A few images from DYKE, A Quarterly will be featured in an upcoming show at The Museum Of The City Of NY called Gay Gotham: Art and Underground Culture in 20th Century NY.  The show opens October 7th 2016.

We've been working for months with curator Stephen Vider, figuring out what pieces would work best, how to title them, what sizes, who owns the rights and etc. We are not sure yet which images, or how many images,  will be in the exhibit but we do know for sure that our iconic flier, DYKE IS OUT! ARE YOU? will not only be feature in the exhibit, but will be available as a poster in the Museum gift shop, along with postcards and magnets with that image. 

And there will be a book, which will include at least some of our pages. 

You can read more about the exhibit here

You can buy the magnet and the poster at the Museum gift shop. The magnet is also available online   here.  All sales help to fund the DAQ online annotated archive.

 We will keep you updated. 

the future is female, 1974

Labyris Books was the first feminist bookstore in NYC. It was owned by Jane Lurie and Marizel Rios, fresh from their experiences at the takeover of the 5th Street Women's building. The slogan of the store was "the future is female" and in 1974 they asked me, Liza Cowan, to make this button for them. At the time, I was running a feminist button business, White Mare Buttons. It's hard to believe that I still have a bunch of these left...but I do. They are great, don't you think? And the slogan is just as fresh today as it was in 1974.

I have a limited quantity of mint-condition, vintage buttons available  at my online store. 
www.smallequals.com

All sales help support the DYKE, A Quarterly Annotated Online Archive. 

Before there was DYKE, A Quarterly, there was COWRIE, Lesbian/feminist. It started off as the publication of a local women's group in New York City, Community of Women, COW. Although Community of Women was not strictly a Lesbian group, COWRIE quickly became a Lesbian magazine, independant of COW, taken in this direction by the editors, Liza Cowan and Carol Hardin. 

It was here that Liza Cowan's series, What The Well Dressed Dyke Will Wear originated. Vol. 1 #4 was the Amazon issue, with cover of Amazons and inside, the essay on Lesbian Clothing. Here it is, the original text and graphics: 

COWRIE, Lesbian/feminist. Vol 1 #4, December 1973. Cover design ©Liza Cowan

 Look at Greek vase paintings in a book or at a museum, you can always spot an Amazon by the way she looks. Greek patriarchal women are very femme, they wear loose, flowing chitons and are very nice to the men who share their space on the vases. The Amazons wear bold, striking pants, tunics and weapons, and are busy killing the men.

 It is incredible the way our heritage is denied us. I never studied about Amazons in school. My twelfth grade Ancient History textbook never even mentions them. In order to write about Amazon clothes I first have to bust my ass trying to find information about Amazons themselves, information which isn’t readily available, and what is available is mystified, obscured and held by men who don’t want to part with their precious knowledge. Information Imperialism! (There is one excellent book, Mothers and Amazons, by Helen Dinar) We should have learned about our Amazon foremothers before we learned about George Washington. We are never taught about women. Every book that mentions Amazons (excluding Dinar) says they were a mythological race of women. The concise English Dictionary calls them “ A fabulous race of women warriors, masculine women” Men cannot stand the idea that women preferred to live without them.

 The Amazons were a strong, powerful group (or groups) of women identified women who lived according to their own determination, without men. They were forced to fight for survival against a growing patriarchy. Their existence has been documented as early as 1760 BC, when Queen Euripyle captured the Amorite capital in Babylon. They lived in many different places, migrating frequently, conquering new lands. There were Amazons all around the Mediterranean area, in southern Russia, north of the Black Sea, in Asia Minor and in northern Africa. There were two major groups, the Libyan (Libya being the place we now refer to as Morocco) and the Thermodontines. The only pictures of Amazons are those on Greek Vases (and some sculptures,) usually depicting the great war between the Athenians and the Thermodontine Amazons, whose territory extended from the Saramatian Planes to the Aegean Sea (which is roughly southern Russia, the Balkan countries, Greece and Asia Minor. This is the story of that war:

COWRIE, Lesbian/Feminist. Vol 1 #4, What The Well Dressed Dyke Will Wear, ©Liza Cowan

In the 13^th century BC, a group of Greek men (Heracles and Theseus, according to one version) sailed to Themiscyra, the Thermodon capital on the southeastern coast of the Black Sea, to steal the belt of Hippolyte, the Queen. It was a gold and crystal sword belt, one of the Scythian insignia. It symbolized virginity, which meant unmarried rather than unfucked. It was more than the belt they were trying to steal. Patriarchy was trying to conquer and dominate Matriarchal authority. Stealing the belt was a symbol of this intended domination. If Amazons surrendered their virginity, they surrendered their independence, as every Lesbian/feminist knows.

 At any rate, the Greek men fell upon the undefended city and its Queen, while the other Queen was away defending the borders with her army.

 Amazons always had two Queens, one to administer and one to lead the armies. The men stole the belt, killed the remaining townswomen, and abducted Antiope, Hippolyte’s sister. When Oriethia heard the news, she came rushing back, but the men had already left, so she led her army to invade Athens.

