1
20
504
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/e80f64a981e025ccc191949a8be14318.mov
ea1d4fac5b1da28d4cacfd6aceb4c3e2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, “History of Community Activism in the GLBT Community in Tucson”
Subject
The topic of the resource
LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, Wingspan, public
Description
An account of the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07 June 2008
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wingspan, Southern Arizona’s LGBT Community Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Relation
A related resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, 07 June 2008
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
MovingImage
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Tucson, AZ
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
06 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
07 June 2008
Date Accepted
Date of acceptance of the resource. Examples of resources to which a Date Accepted may be relevant are a thesis (accepted by a university department) or an article (accepted by a journal).
05 October 2009
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, Arizona Queer Archives, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, “History of Community Activism in the GLBT Community in Tucson”
Introduction
Subject
The topic of the resource
LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, Wingspan, public
Description
An account of the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
CLIP 001 :: INTRODUCTION
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07 June 2008
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wingspan, Southern Arizona’s LGBT Community Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Relation
A related resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, 07 June 2008
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
MovingImage
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
06 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
07 June 2008
Date Accepted
Date of acceptance of the resource. Examples of resources to which a Date Accepted may be relevant are a thesis (accepted by a university department) or an article (accepted by a journal).
05 October 2009
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/6695252a760ffe17d43a33035c0c80db.mov
8e83aed350e123ddadc5304e290b60df
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, “History of Community Activism in the GLBT Community in Tucson”
Subject
The topic of the resource
LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, Wingspan, public
Description
An account of the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07 June 2008
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wingspan, Southern Arizona’s LGBT Community Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Relation
A related resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, 07 June 2008
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
MovingImage
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Tucson, AZ
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
06 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
07 June 2008
Date Accepted
Date of acceptance of the resource. Examples of resources to which a Date Accepted may be relevant are a thesis (accepted by a university department) or an article (accepted by a journal).
05 October 2009
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, Arizona Queer Archives, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, “History of Community Activism in the GLBT Community in Tucson”
1970s: Lavina Tomer and Leslie Carlson
Subject
The topic of the resource
LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, Wingspan, public
Description
An account of the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
CLIP 002 :: 1970s Lavina Tomer and Leslie Carlson
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07 June 2008
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wingspan, Southern Arizona’s LGBT Community Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Relation
A related resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, 07 June 2008
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
MovingImage
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
06 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
07 June 2008
Date Accepted
Date of acceptance of the resource. Examples of resources to which a Date Accepted may be relevant are a thesis (accepted by a university department) or an article (accepted by a journal).
05 October 2009
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/7353cf356111ca90248aa1fa44a99a5a.mov
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, “History of Community Activism in the GLBT Community in Tucson”
Subject
The topic of the resource
LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, Wingspan, public
Description
An account of the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07 June 2008
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wingspan, Southern Arizona’s LGBT Community Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Relation
A related resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, 07 June 2008
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
MovingImage
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Tucson, AZ
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
06 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
07 June 2008
Date Accepted
Date of acceptance of the resource. Examples of resources to which a Date Accepted may be relevant are a thesis (accepted by a university department) or an article (accepted by a journal).
05 October 2009
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, Arizona Queer Archives, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, “History of Community Activism in the GLBT Community in Tucson”
1980s: Wayne Blankenship
Subject
The topic of the resource
LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, Wingspan, public
Description
An account of the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
CLIP 003 :: 1980s Wayne Blankenship
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07 June 2008
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wingspan, Southern Arizona’s LGBT Community Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Relation
A related resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, 07 June 2008
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
MovingImage
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
06 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
07 June 2008
Date Accepted
Date of acceptance of the resource. Examples of resources to which a Date Accepted may be relevant are a thesis (accepted by a university department) or an article (accepted by a journal).
05 October 2009
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/67e397a7fccce717c44e7d957aea6cc9.mov
617ec0fdc135c8b9e9728ec7c5e4cbbb
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, “History of Community Activism in the GLBT Community in Tucson”
Subject
The topic of the resource
LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, Wingspan, public
Description
An account of the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07 June 2008
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wingspan, Southern Arizona’s LGBT Community Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Relation
A related resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, 07 June 2008
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
MovingImage
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Tucson, AZ
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
06 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
07 June 2008
Date Accepted
Date of acceptance of the resource. Examples of resources to which a Date Accepted may be relevant are a thesis (accepted by a university department) or an article (accepted by a journal).
05 October 2009
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, Arizona Queer Archives, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, “History of Community Activism in the GLBT Community in Tucson”
1990s: Ken Godat
Subject
The topic of the resource
LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, Wingspan, public
Description
An account of the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
CLIP 004 :: 1990s Ken Godat
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07 June 2008
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wingspan, Southern Arizona’s LGBT Community Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Relation
A related resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, 07 June 2008
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
MovingImage
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
06 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
07 June 2008
Date Accepted
Date of acceptance of the resource. Examples of resources to which a Date Accepted may be relevant are a thesis (accepted by a university department) or an article (accepted by a journal).
05 October 2009
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/79a7fd7cc140036e0b77ce4bdc5b101f.mov
95500c2a01a9b3060677f5671f8dcb02
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, “History of Community Activism in the GLBT Community in Tucson”
Subject
The topic of the resource
LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, Wingspan, public
Description
An account of the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07 June 2008
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wingspan, Southern Arizona’s LGBT Community Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Relation
A related resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, 07 June 2008
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
MovingImage
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Tucson, AZ
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
06 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
07 June 2008
Date Accepted
Date of acceptance of the resource. Examples of resources to which a Date Accepted may be relevant are a thesis (accepted by a university department) or an article (accepted by a journal).
05 October 2009
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, Arizona Queer Archives, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, “History of Community Activism in the GLBT Community in Tucson”
SAGA: Kevin Maxie
Subject
The topic of the resource
LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, Wingspan, public
Description
An account of the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
CLIP 005 :: SAGA Kevin Maxie
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07 June 2008
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wingspan, Southern Arizona’s LGBT Community Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Relation
A related resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, 07 June 2008
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
MovingImage
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
06 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
07 June 2008
Date Accepted
Date of acceptance of the resource. Examples of resources to which a Date Accepted may be relevant are a thesis (accepted by a university department) or an article (accepted by a journal).
05 October 2009
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/db733a485760ef44794f33b7b3bd7f49.mov-1
9d35c583c730f4cdfde72fd75d7a5f2a
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, “History of Community Activism in the GLBT Community in Tucson”
Subject
The topic of the resource
LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, Wingspan, public
Description
An account of the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07 June 2008
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wingspan, Southern Arizona’s LGBT Community Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Relation
A related resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, 07 June 2008
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
MovingImage
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Tucson, AZ
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
06 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
07 June 2008
Date Accepted
Date of acceptance of the resource. Examples of resources to which a Date Accepted may be relevant are a thesis (accepted by a university department) or an article (accepted by a journal).
05 October 2009
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, Arizona Queer Archives, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, “History of Community Activism in the GLBT Community in Tucson”
2000s: Jason Cianciotto, Executive Director
Subject
The topic of the resource
LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, Wingspan, public
Description
An account of the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
CLIP 006 :: 2000s Jason Cianciotto, Executive Director
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07 June 2008
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wingspan, Southern Arizona’s LGBT Community Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Relation
A related resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, 07 June 2008
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
MovingImage
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
06 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
07 June 2008
Date Accepted
Date of acceptance of the resource. Examples of resources to which a Date Accepted may be relevant are a thesis (accepted by a university department) or an article (accepted by a journal).
05 October 2009
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/f7ca0b4d9cf409da33cf700d6cec3b76.mov
8f9d3f3882397aad9dcdd9671308a402
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, “History of Community Activism in the GLBT Community in Tucson”
Subject
The topic of the resource
LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, Wingspan, public
Description
An account of the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07 June 2008
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wingspan, Southern Arizona’s LGBT Community Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Relation
A related resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, 07 June 2008
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
MovingImage
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Tucson, AZ
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
06 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
07 June 2008
Date Accepted
Date of acceptance of the resource. Examples of resources to which a Date Accepted may be relevant are a thesis (accepted by a university department) or an article (accepted by a journal).
05 October 2009
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, Arizona Queer Archives, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
MovingImage
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, “History of Community Activism in the GLBT Community in Tucson”
2000s: Cathy Busha, Director of Programming
Subject
The topic of the resource
LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, Wingspan, public
Description
An account of the resource
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
CLIP 007 :: 2000s Cathy Busha, Director of Programming
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07 June 2008
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wingspan, Southern Arizona’s LGBT Community Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
Relation
A related resource
Wingspan Community Conversation, 07 June 2008
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Introduction: 3:29 8.1MB
Cathy: 8:40 21.1MB
Jason: 12:59 27.4MB
Ken: 20:54 46.4MB
Kevin 11:15 26.3MB
Lavina & Leslie 23:41 51.7MB
Wayne 11:33 27MB
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
MovingImage
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Wingspan Community Conversation ~ “History of Community Activism in GLBT Community in Tucson.”
Wingspan hosted a public forum with speakers representing their work in Tucson from the 1970s through the development of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) and through the 2008 leadership and programmatic foci.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
06 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
07 June 2008
Date Accepted
Date of acceptance of the resource. Examples of resources to which a Date Accepted may be relevant are a thesis (accepted by a university department) or an article (accepted by a journal).
05 October 2009
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to Jamie A. Lee, Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project, AQA, by Courtney Jones, Wingspan’s Director, on 05 October 2009.
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/7770a17094b03bc21dd6b6cb238b1763.mov
9bbde908e94064012a0d321ce7aea246
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
starting March 2013
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Lavina Tomer and Deborah Dobson, organizers for Southwest Feminists Reunite
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Relation
A related resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite and Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project
Language
A language of the resource
English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jamie A. Lee
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Eloise DeSpain
Location
The location of the interview
Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, Tucson, AZ
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Transcription by Courtney Martinez
Interviewer:
So Eloise, would you tell me your last name?
Eloise DeSpain: Uhm, my last name is DeSpain, that’s my married name…
Interviewer: Okay
Eloise DeSpain: …My middle name is Wycott, W-Y-C-O-T-T.
Interviewer: And then how do you spell your last name?
Eloise DeSpain: Uhm. D-e-S-P-A-I-N just like in the country, and it’s all one word.
Interviewer: Okay. So when were you active in the Tucson community?
Eloise DeSpain:
Uhm…around…well…I went to the opening of Antigone and Johnny Cunningham who worked there…uhm…was a housemate of mine and Pat Kelly and Barbara Atwood uhm…were…very close friends of mine and they were partners at the time. And uhm…so one thing just lead to another and they did not live that far away from….I did not live that far away and we all lived in the old part of Tucson downtown, I lived in the barrio on main street in a huge old house that had lots of bedrooms and screened in porches, so it was you know…pretty much non-stop with….people, trans- women transitioning from one situation to another. And uhm…it was kind of idling, to think I ever had a key to my front door, but it, that’s what the barrio was like 40 years ago…
Interviewer:
uh-huh…And you know after hearing all of these stories like all day today, what is it about Tucson that….Was it anything about the place or was it that somehow the people ended up here and it made the…
Eloise DeSpain:
I was born and raised here, I’m a fourth generation native Arizonian. My grandfather was a third generation and he was Irish from county court and my grandmother was a Yaqui Indian and she…that’s…we always made jokes in the family that Arizona was not Arizona it was Sonora. And they would make snide remarks about the Gadsden Purchase...uhm…because, well, everybody, my father was the youngest. Uhm…he was born in Winklemen Arizona and he was the youngest and his father was a minor, and when he was six years old, his father died in a mining accident and his Yaqui mother who had six kids, five of them were males, she started taking laundry in for the Mormons and she saved enough money to buy this house down in uhm…the barrio, El Pasidio, and we also had a ranch, a small ranch…and horses and cows. And of course, I had the usually goats and ganders and chickens and you know- I still have chickens (laughs) and I give them away free.
Uhm…I’m very active in my community…Uhm...other than this…
Interviewer: You’ve always been?
Eloise DeSpain: Yeah…
Interviewer: That’s great…
Eloise DeSpain:
Yeah, I always have been it’s in my blood. When I was eighteen I went to jail for crossing the state line with intentions to riot in Pulaski county Mississippi and uhm…uh…a large part, a large number of my friends…we consider ourselves a spiritual family a…a large number of them are black cause I have a comfort zone because Winslow is very conservative and uhm…so my activism uhm…is in the form of historic preservation and working with the aged in particular, women, in particular uhm…and uhm…community cleanup projects; I have an old truck a V8 ¾ ton that the police chief has a key to and when we have…and when an older person has…their yard has just gotten away from them because they have no family and their infirm, we just schedule a work day and the police officers volunteers, the fire department volunteers, and I work up a bunch of volunteers and we just go over their and clean up their whole yard and lot and take it to the land fill and that’s the kind of stuff I do.
And I had several…there isn’t a very large lesbian community but I will say this, I do know all of them. And they feel comfortable with me and ..uh...they come to my house and uhm…I’ve been teaching quilting and I’ve always taught quilts that taught history. One quilt I taught was moving west and that was about all of these instrumental women who, starting with the state of Kansas, moving west to California.
And another one was a misbehaving and that was one of my favorite ones because these were women who broke the molds. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th century. With regards to... well, for example the um-short ways triangle fire. Triangle Short Ways Factory in New York, are you aware of that? It caught on fire and they were making those Gibson girl blouses and they were all gauzy and they had all of the exits locked. And all of these women couldn’t get out. This fire started and most of them jumped to their death. And the building is still there and one woman, one woman survived, well…a lot of women survived but most of them died.
She moved to New Mexico and she started it, she started all over again working with older people, working with older women to get women’s equal wages in the garment industry. She was Jewish and when she died, her Jewish organization planted as many trees…she was buried in Israel in the area right next to John Kennedy. And they planted as many trees at her site that they did at that President Kennedy’s. Just remarkable women like that home startes, on their own. The woman who developed physical therapy with a doctor because of doing handwork. And I used to teach women’s history. I was a union plumber working my way through graduate school because my father was a union plumber and had a shop. So I grew up, I’m very mechanical, so I grew up working as a plumber. His helper. And so, when I finally turned 40 and realized I had 10 fingers and 10 toes and I was vested in the union I decided that it was time for me to retire, and start teaching at the college level. Which I did and I cried when I got my first paycheck because after working for Buckle for 16 years, the college was paying me one month what I used to make in one week. But it didn’t seem to stop me. I just kept going. I became a Main street manage and I wrote grants. I’m still writing grants for nothing, for the city. Um…from everything from you know, softball money, money for basketball, you know, intermural sports for the city of Winslow because we are…we are pretty poor. The city of Winslow is very very poor. And I work with the poor primarily and I also work with a group of women. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Madonna House? Well it’s a catholic organization that the main motherhouse is in Canada. And the woman who founded it was a polish Jew who converted to Catholicism. Along with Dorothy Day and Thomas Murphy were working in Harlem and um… they take a vow of poverty and they go and help the poorest of the poor. So, I help them. And I make sure that friends of mine who are well healed give them money every year. What I do is I go to quote “Sam’s Club” and I will buy two or three…at Christmas…two or three cases of toilet paper but the biggest thing that they say “Oh this is gold! Eloise!” is sanitary napkins. (laughter) “Oh this is gold!” ‘Cause no one ever thinks about that, you know, because they don’t use tampax, so I’ll buy two or three big big things of sanitary napkins and Um…the speed limit is about 25mph in Winslow and the population is… they say its 10,000 but it’s a lot less than 10,000. And I can ride my bicycle everywhere, to the library, to the post office, to my dentist, to my chiropractor, Um…to my uh…I get to my massage. I get a free massage all the time because the police chief, his wife is may missus. And because I take care of all the older…and she’s black. I take care of all the older black women in town. We just swap it out. “You just keep doing what you are doing Eloise”. And she’s a very good massage therapist. And we have a ripple in time together as girlfriends. So Um... sometimes people will say to me, “Winslow!” and I bite my tongue because it’s a best kept secret. I don’t really want…you know…I feel that the valley is creeping up the hill and its almost like I can feel it coming and I don’t want it to do that. Because I’m pretty much anti-conspicuous consumerism and mansions and overdevelopment and you know. And I have a huge vegetable garden, and I had chickens…I don’t know. Do you want to ask me other questions?
Interviewer:
You had mentioned Pat Callaway and Barbara? Where they the founders of Antigone? And were you part of that?
Eloise DeSpain:
Yeah. Well, I would go down there and volunteer and the other woman, Johnny Cunningham who worked there. She was my housemate. We all ran together.
Interviewer: So the volunteers ran the store?
Eloise DeSpain:
No. But when I say we ran together I mean we ran the streets together (laughter). We raised hell! (laughter). We took names and kicked ass (laughter). With everybody. Sometimes I look back on it and think, “Wow! I can’t believe I did the things I did!” But most of the time I’m OK with it.
