When We Were Outlaws

by Jeanne Cordova

  I wiggled over to the Fourth Street exit, turned south, then west to 237 Hill Street, and pulled Lionheart into the parking lot next to the Westside Women’s Center. Bounding up the stairs of the porch, I stopped for a moment to pay homage to the sign nailed to the front of the building, L.A.’s original sign from the city’s first women’s center. The large red letters painted against a white background bore the simple words The Women’s Center. Tucked into the “o” of “Women” was the insignia of the feminist movement—a raised, clenched fist encircled by the ancient symbol for female. The late ‘sixties radical feminists from Boston had borrowed the clenched fist from the power-to-the-people salute of the Vietnam anti-war movement, who had, in turn, adopted it from the Black Panthers during the civil rights struggle. The Panthers had copied the clenched fist from the anti-fascist movement in the Spanish civil war. A proud symbol of past defiance, incorporated and modified to be our woman-power symbol, had been popularized in America by appearing on the cover of Robin Morgan’s anthology, Sisterhood is Powerful, five years ago. I puffed out my chest, knowing it bespoke women’s identification with minority people all over the world.

  I opened the door, walking into the front living room which was lined with folding chairs. Posters of women of every size, color, and shape were pinned to the walls. The room exuded safe familiarity, like a true family living room of multi-ethnic worldwide women. Staring at four closed doors that used to be bedrooms, I wondered which of the rooms held my meeting. I didn’t want to barge in on someone else’s private group meeting. Would Ariana’s meeting be in the rear bedroom where I occasionally met with members of the Radical Feminist Therapy Collective over political issues? In their opposition to the psychiatric Establishment, radical feminist therapy groups had sprung up all over the country teaching that the silenced realities of living under the patriarchy—rape, sexual abuse of children, beating of women in the home, violence against gays and lesbians, and institutionalized racism—were societal crimes and not the job of one victimized woman to “adjust to” in therapy.

  Opening the door, I heard “Hiya, Córdova Kid!” as Ariana broke into a warm smile, calling me by her pet nickname. Sitting on the carpeted floor in a circle, everyone smiled and jostled around, opening a space for me.

  She summarized for me. “We’ve decided to hold a community-wide educational forum on September 25, to defend our community against the Grand Jury’s abuses of political dissidents, and using its power and secrecy to intimidate witnesses and fish for evidence.” Ariana Manov’s day job was counseling poor, domestically abused, and raped women while she helped create a battered women’s shelter, the first feminist one in Southern California. By night, Ariana did what she termed solidarity work with Central American causes. I shared almost everything, personal and political, with Ariana, but her solidarity work was something she shared with no one.

  “The purpose of the forum,” continued Judy, “will be to raise political consciousness. To explain to women how the Grand Jury system is part of the government’s national program of repression, and how we should respond to it.” Judy Freespirit was tacitly recognized as Queen Bee of the Westside radical lesbian feminists. She was short, fat and round, with tight curly locks that sat atop an ever-smiling face. “We need to tell our sisters how these Grand Juries have been used to fragment movements, to create mistrust and make us suspicious of one another. We’ll give them the background on how FBI probes and Grand Juries were used against Martin Luther King and the NAACP.”

  Judy epitomized the radical feminist practice of women changing their last names to reflect who they wanted to be, rather than their father’s identity. At thirty-eight, she was the eldest among us. She and I had been neighbors last year, sharing adjacent studio apartments overlooking the beach, so she knew me well.

  Jane Herman chimed in, “We’ll tell them about the FBI’s probe into the Lexington and Connecticut lesbian communities. How that’s resulted in sisters being hauled before Grand Juries, and now, jailed for refusing to talk.”

  I interjected, “At the forum shouldn’t we pass out a list of attorneys in L.A. who would be ready to take a dyke’s case pro bono if she receives a subpoena?”

  “Let’s make a list, but don’t hand it out. That would make those lawyers advance targets,” Ariana said.

