In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (15 page)

We demand that the magazine cease to further the exploitation of women by publishing advertisements that degrade women, and by publishing ads from companies that exploit women in terms of salary and job discrimination.

We demand that the magazine cease to publish “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” and all contributions by Drs. Bruno Bettelheim and Theodore Rubin.

We demand an end to all celebrity articles, all articles oriented toward the preservation of youth (implying that age has no graces of its own), and an end to all articles specifically tied in to advertising: e.g., food, makeup, fashion, appliances.

We demand that service articles perform useful services: e.g., real information along the lines of
Consumer Reports
, telling whether consumer goods really work.

We demand that the
Journal
publish fiction on the basis of its merits, not specially slanted, romantic stories glorifying women’s traditional roles.

The Women’s Liberation Movement represents the feelings of a large and growing mass of women throughout the country. Therefore we demand that as an act of faith toward women in this country, the
Ladies’ Home Journal
turn over to the Women’s Liberation Movement the editorial content of one issue of the magazine, to be named the
Women’s Liberated Journal
. We further demand a monthly column.

The main problem, as I saw it, was getting out the troops. At that early stage in Women’s Liberation there had been WITCH zaps and NOW pickets, but most of the movement’s energy was being directed toward consciousness-raising, abortion rights, and theoretical papers. A large-scale assault, in the flesh, on a giant American institution had not been attempted since the Miss America Protest of 1968. The leftists’ taunt that we were living-room feminists was not without truth.

A sit-in does not need a huge number of demonstrators, but it does require a high degree of commitment. We had to find people willing to take a day off from work or school for an action that exposed them
to arrest for criminal trespass, but if we tried to spread the word openly, with flyers on lampposts, for instance, the
Journal
might get wind of our intentions. We needed to proceed in stealth for maximum security and a lightning strike.

I passed the word to Kathie Amatniek Sarachild, who took it back to her group and returned with a solid guarantee of two dozen Redstockings. Kathie glumly predicted that the
Journal
would call the cops, but I did not think John Mack Carter would risk a tabloid headline along the lines of “Male Boss of Women’s Mag Sends Gals to Clink.” Furthermore, our sit-in was going to be perfectly nonviolent with an emphasis on constructive editorial advice and moral suasion. My friends Jan Goodman and Marion Davidson, then in their second year at NYU law school, enlisted as our legal advisers. If the paddy wagons showed up, Jan and Marion would negotiate with the police to make sure that the less-committed militants could leave quietly if they wished.

West Village–One, my consciousness-raising group, was fully behind the sit-in—ten more fearless activists to count on—but the leaders of New York Radical Feminists were dragging their feet. That situation changed one Sunday when Shulie Firestone and Anne Koedt were chairing the monthly general meeting and a visiting leftist erupted with the predictable “What do you women
do
? What are your
actions
?”

Anne turned to me. “Susan, you have an announcement about the magazine sit-in?” The visiting leftist got her answer, and I got a sign-up sheet with twenty more names.

Madelon Bedell, a public relations consultant and a member of OWL, Older Women’s Liberation, promised to bring a crowd and commandeer the
Journal
’s test kitchen. Representatives from Barnard and Columbia Women’s Liberation pledged their support. Twenty-three women signed a recruitment sheet at New York NOW. Michela Griffo, an art student at Pratt, volunteered to do the cover for our mock magazine, the
Women’s Liberated Journal
, and produced a witty graphic of a pregnant woman holding an “Unpaid Labor” picket sign. We reproduced it as a poster. Janet Gardner and Jo Tavener from NYU film school were ready to roll if I could get them a light meter. Marlene Sanders at ABC called me to confirm that she and a network film crew would be shooting.

The countdown was scary. I had set in motion an act of protest that was rude, antic, patently illegal, and guaranteed to make news. Two weeks before, the Weathermen had accidentally blown up their bomb factory on West Eleventh Street in Greenwich Village, killing three of their number. My plan to confront the system was hardly akin to theirs, but it, too, was hurtling forward on its own momentum. Several hundred people going about their normal routines had no idea that they were prisoners of a ticking clock. I wondered if terrorists were ever beset by twinges of misgiving.

