The day women took to the streets

Editor’s note: Workers World is in its 50th year of publication. Throughout the year, we will share with our readers some of the paper’s content over the past half century. Below is a reprint from a 1970 article on the first massive women’s demonstration from that period in New York City.

NEW YORK, Aug. 26—For all of us who took part in the Women’s Strike here today, the single most significant fact about the day’s action was indisputably the enormous number of women who poured out onto the streets in response to the call. Tens of thousands came out in an overwhelming show of strength to demonstrate their commitment to the struggle for Women’s Liberation. In spite of all the snide remarks, the chauvinist comments in the bourgeois press, women, recognizing their oppression as women, came in a serious mood to demand 24-hour childcare centers, free abortion on demand and equal job opportunities.

The turnout was far beyond the expectations of the organizers of the march and particularly took the police and city administration by surprise, who up until the last moment were insisting that the women could only have part of Fifth Avenue for the march. But as the marchers lined up, snaking their way deep into Central Park at 60th Street, it became clear that there was no way the cops were going to confine this enormous crowd to one lane. And as we marched out of the park we could see women marching shoulder to shoulder and curb to curb down Fifth Avenue as far as the eye could see.

The crowd was for the most part young, with many, many women of high school and college age. But there were also older women, working women, mothers with children and groups of Black women. Although the vast majority were women, some men did come, one group with a sign, “Men Support Women’s Liberation.”

We marched down Fifth Avenue with arms linked, chanting and carrying banners. The street was lined with spectators. Often the women among them were friendly, but most of the well-dressed businessmen types along the way seemed to regard the demonstration with a cold hostility which gripped them during this day for women.

There were also the usual fascist hecklers. One group held up a sign in German—Children, Church and Kitchen—Hitler’s slogan to keep women enslaved in the home!

The most militant section of the march gathered around the banner of the Third World Women’s Alliance. It read, “Hands off Angela Davis.” This contingent of Black, Spanish and other women of oppressed nations chanted, “Ho, ho, hey, hey, Angela Davis is here today.” Behind them a group of women from the YAWF Women’s Caucus carried banners, “Support our Panther sisters and brothers” and “Equal pay for equal work.”

Bryant Park filled up quickly as the marchers poured in. Organizers of the event estimated the crowd at 50,000. The rally began with a spirited message delivered by Jo O’Brien, a militant working woman from Nottingham Women’s Liberation in England.

Journalist Gloria Steinem, who chaired the rally, then introduced a representative of the Third World Women’s Alliance. This Black sister, whose name was never announced, gave by far the most revolutionary speech of the evening and in doing so explained to the largely white audience there exactly how Black women feel about the women’s movement and what their relationship to it will be.

She began her speech by stating, “Third World women are the most oppressed. ... Neither Third World women nor other women can be liberated until this capitalist, imperialist system is destroyed.”

Addressing herself to the white women she continued, “Until you can recognize your own racism and address yourselves to poor women, you cannot expect us to ally with you. ... We are the women who are the slaves in the garment center, work for the telephone company and in the factories.”

“The difference between white women and Third World women is the difference between exploitation and slavery. ... We cannot worry about petty problems like who is going to put out the garbage. We don’t have garbage because we don’t have enough food to eat!” And she ended her speech by saying, “Revolution and not reform is the only answer.”

Most of the speakers were the usual bunch of politicians you would expect to find at any large rally of this kind. There was a woman from Mayor Lindsay’s office, Bella Abzug plugging for the Reform Democrats and an SWP candidate pushing her own election. Betty Freidan of NOW and Kate Millett, feminist and author of “Sexual Politics,” also spoke.

It goes without saying that the leaders of the August 26 action have no class line, that they are tied to bourgeois, parliamentary politics. Nevertheless, this was an enormous demonstration of the fact that women do recognize their oppression as women and want to struggle against it. In any huge outpouring like this, the consciousness of women grows and once women are on the streets they will be susceptible to a class approach to the revolutionary struggle of women.