They besieged the Acropolis, but were not victorious. Antiope (and maybe Hippolyte) fought alongside the Greek men, and the war ended with a compromise. Oriethia died of grief and shame. Few of the remaining Amazons every reached home again. They were discouraged and almost totally defeated.

 This war is the one that is usually portrayed on the Greek vases. Some others show the Amazons, led by Penthesilea, fighting the Greeks in the Trojan War. The earliest vase paintings were done in the 7^th Century BC, most were done in the 5^th Century BC, eight hundred years after the Thermodontine-Athenian War. But clothing styles didn’t change as rapidly as they do now, so there’s a good chance that the Amazon clothes depicted on the vases are accurate.

 There is no one Amazon clothing style. The clothes change with place of origin, but there was much migration and communication between locations. The most striking clothes are those that come from Asia Minor, around modern Turkey, near the Amazon capital, Themiscyra. They wore an outfit that looked like a body suit covered by a tunic. The front and back pieces were oblong, sewn together on the shoulders and down the sides, with openings left for the arms. There was a single seam in the arms sewn on the undersides. These coats were usually made of leather, and sometimes wool. They wore tight fitting knit hose with bold geometric designs, checkerboards, stripes, circles, stars and zigzags. 

COWRIE, Lesbian/feminist. Vol 1 #4, 1973. What The Well Dressed Dyke Will Wear. Text and image ©Liza Cowan

Some sources say that the Amazons were tattooed on their arms and legs, but this is unlikely. The shirts and tunics had tight sleeves, close fitting at the wrists, and were also boldly patterned with geometric designs. They frequently wore long soft red leather boots. The toes of the boots were often curled up, indicating a northern origin. Shoes like this are usually worn in snowy, rocky climates.

 They wore a variety of hats and helmets. One popular hat was from Phrygia (150 miles due east of Lesbos.) This was a tall conical cap, knitted in one piece or made of felt. It had a broad flap which hung over the nape of the neck and two other flaps which came to the shoulders and could be tied.

 In battle the Amazons carried crescent or double crescent shaped shields, emblems of the Moon Goddess, and they frequently wore the crescent emblem on their helmets. They carried bows and arrows, darts, javelins, nets and, of course, the Labyris, double-edged axe, symbol of the matriarchy. They wore armor made of red leather, and sometimes were greaves, armor for the shin area. Some pictures show them wearing no trousers, though I doubt that any self-respecting Amazon would ride into battle without her pants. She would be too vulnerable.  Some pictures show them wearing earrings. Their hair is shown tied back, or is hidden by the helmets.

There are no pictures of Amazons alone with each other, having fun, making love, eating, sleeping, building houses, training horses, playing with the children, or doing anything else but fighting. After all, men were not allowed to hang out with the Amazons so the only way they would have been able to see them was in combat. There are no remnants of Amazon art or artifacts (that I have found, anyway.) Probably everything was destroyed.

 Amazons were our great, great, great grandmothers. The patriarchy almost defeated them, but not quite. Here we are, the North American Amazons. Long live the Amazons.

Bibliography

Mothers and Amazons – Helen Dinar (available in paperback) The best book about Amazons so far.

 Amazons In Greek Art – Deitrich von Bothmer. Complete collections of Amazon pictures.

 Les Guerilleres,  Monique Wittig (paperback) not specifically about Amazons but gives, I think, a sense of an Amazon Community. 

COWRIE, Lesbian/Feminist Vol. 1 #4, 1973. What The Well Dressed Dyke Will Wear. Amazons. Text and illustration ©Liza Cowan

By Liza Cowan.

Recently I had the pleasure of watching a new documentary, Left On Pearl, about a women's takeover of a Harvard University building in March of 1971. Seeing the film reminded me that I had written a paper about a similar action that had taken place in New York City just a few months earlier than the action in Boston.

In 1992 I wrote the paper about the Fifth Street Women's Building Takeover for a Sociology course on Urban Social Movements, taught by professor Diane Davis at The Graduate Faculty at The New School For Social Research in NYC.

I had participated somewhat in the 5th Street Women's Building takeover. I was at the original meeting at Washington Square Church, and had popped in and out a few times during the next week. I was a reporter/producer at the WBAI-FM at the time, and it's possible I filed a story. I can't remember. But I did keep in touch with some of the women who were the organizers and was able to interview them for my paper. Thanks again to Reeni Goldin, Fran Goldin and Jane Lurie. 

Here, twenty years after I wrote the paper, and forty years after the action, is my report.

muheres, women. Flier for Open House at the Fifth Street Women's Building. Click to enlarge. From the Reeni Goldin Collections.