  “Women will want to know that a Grand Jury has been opened in Los Angeles,” I said.

  “Indeed!” said Jane, her long, proud chocolate tresses bobbing in her indignation. “The FBI has opened a Grand Jury in every city where Saxe or Power or the SLA was known to have hidden.”

  “They’re really looking for Patty Hearst,” Ariana said. “Not finding her has been a huge national embarrassment to the FBI. They are not letting anyone’s constitutional rights get in the way of capturing the SLA fugitives who are hiding her.”

  “We need to tell everyone that the government thinks that women break more easily than men,” said Kate McDonough. Kate’s new Westside Women’s Clinic had been harassed with death threats and repeatedly vandalized.

  Jane jumped in. “The Feds think women can’t handle the pressure of being in jail. They say that appealing to our so-called natural nurturing and humanity makes us crack more quickly.”

  “Lesbians need to be psychologically prepared not to fall for this crap,” I said.

  Two hours later, we reached consensus on our plans. We’d designed a creative flyer, using the format of a real grand jury subpoena. Assignments were parceled out, and we’d decided who would say what at the public forum. Last but not least, we’d formalized our group, naming it: The Feminist Offensive Against Repression, FOAR for short.

  “All right,” recapped Freespirit. “Let’s do some centering and then do some personal work with Córdova.”

  I folded my hands on my lap. The process known as centering, a feminist therapy term, created a space into which we could pool our energies, our love for each other, and our trust. During centering each woman told the others where her head was at—this week, this day, this hour. If a woman was so un-centered that she couldn’t come into shared group energy, personal time was called for her to talk about what was so painful. That’s what I felt now—too blasted away by seeing my name on the lawsuit that I couldn’t let that energy go.

  Jane turned to me. “What do you need, Córdova, to get centered today? It feels like your energy is all over the map.”

  I released a pent-up sigh. I could let these women see the real me. I wasn’t smarter, more politically astute, or more courageous than any of them. I tossed my copy of the lawsuit into the center of the circle. “This is what is fucking up my life. That’s the lawsuit that the strikers filed against GCSC. Look at page one.”

  Judy picked up the document with one finger, disgust written clearly on her round, freckled cheeks. “Aside from its very existence, what disturbs you so much?”

  “My shock and hurt are blocking me from finding a solution to this political battle.” I stumbled over each difficult word. It was never easy for me to show personal pain. “I knew the lawsuit was coming. I think we’re doing the right thing given GCSC’s lack of cooperation, but seeing my name on this printed court document makes me feel so...so…devastated.” The last word came out barely audible as I bought up my knees and my head fell into them.

  “Devastated by what…exactly?” Ariana asked.

  “I don’t know!” I wailed putting my hands over my ears. “Being singled out, being the first name. Something about being a ‘plaintiff.’”

  “What does that word mean to you?” Jane asked.

  “Plaintiff means the voice of one crying alone in the wilderness. Plaintiff means complainer,” I muttered through tears. “I’ve been complaining for months. No one is listening to us!”

  “You mean no one is listening to you?” Ariana interjected.

  “That’s right,” I choked on my words. “I feel like a complaining, whimpering victim. Like I have no choices. I don’t know what to do.”

&n
bsp; Judy reached out to caress my arm. “You mean you want to do something to make it all go away, but you feel powerless.”

  “Exactly!” I bellowed. And then, it hit me. “Yes!” I screamed. “It’s the goddamn powerlessness!”

  Ariana stroked me on the back of the neck and I leaned my head into her shoulder and let my tears flow. Sobbing deeply, a huge sense of release blew through me like someone had sucked out a boulder lodged in my lungs. I realized I wasn’t “confused” about the strike. The feeling of confused depression was born out of my perception that I had no power. I’d forgotten that leading means freeing oneself to take action. That’s what makes a leader—the courage to take risks. I’d known this since leaving the convent. I’d almost always been the first horse out of the box. Somehow, in the negative conundrum called The Strike, I’d rendered myself choice-less and therefore powerless.

