Women Activists From The United States

"Kate Richards O'Hare, as I have described, was a prominent and extremely effective Socialist speaker."

"April added another political, Mrs. Kate Richards O'Hare, to our company... She had been convicted under the Espionage Law, but she was emphatic that the Supreme Court would reverse the verdict, and that in any event she would not serve time in our place. Soon we politicals-Kate, Ella, and I-were nicknamed "the trinity." We spent much time together and became very neighbourly. Kate had the cell on my right, and Ella was next to her. We did not ignore our fellow-prisoners or deny ourselves to them, but intellectually Kate and Ella created a new world for me, and I basked in its interests, its friendship and affection."

"Under the operation of the "espionage act" it was not necessary to really commit the crime of having an opinion of the administration; it was not necessary to do anything at all, or to be responsible for any results. Hundreds of people are now behind prison bars whom the administration never charged with any overt act; they merely were found guilty for having an "intent," and that "intent" was sufficient to call down upon their heads punishment far more severe than is dealt out to thieves, bank wreckers, white slaves and murderers. No white slaver who has made traffic in human flesh for the profits of vice in this country has ever been sentenced to five, ten or twenty years in prison, as Rose Pastor Stokes, Eugene V. Debs and others have been sentenced for having an "intent" that never accomplished any purpose whatever."

"I saw in the tombs in New York City a tiny, half-starved scrap of girlhood that should have been in a grade school, who was sentenced to twenty years at hard labor for saying that President Wilson was a hypocrite, and that girl is now serving this monstrous sentence with Stars and Stripes the emblem of freedom, justice, and democracy, flying over the hell-hole in which she is imprisoned."

"there was written into the history of our country the most shameful story of abject cowardice on the part of elected officials that has ever blackened the pages of human history the so-called "espionage act.""

"For eighteen months the very atmosphere of the nation has been surcharged with the roaring, shricking shouts of Americanism, then in a single day a thunderous silence descended upon us and we felt the stunned scene of unreality that fell upon the soldiers in the trenches when the signing of the armistice suddenly stopped the roar and bedlam of war."

"Soon the country was overrun by spies, seeking not German vandals but Americans who held ideas and beliefs differing from the administration. Soon every vicious element in our society was hot on the trail of every man or woman who had ever stood for social justice and industrial democracy, and found it an easy matter to railroad them to prison. It was only necessary to cry "disloyal," "seditious," "pro-German," "un-American," and like the witches of old the leaders of the working class were hounded, imprisoned and murdered."

"Max Eastman, one of the foremost writers and teachers of the country, went to Fargo, North Dakota, to deliver a lecture on "Democracy." A great crowd evidently interested in the thing we were fighting to make the world safe for, gathered in the court to listen to what he had to say. A drunken mob, led by a judge and a "very respectable" attorney, invaded the "temple of justice" and would have murdered Max Eastman but for the sublime heroism and unflinching courage of a woman. An attempted murder of Max Eastman was flaunted as an exhibition of the "spirit of Americanism.""

"Of course John D. Rockefeller does not realize the fact, but it is true nevertheless that the Hookworm Commission he is supporting in the South is doing more for the revolutionary awakening in Dixie than anything else."

"When that efficient worker has built a world of beauty, comfort and luxury, he will not stop at the puny gates of private property with which the ruling class would shut him out of the Paradise he has created, but he will use the same efficiency with which he built the gates to hammer them down again."

"we Socialists know that hookworms in the tummy and revolutionary thoughts in the brain cannot exist in the same man at the same time."

"An efficient man is a rebellious man. And anything that raises the efficiency of the working class will speed the revolution."

"The want of a biscuit, a beefsteak and a job has caused more revolutions than all the flags that ever waved"

"We have learned by long and bitter experience that when the "kept press" assails a thing, that it must be something very beneficial to the working class; that when the newspapers slander and villify an individual or movement may be serving the masses and endangering the privileged classes."

"Parlier is over eighty-five percent Chicano, yet during that time there were no Chicanos on the school board, on the police force, nowhere. Now it's changed; we fought to get a Chicano mayor and officials."

