My Life on the Road (9 page)

Up to then, I had feared that our opposition was more unified than we were. For instance, the same groups that opposed contraception and abortion also opposed sexual relationships between two people of the same sex. It was irrational on the surface, but the religious right wing was against
any
sex that couldn’t end in conception. Now a representative majority was united, too, in recognizing that human sexual expression was not only a way to reproduce if we chose to, but also a way of pleasuring and bonding.

By the end of the first day’s marathon, Bella got laughter and cheers when she broke the tension by saying, “Good night, my loves!”

M
Y SURPRISE DUTY AT
the conference was a last-minute request from the various women-of-color caucuses to be a kind of scribe. I was to go from one hotel room to the next, one meeting to the next, writing down concerns that were shared by all, combining language for their approval, and appending issues that were unique to each. The goal was to compose a substitute for the so-called Minority Women’s Plank that had come up from individual state conferences, yet women of color hadn’t been able to meet as a group. Asian Americans were spread from Hawaii to New York. The Hispanic Caucus was mainly Chicanas on one coast and Puerto Ricans on the other. African Americans came from everywhere, and members of the American Indian and Alaskan Native Caucus were the most spread out of all. Houston was their first and only chance to meet and come up with a plank that included their shared and specific issues. Yet if they met during the day, they would miss crucial floor votes. As usual, double discrimination meant double the work.

I was to be what they referred to cheerfully as “our token,” that is, the only one who wasn’t a woman of color, going early in the morning or after hours at night from one drafting group to the next as they met in different hotel rooms. I would combine language where possible and list unique issues, then give the result back for the approval of all. This was an honor, but it also upped my already high anxiety level. I was afraid I would mess up. I wasn’t even sure I could physically get to each meeting in the midst of conference chaos.

As I went from one caucus to the next, I saw women camped out on every surface around breakfast or late-night snacks, from Houston’s idea of bagels to Tex-Mex pizzas. Among the three hundred African American delegates were legislators skilled in parliamentary procedure and women who’d never been to a conference before, Deltas in silk dresses and students in army boots, radicals with no faith in voting and civil rights veterans like Dorothy Height, who had worked for voting rights since she was a young woman meeting Eleanor Roosevelt.

While the African American women raised umbrella issues of racism and poverty, the Asian and Pacific American Caucus added language barriers, sweatshops, and the isolation of women who came to this country as servicemen’s wives. The Hispanic Caucus spoke about Chicanas being deported away from their American-born children, Puerto Ricans who were treated as if they were not American citizens, and Cubans cut off from families by tensions with their home country. Somehow, this all had to go into one substitute Minority Plank that could come to the floor and be voted on by all delegates.

Still, nothing prepared me for the American Indian and Alaskan Native Caucus. These delegates from Indian Country had the most educating to do. For instance, when Native women spoke passionately against “termination,” meaning of treaties, others in the Minority Caucus thought they meant “termination,” as in pregnancies. While other women of color fought for equality
inside
the mainstream, Native women fought for that plus tribal sovereignty and self-determination
outside
the mainstream. By treaty, Native nations were supposed to have government-to-government status with Washington, yet in reality they weren’t even allowed to teach their own languages in schools. As one Native delegate said, “Other Americans have histories and families and gene pools in their home countries. If French or Arabic is forgotten in America, it’s still being spoken somewhere. We have no other country. If our languages are wiped out, they can’t come back. If we disappear here, that’s it.”

From listening, I began to realize there were major cultures in my own country of which I knew nothing, and these cultures were struggling to keep or restore a balance—between males and females, humans and nature—that modern social justice movements thought they had invented. Even the familiar term
Indian Country
meant not just self-governing territories within the United States, but also a sense of community that exists within big cities and small towns—wherever First Peoples live. As a Cherokee activist said to me, “
Indian Country
has become a shorthand for our home, reservation or city. It is where we are known, where we are safe.”

I also noticed that humor was even more of a survival tactic here than in most women’s groups. As one asked:
What did Columbus call primitive?
Answer:
Equal women.

It was my first glimpse of how little I knew—and how much I wanted to learn.

F
INALLY, URGENT ISSUES WERE
reduced to phrases short enough for a plank to substitute for the original Minority Plank. Minutes before it was to be presented on the floor, a spokeswoman from each of the women-of-color caucuses gathered in an empty coatroom to give the final okay to the text, then rushed out on the floor to surround a mike in the huge Coliseum.

First, Maxine Waters read the preamble on the discriminatory impact of sex and race combined. It was an honor that this young California assemblywoman had earned by her organizing skill in bringing all three hundred diverse members of the Black Caucus together.

Then Billie Nave Masters, a Cherokee educator and activist, spoke on behalf of the Native American and Alaskan Native Caucus, citing their unique issues of sovereignty, and calling on “Earth Mother and the Great Spirit.” Those words didn’t seem to belong in a political plan of action, but I had asked the other caucuses if I could leave them in. An older woman in the Black Caucus had agreed. “Those are the only words my grandmother would give a damn about,” she said. “Issues are the head; those words are the heart.” When Billie read them, I saw delegates standing on their chairs to see who was speaking poetry.