  The room gave in with me and was silent.

  Jane whispered, “Poor you,” voicing her words in the tone a mother might use to comfort her child. Silly words for grown-ups, I thought, hearing them addressed to me. But soothing and womblike. I felt cradled.

  Kate echoed Jane’s condolence. Ariana stroked my forearm. After some minutes, Jane handed me a Kleenex. I wiped the mucus from my nose and lifted my head to look at the faces around me. Everyone was listening to me.

  “Are you ready to take your power?” Judy’s tough invitation brought me back into focus.

  Gazing into her warm eyes, I nodded. “Yeah, I’m ready…for…whatever.”

  The group fell into thought.

  “In that case, the nerve of that Board!” Jane blurted out.

  Jane Herman didn’t believe in suffering silently. One of her affair-mates had it that she gave all her lovers an instruction sheet, map included, before she allowed them into her bed. “What would happen if you told the lawyer, Patton, to take your name off the lawsuit?”

  I reached for the document lying forlornly in our circle. “If I asked her to take my name off this, she’d bring it up at the next meeting and call me out publicly. She’d ask me if I want to renounce my role as a striker. Word of my defection would leak and be great gossip. When the Center finds out there’s a rift among the strikers, or that I don’t believe in our position, it will weaken the picket line, and our position. Everything!”

  “What if…” Judy spoke softly with quick, terse words, “the Radical Feminist Therapy Collective called Alan Gross, GCSC’s attorney, and offered to mediate the strike? We’ve mediated between other groups in town.”

  Part of the role of the RFTC was to keep peace within sometimes fractious groups at the Women’s Center and elsewhere in the city. They’d successfully mediated a disagreement on The Tide’s staff a year ago.

  I studied earth mother Judy. She didn’t know the players in this situation. In my mind’s eye I saw Morris laughing derisively when Alan Gross brought RFTC’s offer to mediate to him. Morris and Gross would dismiss the offer assuming a bias because RFTC was a lesbian group. After all, it came from women—the weaker sex.

  “That wouldn’t work,” I explained. “I’m sure Morris would pull the corporate papers of the WWC and see that I’m the Secretary of it, at least my title, though not reality. That makes me an officer of this non-profit, which overlaps strongly with the Radical Feminist Therapy Collective. Way too much conflict of interest. He doesn’t respect lesbians anyway.”

  Everyone laughed, remembering how a year ago we’d sat down to draw up some necessary legal documents to renew the Westside Center’s non-profit status. Since officers were required by the State, some of us activists, myself included, had blithely inserted our names. But no one knew who the officers of WWC were. In practice the center was mostly run by the Radical Feminist Therapy Collective. The words “Board” or “Director” were never used. Such structures were patriarchal, and therefore anathema.

  Kate swung into the discussion. “GCSC was dead wrong to fire all of you. Even General Motors doesn’t fire people without notice! I agree with Córdova that this struggle is not primarily a labor issue. But each side seems to fear and distrust the actions and motives of the other side.”

  I beamed, happy to be in a room full of lesbians, away from June and her ilk, who defined the strike as a worker’s issue.

  “In other words,” Jane said, “is it a feminist Center or a homosexual Center?”

  “Being a gay Center is not a bad thing,” I said. I thought of my little brother, Jerome, who I was sure would grow up to be a gay man, one who might need GCSC someday.

  “Why are we attempting to reform GCSC,” Judy continued, “and make it acceptable? Why work with men at all? We have what amounts to a lesbian center here on the Westside.”

  I paused. “Some lesbians want to work with men. Gay men have the money—from other rich gay men and their visibility to get grants—therefore their programs get funded.” My shoulders drooped, I was suddenly discouraged. “Hell, that’s how we lesbians got into this mess in the first place. Social change doesn’t always proceed in a straight line. Sometimes it just jags to the left and then jags to the right and loops back on itself and the good guys get hung with their own rope.”