"I became involved in many of the activities in the community-school board meetings, city council meetings, everything that I could get into. For example, I began fighting for bilingual education in Parlier, went to a lot of meetings about it and spoke about it."

"We had Senate hearings at the Convention Center in Fresno. There were hundreds of people listening. A man I know comes to me and says, "Jessie, you're next." He'd been going to speak, but he said we wanted me to speak in his place. I started in Spanish, and the senators were looking at each other, you know, saying, "What's going on?" So then I said, "Now, for the benefit of those who can't speak Spanish, I'll translate. They tell us there's no money for food stamps for poor people. But if there is enough to fight a war in Vietnam, and if there is money enough for Governor Reagan's wife to buy a three-thousand-dollar dress for the Inauguration Ball, there should be money enough to feed these people. The nutrition experts say surplus food is full of vitamins. I've taken a look at that food, this cornmeal, and I've seen them come up and down. But you know, we don't call them vitamins, we call them weevils!" Everybody began laughing and whistling and shouting. In the end, we finally got food stamps for the people in Fresno County."

"I said, "Well! Do you think we should be putting up with this in this modern age? You know, we're not back in the twenties. We can stand up! We can talk back! It's not like when I was a little kid and my grandmother used to say, 'You have to especially respect the Anglos,' 'Yessir,' 'Yes, Ma'am!' That's over. This country is very rich, and we want a share of the money these growers make of our sweat and our work by exploiting us and our children!""

"It was very hard being a woman organizer. Many of our people my age and older were raised with the old customs in Mexico: where the husband rules, he is king of his house. The wife obeys, and the children, too. So when we first started it was very, very hard. Men gave us the most trouble-neighbors there in Parlier! They were for the union but they were not taking orders from women, they said."

"Bolshevism is a new word, but the charges brought against it and its supporters have a strangely familiar sound-we seem to remember them of old. Privilege is so sterile of ideas; so barren of imagination, that it has not been able to think of one new lie; to concoct one fresh slander; to turn one new trick or say one new thing about Bolshevism that has not already been worn to tatters in the assaults upon abolition of slavery, trade unionism, woman's suffrage, Socialism, the Non-Partisan League and the I. W. W."

"At another place, in Kern County, we were sprayed with pesticides. They would come out there with their sprayers and spray us on the picket lines."

"Sometimes I'd just stop to think: what if our parents had done what we were doing now? My grandparents were poor. They were humble. They never learned to speak English. They felt God meant them to be poor. It was against their religion to fight. I remember there was a huge policeman named Marcos, when I was a child, who used to go around on a horse. My grandmother would say, "Here comes Marcos," and we just grew up thinking, "He's law and order." But during the strikes I stood up to them. They'd come up to arrest me and I'd say, "O.K., here I come if you want. Arrest me!""

"Sobriety means efficiency, and "efficiency" movements have in all ages been the incubators in which revolutions were hatched."

"Looking back over twenty years, I am content. I gave to the service of the working class all that I had and all that I was, and no one can do more."

"Bolshevism may cause the goose-flesh of abject terror to prickle the spine of the "powers that prey," but it has no terrors for the working class."

"Prohibition has not reduced the sale of liquor, but if the ruling classes can succeed in cutting down drinking by liquor legislation, will it speed the coming revolution? Most assuredly!"

"When I became involved with the union, I felt I had to get other women involved. Women have been behind men all the time, always. Just waiting to see what the men decide to do, and tell us what to do. In my sister-in-law and brother-in-law's families, the women do a lot of shouting and cussing and they get slapped around. But that's not standing up for what you believe in. It's just trying to boss and not knowing how. I'd hear them scolding their kids and fighting their husbands and I'd say, "Gosh! Why don't you go after the people that have you living like this? Why don't you go after the growers that have you tired from working out in the fields at low wages and keep us poor all the time? Let's go after them! They're the cause of our misery!" Then I would say we had to take part in the things going on around us. "Women can no longer be taken for granted-that we're just going to stay home and do the cooking and cleaning. It's way past the time when our husbands could say, 'You stay home! You have to take care of the children! You have to do as I say!"" Then some women I spoke to started attending the union meetings, and later they were out on the picket lines."