Next came Mariko Tse, a young Japanese American actor, who cited the struggles of Asian and Pacific Americans against language barriers, cultural bias, the realities of sweatshops, and the stereotypes of being “a model minority,” one supposedly without rebellion or problems.

For the Hispanic Caucus, three delegates—Mexican American leader Sandy Serrano-Sewell; Ana Maria Perera, a Cuban American; and Celeste Benitez from the Puerto Rican senate—came to the mike together. This was the first time that different Spanish-speaking groups had unified in public across national boundaries as Hispanics, something they were encouraging male counterparts to consider. They took turns reading, and stood together on everything from immigrant rights and a minimum wage for migrant workers to reminding the media that Spanish-language reporters were not foreign press.

Last came Coretta Scott King, standing with her bodyguard, a reminder of past tragedies and present danger. She cited the unemployment rate for young black women that was even higher than that for young black men, as well as housing bias against black families, black children in need of adoption, and more.

Then she spoke for all the caucuses when she called for “the enthusiastic adoption of this substitute resolution on behalf of all the minority women in this country!” There were cheers, but her voice rode over them: “Let this message go forth from Houston and spread all over this land. There is a new force, a new understanding, a new sisterhood against all injustice that has been born here. We will not be divided and defeated again!”
14

With chants, applause, and tears, the two thousand delegates accepted the new so-called Minority Plank by acclamation. It was the high point of the conference. I was as proud of my facilitating role as anything I had ever done in my life.

In the back of this cavernous Coliseum, someone began to sing “We Shall Overcome.” Like waves of an ocean, people stood to sing, too. I saw a white man and woman from the Mississippi delegation, the group that had been elected as a state conference partly taken over by the Klan, reach across neighbors to hold hands and stand.

By the second chorus, the observers in the bleachers and media were standing and singing, too. Even after the singing was over, people raised clasped hands above their heads and chanted, “It’s our movement now!” No one seemed to want this moment to end.

I was surprised to find myself in tears. Because these women had trusted me to help as a writer, I began to see a way of bringing together two things—writing and activism—that until then had torn me apart in everyday life.

From those two years on, I divided my life into Before and After.

Before Houston, I had voted to pay some of our scarce funds to retired policemen, who would know how to protect the conference from hostile demonstrators.

After Houston, I realized that the young women volunteers with red T-shirts and movement experience had kept security far better than the retired cops. My lack of belief in them had been a lack of belief in myself.

Before Houston, I had known that women in small groups could be courageous and loyal to each other and respect each other’s differences.

After Houston, I’d learned that women could do this in large numbers, across chasms of difference, and for serious purpose.

Before Houston, I had said that women could run huge public events at least as well as men.

After Houston, I believed it.

At the end of an emotional closing ceremony that left all the delegates plus observers singing and chanting, clusters of women lingered for hours on the convention floor—talking, exchanging addresses, pledging to stay in touch. They seemed reluctant to leave this space that had been our only reality for three days and nights. Then at last I found myself standing alone amid the litter and empty chairs, feeling my adrenaline draining away and exhaustion rushing in.

I wondered: Would anybody in the future know or care what had happened here? From my own college history courses, I knew that a century of abolitionists and suffragists had been reduced to a few textbook paragraphs. Magnetic people could be made to seem distant, boring, irrelevant. In newspaper coverage, the Houston conference was far overshadowed by a brief and symbolic visit to Israel by President Sadat of Egypt.
15

As if summoned by my doubt, three young Native women were walking toward me across the Coliseum floor. One was carrying a red-fringed shawl with a ribbon-work border of purple and gold. Another held a long beaded necklace with a large blue and white medallion. They put the shawl around my shoulders, explaining that I could wear it while dancing at powwows. “And you will dance at powwows,” said one with a smile. They put the flower medallion around my neck, explained it was beaded in the style of the Woodlands people, and told me it would keep me safe. “You’ll need it if you keep supporting us,” said one with a hug. Then they left as mysteriously as they had come.

I
WOULD INDEED WEAR
my shawl while dancing at powwows in the future. I wore the necklace whenever I had to do something I was afraid of, like appearing before an Establishment group that made me feel as if I’d just emerged from East Toledo, a trailer park, or both. I wore it so often that I had to preserve the remaining beads in a bowl.

After I came home from Houston, I slept for days. Then I began to read what other women were writing about it. One account was from Billie Nave Masters, who had read the Native American resolution from the floor, the part with poetry. “If people do not take you seriously when it is a question of survival,” she wrote, “Indians accept this as another loss in a history of many losses, and just walk away. But those ways were set aside in Houston…the most intense and meaningful experience I will have in my lifetime.”
16

We came from such different lives, yet we felt the same way about Houston. For Billie, it was rare to find a public event with any inclusion of Indian Country at all. For me, it was a glimpse of a way of life in which the circle, not a hierarchy, was the goal.

Without this glimpse of what once was—and so could be again—I wouldn’t have traveled in the same way, seen the same country, or become the same person.