 The Fifth Street Women’s Building:

A Feminist Urban Action Jan 1-13^th 1971

by Liza Cowan, written in 1992

“Our hands

Our feet

Our minds

Our bodies

Are tools for change”

Chant by the women at the Fifth Street Women’s Building [i]

Part One – The Takeover

A Feminist/Urban Movement

On January 1^st, 1971, two hundred women took over an abandoned building at 330 East Fifth Street in Manhattan. In what had formerly been a school annex and then a welfare office, the women worked to create a women’s center, offering child care, a food co-op, book and clothes exchange and a feminist school. On January 14^th, twelve days after the takeover, the building was closed by the police, and twenty four women were arrested. Soon thereafter, the building was torn down to make a parking lot for the 9^th Precinct police building across the street.

 Urban social movement theorist Manuel Castells writes that  “When …mobilizations result in the transformation of the urban structure, we call them urban social movements…[a] theory of urban change must account both for the spatial and social effects resulting from the actions of the dominant interest as well as from the grassroots alternatives to this domination.[ii] He states that urban movements

 “seem to share some basic characteristics in spite of the diversity:

1)   They consider themselves urban

2)    They are locally –based and territorially-defined

3)   They tend to mobilize around three major goals…: collective consumption, cultural identity, and political self-management.”[iii]

     The takeover of the building at 330 East Fifth Street Women’s Building (hereafter referred to as The Fifth Street Women’s Building, or Fifth Street) seems to fit the criteria for an urban social movement as defined by Castells. 1) It was urban. 2) It was organized by women who lived either in the neighborhood or close by, and intended for their own use and the use of their peers, i.e. other women. 3) Their goals included collective consumption issues such as child care. They were building cultural networks as women, and coming out as Lesbians. A major goal was political self-management in the form of “control of our own lives.” [iv]

     Other urban movements had been controlled, organized and operated by women, such as the Glasgow, Scotland Rent Strike of 1915[v], the 1902 meat boycotts lead by New York City housewives, [vi] or the 1904 New York City rent strikes, led by young working class women.[vii]  The difference in the Fifth Street Mobilization is that it was led and run only by women, as feminists, specifically for the needs of women, as defined by the participants of the takeover.

     One consequence of this, as will be shown throughout this paper, is that the longer lasting effects of the action on the women who participated, had more specifically to do with their activism about and for women and Lesbians than it had to do with their continued work as neighborhood or community organizers. The focus, at least in the reminiscences of the action, became less on the takeover of the building and the creation of a Women’s Center in and of themselves, and more on their symbolic meaning of empowerment for women. Castells' “rule” number two for urban social movements (that they be territorially defined) became less important, as “territory” became “networks.”

     Although the mobilization itself lasted only twelve days, and although the women’s center they envisioned did not happen for long in that spot or in that form, the goals and ideals that brought the women there, and the ideas and inspiration that came from the activities and discussions during those days, transformed into other feminist and Lesbian projects lasting over the next decade.

 Background, New York City

 John Lindsay was the mayor  of New York in 1971. The federal Model Cities program, begun in 1966 was still in effect. According to Susan and Norman Fainstein, Model Cities

 “required coordinated planning of social services, intensive redevelopment of selected model neighborhoods, and participation of target area residents in policymaking.  As was the case in the Poverty Program, most of the Model Cities agencies did not pursue militant strategies and made little attempt to mobilize their communities.” [viii]

     There were a number of tenants rights groups and oppositionist groups organized around the city, some opposing Urban Renewal plans for razing low income housing, some opposing the proposed construction of highways that would cut through low income neighborhoods. There were squatting actions happening in different neighborhoods.[ix]

     One particularly effective and long lasting group was The Cooper Square Development Committee (Cooper Square), in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. In 1959 the New York City Slum Clearance Committee had proposed to clear a twelve block area and build 2,900 units of middle income housing. This would have dispossessed “2,400 apartments, 450 furnished room occupants, 4,000 beds used by homeless men and over 500 businesses.”[x]  Cooper Square Development Committee formed to fight this proposal.

     In 1960 Cooper  Square recruited a professional planner to come up with an alternative plan. Eleven years later, in 1971, they had proved successful in stopping the city from redevelopment, but only a small portion of the Cooper Square plan had actually gone through. They were successful, however, in community organizing.

 “(Cooper Square) followed a coalition strategy and obtained the support of the diverse groups inhabiting the area. It avoided any identification with any single element in the community. It served as a local source of information concerning tenants rights and eligibility requirements for welfare and medical benefits and it became involved in rent strikes and demonstrations for park and recreational facilities.” [xi]

     Cooper Square was also involved in squatting actions. As we shall see, several members of Cooper Square were among the organizers of the Fifth Street Women’s Building takeover.

 The Action and The Days That Followed.

     Late in 1970, several women were at The Women’s Center in Manhattan talking about their interest in housing issues and squatting.  They “started talking about doing an action in a city-owned building for a women’s center, because the Lower East Side needed a Women’s Center.”[xii]  They talked to friends, and a group of five women formed to plan the action. Reeni Goldin, one of the original organizers of the Fifth Street action, had been working at Cooper Square, and had participated in a number of squatting actions. Her mother, Fran Goldin, had been one of the founders of Cooper Square and was still active there and at The Metropolitan Council on Housing. She was also involved in the Fifth Street takeover, but not as one of the organizers.