Interviewer:
When you look back at the early ‘70s that time that all of these things were coming to be around 4th Avenue, 5th Avenue, and 6th Street. When you look back can you see today repercussions or ripples?
Eloise DeSpain: Oh yeah!
Interviewer: What are you most proud of?
Eloise DeSpain:
What am I most proud of? In Tucson? The fact that I lived there. The fact that I was born there. The fact that I still have very dear friends, very dear women friends that have stuck it out for me. So that when I come to visit I have a place to stay but because of the traffic and the exclusion of development. Usually when I come to Tucson, RC, Pam’s Husband has already clipped out all of the articles of City Council debates and news about developers and all the things that happened with the developers because I’ll have a hissy fit when I finally get there because I look at all of the wonderful architecture that they have destroyed that made Tucson so unique and so beautiful and it just kills me. And I love the Sonoran dessert. I have grown to love the Colorado plateau because it’s almost the ultimate expression or the ultimate experience of surviving. It’s very harsh. It’s very conservative. It’s very racist. There’s no dirt in Winslow. It’s all shale. All of the dirt is in Colorado. So, I’ve been growing dirt for years and my husband was a rancher in 86. One of the largest in Arizona. We were married for 16 years and he died of cancer. And I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to come back to Tucson. And the house that I had bought in Winslow because I knew that eventually that was going to happen because the ranch was in a family trust. And he was Mormon, and I’m Catholic that his kids were just convinced that I was…well they didn’t know how to get over me any rate. They just really didn’t. They were really unaccustomed to somebody like me. And you know my women friends would come to visit, and my husband loved them because they were so down to earth. I would call them up and say, “We are going to be bailing hey, do you guys want to come up? I’ll cook!” and then they’ll get up there and we would just work them to death. And we had a very good marriage. I was very happy, and I feel very fortunate because he was a gentleman. He was a very nice man. He was self-taught. He was a cross between Will Rogers and Mark Twain. Very, very funny. Extremely funny. Very dry wit. He was very intuitive. He was a wonderful cattleman. He taught me a lot. He taught me a whole lot. And he grounded me. He said things to me that no one else had ever said, like, “ You can do anything you set your mind to. You have no business working for anybody else.” He also said that I was a barometer for assholes because people who were insecure immediately felt threatened by me. And I had never known that. I knew that I had always had interpersonal difficulties with people that I didn’t understand because I’m so direct. So that was always a problem particularly in Navajo county because I always called a Spade a Spade and how a cow ate the cabbage. The roles for women, because it was primarily a Mormon community, the roles for women were so prescribe that they could not step out of them. Because they were so repressed, they manifested their repression in some really hostile negative behaviors towards other women. Its that mirror reflection thing. And that was hard to deal with. I’ve developed a circle of friends, as I say, that are spiritual friends. In my older age I learned to detox myself from toxic people. And I just don’t do drama anymore.
Interviewer:
That’s why I’m learning the whole, “Unplug from the Drama”. (Sound effect) Put up that protection. (inaudible)
Eloise DeSpain: Yeah.
Interviewer:
What would be some advice for young feminists who will look at these tapes?
Eloise DeSpain:
Because I’m so isolated, and even though I do have some very very good friends, women friends in Winslow, I don’t have any women friends in Winslow who have any kind of activist consciousness when it comes to feminism. Some of them are just flat out feminist, but they would never…they don’t know what that means. And so, basically, I have been relatively-and I hate to say this, and everyone is going to expect me to say it any rate-I want to know where they are. I want to know where these young people are. These young women. Because I know they are bright, I know they are articulate. I know that they have probably a lot more advantages than the rest of us do during that time of the early ‘70s. And they certainly aren’t as marginalized as we were. I would really like to see more activism. I would really like to see them push the envelope a little more. Take the bull by the horns. And I’m kind of disappointed by that. An example would be that with these group of women, you know with some of the older ones, they would get mad at me because they would be putting up a flyer or a poster for a consciousness raising group that was going to meet but they would put it on the 2nd and 3rd floor of the graduate school, of whatever graduate school they were going to. I kept on telling them, “You know what you need to do. You are preaching to the choir. What you need to do is you need to get on the busses that go from downtown, or south Tucson and go route to all of the foothills that takes all of these working class women and give them these invitations. Because otherwise you are just giving them to each other. And you are not expanding, you are not doing this exponential expansion of what we say we want. And you can’t have it both ways. You can’t be on the soapbox and on the pedestal at the same time. It just doesn’t work. And they would get upset with me. “Oh, Eloise you are such an asshole”. But basically I’ve gotten over that, and I still have four or five really really good good friends. Which are here today, and I’m really glad to see them. It was really pleasant experience. I almost didn’t come. Because I was just nervous. And a lot of these women I don’t know, and I’m sure they are just absolutely wonderful women. I’m glad that there are so many of them and that everybody is pitching in and I think all of it is great but, you know, I’ve done all of the taboo things that nobody is supposed to do. I’ve worked in construction with all-men crews. I’ve done ranch work. I’ve done all these things that…and I’m not a food Nazi. Even though I’m extremely liberal, people don’t give me the chance to tell them just how liberal I am. Because I have some real strong feelings about allowing us to be who we are, and a lot of it is spiritual and people all agree that its quote religious and so they don’t want to have that conversation and its OK with me. It’s all right. Because I had a good job, I just kept going to graduate school until they told me that, “Eloise, you’ve been here for seven years. You’ve written two dissertations. You’ve done all the post-doc work you could possibly do. You’ve taken every class there was. You’ve got to move on.” And I didn’t want to because I had this very good paying job that paid for graduate school and I worked on the weekends on call. Service calls. An example would be that some women came out to one of the construction jobs that I was on, which is an absolute total no no. And didn’t ask me, and didn’t notify me, and didn’t call ahead anybody at the time and just walked on the job with no hard-hats, no safety glasses, no steel toe boots. And wanted to interview me for the paper. I’m making 16 dollars an hour-and this is like 1975-will you pay me that when the foreman who is headed right from the foreman shack right now when he stomps over here and wants to know what in the hell you guys are doing here. Are you willing to pay me that salary? Because you’ve just broken three OSHA laws. Put your thinking cap on. This is my job. This is where I work. You know, they would get mad at me. “I love you guys but come talk to me at home. I’ll even buy the beer!” (laughter)
Interviewer: Exactly.
Eloise DeSpain:
You know, that kind of stuff. (laughter) But I also think because it was so new and there was this fervor that a lot of people couldn’t help themselves and I understand all of that now and it feels all right, I don’t have any grudges towards anybody. I never had any grudges towards anybody at any rate. I think this is great what you are doing. I think this is wonderful. That’s what we are doing with the American Quilt Study Group. We are doing a save our stories. We are going around and interview older women quilters and I’m in the quilter’s hall of fame for preserving the fine art of hand quilting. I don’t do any fancy tricks. I don’t have a rich husband who is going to buy me a $35,000 quilting machine. And I ride my bicycle almost everywhere, I mean there are cobwebs under my truck (laughter). And I’ve never owned anything but a truck. I’ve been a tomboy all my life. My first traumatic awareness of sexual identity was the first day of school, and the school bus pulled up from our dirt road and I had my Roy Rogers lunch box, and I was dressed in my lucky red-and-white horseshoe boxer shorts and that was all. I didn’t even had any shoes on. And the guy said, “You cannot get on the bus.” And it was crushing to me because I had no comprehension. I had no comprehension as to why, and then when two or three people had to sit me down because I was hysterical, that I didn’t get to go to school on the first day when they told me that I was going to have to start to wear dresses. Because I had never worn a dress. I don’t wear dresses now.
Interviewer:
I know, I went to a funeral and I felt like I was in drag. Oh my Gosh!
Eloise DeSpain:
I know, I know that’s how I feel. I feel like if I have to wear a dress to something like that, I feel like I’m in drag. And that was good about my relationship with my husband, because he actually lost track of my kid in me because he said, “I married you to keep from having to hire you.” Because I rebuilt all of his pumps. It just came to me naturally, and I loved working in the ranch, and I loved working outdoors. I loved being with him because we were best of friends. The relationship that I had with the woman, unfortunately she died and I really took it hard. I’ve lived alone most of my life, except for the roommates that I had in the 16 years that I was married. The roommates that I had when I was living in the Barrio when all of this stuff was happening. I was kidding Pam about, “Can you think of one good thing about why you should come to visit? And I said, yeah! I’m hopping to meet a woman that I’m going to fall in love…I’m hoping to meet the right woman.” And when people would accuse me, or I would hear that so-and-so had said that I was gay, or that I was queer, in Winslow, my response is “I’m just waiting for the right woman to come along.” And that always throws them for a loop. I’m walking on firmer ground in my life, and I feel good about that. One of the reasons why I feel good about it is because I actually think that the women’s movement reinforced what I intuitively know all along. Because as a young girl being an artist, the first thing that I told my family was that I was not going to go by Eloise when I sign my art because I would never get anywhere because you had to be a male to be an artist. And I wasn’t even in the second grade, and I already had that awareness. And fortunately my mother and my father, and my grandmother, in particular who was a Yaqui Indian, I think she knew that about me and she never said a disparaging thing. She never tried to push me in any other direction. As a matter of fact she was very supportive because she was so independent. She curated after being widowed in the Barrio down in Tucson, until the day she died. She was in her 90s and I was living with her. They would make me get up at 5:30 in the morning because they couldn’t keep her in bed because she would get up and start making tortillas. I write. I’ve been keeping a journal since, probably, I was 18 years old. I have two full trunks of journals and I write every day, and pam knows that when I kick the bucket she has to burn them. Because I do not change the names to protect the guilty. And lots of it is the temperature, the weather. How many eggs I got, you know. I’m a huge reader. I support the library. We have a library-reading group and last month we did “To Kill A Mockingbird” because I am scout. That was my other identity reckoning, was when I read “To Kill A Mockingbird” I just thought, “And that’s why I always wear converse high tops.” These are my Spiderman converse high tops. I have about 30 of them. It’s the only shoe I wear. When I read “To Kill A Mockingbird” completely and totally transformed that trauma that I had about not being able to get on that bus because I thought, “You are OK. You are OK just the way you are.” And I also kind of think that that book kind of radicalized me, well I know it did, and also being a civil rights worker it definitely radicalized me after spending six months in the county jail. Holly shit! That really radicalized me and from there I went to live in Memphis, and then I went into art school. I wanted to be an attorney, and I had gotten accepted to Stanford, and I had a Rockefeller Fellowship but Stanford sent me this letter saying they didn’t want any more radicals. Because during those days they were bombing the president’s offices. So I lived in Memphis for four years and the week after that they assassinated Martin Luther King I left, and went back to Tucson and went to graduate school at the U of A. Because my identity was so wrapped up in a black culture, in a black blues and Jazz culture and it still is, that I I knew…because the hole town of Memphis filled up with the Ku Klux Klan and I knew I had to get out of there because my identity was so conflicted that I knew that they knew, and that I was next. And I’m still friends with people that I work with, Andy and Charles Clawson. He’s a retired school administrator and he was the first black man to teach at Indianapolis, and he’s a Vietnam Vet, and he and his wife came to my husband’s ranch several times while we lived there and he and my husband loved him. My husband loved all of my women friends, he just thought they were the greatest thing since peanut butter. Because he loved tomboys. Just to see him smile and have such a good time and be three or four women and him and we would all be cooking and he would be grilling steaks…he just loved it. We would be riding horses and he was in his 70’s and he had a shit-eaten grin on his face all the time to be surrounded by four or five women that really knew what they were doing and weren’t agoraphobic or any of those things. “Oh No! An Insect!” I understand that people have all their phobias and all of that stuff but not too many things disturb me, upset me. Except toxic people.
Interviewer:
and we went a little bit long. Have you seen Julian Beamer? Do you know that name?
Eloise DeSpain: No.
Interviewer:
Okay, she was supposed to be here seven minutes ago, I guess. (laughter)
Eloise DeSpain: Well maybe she was.
End of Interview
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • Interview with Eloise DeSpain
Subject
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lesbian, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, 1970s, collectives, media
Description
An account of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • Eloise DeSpain interview: 36:46
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Creator
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Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Anastasia Freyermuth, video producer
Source
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MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
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Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
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16 March 2013
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Southwest Feminists Reunite, Lavina Tomer, and Deborah Dobson
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Southwest Feminists Reunite
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H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Eloise DeSpain interview: 36:46 and 86.6MB
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English
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Eloise DeSpain interview
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12 December 2013
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16 March 2013
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Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/d08603658fb6d7878a178efc7eebfaa2.mov
96bb2405e5dbe001d0d02dcc3f9a2a36
Dublin Core
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Southwest Feminists Reunite
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Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
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MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
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Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
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starting March 2013
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Lavina Tomer and Deborah Dobson, organizers for Southwest Feminists Reunite
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Southwest Feminists Reunite and Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project
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English
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Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Oral History
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Jamie A. Lee
Interviewee
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Lydia Breen and Leslie Carlson
Location
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Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, Tucson, AZ
Dublin Core
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Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • Southwest Feminists in the Media: Interview with Lydia Breen and Leslie Carlson
Subject
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lesbian, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, 1970s, collectives, media
Description
An account of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • Southwest Feminists in the Media: Interview with Lydia Breen and Leslie Carlson, 32:09
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Anastasia Freyermuth, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
16 March 2013
Contributor
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Southwest Feminists Reunite, Lavina Tomer, and Deborah Dobson
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Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
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Southwest Feminists Reunite
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H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Southwest Feminists in Media: 32:09 and 71.2MB
Language
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English
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MovingImage
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Lydia Breen and Leslie Carlson interview
Date Available
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12 December 2013
Date Created
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16 March 2013
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Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Scripto
Transcription
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Transcription by Courtney Martinez
Interviewer:
So, let’s see I have enough pads…so I know you…will you both just state your names for the camera?
Leslie Carlson: Sure, Leslie Carlson
Lydia Breen: Lydia Breen
Interviewer:
And uhm…tell me a little bit about how you got started…did you start the Southwest Media group?
Leslie Carlson:
We have this group called Tucson Feminist in Media and it probably began in uh…the (inaudible) 1973 or maybe 1974. And it was about 8 or 10 women and they are...were...uhm...interested in media and communities and some of them were particularly interested in video and others were more uh…print journalists or people interested in print communications…and we were especially interested in everything that was going on that feminist were doing in our community…and wanting to be able to document that or write about it or make videos about it.
Lydia Breen:
I think it was also a reaction to women in the media which was our of our themes; Uhm…that we felt that women were poorly represented their image but also as people they were poorly represented, there were…you know…very few news anchors...uhm on TV or the radio, etcetera all the way down the line…so uhm…the image of women was one of our concerns.
Leslie Carlson:
And that’s important to remember back…uh…because it’s now- it’s so different but it back then, forty years ago, there were almost- you almost would never hear a female voice as an announcer on the radio like a DJ, or the announcer and it was very rare, it was something to remark upon if you saw a female uh…news reporter on TV.
Interviewer:
You think the media has been one of the largest like regulators of women…like, I don’t know it feels like they’ve kind of lead the way in so many super structures, you know…suppressing what women were able to do?
Leslie Carlson:
It’s always hard to know whether the lead- media leads or reflects…but you know it’s always abound between those two.
Lydia Breen:
It’s a huge, it’s a huge shaper I think of what our internalized expectations about ourselves and still is.
Leslie Carlson:
And the image of women in the media that was one of the thing- I mean in the movies, that was one of the things we discussed, there was a…a book called, Popcorn Venus or was it…or something and so uh…I don’t know if you’ve ever read that, that was a something else we were concerned with.
Interviewer:
And how did you, were you already started in media when you formed this or…?
Leslie Carlson:
I had always been interested in photography and I was doing a still photography in the early ‘70s and had some…scattered some dark room equipment and had a dark rook, so I would always…taking pictures and doing that. And then, then one day I was somewhere in Tucson uhm…and it was…I don’t know when it was…maybe 1973…and I saw this person that I knew…uh this man that I knew at some event and he had this new video equipment that was portable and it was a video camera and a portable video cassette recorder, video tape recorder I guess and this was…this was completely unknown…it was brand new, it was revolutionary and for me…it was love at first sight. I was like…it was almost like in a cartoon or something where my eyes went on it and it’s like I want to do that.
Interviewer: That’s kinda cool…how about you Lydia?
Lydia Breen:
Uhm…I think that around 1971 or ’72 I was doing uh…half-hour a week women’s radio program. I got out of graduate school and didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do, which is a luxury we had back then that young people don’t today. And so I volunteered to work at a radio station in the news…and I was a Asian Studies major but I volunteered to work in the news room for free and then finally got fifty dollars a week and then finally was able to do a half hour radio program a week on women’s health.
