Take five friends, hold handsand run down the street together.Never gothru revolving doors.
Take five friendsand stop the traffic Broadway.Put up posters, explain to the people
why this city must grind to a halt.
Why our lives cannot go on as before.
Seize CBS, liberate a subway stop. (hear about the guy that tried to free a porpoise?)Drive around in a sound truck playing music.Cook breakfast for a thousand children in the university kitchens.Never go anywhere without a tambourine.
Organize a community meal tomorrow – on the A & PNo insurance, no preservatives, no credits.No accumulation but the smell of our skin,the touching of our hair.To save the moment is to loose it.
Take those five friendsand spend the day with Maowith Lao Tzu and Tong Fu.Be a fist at the demonstration.
Learn and teach,carburetors and silk screening.
Find new places to make love.
Move in together, so we canmove out together.If you wander off we will lose each other.
35mm photograph by Jeff Albertson. “Anti-war rally at Soldier’s Field, Harvard University: members of feminist group Bread and Roses speaking while wearing masks,” May 8, 1970.In response to the American invasion of Cambodia, the resumption of bombing of North Vietnam, the repression of the Panthers, and the murders of the Kent State students, Bread and Roses women working with other women's groups in the Boston area, decided to have an independent women’s action. On May 7, 500 women held a rally on Cambridge Commons without a permit and marched through Cambridge, postering and stickering, to Technology Square, a major center of military and imperialist research for M.I.T. and Harvard. The next day, the following speech was given by Bread and Roses women at a National Student Strike rally at Harvard Stadium:
Women have been fighters not only in political movements; since the beginning of the human race, each woman has had to fight, as an individual, for her very survival in the face of male brutalization. We have been slaves in a world controlled by men: we are housekeepers and maids without pay, have all the worst jobs for the worst pay, and serve everybody’s needs but our own.
Women are becoming a powerful force in and of ourselves. The women’s liberation movement is transforming the strength we have had to have as individuals in other struggles and in our daily lives into a collective strength. We have learned that we cannot postpone the struggle for our own particular needs until after the revolution. It is because of our rage at our own oppression that we are fighting hard. We are angry about the invasion of Cambodia and the repression of the Black Panthers, and we are also enraged about what we have to face every day in order to survive and stay sane—walking down the street, on our jobs, at home and at school.
We are told that whenever anything goes wrong, it is our fault; if we are afraid or unhappy, they make us feel that we are guilt-ridden pieces of shit. It is not paranoid to be afraid of the violence that surrounds us. We are beaten and raped on the streets and in our homes every day. It is not neurotic to feel like we can’t be a good mother to our children when we are taught that we are responsible for the health and welfare of our children while decent medical care, housing, and education are luxuries reserved for the rich. It is not ungrateful to resent being imprisoned in our home when hom is a sink full of dirty dishes, a vacuum cleaner, piles of dirty laundry. It is not petty to be concerned about a 20 cent rise in the price of hamburger meat when we are responsible for making ends meet to insure the survival of our family. We are not being piggy, it is not that we want more but inflation is making it impossible to meet basic needs. It is not frivolous to spend our time and money on clothes and cosmetics when it is necessary to decorate ourselves to sell our bodies in the job market and to get men. It is not castrating that WE control our own lives and bodies. All our lives we have been told that these are our own hang-ups, our personal problems. But what more and more women—housewives, single women, black, white, working women, welfare mothers and students—are rapidly learning is that those men who plotted the invasion of Cambodia, who are systematically ripping off the Black Panthers, who are responsible for the murders of the students at Kent State are the very same men who have enslaved us—by trying to destroy our minds and control our bodies, by exploiting our labor on the job and in the home. They are the very same men who have enslaved us for the purpose of enslaving people the world over.
We as women are fighting not just for ourselves but for all people. It is through our experiences in our everyday lives of sexism—our oppression as women—that we understand in our guts what racism and imperialism mean to other oppressed peoples in their everyday lives.
We are revolutionary feminists. We are building an independent women’s movement to destroy male supremacy. To accomplish that end we must fight in solidarity with all other oppressed people because we understand that our liberation depends on the total liberation of all people.