On Wednesday morning, March 18, I put on my best dress, a sleeveless gray wool, and bade a solemn goodbye to Kevin Cooney, the man I lived with. Reuters, the international wire service he worked for, was sending a reporter. Alerted in advance, all the major media outlets were sending reporters, and as far as I knew they hadn’t tipped off the
Journal
, not wanting to ruin the spontaneity of a very good story. The gnawing question, the eternal one for organizers, was how many demonstrators would actually show up. Fifty would be a disappointment; thirty would be a rout. Kevin made a joke about the Women’s Massacre and wished me a slow news day so we’d get lots of press.

Outside my apartment building I linked up with Jan, Sally, her friend Helen Whitney, and Grace Lichtenstein of
The New York Times
, my neighbor and friend. We took the E train to St. Peter’s Church, our convenient collection point at Lexington and Fifty-third, one block from the glass skyscraper that housed the
Journal
. By 9
A.M.
fifty demonstrators were huddled in the church vestibule. Another twenty-five waited outside, hugging their arms in the chilly March air.

We had a liftoff! Signe Hammer and I distributed posters and fact sheets, and went over the logistics: Mingle with the flow of office workers boarding the elevators, get off at the fifth floor. Sandie North and Brook Mason had taken me on a tour of the
Journal
’s labyrinthine corridors a few days earlier so I’d be able to lead the troops directly to John Mack Carter’s huge corner office.

Right on schedule at 9:15, the first wave of demonstrators streamed into the building and proceeded upstairs. An AP photographer was snapping away, dancing backward at the front of the line. We passed startled secretaries clutching Styrofoam coffee cups. They gazed at us
numbly. Everything was going according to plan. Except for my miserable sense of direction. Nothing looked familiar. I was hopelessly lost.

“Perhaps it’s the other way?” said the man from AP.

“The other way!” I shouted.

The surging line reversed course. Eventually we tumbled into Carter’s office.

He looked up from his desk, expensively suited, thinner and smaller than I’d imagined. Lenore Hershey was at his side. True to the ladyeditor dress code, she was wearing a hat, although it did not sprout any flowers.

“Good morning,” I began. “We are the Women’s Liberation Movement. We shall now read our demands.”

We demand …

We demand …

Our numbers had swelled to more than one hundred, and Signe and I had read the demands a second time, wondering what to do next, when at precisely 9:30 Marlene Sanders and the ABC film crew strode in. It was like the cavalry coming over the hill.

“Carter!”
Marlene thrust her microphone forward. “What is your response to what these women are saying?”

Swallowing hard, John Mack Carter worked his jaw. He swallowed again. In shock, the man who had built his career by speaking for women had lost his own voice.

One by one the demonstrators found theirs. Sookie Stambler, Diana Gould, Ada Pavletich, Alice Denham, Sara Pines, Susan Frankel, Barbara Joans, Sonia Robbins, Corinne Coleman, Vivien Leone, Jacqui Ceballos, Marli Weiss, Rosetta Reitz—these are the women I particularly remember. Everyone was eloquent. They talked about their lives; they talked about their mothers’ lives and their mothers’ thwarted aspirations. I stepped back and relaxed.

No vocal failure afflicted senior editor Lenore Hershey. She was a tiger at the gate, a bear guarding her cub, a magpie passing judgment on our clothes, our hair, our extremely rude manners. Sisterhood failed us badly with Lenore Hershey. I got the feeling that even Carter wished she’d just shut up and listen.

The occupation of the
Ladies’ Home Journal
lasted for eleven hours, and I can’t remember Carter ever leaving his desk. At its height, two hundred demonstrators milled freely on the premises, engaging secretaries and editorial assistants in earnest discussions, hanging a banner,
THE WOMEN
’
S LIBERATED JOURNAL
, outside a window, picnicking on the carpet, passing around Carter’s box of cigars, explaining their philosophy and grievances to WINS All-News Radio, CBS, NBC, the
Daily News, The Washington Post
.