Interviewer: Oh, that’s cool…
Leslie Carlson: What radio station?
Lydia Breen: KTKT AM station
Leslie Carlson: So what commercial and….
Lydia Breen:
Commercial AM station…they had probably just…you know they probably had to do…uhm what do you call…public affairs programming…and so was like…”it’s a throw away, you can have this,” nobody ever stopped me you know…from doing anything…so I did it.
Interviewer:
And how many…how many people did you get involved?
Leslie Carlson:
Well we kinda formed our group and our group was uh…our group…we enjoyed our group because it was women we liked that were our friends and they were delightful, interesting, very intelligent women from…who were interested in uhm…like a cultural critique like we were talking about a minute ago and…but actually creating our own media and learning how to do that. But then you know…we were also sometimes…we would be asked to cover something or we…or we knew something was going on and we wanted to write about it or get a hold of this new video equipment and record it. So we…we just started doing things together and one of the women in our group, Jane Kay, was a journalist working with…a fulltime journalist with the Arizona Daily Star, so she was a print journalist. So Jane was a wonderful resource because she could also sometimes finagle a way to write about something in the feminist community and have it published in the morning newspaper. But then…it…we…I think it was 1974…this…this interesting medi- -in –feminist interest in media hence learning to speak in our own voice in media was so—not just here it was a phenomena all over the country and so we heard about this conference and it was actually a conference that was done twice and it was done first on the East Coast in New York and I believe it was called the Feminist Eye or something like that…and then it was done a second time in Los Angeles. And this was so…you know…people could go to either one. And so some of us from Tucson went to the Los Angeles conference and it was very wonderful to be there and to listen to - -hear about what everybody was doing, tell them what we were doing…and one of the things that came out of---and then people wanted to stay in touch and and be able to know what one another was doing and so they came up with idea that we could produce video newsletters for each other. And of course now e-news is like you know…it was a brand new idea…it was a very innovative idea to make a newsletter in the form of a video; and so we wanted to do it and so everybody signed up and wanted to do it…these different cities that…were represented and then…and then they decided, they kind of grouped...uh...cities together who would exchange these video letters so not all…many dozens of cities. So we thought it was hilarious that the Tucson group was grouped to exchange video letters with the women from New York and the women from Los Angeles…because like little ‘ol Tucson right? Uhm…and so…but that’s what we did and so that uh...resulted in us probably producing more video uhm...segments or video stories than we might have otherwise done because we were…we were committed to doing these video letters. And so the way it was suppose to work was every other month you produced a video newsletter…a video letter and made copies and put them in the mail to your sisters in New York and Los Angeles and on the other months they were producing and mailing to you and then you were also suppose to organize...uh...showings so that people could view these video letters from the other cities.
Lydia Breen:
Yeah, and…uhm...Leslie can talk about some of the topics that we choose and she has footage…you could use also if you…you wanna insert into your video…since we’re all video people. Uhm…She has those video letters.
Interviewer: Oh nice….
Lydia Breen:
But of course on of the funniest ones that I always remember, we uhm…because we…we did something out of Old Tucson…I mean we wanted to spoof on that we were in a Podunk town…you know…cowboy town, so we we took on that persona. And so we shot once and once out in Old Tucson, but then one time in the middle of the summer…you know when it’s 105 always…you see the temperature…we decided to uhm…show that you can- -you know can you cook an – fry an egg on the sidewalk…so uh…we were pretending to be uh...street vendors and we cracked a couple of eggs out on the sidewalk and wanted to see how long it would take to fry and right at that point a police man came along…”Oh Officer,” and you now he’s like, “Oh no this is not an (inaudible) to have an egg,” or something like, “oh no…due to the health regulations this is not allowed.” So we played right along with our Podunk image and it it worked for us.
Leslie Carlson:
We…we…we were sure they had this image of us and so we decided to play into it with a straight face. But one of the…the video that Lydia was mentioning that was shot at Old Tucson, we uh… we wanted to interview…we didn’t…we had never had a woman as a city council member in Tucson, but that year, the very first women was…became elected to the city council. So these…this is the kind of things that were happening and so we asked her if she would be willing to be interviewed by Tucson Feminist Media and so she agreed and then she was also willing to drive out to Old Tucson and we opened our video letter that was…uh…we opened that particular video letter with a welcome message to our sisters out in LA and New York…and we all galloped up to the camera on stick horses wearing cowboy hats as though…you know in this western town a scene at Old Tucson as though this is actually what Tucson looks like and how we…
Lydia Breen: …and here was our city council person, she had a cowboy hat on
Leslie Carlson:
Yeah, so then we interviewed her and gave her a cowboy hat and uh…sitting on the bench in front of some old west town set and…but then she talked about what it had been like for her and uh…the difficulties and the incredible sexism and also even death threats that she got...uhm due to the hostility that she would be elected to this office.
Lydia Breen:
I would also like to go back to the conference that we were talking about because it really was quite amazing and one of the people that spoke there was Barbra Koppel, who was a very well know…she was kind of an up and coming…she was ahead of us in her filmmaking but was very impressive to get a workshop from her and other...I forget what her…they were starting women’s collective for filmmakers to help them distribute, produce and distribute films, so it was extremely exciting. And I think that she gave us, she gave me tips and I imagine Leslie…you know…we were just starting out as documentarians uhm…that was very very empowering, encouraging, motivating. It was an extremely important event for us.
Interviewer:
And then when you came back did you train more people to use the equipment?
Leslie Carlson:
We probably did. I remember our group was very busy shooting these videos and remember we didn’t have any equipment that we owned…
Lydia Breen: Oh that’s right…
Leslie Carlson:
We didn’t own any equipment to shoot with or microphones or tripods. We also didn’t have any access to editing and in the mid seventies we didn’t have public access TV stations, we didn’t have KXCI radio. And so we knew a couple people, including the Tucson Public Library, where this friend of mine that -where I had first seen this video equipment and they were very generous to let us…you know…our ragtag group borrow their equipment all the time. So we were constantly like figuring out what we wanted to do, lining things up, like the city council member, organizing ourselves. Many of us did not have cars, borrowing cars, borrowing video equipment, getting some money together to buy the videotape but then you had to view the vid-where are we going to view it, log it, and then decide how we would edit it and then somehow borrow that, like line up some time in a place that had editing equipment. And the editing equipment back then was not very fancy, but we learned how to use it. So it was mostly I think that all of that work ourselves were trying to do it every other month, which was pretty hard to pull off, but we did.
Interviewer:
And how did you keep sticking in the media industry through all of these years?
Lydia Breen: Oh, it’s addictive.
Leslie Carlson:
Well Leny and I later became independent producers and the media evolved a little bit more and we were hooked and so we formed a production company in the early eighties called Southwest Reports and made several documentaries together and….
Lydia Breen:
…and we still worked with these women, I mean Jean K, she was the pre-person was/is a pre-person but she was writing stories before we even met her; very important stories about the environment and her work. So her feminism, like all of us, went into other areas you know. And so she would write about the environment but she would also challenge…her writing lead to challenging corporations, you know, “You make a mess, you clean it up, you have to pay for it.” I mean I don’t know that there were other journalists around the country kind of pushing that stand but she certainly was right in there in the forefront. That was a whole new concept. You know we had people polluting, dumping things, I forget what company, out by the airport and it just sat out there, it was like, “well how come the public doesn’t demand that they clean it up…why should we pay for it?” So uhm…her feminism was put to use in many ways and she was a very important person to us, as a journalist, in terms of her standards and uh...her enthusiasm and motivation. I think she encouraged, I think she insisted on a lot…I think she did a lot of things that worked. For example, one time she did a story about women who earned their living dancing in topless clubs but it…they way she did it of course was very respectful and uhm…then she asked, because I was doing still photography, she asked me and she got the newspaper to allow her to take a non staff worker with her to the topless club to get some photographs with the permission of the women who worked there. And so we did and when the story ran the photos I had taken ran, but the Star didn’t want to acknowledge...didn’t want to give me a by-line on the photo. So Jane demanded that their be such a thing, so that’s just an example.
Lydia Breen:
So I think another role that we played was to encourage women to get into the media, I know we had, at the time, in the beginning there were no women videographers for the TV stations…or production people. Leslie was a very early production people…I was wasn’t really, I was one of the only second broadcast engineer in town to work here. Leslie was early on in the production company. And so women would come on as videographers and it was hard; continues to be hard struggle for those women. We would encourage them and so I think that we played that role as well.
Leslie Carlson:
That’s true we worked for the regular stations. Lydia studied and became a licensed broadcast engineer in TV and radio and I worked as a production crew person on a local television stations on a couple of local stations. And I was the second person hired, not the first. So one of our other sisters was among…so we were breaking into these TV stations as women and it wasn’t easy back then. They kind of thought they were being really liberal to hire us, but then once you were there it was not uhm…a very pleasant environment all the time.
Lydia Breen: I mean, really rough on you…
Interviewer: And how do you see how it’s changed?
Leslie Carlson:
Well…nobody thinks…you see women anchoring news programs all the time. What it’s like for them, I don’t know uhm…it’s probably still really tough to break in and be taken seriously, but it’s just much more common place for women and girls to see other women uhm…speaking anchoring or reporting on TV. Or it’s commonplace to hear female voices on the radio whether they’re a dj playing music or a female voice on NPR.
Lydia Breen:
I uhm…was ay an occupy demonstration last year and in the rain at the port, it was awful weather all these police men around and there’s these news trucks and then the demonstration moved on and I had no way to get there it was far, so I jumped into one of the trucks of the news…I hitched a ride (inaudible) how is it for you women you know? “Well,” she said, “they always give us the worst assignments, they always put us in the back of the line...you know,” They were these two very cool women in the truck one was the camera and the other was the engineer and they were doing it…so…it was nice.
Interviewer:
And what inspired you both to be activist or feminist…like was there a moment that you remember…or was it just engrained in it when you were growing up?
Leslie Carlson:
I did not grow up with activism, I grew up in a somewhat conservative family that would never dream of being an activist, so I wasn’t brought up with it but, I think I am fortunate because my generation was the generation of the Viet Nam war and working against war and racism. And along with those movements was the feminist movement and so it was kinda of just a natural…it just was like, “Oh Yes,” uhm…I was active in some of the anti war work and the anti racism work but when I had the opportunity to be with women and w talked about our experiences with everything…uhm…it was exactly the right place to be, not abandoning the other work but it was exactly the right place to be. And following the revolution of the early consciousness raising groups towards all different kinds of activism that has taken so many forms in Tucson and elsewhere; I’m very proud to have been…you know…played my part in this work and continue to do so. For me it was partly just being of a certain era where this was happening and…yeah.
Lydia Breen:
I think this is a really interesting question what makes somebody and activist and I have actually not talk to a lot of people about this. Uhm, for me my parents were…my father was republican but he was the mayor of a town…both my parents were involved in the community…so they had a commitment to their community. Uhm...and for me I think it just had something to do with feeling for the underdog uhm…there seemed some unfairness and feeling that it really wasn’t right…uhm...and I don’t know what that is, if that’s a personality type. You know I have no idea. So it’s an interesting question to me.
Interviewer: Did you ever feel like an underdog?
Lydia Breen:
I guess I probably felt that way in my own family, so that would be family dynamics…would be a question that if I were interviewing people I would ask...you know. Yeah, I guess I probably did, I felt like there were some you know injustices that I didn’t feel like I was being treated fairly…course all kids feel that way. So then when you see someone else being treated unfairly it’s…
Leslie Carlson:
But I think there was something going on all over the place and I hope it still goes on for young people…really all ages, were you have this…your eyes become open to something and in early feminism we had these groups called early consciousness raising groups and you…you know…it’s a time to look at things in new ways including yourself and the way you frame things shifts. And then another word people used back then was radicalized, so that there’s not just that frame shift through processing and talking but there’s also a critique…there’s an analysis and a critique where you can look at things in a critical way instead of just buying into all these the line that you’re getting through the regular media or through the way that you’ve been socialized through school or family…you’re offered this other critique and so when you hear it and you suddenly think, “Oh yeah…that is completely unfair…oh yeah those people have all the power and they’re telling us what to do,” whatever that is. There’s something that gets triggered that’s; what Lydia was saying that sense of injustice and wronged, and then you…can’t go back.
Interviewer:
How has Women Making Media impacted the feminist or lesbian feminist movements?
Lydia Breen:
Well, I would like to speak for Leslie, what Leslie does and I don’t know that I am directly answering your question, but uhm…you’ll see here work, I imagine-I hope you’ll archived a lot of her films that document our work. And she has always been extremely respectful and listens you know and gives people the space to tell their stories and to speak from their heart and that’s who she is as a person. So I think that, that’s what happens when you get to tell your own stories; you tell them with respect and with a sense of empathy…so I don’t know if that answers your question?
Leslie Carlson: Well that’s what you do to Lydia.
Lydia Breen:
Well, I think we all have, I think that’s Leslie’s gift is that she…yeah I think that’s her gift.
Leslie Carlson:
I don’t, I wish I had a better answer to that question in terms of how Women In Media has made a difference but I think when, I think there are opportunities certainly through our efforts, back then the things that we did in community media, but then as time went on…more and more women are writers, you know…become writers and filmmakers and..g.et all there and you know…become involved with radio and so when I think about just our Tucson community…we now have community radio through KXCI, we have women journalist in radio and in print media and on TV and so…it…I really just think it makes a difference because women really do see things in a different way than men. They are perhaps, not always but often will approach a story in a different way and they can be successful. You can call up a reporter that you know as a woman, “and listen we’re doing this thing,” or “this story hasn’t been told right, we’re angry.” Lydia got very angry a day or two ago because there was a very disrespectful headline in the morning newspaper in regard to a story about women who work as sex workers. And so they had this very disrespectful headline word and so she immediately…you know…told the paper they were wrong and other people. I can imagine contacting a woman and explaining to her, “You have to make sure this never happens again,” so sometimes when you have women that are working in the industry and can talk to them or they already know and would never had done that headline, unfortunately, not in this case…uhm but that is a way for change to happen that’s not very visible.
Lydia Breen:
Yeah to me…one thing it seems that you know thinking about the work that you’re doing, is not only about the voice but about listening and a whole practice of communicating in ways that has never been done.
Leslie Carlson:
It’s true including as we were just saying, use of language, cause that’s a very important…
Interviewer:
What advice would you have for future, or the young feminists on using and knowing media?
Lydia Breen:
Uhm…get out there and talk to people, I’m sorry if I sound like an old person, but I see these anchors and these women are gorgeously dressed uhm….for a party...you know…not for the street, not for you know…walking down alley ways, talking to homeless people, going into shelters or wherever…where real people are getting on a bus; they’re just like paper cut-out dolls…you function and as I say, I sound old but yeah…take your high heels off, put your comfortable clothes on and get out in the street and talk to real people about their real lives.
Interviewer:
One thing, our youngest is interested in maybe looking into journalism and I said, “One thing if you do get into it, you can’t compete with the other women you have to learn,” …you know…just from being at a TV station where the newsroom would walk in and you could see that they were totally trying to keep the stories and it didn’t feel like you know…the empowered stuff that you talk about it. I was like, “How do we change the paradigm in that.”
Lydia Breen: It’s not easy…
Leslie Carlson:
I think the advice I would give for women that want to work in the industry is be sure to very honest to yourself. But an even better way is to have other people that are part of your support community that you can process with about whether you are staying authentic…how you can navigate being authentic. Sometimes you do have to be that one that dresses up in high heels and but then there are other days that you aren’t doing that. That way you can make sure you’re not being coopted more than is necessary, there’s probably a little bit that is sometimes necessary. But try to stay true to yourself and to the other women that you’re there for but maybe you need other people to help you do that.
Lydia Breen:
That’s probably very good advice, there might be a whole lot of many, many stories that you don’t wanna do but there might be something that one story that your hearts really in and go for it, do that one to the max, don’t compromise on that one story.
Interviewer:
Is there anything else you think that the archives should now about the formation of your group?
Lydia Breen:
I have something I would like to say and it sounds a little bit like I’m talking about myself, but it’s something I’m really proud of because of where I came from…that uhm…cause the work I did with Leslie and the other women, and then I got a job in Switzerland and was commissioned to make a film about the particular effect of war on women…women refugees. This was for the United Nations and they had developed a policy before. So I do work with other women as a filmmaker...they sent me…there was nothing to say, the organization had nothing to say so I had to kind of find other women to figure out what to say and make this film and uhm…so it was the first film ever on that subject and the first time the UN ever tackled that as a polic-…it became help form policy for the United Nations that later on I think twenty years, thirty, maybe ten years ago…rape when used systematically is categorized as a weapon of war. And so I’m really proud that I was able to kind of participate in that process but what enabled me to do that you know…what helped form my perspective on that subject was the work I did here in Tucson with Violence against Women, it’s what helped drive me.