[…]
We are women fighting back because we hate what Amerika is. We are revolutionary feminists. We are revolutionaries because we believe we can win and because we have a vision of a better society. We are feminists because it is through our experience as women that we know that people can change, as we have changed; and because we believe that male supremacy is the original and basic form of domination from which all others flow.
Our vision of a new society flows from an understanding of how we have been and are oppressed. We have been victims of the competitiveness, money values, aggressiveness, individualistic ego-tripping, and brutality of white male Amerika. To survive in the misery of that world we have found each other in the women’s movement and have learned to act collectively. Our collective experience has taught us a better way to live—and inspired in us a belief that we can build a society which is based not only on different economic relations, but on a new form of human relations.
A Vietnamese parable of Heaven and Hell says something about what we mean: Hell, in the Vietnamese legend, is a gorgeous banquet spread with mounds of delicious food, only our chopsticks are so long that we can’t get any of it up to our mouth. Heaven is the same identical banquet—only the people feed each other. POWER TO THE SISTERS!
how ridiculous is it not to see THE MANnumber one symbol of a viciously oppressive power structurea fool who calls himself president of a countryand expresses his worry about the events of past weeks…yes – it is truethat the hills of kent state are soaked with innocent bloodwhite, nonpolitical, innocent blood…it rests heavy in our mindsand we mourn
but how absurd it seemsthat MISTER MAN does not worry about the deaths in augustacould it possibly be because the blood in augusta was black blood?and to waste black blood is nothingto waste black blood is naturalto waste black blood is traditioncould it be?but they were innocent too!and their death not less terrifying…and so it rests heavier in our mindsthey were soldiers in our armyand so we mourn in silence… tearlessbut with a new determination growing out of our pain
how utterly bizarre it is that this MANwho claims to be the leader of a nationnever seems to worry about the thousands of deathsin the forgotten shadows of babylondeath that comes through poverty – disease – hunger – dopedeath that creeps up on us out of the sour smell of garbagedeath through mental repression that causes our minds to slowly rotthe kind of dying that destroys our soulsthrough too much humiliation – hopelessness – despair – exhaustion – fearwe are innocent too…and the misery of our existence rests eternally in our minds and soulsand we mournand we dance on the ruins of our livesin a wild desperate attempt to survive the painto hold off that oncoming insanity
and we also remember those railroadedthrough fascist courtsby wicked arrogant judgesand those chained and shackledin amerika's stinking dungeons of corruptionfor demanding human dignity – respect – freedomand those forced into exilerestlessly longing for the streets of their childhoodand all those nations and peoples of the earthchoking under the unbearable pressure of racism and exploitationrobbed of their humanitystripped of their very soulsand those maimed and murdered by fascist bulletsfor exposing the truthabout the illnesses and evils of this dying society…they were innocent too!and their blood rests heavy in our mindsand we mourn furiouslymaddened by unbearable pain
yes – we HAVE gone madand what is going to destroy this whole vicious snakepitis our army of madmen…THE MAN is alone nowhis slaves and servants and n*****s and asslickers have left himhis women and witches and bitches and ladies and whores have deserted himhis sons and daughters and hippies and yippies no longer want any part of himour patience has run outand we cannot afford to give him more timeand in the hottest nighthe will feel a strange chill creeping down his spinewhen he realizes that the storm that is sweeping the earthis the storm of total changeof fearless youthof determination – and joy – and commitment – and loveand solidarity – and pain – and unity – and magic – and wrath…we want to livewe want to be freebut THE MAN with his warped visions and powerhis false standards of couragehis nonexistent concept of humanhoodstands between us and every choice we ever make…
so – sisters and brotherslater for the dreamsthere is work to be done!
and for you MANyou should not worryyou should be terrified
RAT, short for RAT Subterranean News and later Women’s LibeRATion, was created in March 1968 in as New York City’s second underground newspaper. Its first women-only issue was published in January 1970 as one of the first publications of second-wave feminism, notably further hard-left than its contemporaries.
Images and text on this page sourced from the “May 22–June 4, 1970” issue of RAT, courtesy of the Roz Payne Sixties Archive, except for the Bread and Roses speech image copyright Jeff Albertson.
