The ground was nearly frozen. The sun was just beginning to set as eight rag-tag, mud-spattered cars, the funeral procession, pulled up to Chevre Kodetia, the small Jewish cemetery in Betty's beloved Sag Harbor. We followed a lonely black hearse, not a procession of limousines you normally see moving snakelike across the highways of America--Betty would have wanted it this way.
She would have marveled at how the caravan managed to stay together on the three hour drive from Manhattan in the frenzy of the Long Island Expressway. Her life was such a brilliant disorganized, chaotic explosion of creativity. In the final act, she probably would have smiled at our serenity, purpose, direction, cohesivness.
There was nothing traditional about her life.
You can't change the course of history if you lead a normal life.
You can't be a visionary if you lead a normal life.
You can't lead a revolution if you have a normal life.
Normalcy and greatness are antithetical. This is why I know Mr. Bush is a blighted and very ordinary citizen. Because the best that anyone can say about him is he is normal--very, very normal, very, very ordinary--sub-ordinary.
Sag Harbor is the small fishing town where Betty bought a home in 1978, a time when average Americans could still buy homes. For close to 30 years, she led a community of literary and intellectual heavyweights, many of whom changed the course of American history from the eastern tip of Long Island.
She planned the battles, recruited the leaders, shaped the message, revised the vision and raised a family from the living room of her Sag Harbor home. The goals which would shape the lives of a generation were hatched from her cluttered house. A home which by the way, in later years, was teeming with an army of nine grandchildren.
We buried our own Harriet Beecher Stowe yesterday. She was not ordinary, she was not normal. She was a radical, she was a revolutionary. Dear Kossacks, unlike the leaders of today, she feared no one--not presidents, prime ministers, demagogues, or religious fanatics.
At her funeral Elizabeth Holtzman delivered one of the eulogies. For those of you who may not remember, Ms. Hotlzman sat on the House judiciary (impeachment) committee during the Watergate hearings. She reminded us that, "the impact of Betty's work has forced ayatollahs here and around the world to recognize the equality of women."
Yes, my friends, the ayatollahs running our country today, who are trying desperately to undo forty years of progress, will confront a new flock of feminist leaders. We must pray that this generation will be as fearless as Betty, and committed to taking no prisioners as they battle the current enemies of progress and change.
Another speaker remarked that in 1966 when the NOW Statement of Purpose was published Betty was among the first, if not the first leader to identify the reality that African-American women were the victims of the worst form of double discrimination--that of race and gender. And they still are.
The NOW Statement of Purpose is one of the finest political statements of the 20th century. It is a seminal document in American history. If you ever feel despondent about our future, read it. You will marvel at how an earlier generation of activists defined and articulated the struggles of their day. It is chilling to contemplate how life once was, and how far we've come. Maybe it is even more alarming to think, how little progress we have made--and the bleak future those in power now contemplate.
Here is a small piece from the NOW Statement of Purpose. How things have changed. How things have stayed the same!
Despite all the talk about the status of American women in recent years, the actual position of women in the United States has declined, and is declining, to an alarming degree throughout the 1950's and 60's. Although 46.4% of all American women between the ages of 18 and 65 now work outside the home, the overwhelming majority -- 75% -- are in routine clerical, sales, or factory jobs, or they are household workers, cleaning women, hospital attendants. About two-thirds of Negro women workers are in the lowest paid service occupations. Working women are becoming increasingly -- not less -- concentrated on the bottom of the job ladder. As a consequence full-time women workers today earn on the average only 60% of what men earn, and that wage gap has been increasing over the past twenty-five years in every major industry group. In 1964, of all women with a yearly income, 89% earned under $5,000 a year; half of all full-time year round women workers earned less than $3,690; only 1.4% of full-time year round women workers had an annual income of $10,000 or more.
You can read the entire statement of purpose here:
http://www.now.org/...
I'll say one word about the relationship my family and I had with the Friedan family. As some of you know, my mother was Betty's closest friend. Her children spoke yesterday that when she knew death was imminent, she wanted only to say good-bye to my mother, Natalie. My heart breaks for my mother, who spent forty years of her life glued to the hip of this American heroine.
My own relationship with Betty flowed, of course, through my mother. Betty recruited me to mastermind her campaign when she ran as a delegate to the Democratic convention in 1972?, for Shirley Chisholm. I suppose she saw in me, a kindred spirit--with a mouth--sometimes like hers. As a very young girl, she shaped in my own consciousness the passion I carry with me today. She channeled her outrage--something I'm still not doing as effectively as I must. So, I will use her death and the huge personal void it entails for for me and my family, to redouble my efforts in focusing my rage.
As night fell, we gathered in Betty's Sag Harbor home. For a moment she ceased being the leader of a revolution. She was first and foremost, a mother, a grandmother, a sister an aunt, a beloved friend, a demanding neighbor, a village elder.
She was a great American. A fierce Democrat, who didn't live to see all her dreams become reality.
She gave us the roadmap, now we must become the leaders.