Interviewer: That’s awesome…thanks. Maybe you have something…?
Leslie Carlson: No, I think that’s a good way to end.
Interviewer: Great, well thank you…
Lydia Breen: I hope you didn’t mind me throwing that in there…
Interviewer
& Leslie Carlson: No that’s great…that was really important….
Interviewer: And what year was that?
Lydia Breen: That film was in 1989
Interviewer: So necessary
End of Interview
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/ccca346af70e340bbc78f3c2cc2fdd38.mov
309d69557918a4407973c55841bd1b08
Dublin Core
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Southwest Feminists Reunite
Creator
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Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
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MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
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Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
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starting March 2013
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Lavina Tomer and Deborah Dobson, organizers for Southwest Feminists Reunite
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Southwest Feminists Reunite and Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project
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English
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Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jamie A. Lee
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Lavina Tomer, Lydia Breen, Ellen Litman, Linda Hellman, and Doris Dillon
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Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • 2nd Wave 5th Avenue Women's Collective: Interview with Lavina Tomer, Lydia Breen, Ellen Litman, Linda Hellman, and Doris Dillon
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lesbian, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, 1970s, collectives, media
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Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • 2nd Wave 5th Avenue Women's Collective: Interview with Lavina Tomer, Lydia Breen, Ellen Litman, Linda Hellman, and Doris Dillon, 38:44
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Creator
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Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Anastasia Freyermuth, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
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Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
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16 March 2013
Contributor
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Southwest Feminists Reunite, Lavina Tomer, and Deborah Dobson
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Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
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Southwest Feminists Reunite
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H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
2nd Wave 5th Avenue Women’s Collective: 38:44 and 74.8MB
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English
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MovingImage
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Interview with Lavina Tomer, Lydia Breen, Ellen Litman, Linda Hellman, and Doris Dillon
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12 December 2013
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16 March 2013
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Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/a7fdd8563fa1f0a3e5ae02a2916a58d8.mov
a755ba35b75282da766867798321bd68
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Southwest Feminists Reunite
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
starting March 2013
Contributor
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Lavina Tomer and Deborah Dobson, organizers for Southwest Feminists Reunite
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Relation
A related resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite and Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project
Language
A language of the resource
English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jamie A. Lee
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Meg Fox
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Transcription by Courtney Martinez
Interviewer:
All right so first would you introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about how you got involved in the feminist/lesbian feminist movement here in Tucson.
Meg Fox:
In Tucson? Uh…my name’s Meg Fox. I currently live in Seattle. I uh…lived in Tucson 1976-1986. I came to Tucson in 1976 with a woman named Vida Andres who was involved, and this is how many things happen, with a woman here and I…my doctors said you should not go home. I had anorexia at the time and the treatment then was to blame the mother and get the daughter away…so I left and came and stayed at the fifth avenue house…and you just interviewed them…and they are like my heroes and will always be my heroes. I went and I stayed there and I was twenty and here were these vibrant, powerful, rock solid feminist lesbians and I was sort of just coming out and twitching. And I had done a lot of studying when I was in school and was coming out and …you know….I am a child of Betty Friedan and my mom reading Betty Friedan and then Gloria Steinem and talking to me about it. So that’s how I got here and I fell in love with what was going on and I stayed for ten years...and I did a lot of stuff before I left. So…
Interviewer:
So…you have…under your heading is the Pleiades Women’s Theater…
Meg Fox: Pleiades…
Interviewer: Pleiades…
Meg Fox:
Seven sisters and we were a uh…collective consensus based theater company…and we were in sort of the creative side of making the plays and we did a number of plays…War Widow, which was a PBS thing, and we did Children’s Hour and we did Author Kopit’s play, Wings…not Wings…uh…what’s it called? It’s down here somewhere…uhm, which was about seven women in an insane asylum who thought they were everything from Joan of Arc to Amelia Earhart and they're in a nut house. You know…we were very serious about ourselves (laughs). Okay, so I’m sure they said this before but there was a lot of sex, a lot of drugs, a lot of conversation, a lot of activity. So...uh…we made these plays and we had some very strict rules. You had to be sober; which left people out, and you had to be in the collective and you sort of got invited in and I was one of those people invited in and I did the back stage. I acted in one piece but really should never be on a stage. And it was great because the work was hilarious…well when we did the Author Kopit play it was hilariously funny. And Children’s Hour was great, we did it in the old Tucson Music...arts and…T
Interviewer: oh…on Scott Avenue…
Meg Fox:
Exactly and it was a total dump and uhm…we kinda had to make it work. And then we did uh…the War Widow out at Pima College…and then we actually had equipment and that…through Pleiades was really how I got my career. I had been down at the South end…they had alternative skills or alternative…God I’m so old, what’s it called? Uh…you know…when girls…alternative skills you know, I was an electrician, I was training to be an electrician and so uhm…somebody asked me to come make a lighting board. So I made them this lighting board and I started getting involved and I am a lighting designer, I still do it. So that’s where you know…I have enormous fondness…you know I see these people, I haven’t seen them in twenty years and I’m like, “Oh my God there you are…mama,” so uhm…You know we worked really, really hard and them some of us started to leave and uh...it was an intense, many of the things were intense and bright and we (sound effect) uhm…and we know...sort of disintegrated…we had…because we were so…and this is hilarious...because we were so into the art of it, we had a separate group called AWAKE…and I’m not even sure I could tell you what it…A Women’s Art Action Coalition with a K or something or other…and they did the producing they were the business end…whatever the hell that meant, because we were like, you know women did not do this…we did not have the back end, we did not have control, we did not choose what got done, so we got to control everything. So we were flying by the seat of our pants. I knew nothing really…I think I had some make-up in high school. There’s a woman…Gail Reisch…are you guys gonna talk to her? She’s this great lighting designer and she taught me how to design lights. And she worked with Pleiades…I know she’s here for the weekend. So I learned a lot from her and everybody did everything. Judith has pictures of all of us drinking and making scenery and laughing and it was you know…it was just really vibrant…you know when you’re that young…you’re that….vibrant and the opportunities and you just have the energy and you think the world’s going to be a different place. And I think it was…and you know, you get to be my age things go more slowly…yeah.
Interviewer:
And so thinking about this whole women’s movement, how did it transform your life?
Meg Fox:
Oh…My God, it changed my life completely. I came out and you know…at the time that I came out…a lot of women were coming out as a political statement. In terms of my sexuality, I’d been queer so long…who knows…you know if I could find a nice guy, who knows…but at the time it was a very decisive political statement. So that was…that’s been pretty profound in and of itself, but you know…it taught me I could do anything. It taught me about justice in my work, you know, my work in strictly women’s stuff sort of then morphed over to peace and justice and disarmament uh…I’m not sure I would be here without what the women’s movement taught me. I was a survivor of incest and they had a Take Back the first Take Back the Night march…the first year I was here. And I spoke and it was wond- and you know it was no longer a secret and that was so profound. And so I started doing a lot of work and speaking about it uhm….I learned skills, I learned what it was to have a community as foible as that kind of system really is…it’s a flawed system…consensus is a flawed system but you know we were trying, we were trying new things and that…I think the impact has been profound. I don’t know…the younger generation…I talk to my students and I look at them and I go, “Do you know why you can even say what you’re saying,” and there’s definitely a glitch between what was going on and what is happening now and I’m glad there’s that freedom. I’m just like look…they still don’t, I don’t think they necessarily see how bad it still is…not that it’s bad it’s so much better but uhm…what it took to get there. There’s no sense of humility, or sometimes grace about it. So uhm…it changed my life that way. I could go on for hours…it lead me to peace and justice. I’ve meet some of the most amazing people in my life, I’ve been enormously lucky, I have lived a non-traditional life. I don’t drive the bus in any normal fashion and the women’s movement gave me the opportunity to not drive a straight bus. And I couldn’t have. I found a safe place in the seventies for a lot of us…we needed to find a safe place, that’s part of what separatism was about, I was a separatist for awhile and then I realized that I was being ghettoized…so it was a safe place...it was massive. You know and now…safety for women, although there...you know…there’s assholes out there to beat the ban…it’s assumed to be a right and it just wasn’t then at all you know…it’s like, “It’s like, I’m entitled, that should not have happened…my God..oh look it happened to you and we’re gonna stop it,”
Interviewer:
And it was interesting that I interviewed the second wave group of the fifth avenue house collective and they talked really about how they were re-shaping what was a traditional family structure…like really thinking about how the community has become a family and the interconnections there, now that you’re back in Tucson for this weekend, what do you think the overall impact you probably had on Tucson as a community?
Meg Fox:
You know, I’ve been gone for two and a half decades..uhm…I think in a really odd way, it is a still a safe place to come. And for those of us that have left, when I come back I’m like, “Wow,” it’s still generous of heart…it has not…when you go to other cities…I live in Seattle, it’s a completely different culture and part of it I like, that that’s different but there’s something here that…you are safe here…it is a sense of, “Look at these people,” we went through these sort of these sort of really crucible sort of times together, I saw someone I hadn’t seen in twenty years at the airport and I was like, “Oh my God it’s you and look at you and you’re okay. Not only are you okay but you’ve been through the wringer,” I think a lot of us from that generation did a lot of self destructive things, cause hell it was fun and we didn’t know better and we survived, some of us did not and there’s a tragedy there but this place is uhm….are you a native?
Interviewer: No, I’m from Minneapolis, we’ve only lived here six years…
Meg Fox:
Oh…it’s a different world…it’s small enough to still contain itself and that’s lovely, it’s not in larger cities. The communities are more fractured.
Interviewer:
And it really has, what we’ve come to call a queer ethic here, you know, in Minneapolis, I would hang out with the filmmakers but we wouldn’t connect with the photographers or the other artists and here everyone does everything always with a social justice in mind it seems…
Meg Fox:
I think the women’s community here was engendered from that basis…you know…really the fifth avenue to me was the center and the core and it (sound effect) went out from there, you know the bookstore and Pat Kelley who was coming…I hope you talk to her…
Interviewer: Yeah, she’s being interviewed next door…
Meg Fox: Shit…(yells) PAT…uhm….
Interviewer: Where was the fifth avenue collective, like what was the address?
Meg Fox:
829 Fifth avenue and uh…it was this great old…what do they call it?...Craftsman house and they’d sit around in the morning…and I’m twenty and I’m just like coming out of some really bad shit…and I would just sit around at the table like, “look at them,” and they’d say this stuff and I would go, “Wow,” and they would be…they’d go, “Meg, look at this, you can do this,” and I would be like, “Oh God, I’m in love with all of you. All of you right now.” How horrible crushes…I mean you talk to them strong, dynamic dykes and you know committed to a sexuality and that was like you know, “a dick will never pass my lips again,” (sound effect) uhm…that was awesome for me. They were so validating and so powerful and I wish you could interview Sunny Schwartz uhm…but she’s not here. You know, I get back here and I’m like, “What are you doing now,” and everybody’s doing these fascinating things. So yeah. I lived in a tiny little carriage house in the back uhm…and had no money and I was hoping around and people were…you know…”here house sit here, work here, volunteer at Pat’s bookstore,” Uhm…yeah it was a nexus and they had something special, not in the whole entire universe but it was so- and that’s I think the thing is this group we are important right here, right now. And there was a sense of mission I mean, there was a sense of zeal and evangelical passion, which was lovely, I mean women were the shit, we were screwed and we have been screed and we’re still kinda screwed but it’s changing…and the amount of change is cause of those kind of things, those kind of places…
Interviewer:
In terms of reading different things with my minor in women and gender studies there was a lot of talk about how the feminist movement has left women of color in the margins from…
Meg Fox: Marginalized? Absolutely…
Interviewer: in the seventies, was Tucson any different then…?
Meg Fox:
No, I don’t think so. I think there was…you know one of the things….I taught a gender studies class and No, we were not any different. I think we were ignorant uhm and we wanted to do the right thing but we didn’t know how and there was such, I’m guilty and we could talk the good talk but in terms of reaching out and making connections was really hard. And is…you know…large Hispanic women’s community and often the two…you know…I didn’t really know about it ‘til much later, I worked at a warehouse and there were two Hispanic women who were both dykes, I can’t remember if they were partners or not. So yeah, I think it suffered from that and it would be…God if we had the intellectual framework we have now, it would be, I think radically different…uhm but it wasn’t. I think the desire was there. I think there was a lot of anger on the part of people of color and working class people and I am right there and getting it and white people didn’t know how to handle it. And we didn’t know how to say, “I get that you’re angry, don’t yell at me and what do I need to learn,” there’s like a sense of, “I shouldn’t have to tell you a fucking thing, which is you know…the dialogue missed the point completely in my mind.
Interviewer:
And it seems a lot…you know when you think about just surviving even different communities, whether they’re white or people of color in terms of how you know to survive or however you make meaning of that, seems like it’s hard to break through barriers in ways….
Meg Fox:
Well and you know…in terms of…this is how I think about it know, you know thirty, forty years later, is that there’s a reason for them and you know…cultural constructs exist…they’re not inherently bad. What’s complicated is the power structure behind it. And women I think as a rule. You know…culturally or sociologically, we have trouble articulating and maintaining boundaries emotionally and intellectually and in the seventies, what a freaking mess. So you know…now it’s kinda like…this is me, I teach a lot of white people and some black people and I’m like, “This is your culture…don’t A) feel like we need to do this because why….we need to share power and need to listen to you and watch. I can’t fix it. I can’t fix some of that oppression as a white person, I really can’t. I can stand by you, but I can’t speak for you,” And I think that shifted that sort of like you know…big white people we need to liberate and deal with our racism and absolutely, but the argument has to come from people of color and it came from us thinking we knew and trying to talk to people and they’re like (Sound Effect) “shut the fuck up” and we didn’t know to shut the fuck up and they didn’t know how to say shut the fuck up. I have to say in terms of black and white…I…you know…take a really biblical approach…black and white people own this country…it was built on the backs of black people and we’re never gonna we are never gonna get that, I’m never gonna understand that…and think that it..uh..is gonna take generations like Moses in the desert for forty years…that wasn’t forty years, that was a metaphor for like everybody from the days of slavery really had to be gone. Moses didn’t get into the promise land did he…uh-huh, he got deprived the right – and I think until generations it’s not gonna….it’s bigger than we are…in these moments…I just digress…profoundly…sorry.
Interviewer:
Oh no. What are some of the obstacles that you faced or that you saw the community faced during your time here?
Meg Fox:
Poverty. None of us had very much money and granted that was not our central existence. There is a lot of work of how did we all survive. And we were trying to survive outside the economic status quo. I mean a lot of us did food stamps who went to Nourishing Space because we were spending a lot of our time organizing. So that was that sort of internal thing, you know people this is fucking Arizona. People did not like gay people, and women with shaved heads and no bras, and loud and obstreperous. So you know there’s harassment. There weren’t lots of places for us to go. Our own drug abuse. We go to the bars a lot, because those are places to go. So you know, those are sort of internal ones.
Interviewer: what were some of those bars at that time? Are they still in existence?
Meg Fox:
You know, God! I hope someone could remember that name, the name of that bar. There was a bar over on Drachman and…Ok, so “Pleiades”. We didn’t drink while we were working, but when we were done (sound effect) we’d go to the bar and we would all sit around and we would be drinking whatever we drank and we would play truth or dare because we were always trying to like push the limit of like who’s going to sleep with who next?! Truth or dare! I wish I could remember the name of it. They were seedy, they weren’t horribly seedy. Men and women were kind of there together. But it was a lot of men with poppers and that culture. So that was a big bar and there were some drag shows not a lot but its just Tucson. It was kind of a dark place but when we went out together we hang out and we’d dance. There was another bar. I want to say its Ruby’s that was just women and it was in this sort of revamped house and that had a whole different energy and I don’t even think they sold alcohol. We would go and dance all night. You know, there’s some really bad songs from the seventies. Like really bad. Misty Blue, you know the (singing) “Misty Blue, come on, Misty Blue”. Really horrible fucking music! But it was like (singing) “Ohh Misty Blue”. And then you know Donna Summer started doing it, so we got some good music. But hey we danced! None of us going to get dementia because we danced so much. And then there was another one, “Casa Nuestra” has someone talked to you about that? Now this one bought this big old house, of course, I can’t remember her name. And it was this big honking house on the east side. It had a swimming pool and she just turned it into this nightclub for women. I’m sure if you could find people with enough memory space to know when these things happened, you could probably really interestingly sort of track the social-you’re probably already doing that.
