NOW has never made me feel warm and fuzzy! I have read tons of stuff on consciousness raising, on internal splits in NOW, on purges of lesbians, on class issues. I quite believe NOW has a great if mixed history. And I have never lived in a place where the NOW chapter seemed to have a pulse. Instead I remember individual people who made me cringe:
--In NJ, a bunch of us at Princeton had a big sit-in about South Africa and all got arrested. After that hit the papers we had various unsolicited offers of legal help. The one from a woman lawyer with NOW connections was the most expensive offer we received and one the least congruent with what little legal strategy we figured out given the charges and our politics.
--In Bloomington IN in grad school, I remember standing at I think an abortion rights rally and gritting my teeth listening to someone I can only call "NOW lady from Southern Indiana" go on at great length about how she had had an abortion and regretted it terribly. I would personally have been glad to acknowledge her experience, just NOT from the podium of a rally.
To be fair I think there was some NOW visibility within the IN Democratic party, one of those realms where I walked forawhile to show I was politically engaged if not smitten with the party lines on numerous counts.
--In Seatttle I see a NOW booth every year at one, count it ONE of many many local street fairs and farmers' markets. I always buy a button, partly because I am too cheap to pay any dues, and sign up an email address only to get alerts without paper mail. Alas, I have NEVER gotten a single piece of email.
As a further kicker, a couple years ago I had an interpreting job for a Russian women's leadership delegation. Some of the people connected with that had long-time connections with local NOW work. Even though those women had lots of work experience with Domestic violence and lesbian rights, the NOW line still boiled down to defend abortion rights--and sadly what they were doing was needed. But even the 20-something organizer for the League of Women Voters had more pep!
Predictably, NOW was Nowhere to be seen in connection with Seattle International Women's Day. The local event was organized by Radical Women, Sistah to Sistan a Black lesbian network, and various other local fractions. The biggest set of signs greeting marchers were for someone's "Impeach Bush" campaign but Women in Black and several local peace banners were there too. Things got started a little slowly with a certain requisite amount of standing around freezing in the rain. The speeches at the beginning rally were inaudible or forgettable, but there's a great local musician who performed. The march was decent sized, about 500. The end of the march had a great open mike for diehards, and it had even quit raining.
Now why was I nostalgic IWD in St Petersburg? Flowered greeting cards! Everyone and I mean everyone I saw regularly in St Petersburg had holiday greetings. I know the underlying politics were a mess, but it was a party, a celebration and it made me feel honored, not just empowered and enraged and energized and all those things that good radical rants are supposed to do.
Maybe it's too much to hope that IWD might include church ladies and flags from around the world and engagement about something besides this stupid war and this egocentric administration.
And did I mention piroshky? While I was waiting for the rally to start I went over to a piroshky shop. The place is run by entrepreneurial Russians. Their product is made with white yeasted dough a cut or two above Wonderbread and a nice range of flavored fillings. Their borshch really did warm me all the way to my toes, and I think the women realized it was a holiday, but the piroshky were nothing like the best piping hot grease bombs available in Peter.
DoreneC