"Our demands were met, but it was hard bargaining. At one point, one of the Christian Brothers' lawyers said, "Well, sister, it sounds to me like you're asking for the moon for these people." Dolores Huerta came back, "Brother, I'm not asking for the moon for the farmworkers. All we want is just a little ray of sunshine for them!" Oh, that sounded beautiful!"

"Kate Richards O'Hare, a tall Irish woman, was arrested in North Dakota for opposing the war and came to our house before the trial. She had taken a children's march to Washington after their fathers were arrested in Oklahoma for what came to be known as the Green Corn Rebellion. They had hidden with their hunting rifles in the tall corn rather than go to the war, until the militia shot them out when the corn withered. She walked with these children across the country, fed by the farmers on the way. To the horror of President Wilson they stood before the White House in their hunger and rags and asked for amnesty for their fathers."

"Being a migrant worker I changed schools about every three to four weeks. As soon as one crop was picked, we went on to the next one. I'd go to school for about a week or two, then I was transferred. Every time we transferred I had a pain in my stomach, I was shaking, scared to go to school. This is why I began fighting for bilingual education. I didn't want what happened to me to happen to the little children in Parlier whose parents couldn't speak English."

"what some agencies are doing, they are hiring people to investigate crime while they should be using this money to put there families to work where they can support their families"

"The people that are rich, that have the money, get more money without doing anything. They do not work at all."

"we need a change. We need a change for social justice"

"Many of the farmworking families are living in the most miserable places available for human beings. It is not fit for human beings. They live out in the slums in crowded houses, a small house for too large families. They sleep on the floor. During the day they are forced outdoors because there is no room in those houses, so they are left free to roam the streets. So, where does the crime come from if not young adults out in the streets until about the middle of the night because they cannot come home because it is to crowded, and it is too noisy."

"Many of these farmworkers...lived along with all farmworkers at labor camps and when growers were asked to raise the wages of farmworkers to 75 cents an hour, they said they could not afford the camps anymore, so they tore them down after we asked them to please repair them so ewe could live as human beings, one of these growers bring Mr. Russell Giffen, the other being Mr. Anderson Crayton, and all of the big growers around in Fresno County."

"The ruling class has always desired more efficient slaves. They bred them to be more efficient, and then found that efficiency in producing wealth also produced a desire on the part of the slave to enjoy more. In order to secure more, the slaves revolted."

"When we asked for land, they tell us, why? Why should farmworkers want land? They are not farmers. But the true farmer is the one that works the land, and this is the farmworker, if it was not for the farmworker, there would not be any vegetables of fruits or anything on your table without the farmworkers."

"A man whose brain is pickled in whiskey is of little value to the ruling class, and he is of inestimable less value to the working class. Efficiency oils the wheels of revolution."

"when I got to thinking about how I was forced to live, it is a sad thing, but now I am working for a brighter future for my children and myself."

"when the canals were built out there, we were looking at it as a future for the farmworkers to form our family farms, but the big growers would look at the water and instead of seeing people and family farms, they were looking at dollar signs."

"Out in the fields there were never any restrooms. We had to go eight or ten hours without relief. If there wasn't brush or a little ditch, we were forced to wait until we got home!"

"Get busy, you middle class foes of booze! We guarantee that if you can keep them sober, we will organize them for revolution."

"These big growers have a lot of money because we earned all that money for them. Because of our sweat and our labor that we put on the land."