     Another organizer, Susan Sherman, was also somewhat involved in Cooper Square, as was Kady Van Duers, who was peripherally involved in the Fifth Street Action.  The other organizers were June Arnold, a writer, Sarah Davidson, and Buffy Yasmin. Jane Lurie, a filmmaker, joined them a day or so before the action, after reading in the underground newspaper, Rat, about an organizing meeting.[xiii]

     The organizers were mainly young, in their early twenties, except June Arnold who was in her mid forties.  Some of the women were Jewish.  All were all white, except for Buffy Yasin, who was Native American but not claiming it at the time as she had not been raised as such.  The women were from a mixture of class backgrounds. Some were college educated, some were not.[xiv]

     For Reeni Goldin, the action was important because, “it brought together so many different issues – vacant buildings going for no use, the waste of city buildings when people needed housing.”  These concerns were joined with issues specifically about women and women’s needs, and the city’s responsibilities in providing for those needs.

     “The city was totally ignoring women’s needs. Health care sucked. The majority of people on Welfare were women. The city wasn’t doing its job educating women, providing jobs, providing health care and providing daycare so that women could work. The housing situation was awful. There wasn’t affordable housing for women in trouble. Well, here we could bring all that together. We could get a building to use that the city was using for nothing and fulfill those needs of the women. We’d also be pointing out that the city doesn’t! It was a great organizing tool and a great way to bring women together and do something for all of us and for other women…The housing thing was just a tool at that point to talk about women’s stuff.”[xv]

     The group got a list of vacant buildings owned by the city, and rode around on bicycles looking at them. They decided on the building on Fifth Street, which was right down the street from the Cooper Square office. “It was a half a block deep, five tenements wide and four storeys high.”[xvi] A week or so before the proposed night of the takeover the organizers began to prepare the building.

     “We’d gotten into the building, and winos and junkies were living in there. We told them that they really ought to leave because we were locking the buildings up. Then we locked and chained all the doors and gates. We had brought padlocks. The building was trashed. It had no plumbing, no electricity and no fixtures. The junkies and winos had taken all the fixtures because they were copper. It was freezing. We brought in rolls of plastic and staple guns and covered all the windows so there was some kind of warmth. And we had that huge heater. A kerosene heater in the shape of a bullet, it sat on the floor and was a yellow cylinder. It was called ‘Mister Heater.’ We painted over the ‘M’ with and ‘S’ and it became ‘Sister Heater.’ Different women of the group brought in stuff that we knew we’d need, like plastic and staple guns, extension cords and light bulbs.”

Early flier from the 5th St. Women's Building. The Plan. Flier from Reeni Goldin collections.

     To gather women for the take over, “we put out leaflets and just sort of advertised around that there was going to be a women’s action at the church and to bring your sleeping bags and canteens, but they didn’t know why.” On New Year’s Eve a group of women gathered at the Washington Square Church, a church that was regularly used for many types of political events. Reeni Goldin remembers that there were close to two hundred women there. A report from The Village Voice states that there were “more than 75.”[xvii] The New York Times reported 20. [xviii]

     When they arrived the women were given leaflets telling the goals of the action and ways to behave during it.

 “Women have been working on a plan to take over a building on the lower east side for women.  Women not only need housing      we need space to work together.    We can use space for a health project    feminist art and media project   child care    feminist school     etc.”[xix]

     The women were cautioned not to bring non-prescription drugs, to know the names of other women in their small affinity groups and not to resist arrest. The police were referred to as “pigs,” which was common among many activists in those days. “Don’t talk to the pigs in the street, for personal and political security specific women have been designated to deal with the pigs.” In the same flier the participants were cautioned not to call the police “pigs.” And to clean up the church before they left. [xx]

     They counted off into groups of ten and went through the snowy streets till they reached the site. Jane Lurie had brought her Bolex camera and was prepared to film the event but was discouraged by a woman from her consciousness raising group who cautioned her that it would be a bad idea to film an illegal event.  She later regretted missing the beautiful scene of “perfect snow falling on women carrying lit candles.”[xxi] The women marched until they reached the site. They went around the back way to avoid having to walk directly in front of the precinct house.

     “We climbed in, stepping gingerly over a layer of broken glass while our eyes adjusted to the dimness…In the huge second floor room, painted in institutional drab and surrounded on three sides by banks of windows with gaping holes once filled with glass, bare overhead bulbs dangled on long wires….Collecting their equipment into neat mounds, the women set to work. Some grabbed brooms, sweeping up the glass and debris. Others stapled large sheets of plastic over the windows to keep out the drafts and to hold back the snow.”[xxii]

     Fran Goldin, whose job that night was to “look like a lady and look out for the cops,”[xxiii] had a conversation at the precinct house with Police Captain Howe, who warned the women against hurting themselves. “You have a gas heater there. Do the women know how to use it? ‘Yeah’ (Fran Goldin) answered…and we have a nurse on the premises.”[xxiv]

     The New York Times reported that “Ira Duchan head of the city’s Real Estate Department said…that he had not yet decided what to do about the women, who refused to give their names. He said their ‘cold bold trespass’ was secondary to the danger of fire involved.”[xxv] No arrests were made that night

     Over the next twelve days women worked to create the Women’s Center. “During the first couple of nights there were maybe 200 women there. Then after a week there were maybe twenty during the day, but at night there tended to be more. Women would come home from work and join us.” Minda Bickman reported in The Village Voice:

     “When I returned the next afternoon, several dozen women were on the second floor, and as the afternoon wore on the would be joined by dozens more. They were sitting cross legged in a circle, discussing their plans.”[xxvi]

     The plans included using the building for a health clinic, a food co-op, a child care center, an inter-arts center, a clothing and book exchange and a temporary halfway house for homeless women.