  Again the room went quiet, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

  “I don’t care for the analogy about hanging, Córdova Kid, but I’m with you,” Ariana broke the silence. “Maybe you can find some common ground and make some peace overture without selling out the strikers.”

  All heads turned toward Ariana, trying to follow her thinking. Plump and pink-faced from a Slavic-Irish heritage, Ariana was good at nuanced strategy.

  “What are you talking about, R?” I said calling her by my nickname for her.

  My friend studied my face. “You want to know what you, Jeanne Córdova, can do about the strike, right?”

  I racked my brain. “Yes?”

  “You’ve told me that you and Morris Kight used to be very tight personally, right?” she prodded.

  “Used to be,” I said. “Past tense.”

  “Well,” said Ariana, “why don’t you reach out to him based on your past political and personal relationship? Admit to him there’s been a lot of hurt and misunderstanding on both sides. Get him to come to the table.”

  I laughed aloud. “Ariana, you must be nuts!”

  “What’s so crazy?” she shot back. “You know him well. You’ve been with him on the same side for years. You’re his protégée. If he won’t listen to a mediation offer coming from a bunch of radical dykes like us, he may listen to an offer coming from someone he at least used to respect and trust.”

  “Ariana,” I wailed, still astonished. “That would mean crossing the picket line!”

  “I don’t mean talk to him when he’s at the Center. I mean go to his house.”

  “You know it doesn’t matter where he is,” I retorted. “He could be asleep at the North Pole and I’d be technically crossing the picket line no matter where I talked to him.”

  “I know that.” Ariana looked around the room. “And I wouldn’t be suggesting crossing any picket line under any circumstances except possibly this one. You’ve already been branded a traitor by the gay men. Could you can stand up to possibly being branded as such by sisters?”

  For a moment my mind left the room, remembering the afternoon four years ago when I’d had the audacity to stick the word “lesbian” on the masthead of my new publication—The Lesbian Tide. No other women’s publication in the world had risked using the word lesbian on its cover. I had proven then that I was willing to stick my neck out; was I willing to risk it again to save the unity of the greater L.A. gay and lesbian community?

  I studied Ariana’s face. “Are you honestly suggesting that I dive into the deep end head first?”

  “Yes,” Ariana answered without hesitation.

  I looked around. All the heads in the room were slowly nodding agreement.

  I whistled through my teeth. “I know Morris. He won’t cave if we keep picketing until C
hristmas. I’m gonna have to run with this idea. I’ll try to find a way to do it without publicly jeopardizing the line or the issues. But if anyone finds out, or Morris blows my cover, I’ll have to publicly say I’ve gone rogue and don’t represent the strikers.”

  Judy nodded. “That’s the only ethical way.”

  “What if he won’t take my call or slams the door in my face?”

  “You’ll have to cross that line to find out.” Ariana’s lips curved into a rueful smile.

  Chapter 21

  The Arrangement

  [Los Angeles]

  Late July, 1975

  The sun baked the broken asphalt as I strode through The Free Press’s Hollywood Boulevard parking lot. The glass front door was marked 5850.

  “Thank the Goddess you’re finally here!” Bryan gasped as I tried to pass his reception desk. He and his great brush of flowing yellow hair sat at a desk awash in messages, manuscripts, and mismanaged chaos. Bryan was as feminist as any man could be, but also a drama queen.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Bryan was close to tears. “There’s nobody in Editorial. Penny is gone, and so is Tom! She said you’d be here when I opened. You’re supposed to take over!” His mouth quivered, blond curls bobbing with emotion.

  “Calm down, nobody’s dead.” I spoke firmly. “Just give me the editorial messages.” Penny hadn’t given me notice that I was representing the paper today. I would’ve combed my hair.

  “Where are Penny and Tom?” I asked, afraid the question would set him to tears again.