Interviewer:
No. Actually that would be so interesting to re-live. My first film was called “Treading Water” and it was about Duluth, Minnesota, and the iron range because you could be openly gay and not be afraid up there.
Meg Fox: Oh wow! Yeah, yeah.
Interviewer:
So, one of the guys that started the first gay bar there, he was a theater professor at the College of Saint Scholastica which is a catholic college. When they found out he was gay they fired him and he sued the Catholic Church. He won and he used to money to open the first gay bar.
Meg Fox: Oh wow! Yeah. Get out!
Interviewer:
He has this like historic home in Duluth and its got like, you know, the leather swings upstairs and (inaudible)… its got pictures with a leather guy in his chaps. So we interviewed him and then got the history of what were considered gay bars and when they were allowed to be gay after 10 pm.
Meg Fox: (Screams and laughter)
Interviewer:
But I’m so interested in what are the social spaces and how do they all come together because its like really changed today.
Meg Fox:
Yeah! It’s radically different. I live in Seattle, which is a very (sound effect) close but we had dances, we had women woven. There were women’s concerts. We produced a lot of women’s concerts, women’s music so there was so much organizing of events that you met people and there were house parties.
Interviewer: oh yeah!
Meg Fox:
Oh yeah! I wish Dandelion…she probably doesn’t want to talk about it but we were looking through pictures, my friend Judith and I the other night and there wasn’t a shirt on. You know there were sex parties. There were lot of parties. And then there was the bar on Drachman, God Dammit! And Ruby’s, Casa Nuestra, Nourishing Space-which was a whole different thing-and then everybody sobered up. I did not but to me it got really…I don’t even know what the word was but sort of everybody sobered up and that became a cause. We had rotating causes. By that point I was slightly cynical enough to go, “Oh Fuck You!”.
Interviewer: what year was that sobering?
Meg Fox:
I just talked to Kah and she started it. She’s got thirty-two years. You gotta do the math. I can’t do the math. We were sitting at the table last night.
Interviewer: so it was eighty then?
Meg Fox:
Could be. There were four of us at the table all of whom misbehave radically and all of whom are now on some kind of psychotropic drug and we were trying to do math and we couldn’t. We were laughing so hard. That I always think interesting. Who sobered up when, what started to happen. Some of the founders started to move to San Francisco. I tried to leave a lot, before I finally got out of here. Because it’s so damn hot it fries your brain. And I didn’t have air conditioning. I was poor. I was like, “I got to get out of here!”. And it gets incestuous. It was small enough then that it was really incestuous. And I’m remembering people now by who they slept with. Which is embarrassing but that’s kind of all there is. (laughter)
Interviewer:
I think every community, every smaller community is like, “Lets see these five this year”.
Meg Fox:
Yeah. “Who did you sleep with?” I mean it was a joke and we were all a bit bored. I think its bigger now. So I don’t know anything of what’s going on here now.
Interviewer: What advice do you have for young feminists today?!
Meg Fox:
Are you serious?! (whispers) Oh Shit! For young feminists. This is me. I would say, humility. Just in general about your place in the world, and I don’t think you get this until you are older. You’ve got to be passionate about what you are doing. Profoundly passionate and humble about the impact of the moment if you are going to be organizing your whole life. Educate yourself about the body and how it is constructed. Read Michelle F. Cowe if you haven’t (laughter). It's tough, you know it’s changed radically. You have to be media savvy. I think we have to re-invent personal relationships and how we create community because what I think has happened-and this probably has nothing to do with your project-is that power structures because they are so powerful they get smarter faster. They can break you down because they have the ability to outlast you. So how do you generate a community that has some longevity, “A”, or “B” can transfer the ability to think and have passion. When I look at young women now how happen to be teaching and they’re feminists. And, “Really?!” How are you pushing the border. You have to be constantly be pushing to find the border of acceptable. Not that you have to change everything but if you are not changing the sort of intellectual and emotional landscape of your movement, we are going to die. The gender stuff that’s going on, I don’t know what going on in Tucson, but in Seattle, it’s just…
Interviewer: It’s become so fluid.
Meg Fox:
Its fluid! Its lovely! The women who are identifying as men who take the male pronoun but want to keep their genitalia but want to be with women, and call themselves heterosexual. That is awesome shit because one of the great sins to me of the patriarchal and capitalism and however you want to construct them is the bifurcation of gender. There’s two genders. You look at all these other cultures! I was reading a book by a transsexual man-to-woman. So you know that they have issues talking about how in other cultures they find places for the intersexed. And I’m like, “No, you don’t find places. You’ve miss articulated it.” They are inside. They are not outside and have found a place for them to sort of be inside. No, its just really really part of how the world works. People are intersexed people. I think people need to do a lot of research, frankly, into transsexualism. This is me, I have no moral quality but I wonder how much of that sort of self-I’m sorry this is going to sound so politically incorrect-self mutilation when it becomes that, when what do we need to think about particularly as western people that we will cut our bodies. How do we think about that. Not that we should or we shouldn’t but if we can’t think about that in new interesting ways in particular as Americans who think we should get whatever the fuck we want when we want it. How do we think about that. I don’t know if that makes me old and conservative or I too much, I don’t even know, but we need to do that. We need to look at it partly because people are suffering so much and going through these radical extremes and like the youth are going they are just being who they are. It’s a lovely, lovely thing. Of course it’s hard to know what fucking pronoun to use. And what should I do here? I work in theater so I wait until the young person says something like, “OK, Elbie is a He. Got it!” (sound effect)
Interviewer:
And any last words for people who jump into the archive to know about…?
Meg Fox:
Oh! Talk to old people. Get their stories; keep getting them. I’m still middle aged, you know, hopefully I’ll have more stories but these people are such treasure troves. Talk to people. Go up, who cares if you don’t know them. Go hear people stories. And they don’t even-this is where I’m such a bad lesbian feminist. Can I be a trans-lesbian-feminist; post-lesbian-feminist. Hear everybody’s story. Go listen to the guy who served in World War II. Go learn something from these people who are not you. Because that’s part of why I left Tucson. It’s really incestuous. And I started to feel like, “There’s one story being told here. I can’t deal with it”. Because we are a Plano and that’s smashing! That’s an awesome thing. The guy who fought in World War II, what an interesting human being! I couldn’t do that in the seventies. I couldn’t. I was mad and angry and we had to do that shit. That was awesome but we can’t live there anymore. We are not allowed. The world’s a big place. That’s my preaching for today! You youngians! Shoot from the left, its may better side.
Interviewer: all right! Well…
Meg Fox: Sadly you are going to have to listen to me again.
End of Interview
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • Pleiades Women's Theater: Interview with Meg Fox
Subject
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lesbian, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, 1970s, collectives, media, theater
Description
An account of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • Pleiades Women's Theater: Interview with Meg Fox, 29:29
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Anastasia Freyermuth, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
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Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
16 March 2013
Contributor
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Southwest Feminists Reunite, Lavina Tomer, and Deborah Dobson
Rights
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Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
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A related resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite
Format
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H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Pleiades Women’s Theater: 29:29 and 67.6MB
Language
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English
Type
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MovingImage
Alternative Title
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Interview with Meg Fox
Date Available
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12 December 2013
Date Created
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16 March 2013
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A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/433114810ad859f0693d4adfedeb81ee.mov
38479f3564e877db2ef5dfc583412de2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Southwest Feminists Reunite
Creator
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Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
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Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
starting March 2013
Contributor
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Lavina Tomer and Deborah Dobson, organizers for Southwest Feminists Reunite
Rights
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Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Relation
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Southwest Feminists Reunite and Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project
Language
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English
Subject
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Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jamie A. Lee
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Meg Fox, Ka Mudie, and Lavina Tomer
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • 1st Wave of Nourishing Space: Interview with Meg Fox, Ka Mudie, and Lavina Tomer
Subject
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lesbian, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, 1970s, collectives, media, healing, recovery
Description
An account of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • 1st Wave of Nourishing Space: Interview with Meg Fox, Ka Mudie, and Lavina Tomer, 40:01
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Anastasia Freyermuth, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
16 March 2013
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite, Lavina Tomer, and Deborah Dobson
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
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A related resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite
Format
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H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
1st Wave Nourishing Space: 40:01 and 83.7MB
Language
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English
Type
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MovingImage
Alternative Title
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Interview with Meg Fox, Ka Mudie, and Lavina Tomer
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
12 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
16 March 2013
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/fdc91568eb10e5a0d1ca43aa6986e6e9.mov
eb1356f3a14c48980efb78f06a5d947c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
starting March 2013
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Lavina Tomer and Deborah Dobson, organizers for Southwest Feminists Reunite
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Relation
A related resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite and Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project
Language
A language of the resource
English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jamie A. Lee
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Lavina Tomer, Morning Waters, and Deborah Dobson
Location
The location of the interview
Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, Tuscon, AZ
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Transcription by Courtney Martinez
Persons Interviewed:
Lavina Tomer, Morning Waters, Deborah Dobson
Interviewer:
Would you mind saying your name for the camera?
Lavina Tomer:
I’m Lavina Tomer
Morning Waters:
I’m Morning Waters
Deborah Dobson:
and I’m Deborah Dobson
Interviewer:
All right. So tell me how did you get involved in the feminist movement in Tucson?
Morning Waters:
Well my stories kind of unusual I think because I was living out on a Hippy Communion and got in medical trouble, I had had to come in to town and hitched a ride from University hospital over to fourth avenue and I was just sitting there with my backpack and my dog and a good bleeding foot that was wrapped up but not helping, and it was right in front of the food conspiracy when it was on fourth avenue and a woman coming out of there asked me if I needed a place to stay. And I said, “Yeah, I do” and she took me over to the sixth street women’s center, which was just a duplex in the University area. And the guys on the other side of the duplex were college drinking guys…
Deborah Dobson:
Yes they were…
Morning Waters:
And…so that’s how I ended up coming to the women’s center and learning about feminism. I think I had been a lesbian before that but I couldn’t quite deal with it until I had the feminist philosophy to make me feel it’s okay to be gay. And….I lived there for maybe….a year? We did a lot of calling out for pledges and we got a lot of calls in as the Women’s Center; a lot of people seemed to think it was a rape/crisis center which we really weren’t prepared for and had no training and thankfully, no experience. Uhm…but there were wonderful little events, it was the first time I ever looked at my cervix was at the Women’s Center; wasn’t real impressed but…
Group: (Laughs)
Morning Waters:
…Okay that’s what you look like…So that’s my story of how I got there and how I got involved with feminism.
Lavina Tomer:
What was your dog’s name?
Morning Waters:
Trucker
Lavina Tomer:
Trucker, ah, I couldn’t remember…
Morning Waters:
The reason my dog was originally named by my brother in the family, as Narc. N-A-R-C-. Well that was a problem cause I smoked a lot of pot and having a dog named Narc when I’m hitchhiking across the country just was a little rough at the time. So I renamed her after so much traveling as Trucker, cause she would jump into anything. I mean, I always made sure she went in first, cause when you’re hitchhiking…I mean…it didn’t seem as dangerous in the late sixties early seventies as it would be now…
Deborah Dobson:
…obviously now….yeah
Morning Waters:
And I got rides all the way from the east coast to Tucson..so…
Interviewer: How about you Deborah?
Deborah Dobson:
Well, I had been going to school at Kent state and was really horrified by everything there…and uh…I really witnessed the…I wasn’t there during the shootings but the aftermath and the abuse of government power was just so obvious and so horrifying. I ended up dropping out and following my brother to Tucson and the first feminist thing I tumbled across was the Female Unic by Germaine Grear, and that just way opened my eyes. I realized…uh…everything I thought I understood about my background was really different and uhm…so I started paying much more attention and wanting to be around people and I was also starting to realize that I was gay. At the time there was a Friday night coffee house at food co-op in their herb room that was sponsored by lesbian feminists and so I decided to go one night so I showed up and there in the herb-room was this little broken down couch and a couple of milk crates turned over that we sat on and Suzanne and Lynell were there and they were the ones that were toughing it out to be there every Friday night and there was one other woman who was in the Air Force from Davis Manthem and she was starting to go through her sex change process, she hadn’t yet you know but she was going to and I had no understanding of Trans issues at all at that point so that was very strange to me but the good thing that happened out of that event was they told me about the Feminist Festival and they told me about the Women’s Health Collective and the consciousness raising sessions and all of those things and I just gobbled it up, I plugged myself right in. And that’s how I got to the festival and after the festival there was such an explosion of energy in the community, a lot of which was focused around the fifth avenue house, which was amazing and wonderful and these poor women were trying to live there at the same time, so we realized that we needed another space for women to gather and to get together. And we had a lot of meeting, probably at Fifth Avenue…maybe other places I don’t remember. Uhm…but…by June of ’73 the Women’s Center opened up on sixth street and initially, Dash and I were the two people living there and the way the center was supported was people…there were like two bedrooms, three bedrooms something and women would live there and pay rent and then the community would also pay pledges and support the center financially that way. So initially it was Dash and me and not to long after that you showed up (points to Lavina Tomer).
Morning Waters:
I was there before her…
Lavina Tomer:
She was there before me
Deborah Dobson:
Oh, really? I remember when you came…
Lavina Tomer:
You and Dash shared a room..
Deborah Dobson:
We did…
Lavina Tomer:
So there was another room…who was
Deborah Dobson:
I don’t think anyone was in there…
Morning Waters:
Yes there was…
Lavina Tomer:
There was somebody in there
Morning Waters:
I first slept downstairs on the couch and then….she was a baby dyke…I don’t remember her name…
Lavina Tomer:
Daphne Singing Tree…
Deborah Dobson:
Might have been…
Lavina Tomer:
Remember her?
Deborah Dobson:
No, she wasn’t there long
Lavina Tomer:
She wasn’t there long. It might have been Daphne, although Daphne slept downstairs too. So she probably…but there was somebody up there but then you had an empty room and that’s how I came cause as I said in an earlier interview, I went to the library and I started to read books and I started to talk to my friend in Connecticut who was a feminist and I visited her and we did self exams, she was in a women’s health collective; and that was the first time I had ever seen my cervix and so I was fascinated by it all….it was very…I was just very interested and it meant something to me. And when I went to the Women’s Center, I met all these women and I was straight at the time and I was still married and I met all these incredible women and I wanted to leave me husband. So I worked; I was a house cleaner but I worked at a beauty parlor and I cleaned the beauty parlor and that day I had walked out on my husband, I packed my red suitcase and I remember wrapping up floss to put in my red suitcase and I called the Women’s Center all day long and it was busy all day long because I knew they had a room, I had a job, I could pay the rent. And I was just flipping out and I went down there and they--Dash said, “Oh God,” her name was dandelion at the time…the phone was off the hook all day long.
Morning Waters:
Ohhhhh….
Lavina Tomer:
So I said, “Well I wanna live here I can pay the rent,” so I got this little room upstairs and the bed was on the floor you know, little piece of foam on the floor, it was a cozy little room but before that…the reason I know somebody was upstairs I don’t know who it was, Morning Waters and I slept downstairs and we slept in that room at the same time, you were on the couch and I was on the floor.
Morning Waters:
Oh.
Lavina Tomer:
And I remember, I don’t know if you remember this, one night these dogs were barking, barking, barking and I woke up out of a deep sleep terrified and I jumped on top of Morning Waters…I just went up to her and I went to the couch and I was like “Oh” and it was very funny and then the upstairs was available and uhm…Living there was very different than going there for meetings and for the coffee house because you were really on for twenty-four hours, the phone rang, we were committed to answering it no matter what time, and there was a box that at that time Women Against Rape established and they had a little index box that had their names and phone numbers on it so that if a woman did call who wanted help after she was raped, we had somewhere to go, these women were committed to helping women who were raped. And also we were a center, we really were…women called there for all kinds of reasons. This was…initially we were filling, fulfilling a purpose for what the center was for which was a social place, a meeting place, a living space…
Morning Waters:
And a learning space….
Lavina Tomer:
Learning, information and referral and we had women who came there that we…like there was a woman named Spence….
Deborah Dobson:
She came later…
Lavina Tomer:
she came later but I was living there at the time…
Deborah Dobson:
Yeah, I was too…
Lavina Tomer:
And she was very mentally ill, she was…she had a psychotic break squared. So was so sick…
Morning Waters:
…and unmedicaded…
Lavina Tomer:
I mean she was so sick she would take a shower and come out with wet hair but she was dirty…she was so….I remember this cause my sister is mentally ill so I had experience with Psychotic breaks and I just never saw anything like Spence.
Deborah Dobson:
And we weren’t prepared to deal with anything like that we had no experience. That was true even before then though because like Lavina said we had so many different women calling with so many different needs, some had left their husbands and some were in crisis and others were just hitchhiking through and just needed a place to crash for the night and you never knew what the phone call or the person knocking at the door needed or what would happen….