      The building was in operation as soon as it was taken over. “We saw the building as a school. A feminist school. Everything that had to be done there was a learning experience. How does a boiler work? What is a fuse? How many amps do we have? What about holes in the floor?”[xxvii]

      Reeni Goldin remembered, “I got my friend David to teach us all plumbing on the furnace, which was a functional furnace, it just didn’t  have any pipes coming from it. By looking at it he could show us what was going on and how it worked and everything and estimate how much it would take to get the thing functional.

Mujeres/Women. We have taken over this building. 1971. Flier from Reeni Goldin collections.

      “There were karate classes. We had a book exchange and a food co-op. Women used to go to Hunts Point and to a health food wholesaler to buy food in bulk.”[xxviii] There was a children’s theater workshop. Space for childcare was being made ready.[xxix]

     The women entered into negotiations with the city to keep the building. At first the city sent Ronnie Eldridge, a woman who was special assistant to the Mayor. The Fifth Street women did not like working with Eldridge. “I don’t know why Ronnie Eldridge stopped talking to us, but we really couldn’t stand her,” said Reeni Goldin. “Then they send Jeffrey Stokes from the Mayor’s East Side Urban Task Force. He was much hipper.”[xxx]

     The city proposed that the building be partially used as a temporary shelter for welfare women with no place to live. “In the course of negotiations we realized that we would be turned into the welfare cops. They wanted us to monitor the welfare women. Like, how many pairs of socks they had. We said we wouldn’t do it. A day or two later they busted us.

     “There weren’t very many women there when the cops came. I wasn’t there. I was at Cooper Square, which was right down the block. Someone came and got me and I made some telephone calls to get other women there. They locked the place so women couldn’t get in or out and then they ushered women out except for three who refused to leave.

     “Within fifteen minutes there were around seventy five women there. It got to be a melee and women started fighting with the cops. The cops were blown away. They couldn’t believe that the women were fighting with them. There were women there who had grown up on the Lower East Side and were kind of tough. One woman who was experienced in self defense had five cops holding her down.

     “ One woman who was middle aged, middle class, white and married saw a cop fighting with a woman, and she smashed the cop on the back of his head with her fist. He stumbled forward and his hat fell off. He looked back and saw this demure lady with frosted hair. He arrested her. In court he claimed that she hit him with a soda bottle. She said, ‘Your Honor, would I really have picked up a soda bottle off the street to strike this officer?’ Like, she had gloves on and her husband was there. And the cop said, “It must have been her pocketbook.’ She said, ‘What could I possibly have in my pocketbook that would have made this officer fall down and lose his hat?’ They let her go because they couldn’t believe she would have done that. She had been arrested not only for resisting arrest and disorderly conduct but for assaulting a policeman.”[xxxi]

     In all, twenty four women were arrested. They were taken to the precinct, across the street, to have their photographs taken so they could later be identified in court. They had learned that they had to be photographed, but did not have to face front, so they all turned their backs to the camera. Subsequently, during the trial, ten women were dismissed because they couldn’t be identified. [xxxii]

     The sentences ranged from small fines to suspended sentences. A few days later there was a large demonstration to protest the eviction. Soon thereafter the Fifth Street Building was torn down to make a parking lot for the 9^th Precinct House.

 Part Two: Examining The Evidence

 Solidarity with the People

    When the women took over the building, they produced a series of  fliers and press releases. These told of their intentions and their progress. With the exception of the first flier, the one that was handed out the night of the takeover, all the fliers were written both in Spanish and in English. The fact that Spanish was used in the fliers indicates an awareness that English was not the only language spoken by women in the building and the community they were trying to reach. Although all five of the original organizers were white and English speaking, several Latina women became prominent during the occupation of the building. Reeni Goldin specifically remembers Anna Sanches, Marizel Rios and one woman she remembers by first name only, Raquel. [xxxiii]

     Two earlier fliers use almost identical text. One, announcing an open house on Sunday at 4 PM for women, has the text enclosed in a drawing of a house. The open house announcement is written in the path leading to the house. The house, with its sloping roof, and path to the door, looks more like a barn than any urban building. The opening paragraphs of the fliers make it clear that the building is for women only.

“WOMEN

This building has been taken over by women for the use of women. We are now in the process of setting up a health clinic, food co-op, child care center and arts workshops. This building will stay open 24 hours a day to serve the needs of women.

