HIV One thing that was important to my development as a social activist was that the Catholic elementary school I went to was run by very progressive nuns, who were always talking about social justice and peace. When my father was on strike at his tool and die factory (really a forge) the nuns brought food to us at home. Another big influence from my childhood were the VISTA workers who were assigned to our neighborhood. They started a food coop and a community development credit union. I remember meeting these people‚-who were non-Puerto Ricans coming into a Puerto Rican neighbor-‚and being amazed. I also remember going to the credit union--where my father was the manager-- and being exposed to the idea that communities could recycle wealth and become stronger, more independent. It was seeing this larger picture--before this all I knew was my small community--that made me curious about other things. I became very interested in politics and remember watching the Watergate hearings when I was ten or eleven. All this made me an old fashioned Enlightenment guy who believes in progress and people helping themselves. • Kevin Cathcart, Executive Director of Lambda Legal Defense It all came together when I came out, or at least realized I was gay. Then I was faced with the question of "what was this all about." But before this a lot of my politics go back to the Catholic church. Not the thinking of the conservative local parish in which I grew up, but broader ideas about social justice in the world. And this went along with the fact that my father was in a union and our family was working class. My sense of social justice at this times was incredibly vague, but what was I supposed to do, shut up and be quiet? Being quiet has never been my strong suit. Even more important, I think that my current life is as much about how I decided to shape my existence, rather then how I became a gay activist. Growing up working class I was never exposed to people who had options in their work, or in their lives for that matter. It was frightening to me to think I would spend my life on an assembly line. I knew there had to be something better than that. I wanted to break out of this very limited world of having no options than just having to get a job and going through with it. So with my background, activism is as much a work issue as a political commitment. • Tom Cole, writer, artist and director of Harvard Square's The Market Theater I was an obese child but at the age of 15 I began losing weight rapidly. It was then I saw how quickly people's perceptions of me changed. I was the fat fag and then I was tall and skinny and people treated me with respect. But it made me deeply mistrust these people. I understood how people could respond so negatively to the exteriors of others. Later, when I was in high school they built this huge, ugly cement sculpture in the middle of campus. Everybody hated it. They even had to remove several old, very large and beautiful trees to install it. I, and two other friends of mine, did what I would now call a performance. We put up signs and told people to come to the sculpture and when they showed up we spent two hours slamming ourselves against it. They didn't quite know what to do, but they got it. This was the first performance I ever did. It was anti-authoritarian and reflected our powerlessness in this situation. Actually, now when I perform it feels the same way--throwing my body up against a huge slab of cement as a protest. Well, this isn't true all the time, but sometimes this is exactly what it feels like. • Richard Schneider Jr., founder and editor of "The Gay and Lesbian Review" I have a peculiar political history with all kinds of cross-cutting influences. I grew up in a conservative Republican (WASP) family and was an Ayn-Rand-reading political junkie by the time I was 15, whereupon I declared my agnosticism and proceeded to campaign for Richard Nixon in my high school! By the end of high school the Vietnam War was winding down, but I was radicalized by the insanity of it all. By college, I had gone from free market libertarian to hippie anarchist. I quickly bonded with a Marxist professor who tried his best for four years to convert me to The Way. But it was too late. I was already an anarcho-syndicalist or a free market anarchist, depending on the month. The gay movement was now in full swing, and I was out in college but, alas, not a gay activist. I went to Cambridge, MA in the mid-seventies and then slowly its liberal miasma began to sink in to produce what I have become: a more or less plain liberal. I'm still way more suspicious of the state than are my leftist friends, but worry about the gross inequality of wealth and income in this country. Still, I am far more worried about the power of the Christian right and its potential for damage to our civil liberties. Indeed, in addition to gay rights issues, the First Amendment remains my most important political commitment.