Morning Waters:
But that was part of the fun part…
Deborah Dobson:
….We just kinda responded as we could we were certainly not professionals most of us…and that was a challenge but there wasn’t any resource of professionals and that all came later you know out of some of the needs that were identified in that Women’s Center.
Interviewer:
It’s interesting because when you hear about how organizations started the canvas and what is the need and then you know…it feels like you were just going organically and that time period that someone had mentioned earlier, that whole shifting of what the family was you know…how did all of that impacted the whole community and how you reacted and put a foundation up for the women?
Morning Waters:
You’re right about it being organic in that it was clearly ground based thinking and then action a collectivity was very strong at that point and everyone had a say and then you just kinda talk until you got to a consensus…
Lavina Tomer:
Still do….
Morning Waters:
Which is a wonderful way to do it.
Interviewer:
I’m hearing so much about collectives, was that a huge moment for that whole idea….in the early seventies?
Lavina Tomer:
Women’s Collectives…Yes.
Deborah Dobson:
There were collectives for everything…
Morning Waters:
I mean I was involved in a hippy collection…collective
Deborah Dobson:
There was Women’s Health Collective and you know collectives were a way progressive people organized…grouped together.
Lavina Tomer:
The Men’s Collective
Interviewer:
When did that start like the sixties, like with the anti-war movements?
Deborah Dobson:
Probably
Morning Waters:
Yeah
Lavina Tomer:
And civil rights movements and then it morphed because women broke away from there and we started…and I think that we women knew that organizing collectively whatever that meant to us whether it was living together or activism collectively that we were more empowered that we were more powerful, that we couldn’t do it alone and that we needed each others talents and gifts and that we all had a place and we all had a say, it was very important you know if didn’t matter what your education was or what your background was, if you were in that room and you had an interest then you had a say. It was very important that we were all empowered in that way.
Morning Waters:
And there was a lesbian separatist piece that came out of that, that really opened my eyes to language and that was one of the most dramatic things for me at the time was examining my language and how that impacted me uhm…and I went radically the other way. I had an Echang book at the time and I crossed through all the male names and you know…she who crosses the water will spawn…you know…I would kinda like to have that book back just to see…but it was a… the language issues just was so deep embedded in me that that change needed to be and still today feminist focused…my girlfriend isn’t that’s the only kind of problem; she’s just a lovely cowgirl dyke…
Lavina Tomer:
Sounds like fun…
Morning Waters:
Oh yeah, (laughs) how do you think I got this head injury twenty years ago?
Lavina Tomer:
Cowboy?
Morning Waters:
Well we were rough housing and I zigged this way and she zigged that way and I fell and hit my head…
Lavina Tomer:
Yikes…
Morning Waters:
…really bad…
Lavina Tomer:
The thing I remember about the sixth street Women’s Center also is that uhm…I remember getting this phone call…I was married twenty-two or twenty-three I had driven myself across the United States from Connecticut to come and be here with this man who I was in love with and my sister and her family live here. And just driving across the United States at twenty-two by myself was a powerful thing to do. But I was lonely, my self esteem was really whacked out for a lot of different reasons, I wasn’t happy in the marriage and I got a phone call from Debbie Holmosky and she said, “Lavina, could you be on the phones at the Women’s Center from this time to this time, we need help?” and I said, “Yeah.” And I hung up the phone and I burst into tears because somebody thought I could do something like that…you know that somebody asked me to help in some way…and there I was…I mean that hooked me into the Women’s Center some more so I knew more about how it was operating and I was on the phones and answering the phones and I got more comfortable with all of these lesbians around me; I had been exposed to lesbians before as a kid, they lived next door or I worked with them, But I had been around the kind of lesbians…they were lesbian feminists and they were women who were examining language, examining class, examining all kinds of things that never crossed my mind. It was as if I were…I’d never gone to college and it was as if that were my college education was living in that situation, meeting the women, having the women value my opinion, value the work I was willing to do. All of that, it made all the difference in terms of my identity and my self-esteem and how I could be in the world and what I wanted to do and what I didn’t want to do in the world.
Morning Waters:
I remember when you first came out to me when we were both back east and Ezra pond or sanctuary or park or whatever it was…
Lavina Tomer:
In West Chester?
Morning Waters:
Yes
Lavina Tomer:
In New York.
Morning Waters:
Right over the border from Connecticut…it was like
Lavina Tomer:
She was there for some reason and I was home visiting
Morning Waters:
So was I, my parents still lived in the area. And we were walking through this absolutely gorgeous area and Lavina says to me, “You know, I think I’m a lesbian,” out of nowhere, I mean it was not even close to what we were talking about. I remember I was so shocked…
Deborah Dobson:
You’re the same way today…
Lavina Tomer:
Uh-huh
Morning Waters:
So am I….but it was so amazingly freeing to hear her say this out loud in this beautiful setting and it’s not like we were the only ones there I mean there were other people walking around. And I just, I felt like blossoming for her it was so exciting to hear her say this. That was a great visit we had.
Lavina Tomer:
Yeah…it was.
Deborah Dobson:
There were a lot of women coming out at that time. Uhm…after the Feminist Festival we all kind of fall in love with the women from…who had arrived from New Mexico and uhm…in the next several months there were a whole lot of us that came out all at once; that had it’s own energy too cause it was always like is she with her or is she with…
Morning Waters:
Who’s sleeping with who?
Deborah Dobson:
and then the Friday night Lesbian feminist coffee house continued then at the Women’s Center and with many, many more women…
Lavina Tomer:
Lots…
Deborah Dobson:
And the dancing…
Morning Waters:
There was barely room…
Deborah Dobson:
It was a tiny house and we packed it
Lavina Tomer:
We danced our hearts out…
Morning Waters:
It was a town house…a double town house…
Deborah Dobson:
It was a great space and I remember Dash trying to get us all healthy and she would buy…she had one of these fancy juicers and she would go to the co-op and she’d buy forty or fifty pound bags of carrots…remember? And she would shove’em up under the counter in the kitchen and she’d be making this carrot juice and handing it out to us right and left…
Morning Waters:
And sprouts…
Deborah Dobson:
And sprouts
Lavina Tomer:
Carrot and garlic juice…that’s good carrot and garlic juice, carrot and celery juice, She was very…she was definitely an mentor about diet oh and fasting and emmemas and remember all that stuff we got into it, wheat grass and we got into it but we started a….that was a good thing because we started to take really good care of ourselves….herbs…
Morning Waters:
When Dash is sober she is awesome…she’s a goddess…
Deborah Dobson:
Yeah, and she’s been sober now for several years…
Morning Waters:
Good, I’m glad to hear that.
Lavina Tomer:
She used to say…uh…God this was so funny…she was walking outside and she hit her knee on the door and she said, “Oh Goddess,” and she looked at me and she just cracked up laughing, it was so hysterical, “Oh Goddess that hurt,”
Group: Laughs
Morning Waters:
Do you remember that little area that we kinda claimed with Bamboo fencing…just that little outside area…
Lavina Tomer:
Oh yeah…
Morning Waters:
Women would come all day long, women would come by and we’d sit there and visit and smoke…
Interviewer: What was the address?
Deborah Dobson:
912 east Sixth Street…it’s still there, the building’s still there…
Lavina Tomer:
I go by it and you know it was very interesting because across the street was Casa Del Los Niño’s which was just starting and maybe was a year or so old and then up the street from there was Southern Arizona Mental Health Center (SAMHC) and then…
Morning Waters:
Which we began to work with….
Lavina Tomer:
Yes…
Morning Waters:
Because we were having so many disturbed women
Lavina Tomer:
Yes and we’d call on them to…we had women who were using those… feminists women who were feminists not necessarily lesbians but feminists who were utilizing the services and we tried to be advocates and learned a lot about what that meant. There was also a thing called the Brewster Center and it was right up the street, and it was a home for unwed mothers and then it morphed into a women’s…they used the name Brewster Center for a domestic violence shelter and I don’t know whether one shut down or how or if it just morphed from one thing to another…
Interviewer: Is that were Emerge came from also?
Lavina Tomer:
Uh-huh
Interviewer: Okay
Lavina Tomer:
Emerge came from Tucson Centers for Women and Children which you will learn about and meet the woman who ran the very first one and Brewster Center which came after TCWC. And uhm…I loved meeting women at the coffee house. Women would come and this made me laugh, I was quite innocent but it made me laugh…they would come in and they would say, “Well I’m here, I’m studying at the University and I’m here for linguistics of lesbian community,” and I would be like, “Okay,” …
Morning Waters:
Usually we speak English…
Lavina Tomer:
Right…the linguistics…
Interviewer: Was it Cunninglingustics?
Lavina Tomer:
Yeah…cunning linguistics…very good very good! Then they…uhm…of course they came out you know but that’s what sort of got them in the door and we did some outreach we let different places know but not a whole lot, it was a lot of word of mouth.
Deborah Dobson:
Word of mouth mostly.
Lavina Tomer:
And you know people that went to the University, people that were just here in Tucson was really word of mouth that brought…
Deborah Dobson:
The food Co-op people..
Lavina Tomer:
Oh yes, the food Co-op, yes and we would have posters at the food Co-op
Interviewer: Did you guys start the food Co-op too?
Group: No
Deborah Dobson:
That was there earlier, that was there at least in 1972 because when I came to visit my brother the first time it was here…
Lavina Tomer:
It was here when I came in ’72 in the spring.
Morning Waters:
Originally it was really…you put your order in and then they go buy it and then you get it. By the time I had gotten into Tucson, it was already more of a market place but with bulk items…
Lavina Tomer:
Yeah…and no refrigeration, everything was like in boxes and you just came in and you bought…but they were always…always open to us.
Deborah Dobson:
They were very radical in a way…very radical
Morning Waters:
Food Conspiracy…
Deborah Dobson:
A lot of different other radical groups at the time you know that would pass through there or you know….and they were very generous, they kept a lot of space open in their monthly newsletter for these different groups and I’ve got some of them that I’m going to be sharing with the group. There’s one that I have that they offered about half of it to women’s issues…
Lavina Tomer:
That’s really amazing….
Deborah Dobson:
…about women’s rape and women’s self-defense and women’s health stuff…you know…they were a great support in the community.
Morning Waters:
Do you remember when they did open a little place up in Mount Limon?
Deborah Dobson:
Oh they did…they had a little co-op up there…it was a little tiny little thing
Morning Waters:
Because Dash was living there and Joanne was living there and do you remember a guy named Twenty-Two Love from there…
Lavina Tomer:
No
Morning Waters:
…he was creepy…
Deborah Dobson:
There was another guy up there who was a woodcutter though who he was really nice and he was part of it. I can’t remember his name.
Morning Waters:
It was a nice group up there.
Lavina Tomer:
I worked at the Co-op…I worked with Veronica Angel who worked at the co-op at the time and these very hippy, hippy men uh…who were lovely guys, some of them quite heterosexist but still really, really nice men. And uhm…we were a good collective…our co-op you know. That’s were I met a lot of women also and I would tell them about…it was nice to have…that was a gateway…and women would ask, “Do you know where,” “Do you know where,” “I need this,” you know and I was able to say yeah we have a resource I mean that sixth street Women’s Center was a really important resource…
Morning Waters:
Yes…It was amazing…
Lavina Tomer:
….for one it separated fifth avenue, they could go on with their lives and their collective, their mission, what their vision for themselves was and we could have this resource in our community that was well used…very well used.
Deborah Dobson:
Very well used.
Morning Waters:
Yes…in all kinds of ways.
Deborah Dobson:
It was in all kinds of ways. And we also continued really learning cause this was all still new to us, I mean we were all…you know…in the first few months of out coming out and our becoming feminists and all this stuff and we were constantly learning. I remember women coming through…yes they were the ones who tentatively come in and say…you know…”Is this a coffee house,” and then they’d come out eventually you know…but there were also women who would show up they’d been dykes for years and or they had been political radicals for years and they would come through and they would talk about it, expanding our linguistics because you know they would have all this understanding that they had developed over time and we were just kind of soaking it up you know.
Morning Waters:
I felt like a sponge, just absorbing so much in such a wide variety in such a short amount of time. And as Deb said, every day was different, I mean every time you answered the phone you had no idea what was gonna happen. You know you kinda had to be just a deeply caring person…was kinda the criteria for…
Lavina Tomer:
Living there…
Group: Yeah.
Interviewer:
How is it that everything became concentrated like Fifth Avenue, fourth, Sixth Street?
Deborah Dobson:
Fourth avenue was kinda the Height Ash berry of Tucson…
Lavina Tomer:
In a very small way…
Deborah Dobson:
That’s were all the hippies and the hippie café, the bookstore, the (inaudible) bookstore, the food co-op…
Morning Waters:
Antigone…
Deborah Dobson:
…Delectable was there…before I came to Tucson, it was already there. And then, I don’t know how Fifth Avenue ended up getting their house; you probably have that in your other stories.
Morning Waters:
Uhm Anne Yellet and her husband bought it.
Deborah Dobson:
Uh, Okay. And it just happened to be right next to Fourth Avenue and you know…we all started renting places…it was a little kinda vortex in Tucson. If you wanted to be part of this action, you probably wanted to live nearby because we didn’t, a lot of us didn’t have cars, we rode our bikes everywhere, we walked you know…
Lavina Tomer:
And I….I don’t know but finding the sixth street house, I know it wasn’t expensive.
Deborah Dobson:
I think that was another criteria…
Lavina Tomer:
And it was close by to a lot of people who were the stronger activists at the time and it was convenient and there it was. It was a very good location…
Morning Waters:
Yeah…It was a central location…
Lavina Tomer:
There was parking in the back…lots of parking in the back…it was…that sixth street center became a Women’s Center for DV victims and then it was a women’s and children’s center and so…
Morning Waters:
It progressed…
Lavina Tomer:
…Part of that, part of what happened that I am just remembering now is that sixth street center was open to all women and when we changed and it became like more institutional…it was the rape crisis and the DV shelter…there was nothing for lesbians and I was very upset. I was angry that here we had this resource…it was just a lesbian coffee house and a place for us to be activists but it went away and that was really sad. And uh…it got…a coffee house did get established again but many years later, actually we had it right here in the Unitarian Church but that woman is local so we’ll do more on that later. Uh…but that was part of it, even though it was a powerful thing for it to change into something that had…was more resources for women it left lesbians out. And it was interesting because a lot of lesbians were who started that…
Morning Waters:
That’s the ironic point…
Lavina Tomer:
Yeah it was…but you know I noticed that and very strongly and was very angry about that.
Interviewer:
Has that been one of the main challenges that you know when you think about the feminist movement and the lesbian feminist movement is that once it becomes institutionalized that it kind of eliminates the difference?
Lavina Tomer:
Well I’ve found that to be true, I mean that was certainly an issue for me.
Deborah Dobson:
That’s certainly effected the ERA stuff that was going on because you know I think Betty Friedan finally accepted the lesbians in Houston the same time that Fila Schfley was in Houston saying, “Across town…you know what they’re doing?”
Morning Waters:
They’re not growing oranges…
Deborah Dobson:
It really was now a mixed straight and gay organization at the time, sorta mainstream in it’s way and so you know there was this backlash so I think a lot of straight feminists you know took what they could get and divide it…I don’t know, I don’t know that first hand but that’s what it felt like.
Lavina Tomer:
Yeah, there was a real shift; I mean many years later when I was being battered by a lesbian, I wasn’t sure where I could go…where I would really be able to get the help I needed. And that was one of the things that motivated me to do some of the activism that I did around LGBT resources for domestic violence and anti-violence. Uhm…because those places and it’s still true…they will…you don’t know. In my opinion they do not let enough of us know that they’re available to lesbians. I know the rape crisis center is and I know that they do some but it’s not a big public thing you know…they don’t say…in our brochure… “and we serve people of all colors, all languages and lesbians.” You know…they don’t do that. And that…I…why not? I think now the…Emerge has a little…is much more open than any of the other ones were but I still have issue with that because how do we know that it’s a safe place? We have to know, we have to see the word lesbian…that’s my opinion. Uhm…but that…my strength and my passion about resources for lesbians comes from that sixth street women’s resource center because we had resources then. We were serving all women and uhm…
Deborah Dobson:
On a shoe string but…
Lavina Tomer:
On a shoe string…
Morning Waters:
And a lot of volunteers…
Lavina Tomer:
And very…some of us without any experience or skills but that was a resource…that we lost. And then it went and scattered here and there, that’s why I love Wingspan because it’s there. It’s there for the LGBT community and if lesbians want something specific, we can do something specific…
Morning Waters:
It’s interesting now though that I’m getting older and thinking about retirement issues and where to move to because I’m not happy on the east coast. Looking at lesbian feminist communities for sixty plus, fifty-five plus…whatever, and finding that one of the reasons I had gone into the field of aging as a profession was to make sure there were more resources available when I needed them. And there are a few lesbian retirement places, most are in city settings though rather than you know a more natural environment which is what I would want.
