Two weeks ago I spent the weekend with 1,000 remarkable women. You know where; the Web has been full of posts and tweets and messages about BlogHer, the women bloggers conference. Since its founding, BlogHer has held four conferences, and I’ve been to three of them. For those three years I’ve wondered at the strength and power of both the gathering and each woman, most far younger than I, who is part of it. Audacious and rambunctious, honest and gifted, they are far beyond where I was at their age. I’ve always known that all of us, sisters from the 70’s and 80’s and 90’s, scratched and kicked and pulled and fought to move our lives, and those of the women around us, forward. In many ways, we made a difference. I’m proud of that.
Today though I was reminded of a real heroine, one whose star lit the way for much of what we did, in a wonderful piece in The Women’s Review of Books: Ruth Rosen‘s review of Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought
Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed Off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the
Rights of Women and Workers, … Planet, and Shook Up Politics Along
the Way–an oral history of the life of Bella Abzug. Among other things, Ruth says:
She fought for the
rights of union workers and African Americans, protested the use of the atomic
bomb and the Vietnam War, waged endless battles to advance women’s rights, and
spent the last years of her life promoting environmentalism and human rights.
When she plunged into the women’s movement during the late 1960s, Abzug infused
feminism with her fierce, strategic, take-no-prisoners spirit. As Geraldine
Ferraro reminds us,
She didn’t knock lightly on the door. She didn’t even push it open or batter it
down. She took it off the hinges forever! So that those of us who came after
could walk through!
And with a bow to Bella and so many others, walk through we have. It’s tough to pass the stories ‘I walked six miles to school in the snow’
fogey. Younger women, though, would find courage to fight their own
battles in Bella’s story and in many of our own."
For me, Bella was a brave, untamed beacon of defiance and energy. Her story, and ours, laid the ground for these determined, gifted "blogger generation" women. I would so love to be able to tell them about her – and about all of us, just so they could know the solidarity, the battles, the anger and the hope. And why seeing them all together, hugging, laughing and raising hell, makes me so damned happy. And that Bella would have loved them.