 SISTERS

THE BUILDING IS OURS

IT BELONGS TO ALL OF US

USE IT!”

     The fliers produced during the actions and just after the arrest emphasize the solidarity of the women’s movement with women in other – not specifically feminist – urban movements.

“With this actions the women’s movement joins in solidarity with our sisters who are squatting throughout the city in their attempts to get decent housing. This building will serve the needs of the immediate community as well as the needs of the community of women as a whole.”[xxxiv]

After the shut-down of the building and the arrest of the women, the fliers and press releases emphasize not only that the building was being made over by and for women but also the criminal nature of the government of the City Of New York towards women. In a flier addressed to “Women,” to announce a demonstration on January 16^th, Mayor John Lindsay was accused of sending “his pigs to arrest and brutalize the women working in The Center.” The gesture of solidarity towards squatters shown in the earlier flier shifts from “women squatters” to “people” engaged in an urban struggle.

“We have been arrested and harassed for making a safety hazard into useful space. We know that the City of New York is the criminal. City government is not providing for the needs of the people and when the people try to provide for themselves they are arrested and beaten. This is not an isolated instance. We express solidarity with all people who are squatting throughout the City in an attempt to provide basic human necessities for themselves and their families.”[xxxv]

Press Release. Our community Center has been stolen 1971. Reeni Goldin collections.

     A somewhat modified version of this paragraph was included in a press release sent just after the shut down. “…and when people try to provide for themselves thy are sometimes brutally beaten.” (note the addition of “sometimes.”) It also accused the city of “attempted murder against women and children of the community.”

      The press release emphasized the work that the women had done to improve the conditions of the building “that the city had vandalized” including having had “professional electricians, plumbers and oil burner technicians” to make repairs, cleaning up lead paint chips, and closing the empty elevator air shaft. All of this work ensured that the building no longer posed the health and safety hazard to the community that it had posed before the women took over.

     The police and Department of Real Estate had used the issue of the building’s hazardous condition to remove the women and shut down the building. The New York Times stated that , “a spokesman  of the city’s Department of Real Estate said the building’s lack of heat, electricity and sanitary constituted a health hazard to the occupants."[xxxvi] At the initial occupation, the police chief had even been skeptical that the women knew how to use the kerosene heater they had brought in. It is doubtful that the police and other city official would have been as “concerned” about these issues had a group of men, or a group including men, taken over the building. They would have used other reasons to evict them.

     In fact, the building trades skills that women had traditionally been denied access to were considered the primary curriculum of the new feminist school. As a feminist identified group, they understood that “…the men of the Department of Real Estate”[xxxvii] were dealing with them in a gendered way. It was women’s presumed lack of building, electrical, plumbing and related skills that was used to evict them. The city stepped in, as male, to “protect” them, as female, i.e. helpless and unskilled. A male voice echoes through the sound track of the Fifth Street Women’s Building film. Taped during the demonstration, a man from the police or the Department of Real Estate says over and over, “We’re your friends, we’re here to help you,” as Marizel Rios, who had the tape recorder slung around her neck at the time, “was being tossed around.”[xxxviii]

Feminist Identity

     While the documents produced during the takeover and arrest manifested an awareness of both urban and feminist movements, The Fifth Street Women’s Building Film, which came out later that year, emphasized a feminist/women's movement.

There's more...click below to continue with the saga. 

DYKE A  QUARTERLY, Rated xx: recorded women's music p. 26,27. Rated xx: recorded women’s music Lavender Jane, Alix Dobkin

Here is another review from this long article, Rated XX. I've broken them up into separate posts to make the reading easier: 

Lavender Jane Loves Women, review by Liza Cowan in DYKE A Quarterly, No. 2, 1976,

In March of 1973 Alix met Kay Gardner at the Women’s Skills Festival at the women’s center in Manhattan. Soon they began to meet together for reversals. The first time they performed together was at the Lesbian Lifespace benefit at Barnard in NYC. It was right around this time that Alix, Smokey and Mary and I began to talk about and analyze the human being theory, and we started to develop a separatist consciousness. We had been fortunate that almost all of the women’s events we had attended in NYC had performances for women only as well as for mixed audiences. At Brooklyn College there were some men present for one of Kay and Alix’s performances. Alix was able to make them leave before she sang her Lesbian songs. That was the last time men were ever able to set foot in one of Alix’s concerts. We knew how disgusting it would be to have men present, and insisted that there be only women allowed at the concerts. Lavender Jane made its titled debut at the women’s center in August 1973. Abacate, who had been playing bass with Alix and Kay, left to join the women’s rock band, Street Fighting Woman (later known as Sister Moon). Soon they found Patches Attom to play bass, and in October they went into the studio to record Lavender Jane Loves Women.

Each time I listen to this album I am disappointed in the way it sounds. Alix and Kay are almost drowned in reverb (echo) and there is so much tape hiss that I have to cringe. I realize that many women are not bothered by this, but to me, sound quality is one of the most important features of a recording. Besides being the oldest cliché in recording, the reverb makes Alix and Kay sound like they were at the bottom of a canyon. There is no presence. I want to feel like the singer and musicians are sitting next to me, not in the next county.