Deborah Dobson:
I think the experience that we’re going to have as we move into these aging resources is going to be the same experience we had when we moved into those other institutions when we were younger.
Lavina Tomer:
We have to get closeted.
Deborah Dobson:
…and that is we had to walk in and say, “Okay look I’m a lesbian, how are we going to deal with this?” You know…how are you going to take care of the things that are specific to my needs because of my being a lesbian that are different than a straight communities and it’s going to be the same fight all over again because you know, I’ve been taking care of my parents and my partners parents and we’ve been in and out of again centers and hospitals and what not and we can still see that there’s no place for lesbians or gay men and so I think it’s going to be…even with all the progress that’s been made…and it’s amazing to us that we are where we are now you know but uhm…I think we’ll still be doing it.
Morning Waters:
Reinventing what we need…
Deborah Dobson:
Yeah, it might not be quite as difficult in the sense that there’s a much, much broader community acceptance of gays and lesbians and trans that…
Morning Waters:
Please even President Obama said he’s in favor of gay marriage…
Deborah Dobson:
So it will be different but we’ll have to go and establish institutions again.
Lavina Tomer:
Yeah and like at Wingspan they have this senior pride program and they collaborate with the Pima Council on Aging and they are at least trying to educate and work with institutions so okay now you know you might have lesbians in your population or gay men in your population. How will you treat them? What resources do they need? Do you have that available? Do you have at least that information available?
Deborah Dobson:
Does medical staff understand?
Lavina Tomer:
Yeah, that kind of stuff. I feel like what we did in the time period in the seventies we…I remember when the women’s studies program started and now you know we have an LGBT studies program, I mean that’s phenomenal at the U of A. We have a gender and women’s study program. We have an LGBT center at the …you know none of that stuff was there. We had a…there was a women’s center at the University but uhm….
Morning Waters:
But it was so dramatically different than what we were doing.
Lavina Tomer:
What the University?
Morning Waters:
The center on campus…
Lavina Tomer:
Well sure because it was supporting students and what they were doing and what they needed and all that but still…
Morning Waters:
Right…
Lavina Tomer:
It was there…
Deborah Dobson:
At least it was there…
Morning Waters:
Yeah
Lavina Tomer:
And they could have us as a resource you know if women wanted something else they knew we existed. And they were so helpful…they were really a good collaborator. But you know, that sixth street center and all of these other things…that was one heart. There were many hearts in Tucson to the movement here but the sixth street center was one heart that….and outgrowth…in the community.
Morning Waters:
It’s so exciting to think that in the forty years how much change really has happened…yes we need more, there’s no doubt about it…
Lavina Tomer:
It’s amazing…
Morning Waters:
But it’s wonderfully reaffirming that the work we were doing then has carried on and morphed into you know different groups and yet the connections we made back then were vital.
Lavina Tomer:
uh-huh, not just to us at that time…
Morning Waters:
No, but for the community at large
Lavina Tomer:
and resonated…it resonated you know
Morning Waters:
Yes…that’s a good word
Deborah Dobson:
We were each ambassadors we went on in the rest of our lives you know I would go into work places and come out and you know I was the first out lesbian people knew and that was strange. I would come out to a doctor or some other person I encountered in my everyday living and you know I kind of made it my private mission to be a really ordinary person that people could say Oh you know she’s not a crazy…you know it doesn’t make her strange. You know she’s still got Tupperware in her lunchbox she’s just like everybody else…you know…but I know my one life…my one insignificant life is multiplied statistically by every woman that came through that center having gone out into her own life and had some kind of effect of spreading that change, spreading that awareness you know having people encounter us and go, “oh, I can relate to these people” so that was really important.
Morning Waters:
I live in a fifty-five plus community at this point and we are the only gay couple in there but we’re both very nice people and so our neighbors have recognized that we’re more nice than we are gay and…
Deborah Dobson:
But that’s true…
Morning Waters:
And that’s how it’s worked out for us very comfortably that I don’t know what nasty gays do or…
Lavina Tomer:
Yeah right…
Morning Waters:
you know how they function in the world…just nasty people that happen to be gay but…
Interviewer:
Well as we’re nearing the two o’clock hour is there any last thing you think people should know about this sixth street women’s center?
Deborah Dobson:
It was fun. It was hard. It was energetic. It was loving. It was a great challenge and…
Morning Waters:
A wonderful experience…
Deborah Dobson:
A really great experience
Lavina Tomer:
Yes all of that.
Interviewer: Would you do it all over again?
Group: Oh yes…you betcha, absolutely…oh yes
Lavina Tomer:
Yeah…that was…it was really something
Deborah Dobson:
and more probably because we go into with the kind of awareness we have now you know…wow…
Morning Waters:
It would be broader based than it even was…
Deborah Dobson:
It’d be huge yeah…
Lavina Tomer:
Yeah…it was so important…it was an important time
Morning Waters:
It was wonderful times…and the friends that we made…here we are forty years later
Lavina Tomer:
There coming from all over the country and Canada to revisit
Deborah Dobson:
That dynamic that energy
Morning Waters:
It was a momentous time…
Lavina Tomer:
The energy of each other … and I’m moved by that…very moved by that
Interviewer:
That’s awesome…
Group:
Thank you…
[End of transcript]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • 1st Wave 6th Street Women's Center: Interview with Lavina Tomer, Morning Waters, and Deborah Dobson
Subject
The topic of the resource
lesbian, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, 1970s, collectives, media
Description
An account of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • 1st Wave 6th Street Women's Center: Interview with Lavina Tomer, Morning Waters, and Deborah Dobson, 45:00
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Anastasia Freyermuth, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
16 March 2013
Contributor
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Southwest Feminists Reunite, Lavina Tomer, and Deborah Dobson
Rights
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Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
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A related resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite
Format
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H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
1st Wave 6th Street Women’s Center: 45:00 and 97.3MB
Language
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English
Type
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MovingImage
Alternative Title
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Interview with Lavina Tomer, Morning Waters, and Deborah Dobson
Date Available
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12 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
16 March 2013
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/a8c8987d2ab616a4735dd093bba36ae3.mov
f99890dae066081d1e6b01a87908135a
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Southwest Feminists Reunite
Creator
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Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
starting March 2013
Contributor
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Lavina Tomer and Deborah Dobson, organizers for Southwest Feminists Reunite
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Relation
A related resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite and Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project
Language
A language of the resource
English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jamie A. Lee
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Ann Yellott, Leslie Carlson, Debby Hamolsky, and Tina Efron
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • 1st Wave 5th Avenue Women's Collective: Interview with Ann Yellott, Leslie Carlson, Debby Hamolsky, and Tina Efron
Subject
The topic of the resource
lesbian, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, 1970s, collectives, media
Description
An account of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • 1st Wave 5th Avenue Women's Collective: Interview with Ann Yellott, Leslie Carlson, Debby Hamolsky, and Tina Efron, 48:08
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Anastasia Freyermuth, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
16 March 2013
Contributor
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Southwest Feminists Reunite, Lavina Tomer, and Deborah Dobson
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Relation
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Southwest Feminists Reunite
Format
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H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
1st Wave 5th Avenue Women’s Collective: 48:08 and 108.8MB
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
MovingImage
Alternative Title
An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific.
Interview with Ann Yellott, Leslie Carlson, Debby Hamolsky, and Tina Efron
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
12 December 2013
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
16 March 2013
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/73de83a52cbc15e1b9a08df2e69cdfb3.mov
6b8409f8ccd24ab505489ec90221c123
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
starting March 2013
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Lavina Tomer and Deborah Dobson, organizers for Southwest Feminists Reunite
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Relation
A related resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite and Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project
Language
A language of the resource
English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jamie A. Lee
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Meg Fox, Ka McMudie, Judith Weiser, and Doreen Dobowitz
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Transcription by Courtney Martinez
Persons Interviewed:
Meg Fox, Ka McMudie, Judith Weiser, Doreen Dobowitz
Interviewer:
So, if we could start with you Doreen, and just say your name and we’ll go around for the camera…
Unknown Speaker: Are we all gonna be on camera?
Interviewer:
…so we have everybody’s names and then we’ll start talking about Women Woven…
Doreen Dobowitz:
Doreen Dobwitz..aka.Dori
Interviewer:
Here
Ka McMudie:
Katherine McMudie aka Ka Mudie
Judith Weiser:
Judith Wiser aka Judith Wiser
Meg Fox:
Meg Fox…pretty much what you see is what you get
Interviewer:
So what is how Women Woven
Ka McMudie:
Women Woven is a…was a production company producing women’s events…pretty soon women’s concerts would bring mainly a levy of artist here from California and produce women’s concerts, sometimes two the same night…sometime one the same night….duh…(laughs, room laughs).
I think that means there were 3 a night…
Ka McMudie:
I can’t figure that one out...anyways uhm…we would hold concerts for the community. There was a lot of work involved…
[Interruption]
Ka McMudie:
…and there was a lot of work involved and there other people involved, there was Dash, uhm Oquitatus or Dandelion Oquitatus, there was Janna Leal, and
Group: Cindy Elliot was here…
Ka McMudie: and uhm…anybody else?
Judith Weiser: Other people…
Doreen Dobowitz:
Edie..wasn’t Edie involved?
Ka McMudie:
Edie was involved from…she was the owner of the woman’s bookstore Antigone and so she was very much…sold tickets, she hung up posters in her bookstore…
Doreen Dobowitz:
She was kind of our marketing person…
Ka McMudie: Yeah…she was our marketing person.
Meg Fox:
You know…a lot of things were fluid (group laughs). Personnel was really fluid...yeah...it was pretty fluid.
Ka McMudie:
But everybody had like jobs…like you did (points to Meg Fox) the lights.
Meg Fox:
Such as they were, I mean really they were clip on flood lights.
Ka McMudie: Yeah, but you did’em.
Meg Fox: I did do them.
Ka McMudie: I didn’t know how to do’em.
Meg Fox: I didn’t really either.
Judith Weiser: But she does now.
Ka McMudie: But Cindy did the posters.
Doreen Dobowitz:
Yeah, we did posters…
Meg Fox:
You know it’s like we were saying this story all day, we were making it up as we went along and thus we don’t remember a whole lot aside from the other issues, but there’s this certain amount of we were just kinda doing it…
Judith Weiser:
I remember sitting in a circle on the floor in your living room (Looks at DD) and saying, “Okay what do we have to do now, what do we have to do? You take posters here, she’s gonna make the posters, your gonna take’em around, we gotta get the tickets printed, we gotta, gotta, gotta…” It was very grassrootsy kinda.
Meg Fox:
It was and so the women’s music scene was you know, at that point…
Ka McMudie: Was very new…
Meg Fox: But it was hot.
Ka McMudie: It was hot…
Doreen Dobowitz:
Yeah…
Meg Fox: It was hot and so were the singers frankly.
Ka McMudie: and it brought men and women to the concerts.
Group: No, wait a minute…that first one…
Judith Weiser: We need to start….
Meg Fox: Cut the camera….
Ka McMudie: Yeah, yeah right…
Judith Weiser:
For the sake of the archive and being correct, an article that Doreen had and found was brought and scanned, it was in the paper here and our first concert at Made Christian, we said, “All Women Welcome,” on the poster and men came to the…
Interruption (Group laughter)
Judith Weiser:
…Uhm a man from Phoenix, his girlfriend or wife bought them tickets they didn’t notice, “all women welcome” they came all the way down from Phoenix; I read the article, and it was quite a bru-ha-ha because they were turned away and he had lived in Tucson and been a big supporter of abortion rights and a lot of our causes and it was very controversial and we had to start talking about things then. And as I said in an earlier interview, separatism and our own space was really needed in the beginning when the movement was young, we needed to get together on our own and get our power…and then you know…then you branch out into the world and you take yourself out into the world….
Meg Fox:
…but there was a problem, which is that some of us had male children and it was not pretty…it was not and you know…people were you know…I was a separatist at the time myself, if I have to look back on it in twenty-twenty I’m a little like, “Ewwww,”…
Ka McMudie: …Why’d I do that….
Meg Fox: ….that was…I think you know…we hurt people…
Judith Weiser: We hurt ourselves
Meg Fox:
I don’t know about that. I’m pretty clear that….it was what we thought was the right thing to do and you know…
Ka McMudie: It’s what we were going through.
Meg Fox:
And that’s you know…it’s messy, life is messy and we were kinda messy…
Ka McMudie: And we lived through the mess.
Judith Weiser:
And also another…this is a historical factoid…we produced a singer, Cerny, who was a separatist when she found out that our sound person was a man she said she would not go on. We had a hall full of people, we did not know anything…we learned our lesson that we have to have contracts with people…
Meg Fox: Yeah, there was that problem…
Judith Weiser:
And there she was in the green room here at the sanctuary of the church with a hall full of people saying, “I’m not gonna go on with that man in the room.” This man, (looks to MF) do you remember Bill Bland…from workshop music?
Meg Fox: Yes!
Judith Weiser:
He was our friend. Women didn’t know how to mix sound yet and do that stuff. You know we had just formed that…the women’s company and learning non-traditional skills, but he came in and he donated his time and his talents and his equipment and we didn’t know what to do about it. And finally, I think you negotiated with her Ka….
Ka McMudie: Yeah I did…
Judith Weiser:
There was one song she insisted her leave the room for, so we went and talked to him and he was cool…but you know…this is what we were going through then. Now we could probably find a woman to do our sound maybe not…
Meg Fox: What do you mean probably?
Judith Weiser: Probably?
Meg Fox: Oh my God
Judith Weiser: You live in Seattle, we live here
Meg Fox:
No, I just think you don’t know…I think the women…it’s still a non-traditional skill…
Ka McMudie: It is a non-traditional skill…
Meg Fox:
(looks at interviewer) what you’re doing is…but women are claiming…you know...first of all…nah, that’s a long conversation about sound technology…
Ka McMudie: Yeah, we don’t need that…
Meg Fox:
It’s not that interesting. Yes you could…you just have to advertise.
Judith Weiser:
You just have to find…but then…we probably couldn’t have or we didn’t know…alright, shut up.
Meg Fox: We didn’t know.
Judith Weiser: We didn’t know.
Ka McMudie: But at that time Olivia which was a women’s…
Group: Music
Ka McMudie:
women’s music production company was just starting with their artists so they were wanting for us to produce. So not only were they tapping on our shoulders but we were tapping on theirs. So it got that Women Woven was having a fairly good reputation. So we produced Holly Nier, we produced Meg Christian, we produced…
Judith Weiser: Teresa Tral
Ka McMudie: Teresa Tral, we produced Kris Williamson
Doreen Dobowitz:
Robert Flower
Ka McMudie:
Robert Flower…We produced…remember the band En Izquierda, BeBe Chrouch and you (nudges DD) you helped me with them because they were always in the bathroom.
Judith Weiser: No, no, no, no, no
Ka McMudie: Yes, yes, yes
Judith Weiser: No, really?
Ka McMudie: Yup,
Doreen Dobowitz:
Yup, Yup
Judith Weiser: We don’t need to talk about this do we?
Ka McMudie: Yes, no we don’t need to bring this up
Judith Weiser:
Because one of their members is moving back into the business so let’s…(sound effect)
Ka McMudie:
Okay, so we won’t do that, but anyways…there were always…you know we learned the hard way cause there’s always something up that we didn’t know and they said, “Now your suppose to have this,” and we said, “Oh…
Judith Weiser: Where do we get that?
Ka McMudie: And we just look at each other…
Doreen Dobowitz:
And we all kind of fumbled around until we figured it out and got what we needed to get.
Meg Fox:
But we had to use people more than once…I mean we got…we had a few years of seasons going…
Group: Yeah
Meg Fox:
And you know we were talking about this earlier but you know the bars…but this was kinda a social thing for women, where people could, where we could go and have sort of our art scene. We’d have women’s art, women’s music…
Ka McMudie: And then we had a dance afterwards…remember?
Meg Fox: We had a big dance.
Doreen Dobowitz:
A lot of times we had a dance…yes.
Ka McMudie: In fact the dance was here
Group: Yup, yeah, right
Judith Weiser:
Because we had the concerts in the sanctuary building and the dances was probably in here.
Ka McMudie:
Yeah and I mean, it’s so incredible that we’re doing this here and the dances were here because we would rent this out Yu-Yu was very used to us and they were very used to you know…I mean so we had no problem with the contract here and we’re all on first name basis, you know it was great. You know we could rent a place with no problems. The problems we had met were mostly with the artists you know and us not knowing what certain terms meant in contracts…we really had to like study these things. And for us to learn and become more professional at it cause we were really just sort of laid back like, “Oh well, who are we gonna produce now?”
