DIY History | Transcribe | Campus Culture | Ain't I A Woman? newspapers, June 1970-July 1971

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Ain't I A Woman? newspapers, June 1970-July 1971

1970-06-26 "Ain't I a Woman?" Page 5

But Leona isn't a passive type of female, and she did not meekly accept the board's decision. She fought back with help from several lawyers and from many liberals and radicals who were appalled at the board's unjust action. And when the local chapter of the ACLU urged the board to reconsider the firing, things began to look up for Leona.
   Under all this pressure, the board set up an outside fact-finding commission to hear the case. On June 11, the commission released a blistering report, which states that the board acted "unreasonably and without sufficient cause" in firing Leona, and recommended that she be fully reinstated. In their words, "the overwhelming evidence is that the board threw Leona to the lions -- and then blamed her for getting bitter."
   One week later, the board met and reinstated her. She and her new staff took over The Daily Iowan on June 20, after one last nasty jab by the old Iowan staff. Ungracious in defeat, these sexists put a filler item in their last issue of the paper which said: "The Women's Liberation Movement is something. The trouble with most women who insist that they can get along without men -- is they look like they already have."
                   Carole
BRING IT ALL DOWN!
and hurry it up cause
BABYLON is hurting me.

Thoughts about the strike: very confused. I felt at a loss as to how to relate as a woman and as a person to what was going on; I wanted to rejoice in the window-smashing, building-burning, etc., yet couldn't feel there was any clear political motivation for it -- they seemed to be just half-assed undirected property-damage trips participated in as much (or more) by idiot jocks as by dedicated revolutionaries on the path to a Goal. I couldn't stand the endless pompous chauvinist male-rapping at rallies -- why the hell didn't I have the courage or togetherness or whatever to get up there and straighten everyone out (ha)? An air of excitement, things happening, the Revolution coming home to roost -- yet nothing significant occurred. The passionate angry desire to act -- yet how? Not just by trailing along following the crowd. The choice seemed to be between 1-woman violent action which I was scared to understake, and getting ourselves together as women to seize the leadership and do something serious. But, I thought, that can't be done on the spur of the moment; have to know things about tactics, have complete trust in our cohorts, be confident of our analysis and ability to carry it out. Whence cometh such confidence if not by doing it?
I really don't know if any good came out of the strike. So the Faculty Senate offed ROTC -- the trustees will doubtless veto their decision. A few students may have been politicized by the obvious freakout of the police in several instances, or in the mass arrest of 200+ peaceful sit-in-ers, or in the spur-of-the-moment suspension, then firing, of the new DI editor. But I felt my own lack of political development during the crisis, and I think a great many would-be radicals felt similarly. An eye-opener. Perhaps the next time we'll be better prepared? 
Penny

[right section of page]
Dum-dum Day Care (title chosen by the children)