"Charlotte Perkins Gilman put her feminism before her socialism; Kate Richards O'Hare, who served on the National Committee of the Socialist Party of America and worked closely with Eugene Debs, reversed that pattern. Although O'Hare supported women's suffrage, her feminist argument nevertheless differed in important respects from Gilman's. For example, O'Hare was not convinced that an emancipated, economically productive womanhood was an essential precondition for a socialist society. Not opposed to working women per se (no good socialist could be), O'Hare nevertheless emphasized the importance of female domesticity. Although she expected that a socialist society both would alter the conditions of work and provide support systems such as communal kitchens and laundries, she was far less radical then Gilman in her conception of woman's place. For example, she suggested that the care of children under socialism would rest primarily with the mother, who during the period when her children were growing up would not engage in outside work...She forcefully expressed her domestic predilections in her lament that young women had lost the art of homemaking because "we insist that our girls be educated. We provide teachers for them in art and science but entirely ignore the greatest art known to man, that of making a house a home, and giving life to well-born children." While she claimed that she was not denigrating intellectual or artistic education for women, she still insisted that girls had "an inalienable right to a "domestic" education as well. One suspects that her priorities would not have changed drastically after the revolution. O'Hare did argue that men should participate more actively in the process of raising children, that they should be educated "for the duties of fatherhood" and must learn "to be helpers and sustainers" within the domestic circle. Given the overall character of her argument, it seems probable that O'Hare's conception of fatherhood was simply an extension of Catharine Beecher's view that the home should serve as the focal point of human activity for both sexes. O'Hare was not anticipating the argument of some late-twentieth-century feminists that since women have the right to participate completely in what used to be called "man's world," men ought similarly to enter fully into the joys and responsibilities of childrearing."

"Socialism is coming, and it seems poetic justice that it should be thrust upon the world by its most bitter enemies. Industrial and political autocracy run mad plunged the whole world into war, and then the world, in order to save itself from utter destruction, was compelled to turn to Socialism for salvation. The warring nations did not make the long strides towards industrial democracy because they loved the Socialists, or wanted Socialism, but because it is the only thing that can meet the situation and save the world from utter chaos and ruin."

"By the enactment of certain parts of this one act a way was opened by which we as people lost rights secured by hundreds of years of ceaseless struggle, rights that had been bought and paid for in the blood and suffering of our fathers, religious liberty, the very ideal that sent the Puritan forefathers to this savage land, was destroyed overnight. In the land whose constitution guarantees religious liberty, by the misuse of this act, scores of men were sent to prison for ten and twenty years for circulating a book that stated in the mildest, gentlest language that wars were contrary to the teaching of Jesus. Thousands of young men whose religious convictions made it impossible for them to bear arms or kill their fellow men were forced by the most brutal methods into uniforms, dragged like felons to training camps, subjected to tortures that vie with the horrors of the Inquisition, and that sent many of them to an untimely grave."

"[L]ate one night in 1962, there was a knock at the door and there were three men. One of them was Cesar Chavez. And the next thing I knew, they were sitting around our table talking about a union...Cesar said, "The women have to be involved. They're the ones working out in the fields with their husbands. If you can take the women out to the fields, you can certainly take them to meetings." So I sat up straight and said to myself, "That's what I want!""

"I have not been accustomed to address meetings of this kind. It is not my vocation to make speeches, or to sting together brilliant sentences, or beautiful words. But my mission has been back among the people, amid the little sources of public sentiment; among the hills and the hamlets — amid the opposed, but the comparatively unsophisticated; and I have had no weapon but the gospel of truth in its simplicity."

"nothing is done while anything remains to be done, so far as the death of American slavery is concerned. Not that I believe that one iota of moral truth that has ever been uttered, any more than one atom of physical matter that has ever been created, can be lost. But, so far as the accomplishment o the overthrow of slavery is concerned, were success to attend the federal arms today, I feel confident that slavery would linger, God knows how long; and I am willing, therefore, to wait another ten years, if need be, in order to insure its destruction now."

"Where was our country sixty years ago! She sprung upon the arena of nations, armed in the glorious panoply of liberty. The principles we not advocate had omnipotent sway with her. They were quick and living; and when she hurled them across the Atlantic, the thrones of centuries trembled, monarchs blanched with fear. But look back then years ago only, and where was our country! A hissing — a mockery — a reproach before those very nations whom her first advance had so terrified."