Other than that I think Lavender Jane Loves Women is a far out, brilliant album. It is so blatant and specific, you never have to guess what Alix is singing about in a song. I am a detail junkie, I always want to know every detail about something that interests me. I think it is important to know how and why something was made or written, what it was based on, what year it was done, and what was happening at the time, etc, etc. Alix satisfies my need for details in her liner notes. It’s our history and I want to know all about it.

One thing that I feel is so fantastic about Alix’s music is that she sings so explicitly about Dyke experiences. I love and dearly appreciate that everything she writes about comes directly from her own experiences, and is written about as such. There are no vague generalities (except in her old hetero songs, and you won’t hear too many of those.) Many women love to hear A Woman’s Love, one of Alix’s coming out songs. She wrote it from my 23^rd birthday, in 1972, but it is really about her, the anxiety of coming out, and the delight of actually being out. View From Gay head is the first Dyke separatist song I ever heard. It chronicles the events and ideas that led us to be separatists. Smokey and Mary used to talk about men being ‘them’ and the women ‘us’, not all human beings. I was really upset at having to look through all the books by men in the library. Carol Hardin, our neighbor and my partner for Cowrie (a Lesbian magazine) spoke of pacifying men with pretty smiles, and Louise Fishman had just finished her electrifying series of paintings: Angry Djuna, Angry Radclyffe Hall, Angry Alix, Angry Harmony, Angry Judy, Angry Billie, Angry Sarah, Angry Bertha, et. al. Alix took all our thoughts and turned them into a song so Dykes all over the world could share the ideas with us.

Another thing I like about LJLW is how varied it is, with Balkan songs, old American folk songs, and original compositions. I’m also glad to hear children singing on Little House, and Kay’s piccolo solo is fantastic on that cut. Many Dykes objected to the song Charlie, because who want to hear about some dumb man? I agree. Talking Lesbian is another separatist delight. Kay Gardner’s flute playing on this album is wonderful to hear, supporting Alix’s voice with her beautiful tone and intonation. Her arrangements add another dimension to  Alix’s music.

After all these years I still adore Alix's music. It just doesn't get old for me. And now you can get it on iTunes, which is something we'd never have been able to imagine in our wildest dreams. Not just the technology, which is mind boggling, but the idea that Alix's music would be available in any other venue than ones that are totally controlled by women. Of course, you can still buy her cd's at Ladyslipper Music, and I encourage you to do so. For albums, you will have to search online auctions.

Lavender Jane Loves Women, original cover and album

Louise Fishman, Angry Jill.  

For more on Alix Dobkin and Lavender Jane see Queer Music Heritage Website

More on Louise Fishman HERE

From DYKE, A Quarterly No. 2. Rated XX, Recorded Women's Music reviews by Liza Cowan:

WOMEN’S MUSIC, NYC 1971

 In 1971 I would occasionally have women musicians on my radio show. None were feminists,  certainly their music was not directed to women. Several women sent tapes of their music to me. None of these women had any talent for writing or singing. I used to say over the air that I was looking for women musicians to play on the show, and one day Alix Dobkin  called me and told me that she sang and wrote and would like to be on Electra Rewired. I scheduled her to appear on Dec. 13^th, 1971. A few hours before airtime I realized that she was to be my only guest for a five hour live show, and I had never even heard her! We went on the air, we talked for a little while, and then she sang a song she had just written, My Kind Of Girl. I couldn’t believe my ears. She was fantastic. She sang a out a dozen songs, we talked some, and we had to go off the air early because of transmitter difficulties. Two months later we were lovers, four months after that I was fired. By this time Alix had started to write Lesbian songs (A Woman’s Love). We began to explore Lesbian culture and Lesbian Politics. In the fall of 1972 we used to spend many Sunday afternoons at the firehouse on Wooster St, where Lesbian Feminist Liberation was housed. Each week there would be a discussion or presentation of some kind. Sometimes there were music afternoons, where many women would play and sing. It was beautiful to hear so much Lesbian music.

a few loving women, 1973, Lesbian Feminist Liberation. Image courtesy of Queer Heritage Music website.

A FEW LOVING WOMEN

The first Lesbian record album was made by Lesbian Feminist Liberation in 1973. It is called a few loving women and, like the Sunday afternoon music events, it is a collective effort of many different Lesbians. It starts off with I’d Like To Make Love With You, a wonderful song by Margaret Sloan. I love the way Margaret sings. She’s direct and charming and she makes the most out the few chords that she can play on her four string guitar. There are two songs by Martha and Lucy Van Felix Wilde (authorss of the book of Lesbian short stories, The Ripening Fig) Their song, Gladys’s Revelation is one of my favorites on the album. “As Gladys sat praying in temple one day, a thought was disturbing her peace. A strange and terrible passion, my Lord, has taken a hold of my niece. She came to me with a light in her eyes, speaking of love and of joy, tell me, how can I learn to respond like an aunt, when her lover isn’t a boy." (this song can be found also in the book, We Are All Lesbians, published by Violet Press.) Roberta Kosse and her group Women Like Me, sing some good and interesting songs, and one funny one called The Big Orgasm. Some of the songs on the album are not very good. The music and lyrics are often awkward, sometimes over dramatic or too long. I bought this album at the Firehouse when it was hot off the press. I bring it out every once in a while, and I enjoy listening, because it reminds me of those Sunday afternoon.

a few loving women, Lesbian Feminist Liberation 1973. Liner notes from album, collage courtesy of Queer Music Heritage website.