The Iowa City child care collective decided to start a free day care center. we got the basement of a campus Lutheran chapel to use for free. It's one big carpeted room with a kitchen and bathroom off to one end. The people donated toys, four cribs, two bassinets, four mattresses and two playpens and got together on a Saturday morning and made more toys from scrap lumber. We made a large playpen where there's plenty of room for several non-walkers to crawl around without getting trampled or picking up chokable bits. 
   There are 16 children involved but no more than 13 come at one time. They are all under 3 years old (one is 4 weeks, another was born 3 days ago and will come starting next week).
   The adults come there according to a fixed weekly schedule. About half of us are volunteers and half are parents. One-fourth to one-half of the adults there at one time are male volunteers and fathers. Parents must put an 8 hours a week unless they are working. Six adults come every morning and 5 every afternoon.
   We take the walking children to the city park every morning and take the babies outside to the small church lawn. One day a week to 2 year olds go to a farm 20 miles away where one of the children lives. Everything is free play and so far we haven’t insisted on naps although we may have to. They’re very possessive so we’re trying to insist that “everything is everybody’s!” instead of “mine.” It hasn’t changed any behavior but it’s sematically better for us.
   Parents bring lunch, clean diapers, and a clean change of clothes and do their own laundering. We have collective snack material (apples, juice, crackers) which is supplied by one set of parents a week.
   We haven’t got into any legal hassles yet. At first we checked on certification requirements but decided we didn’t want welfare breathing down our backs. Unfortunately one of us was in the food stamp line and was recognized so we’re sort of trapped into going next week. The lawyer said he didn’t think we had to be certified but welfare thinks otherwise. We’ve had all parents sign liability releases but we don’t know how much good they’ll do. The lawyer said that certification, incorporation and liability insurance are all prerequisites for each other plus a showing of financial stability (I guess we are stable at nothing) and permanence.
   A medical student arranged to have four med students come to the center one evening and give all the children medical examinations under the supervisor of the pediatrics professor. These free physicals were both a service to the parents and for use in case of emergencies.
   We’ve decided to try to set up at least a couple more day care centers before the end of the summer. These will be more parent established and controlled. A couple of us will try to phase ourselves out of this center to help with setting up the new ones. We’ll also ask the parents in this center to use some of their liberated time to help a new group of parents get set up.
   For the summer the political use of the day care centers will be self education about what’s involved in daycare and whatever organizing can be done with the parents and volunteers involved. When the students return to campus in the fall we will use the centers to [makes] demands on the University.
   One thing that’s happening is that we’re finding ourselves in the position where we may be working politically with men. But we definitely want men to start taking responsibility for children and when they take this responsibility and work 8 hours or more a week they should have a say on the day care center’s political use.
   In many ways we’ re finding ourselves in an “after the revolution” position before the revolution. We teach the kids that everything’s everyone’s but what can we say when they want to take a ride in a car that’s just sitting there but isn’t ours? We’ re in a position of feigned equality with men which is a strain on us all. I suppose it’s because we hope the kids will be “after the revolution” people -- but I don’t know how much good or bad our dishonesty is doing to them or to us.   Phyllis

[photo]

A Woman? image of an arm]
Vol 1 No 1        5

Saving...