Shana Alexander from the rival
McCall’s
sent her beleagured counterpart a condolence bouquet of flowers.

Grace Lichtenstein whispered to me that the
Times
loved her call-in report and wanted more.

Trucia Kushner commandeered a phone to give a running account to
Women’s Wear Daily
.

Art Rust, Jr., of NBC made the mistake of shoving Claudia Dreifus of the
East Village Other
.

“Out! Out! Out!” the demonstrators chanted.

Idly I watched Tony Rollo of
Newsweek
lavish a roll of film on Holly Forsman, winsome in her granny glasses, as she rested her chin, just
so
, on a homemade poster. Holly, of New York Radical Feminists, was a former teen-fashion model for Eileen Ford.

In the media free-for-all, some of our more experienced firebrands who hadn’t attended the planning sessions felt ignored. Only the night before, Ti-Grace Atkinson had purred into the phone, “I have decided to attend your demonstration. My presence will assure that you get media coverage.” Now I watched her stalk the perimeter of Carter’s office, unrecognized and unnoticed.

Shulie Firestone was in a snit, stamping her foot like Rumpelstilt-skin.

“Am I your leader in New York Radical Feminists?”

“Yes, Shulie, you are.”

“Then tell the reporters they must speak to
me
!”

“Shulie, they’ll speak to whomever they want.”

Minutes later I was standing near Karla Jay, a sturdy Redstocking with a sense of humor who was doubling that season as a rotating chair in the Gay Liberation Front. We were facing the sleek expanse of
Carter’s
wood desk when Shulie, egged on by Ti-Grace, made her move.

“I’ve had enough of this,” Firestone screamed, leaping onto the desk and tearing at a copy of the
Ladies’ Home Journal
. As the magazine’s spine broke she received a smattering of nervous applause and suddenly I had the sinking feeling that something was about to go dreadfully wrong. Then she shouted, “We can do it—he’s small,” and took a flying dive at John Mack Carter.

I froze.

Carter froze.

Everyone froze except Karla Jay. With split-second timing she grabbed Shulie’s right arm and expertly flipped her off the desk and out of danger. There was an audible “Oooooh” as Shulie sailed in an arc toward three waiting demonstrators who cushioned her fall. A phalanx of hands reached out to detain her while she blinked, looking sheepish. Her passion was spent.

Karla had been studying judo for all of three months.
I have to save this woman from going to jail and destroying her life
, Karla remembers thinking.

Without Karla Jay’s intervention, the
Journal
sit-in might have turned into a disastrous melee. She was our heroine, the woman of the hour. As for Shulie, at the time I thought that the media opportunity had simply gone to her head, but in retrospect I believe that her lunge was the first public sign of her growing instability. Disgraced, she walked out the door with Ti-Grace Atkinson and Rosalyn Baxandall. The three veteran activists, accustomed to claiming their place at the eye of the storm, tramped down the back stairs agreeing that the Media Women was a finky bunch.
Ros had seen us wave sheaves of paper at Carter and Hershey—our precious demands and article suggestions. With little effort she somehow convinced herself that we were brandishing resumés and angling for jobs.

Most people who were there believe that the unplanned drama of Shulie’s dive and Karla’s flip spurred John Mack Carter to begin negotiating with us in earnest. Whether that was the catalyst or not, his initial stance—“I will not negotiate under siege”—changed at midday to “I will not negotiate with a group larger than twelve.”

Choosing representatives from the various factions—three Redstockings, one OWL, four Media Women, Karla! Karla! etc.—was diplomacy worthy of the United Nations. We worked it out and repaired to a conference room while a weary Carter informed the lingering demonstrators, “Stay or leave as you wish.” The man had great dignity. Afterward he said the experience had been the most interesting and transformative day of his career.

By 6
P.M.
we were hammering out the basic terms of our settlement. The
Journal
editors agreed to hand over eight pages of their August issue, for which they’d pay us ten thousand dollars. They also promised to explore the feasibility of an on-site day-care center.