See also:

From Outhistory. Gay Activists Alliance History re the firehouse and how the group Lesbian Feminist Liberation began:

http://outhistory.org/wiki/Gay_Activists_Alliance#cite_note-47

 Article on a few loving women:

 http://www.queermusicheritage.us/jan2003.html

On Margaret Sloan-Hunter:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sloan-Hunter 

Milan Hughston, Chief Of The Library, MOMA NYC, with DYKE A Quarterly. Photo: Liza Cowan

DYKE A Quarterly is archived at the Museum Of Modern Art Library in NYC. Today I went to see it in situ. My host was Milan Hughston, Chief of the LIbrary & Museum Archives. I assure you, it was very exciting.

And for total referencing- and infinite regression of referencing- you can visit their TUMBLR where they documented the visit. 

Just a few months before she died, Alice Austen made her second appearance in LIFE Magazine.

Alice Austen Day. Life Magazine, October 29, 1951

"Alice Austen, America's first great woman photographer, had been rescued from the poorhouse and oblivion by the sale of her superb collections of pictures (LIFE, Sept. 24). But until this month the 85-year-old artist had never had a public showing of her work. On Oct. 7, however, the Staten Island Historical Society, custodian of her photographs, celebrated "Alice Austen Day". More than 300 of Miss Austen's old and new friends crowded into the museum to look at her pictures and say hello to her once more. Miss Austen herself was an hour late. Worn out by a television appearance two days earlier, she at first refused to come. But her friends convinced her that she would enjoy herself, and enjoy herself she did. There were speeches and orchids and gifts and refreshments, but above all, there were friends. Some, like Mrs. Charles Barton had posed for her in the old days on Staten Island. Others, like Coapes Brinley of the Staten Island Historical Society, helped win recognition for her work. Miss Gertrude Tate, her closest friend, had lived with her for 27 years at the Austen home until the two ladies lost their money and the home was sold.

The old lady in the wheelchair knew how to get the most out of every moment, although she mostly wept when Mrs. Barton bent over to kiss her hand. As the newspaper and magazine cameras recorded the afternoon, Photographer Alice Austen said proudly, "I'd be taking those pictures myself if I were 100 years younger." When the pictures and the refreshments were over, she went back to the private nursing home where she now lives, a little tired by the festivities but glad that she had lived to see Alice Austen Day."

Alice and Trude, now Mrs. Charles Barton, donned corset covers and petticoats and posed for this wicked picture taken 60 years ago on Staten Island. Alice Austen, LIFE Magazine 1951

Deeply Moved, Alice Austen bites her lips as old friend Mrs. Barton impulsively kisses her hand. Mrs. Barton now lives in New Jersey but visits Alice often.

HIGHLY PLEASED, Alice Austen beams up at Gertrude Tate, who lived in Austen home, took trips to Europe with her, nursed her during arthritis attacks.

For more on Alice Austen see HERE  and also visit the Alice Austen House Museum Website

Alice Austen fans...great news. The Alice Austen House has a beautiful new website and Facebook page, and is proud to be one of the only museums in the US devoted to a Lesbian. Yes, that's right. They are proud of it. As they should be. Here's an interview with Alice Austen House directors Carl Rutberg and  Ann Marie MacDonald on New York City TV show, City Talk. 

You will note that they talk about Alice as a Lesbian, which is great, yay, and that they discuss the first time Alice was "outed" at the 1996 NY Public Library Stonewall Aniversary Exhibit. Now, we know this is not true, because DYKE magazine ran an article about Alice as a Lesbian in 1976. However, they filmed this interview before I posted the Alice article here at the Annotated Online Archive...so we forgive them for not knowing, right? Right. Because Dr. Rutberg got in touch with us immediately, and we have been emailing ever since. He now knows that we had the scoop on Alice. And as he said in a Facebook comment to me,  "We want to make sure the LGBTQ community rallies around Alice"

And we will. 

So go to the website and Facebook page, and if there's still time, you can vote HERE for the Alice Austen House to get a $100,000 grant from American Express.

Nearing 100 years old, a national treasure, Bobbie Staff whimsically exposes a rare and revealing insight into the romantic life of a butch lesbian born in 1913. Accompanied by her long time friend, Sweet Baby J’ai,  Bobbie takes us on a trip down a very steamy memory lane, through photographs and vivid memories of many decades living her life as an out lesbian in New York City and Los Angeles. More HERE
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