But Leona isn't a passive type of female, and she did not meekly accept the board's decision. She fought back with help from several lawyers and from many liberals and radicals who were appalled at the board's unjust action. And when the local chapter of the ACLU urged the board to reconsider the firing, things began to look up for Leona. Under all this pressure, the board set up an outside fact-finding commission to hear the case. On June 11, the commission released a blistering report, which states that the board acted "unreasonably and without sufficient cause" in firing Leona, and recommended that she be fully reinstated. In their words, "the overwhelming evidence is that the board threw Leona to the lions -- and then blamed her for getting bitter." One week later, the board met and reinstated her. She and her new staff took over The Daily Iowan on June 20, after one last nasty jab by the old Iowan staff. Ungracious in defeat, these sexists put a filler item in their last issue of the paper which said: "The Women's Liberation Movement is something. The trouble with most women who insist that they can get along without men -- is they look like they already have." Carole BRING IT ALL DOWN! and hurry it up cause BABYLON is hurting me. Thoughts about the strike: very confused. I felt at a loss as to how to relate as a woman and as a person to what was going on; I wanted to rejoice in the window-smashing, building-burning, etc., yet couldn't feel there was any clear political motivation for it -- they seemed to be just half-assed undirected property-damage trips participated in as much (or more) by idiot jocks as by dedicated revolutionaries on the path to a Goal. I couldn't stand the endless pompous chauvinist male-rapping at rallies -- why the hell didn't I have the courage or togetherness or whatever to get up there and straighten everyone out (ha)? An air of excitement, things happening, the Revolution coming home to roost -- yet nothing significant occurred. The passionate angry desire to act -- yet how? Not just by trailing along following the crowd. The choice seemed to be between 1-woman violent action which I was scared to understake, and getting ourselves together as women to seize the leadership and do something serious. But, I thought, that can't be done on the spur of the moment; have to know things about tactics, have complete trust in our cohorts, be confident of our analysis and ability to carry it out. Whence cometh such confidence if not by doing it? I really don't know if any good came out of the strike. So the Faculty Senate offed ROTC -- the trustees will doubtless veto their decision. A few students may have been politicized by the obvious freakout of the police in several instances, or in the mass arrest of 200+ peaceful sit-in-ers, or in the spur-of-the-moment suspension, then firing, of the new DI editor. But I felt my own lack of political development during the crisis, and I think a great many would-be radicals felt similarly. An eye-opener. Perhaps the next time we'll be better prepared? Penny [right section of page] Dum-dum Day Care (title chosen by the children) The Iowa City child care collective decided to start a free day care center. we got the basement of a campus Lutheran chapel to use for free. It's one big carpeted room with a kitchen and bathroom off to one end. The people donated toys, four cribs, two bassinets, four mattresses and two playpens and got together on a Saturday morning and made more toys from scrap lumber. We made a large playpen where there's plenty of room for several non-walkers to crawl around without getting trampled or picking up chokable bits. There are 16 children involved but no more than 13 come at one time. They are all under 3 years old (one is 4 weeks, another was born 3 days ago and will come starting next week). The adults come there according to a fixed weekly schedule. About half of us are volunteers and half are parents. One-fourth to one-half of the adults there at one time are male volunteers and fathers. Parents must put an 8 hours a week unless they are working. Six adults come every morning and 5 every afternoon. We take the walking children to the city park every morning and take the babies outside to the small church lawn. One day a week to 2 year olds go to a farm 20 miles away where one of the children lives. Everything is free play and so far we haven’t insisted on naps although we may have to. They’re very possessive so we’re trying to insist that “everything is everybody’s!” instead of “mine.” It hasn’t changed any behavior but it’s sematically better for us. Parents bring lunch, clean diapers, and a clean change of clothes and do their own laundering. We have collective snack material (apples, juice, crackers) which is supplied by one set of parents a week. We haven’t got into any legal hassles yet. At first we checked on certification requirements but decided we didn’t want welfare breathing down our backs. Unfortunately one of us was in the food stamp line and was recognized so we’re sort of trapped into going next week. The lawyer said he didn’t think we had to be certified but welfare thinks otherwise. We’ve had all parents sign liability releases but we don’t know how much good they’ll do. The lawyer said that certification, incorporation and liability insurance are all prerequisites for each other plus a showing of financial stability (I guess we are stable at nothing) and permanence. A medical student arranged to have four med students come to the center one evening and give all the children medical examinations under the supervisor of the pediatrics professor. These free physicals were both a service to the parents and for use in case of emergencies. We’ve decided to try to set up at least a couple more day care centers before the end of the summer. These will be more parent established and controlled. A couple of us will try to phase ourselves out of this center to help with setting up the new ones. We’ll also ask the parents in this center to use some of their liberated time to help a new group of parents get set up. For the summer the political use of the day care centers will be self education about what’s involved in daycare and whatever organizing can be done with the parents and volunteers involved. When the students return to campus in the fall we will use the centers to [makes] demands on the University. One thing that’s happening is that we’re finding ourselves in the position where we may be working politically with men. But we definitely want men to start taking responsibility for children and when they take this responsibility and work 8 hours or more a week they should have a say on the day care center’s political use. In many ways we’ re finding ourselves in an “after the revolution” position before the revolution. We teach the kids that everything’s everyone’s but what can we say when they want to take a ride in a car that’s just sitting there but isn’t ours? We’ re in a position of feigned equality with men which is a strain on us all. I suppose it’s because we hope the kids will be “after the revolution” people -- but I don’t know how much good or bad our dishonesty is doing to them or to us. Phyllis [photo] A Woman? image of an arm] Vol 1 No 1 5