Doreen Dobowitz:
We’ll figure it out…
Interviewer: What years were these?
Group: (Laughs) ’76, ’77
Judith Weiser:
’76 was BeBe Chrouch cause I was just passing through town and happened to show up at that concert.
Group: ’76,’74-80, ’76 to at least ’78, ‘79
Meg Fox:
This is really embarrassing but I’m figuring out by who I was sleeping with…at least ’79, yeah…Rebecca…’79 yeah…and we were still doing concerts.
Judith Weiser: (To MF) You’re not embarrassed.
Meg Fox:
No…Rebecca…oh…yup. But you know…you probably if you’ve read any stuff about the women’s music with all the women’s music festivals there’s really sort of this wonderful dynamic thing that was going on…some of these women, not a lot but some of them entered mainstream music.
Group: Umh-uh
Ka McMudie: Polly Mirdu…she’s got a new…
Judith Weiser: Vicky Randell
Ka McMudie: Yeah, Vicky Randall, she’s got a new album out
Judith Weiser: The Tonight Show
Meg Fox: (Laughs)
Judith Weiser: Vicky Randall ended up on the tonight show
Meg Fox: Good for her.
Judith Weiser: Doing percussion…so you know. Good for her…
Ka McMudie: that’s great…
Interviewer:
Well that’s cool, Is there any last thing that you think the archives should know?
Ka McMudie:
Just that for me I never thought that….I thought it was great that we were bringing music to the community and I just thought it was fantastic but I never thought of it as a big thing you know. And Edie and I would always go for walks when the music was going on.
Judith Weiser: You would?
Ka McMudie: Yeah.
Judith Weiser: You wouldn’t stay at the concerts?
Ka McMudie: No, I was too nervous. So Edie always took me for walks.
Judith Weiser:
That’s really interesting…I didn’t know that. Who’s watching the store?
Ka McMudie: Ha…I don’t know.
Meg Fox: The store watches itself.
Judith Weiser: Okay. Cool Beans.
Meg Fox: Wow are we done?
[End of Interview]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • Women Woven: Interview with Meg Fox, Ka McMudie, Judith Weiser, and Doreen Dobzewitz
Subject
The topic of the resource
lesbian, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, 1970s, collectives, media
Description
An account of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • Women Woven: Interview with Meg Fox, Ka McMudie, Judith Weiser, and Doreen Dobzewitz 11:59
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Anastasia Freyermuth, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
16 March 2013
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite, Lavina Tomer, and Deborah Dobson
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Relation
A related resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Women Woven:
11:59 and 26.8MB
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
MovingImage
Alternative Title
An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific.
Interview with Meg Fox, Ka McMudie, Judith Weiser, and Doreen Dobowitz
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
6 January 2014
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
16 March 2013
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/374fcb7e4dd25d32f748589af0186f71.mov
054c7c8810072e042bc158db0e130e14
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
starting March 2013
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Lavina Tomer and Deborah Dobson, organizers for Southwest Feminists Reunite
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Relation
A related resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite and Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project
Language
A language of the resource
English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jamie A. Lee
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Joann Boehmer
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Transcription by Courtney Martinez
Joann Boehmer:
Do you want me to start from when I first decided I was a feminist?
Interviewer: Yes.
Joann Boehmer: Okay,
Interviewer: And any time, you go right ahead…
Joann Boehmer: Sure, do I talk to you or do I talk to it?
Interviewer: You talk to it…
Joann Boehmer: Okay great…uhm…I first decided-
Unknown Speaker: Oops…sorry-
Joann Boehmer: Nope, we’re not suppose to do this…
Unknown Speaker: I think they squeezed someone in that wasn’t even on the list..
Joann Boehmer: Well…important people…so go…
Interviewer: Okay…
Joann Boehmer:
I came to Arizona in 1971. I decided, I went…before that I was in Cleveland Ohio…and I was at an all girls school and Betty Freidan had written her book…and I kind of related, but then I got involved more with radical nuns and lesbian nuns…and realized I was a lesbian feminist…moved to Phoenix…I couldn’t relate to living there…uhm…was involved with the women’s center…was involved with the Arizona GLAAD…uhm….we leafleted bars trying to get women out of the bars to be active and that there was something outside of that reality…uhm…we connected with women in Tucson, they came up to the women’s center…uhm…and they just sounded like, “this is really where I want to be living…in Tucson.” The first Southwest women’s festival happened, I went to it…did some photographing there, went with some women there from Phoenix …uh…and pretty much stayed in Tucson from that point on. Uhm…let’s see what else…hung out at the back of the women’s center, when I didn’t live anywhere…and was involved in different activities with the women’s center. I mostly floated through the women’s community with my partner. Uhm…I’m trying to go fast because I’m feeling like…
Interviewer: Sorry…
Joann Boehmer:
…I’m suppose to do that. So being an activist at this point in my life, over many many changes, from not living anywhere to being a free floating spirit and then eventually deciding I could go back to school and Pima college afforded my that and a lot of women in this community realized, “Oh, yeah, we can do whatever we want,” right on, uhm…so…we did. And uhm…met a lot of other women continuing their education…uhm I furthered mine. I choose to stay involved in education and be an activist in higher education because teaching is a political act. Uhm… and you touch a lot of lives that way…and so that’s how I operated…but uhm…you know…from the very first time I decided that...we needed to start organizing in Phoenix and trying to move people away from scenes that weren’t healthy for them, especially, and that there were venues or alternatives...uhm…and, I should probably say we did that with Cleve Jones…Uhm…who did the AIDS quilt in case no one knows that…uhm…and he was a little baby boy at that time…and we rode around with mimeograph sheets leafleting the bars. Uhm…and then…uhm…I’m trying to think what else in the women’s community…I’m…there’s a big group out there, I really feel that they should…
Interviewer: Are you from Tucson?
Joann Boehmer:
I do not live here anymore…uhm…I went back up to Phoenix to finish my degree…and then when you get a degree…a MFA doing photography, you go were the job is...and so…and I did a degree up there in audio visual production also.
Interviewer: Are you in Phoenix then?
Joann Boehmer: I am not in Phoenix…I am in Iowa…Aims, Iowa…
Interviewer: Oh…no way?
JB: Uh...Way…
Interviewer:
That were my partner…she got her PhD there and that…I lived in Minneapolis and I screened a film in her lesbians studies course she was teaching…
Joann Boehmer: Awesome
Interviewer:
…and that’s how I met …and now she is at the U of A teaching another….
Joann Boehmer:
Yeah, myself and my wife…and we chose to get married as a…I choose to get married clearly as a political act…cause we could…uhm so we did…and we did that on 11/11 uhm…which is Veteran’s day and was kinda like, “veteran’s day?” then I decided…I am a veteran…uhm...truly…So I…that was a good date and we got married on the capital steps…
Interviewer: Oh...nice…
Joann Boehmer: and…Yeah…
Interviewer: Congratulations…
End of Interview
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • Interview with Joann Boehmer
Subject
The topic of the resource
lesbian, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, 1970s, collectives, media
Description
An account of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • Interview with Joann Boehmer
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Anastasia Freyermuth, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
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Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
16 March 2013
Contributor
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Southwest Feminists Reunite, Lavina Tomer, and Deborah Dobson
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Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
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Southwest Feminists Reunite
Format
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H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Joann Boehmer:
4:40 and 10.9MB
Language
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English
Type
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MovingImage
Alternative Title
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Interview with Joann Boehmer
Date Available
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6 January 2014
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
16 March 2013
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/239b601ccbc72897ac7134ffb00cf69f.mov
1a255aa23ae8a5808eb3a101d24138a4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
starting March 2013
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Lavina Tomer and Deborah Dobson, organizers for Southwest Feminists Reunite
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Relation
A related resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite and Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project
Language
A language of the resource
English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jamie A. Lee
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Pam Hyde Nakai, Roberta, Debby Hamolsky, Tina Efron, and Char
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Transcription by Courtney Martinez
Interviewees: Pam Hyde Nakai, Roberta, Debby Hamolsky, Tina Efron, Char
Interviewer:
I’m going to have you introduce your names for the camera so we can recognize and also your voices and then we’ll go from there.
Pam Hyde Nakai: Hello I’m Pam Hyde Nakai.
Roberta Lathium: I’m Roberta Lathium
Debby Hamolsky: Debby Hamolsky
Tina Efron: Tina Efron
Charlotte Lathium: Char or Charlotte Lathium
Interviewer:
So tell me about Artemis, we’re here to talk about Artemis, what is it?
Roberta Lathium:
Well I just got through saying that it saved our children from being abandon by their parents when we went to work…co-opt daycare.
Debby Hamolsky:
So as a ton of other things from that same period, it was an idea that blossomed out of a) the reality that there were kids amongst us b) the reality that there were working parents amongst us and c) that some of us had different kinds of commitment to education and thinking about the next generation. So uhm…we had some of those conversations and decided we really needed to do some form of childcare. And the original group actually that came together around that was Pam, Dash whose not here, Jack/Nick Lathium, her ex (points to Roberta Lathium)….
Charlotte Lathium: Charlotte
Debby Hamolsky:
…his dad….her…her dad (points to Charlotte Lathium), I’m getting gender confused here, I’m not at confused about you being a woman Char…
Char: We’re not really into gender…
Debby Hamolsky:
…And we had initial conversations, Tina came in very shortly after those initial conversations, joined us and this…it rotate from house to house to house. I…in looking over all the stuff in preparation for coming here today, found the original proposal that we wrote which is out on the memorabilia table that has on the one hand…this was so sweet to go back and find…on the one hand was our statement of philosophy which was this lofty thing about how…
Roberta Lathium: Feminist, non-violent…
Debby Hamolsky: all of it…
Roberta Lathium: All of that stuff right…
Debby Hamolsky:
Visions for children, visions for the future expressed in our kids and you know…what we were committed to and then…we got it even then…that the proposal that we would try to write for funding couldn’t say all that.
Group: (Laughs)
Debby Hamolsky:
So the proposal for funding. Uhm…was much more…was a piece of work that was grounded in a lot I think, the fact that Pam and Nick and I were teachers, had been trained as actual teachers so we kinda knew something about that education world.
Pam Hyde Nakai:
And I had just…I had taught second grade in Chicago…inner city Chicago and I came to Tucson from there and was getting a Master’s degree at the U of A in multicultural education and I took these classes and the whole focus was on an open classroom…
Debby Hamolsky: Right…
Pam Hyde Nakai:
Which is very much the way that pre-school…or is that what we called it? Pre-school?
Debby Hamolsky: Early Childhood Education…yeah…
Pam Hyde Nakai:
That was…I mean that was how it was done. That was one of the things that was fairly popular at that time and I was just very interested in putting this to work.
Roberta Lathium:
Well and we knew there was also an open classroom elementary school that we all wanted our kids to go to so we wanted them in that…
Charlotte Lathium:
And it was just starting…and that was Miles…Miles was just getting started.
Tina Efron:
Well and I think what maybe didn’t get mentioned cause it was so obvious was the point of this was to have what we called non-sexist childcare collective because we were so aware of how limiting these uhm… expectations were upon us based on whether we were girls or boys growing up and so we were kinda unraveling that kinda stuff, so the idea was that we’re not gonna visit that on children that were growing up at this time and so…you know…everybody was gonna get to be…you know…whoever they were regardless of their gender right? So that’s just in it right?
Roberta Lathium:
Well and some of the kids were entered in (inaudible) my kids were and the boys were on one side of the room and the girls were on the other side of the room. It was just fostering that whole division right from the very beginning. You know when this group became aware of it, I didn’t pay much attention, I was so stressed trying to get myself through school and to work you know…they said, “Oh my gosh…this is not healthy, it’s not good, we’re gonna change this.”
Interviewer: And what years…’72/’73?
Debby Hamolsky:
So I think more like seventy…I didn’t get there till like ’73 so it was seventy…the actual proposal was written in the summer of 1973.
Roberta Lathium: Really? Okay, I thought it was before that.
Debby Hamolsky:
And we rotated…(looks at Roberta Lathium:) lots of conversation before that…we rotated through all…a bunch of different houses…
Roberta Lathium: Play groups…
Debby Hamolsky:
Play Groups and then there was work to actually get a site which it got a year of getting…it took at least a year to actually get a site. And all the while learning what it was like to actually do it and how hard it is actually…
Roberta Lathium: To run a business…
Debby Hamolsky:
How really hard it is a) to do childcare in that way and b) to uhm…day to day act out you know…I remember our having a big conflicting meeting about the fact that here we were engaged in teaching non-violence and the kids were playing guns with their fingers…
Group: (Laughs)
Roberta Lathium: Didn’t know how to stop’em…
Debby Hamolsky:
So we had this big meeting were we talked about…you know in my position at the time was that they were doing a lot of stuff out of boredom and we had to re-look at the curriculum and …
Charlotte Lathium: Redirect…
Debby Hamolsky:
…and yeah like what else…what were we not giving them that they were shooting each other with guns of course ignoring the fact that kids see stuff in the world and you know…
Pam Hyde Nakai: That’s what they do.
Debby Hamolsky: That’s what they do…
Roberta Lathium:
Got there to pick up my son one day and he had a piece a bread he had made into the shape of a gun and he was terrorizing everybody…
Group: (Laughs)
Charlotte Lathium:
…And we still joke about that…”we were raised by people that didn’t let us make guns out of a piece of bread.”
Group: (Laughs)
Roberta Lathium:
And then we had the little kid named Jihad….now that was interesting….
Group: (Laughs)
Debby Hamolsky:
Jihad gave me a nickname. I remember Jihad came in the house with his little cowboy boots which he would never take off and he was two at the time and he would walk in and go…he had the lowest voice of any two year old I’ve ever known and he’d go, “Dobbi, Dobbi.”
Group: (Laughs)
Interviewer: So with this what do you feel was the greatest success?
Tina Efron:
I guess just for awhile people were caring for…having their own children cared for in this sort of environment of sort of experiment I guess and hope of sort of freedom for them to like grow and be themselves and uhm…those of us who didn’t have children but who were drawn to kids were getting to be a part of that and children like this (taps Charlotte Lathium on leg) who were in that…
Charlotte Lathium:
These guys all raised me…I mean…it was…you know…this was…and I told a friend when I was getting ready to come here I lived in New Mexico now and she says, “What are you going for,” I said, “I guess you could look at it like a family reunion.”
Group: (Laughs)
Charlotte Lathium:
And uhm…so being…I was one of the older kids in that group, so I didn’t really get the full benefit of it getting going but I did go on to that…to Miles which is still in existence, I don’t know how open classroom it still is…
Roberta Lathium: I think it still is…
Charlotte Lathium:
But uhm…we were kind of the incipient kids for that too. I told a good friend in high school once and uhm…I’m still in touch with her and I said….we were talking about our childhoods…and you know…we realized later things we had been protected from and I got out of Miles and I did not know that there was a world outside of where I grew up where people were judged. I grew up protected in the opposite way of what these other kids had been protected from…us. The other kids had been protected from us and I didn’t know that world existed. And so as far as…as far as I can attest to what you guys tried to create was a complete success because I think that all of the kids from that would probably say similar things like we did not know that we were going to go out into the (uses finger quotes) real school and not fit in, be judge because we didn’t have judgments against those other kids. So that’s…
Pam Hyde Nakai: That’s very cool…
Roberta Lathium: That’s good.
Pam Hyde Nakai: I’d say there was success
Charlotte Lathium: Yes, absolutely, absolute success.
Roberta Lathium: Created some leaders
Debby Hamolsky:
I think…You know…I mean…now I’m involved in all this formal program stuff right, which would never do anything without a pre-test and an evaluation and proving how it worked right? And I think it’s an expression of the fluidity of that time. That it worked for the time that it worked and then morphed into the next thing and looking back on it and having to ask that kinda of…in my way my head works now, how would you evaluate the success of it? I actually wish I could sit in a room with all those
Roberta Lathium: Those kids
Debby Hamolsky: … people who were kids then..
Charlotte Lathium: We should have an Artemis reunion…
Debby Hamolsky: Right…and ask them what they remember….
Roberta Lathium: We’ll have Watermelon…
Charlotte Lathium: Lot of watermelon.
Debby Hamolsky:
Right have Watermelon…a lot of watermelon…and we once had a potluck and the only thing anybody brought was watermelon.
Roberta Lathium: Everybody remembers that..
Charlotte Lathium:
And we did we had it all the time, we had these potluck all the time and that had never happened before but nobody…I mean it was always a just bring something and everybody brought watermelon…Catlina park, over there on fourth..
Roberta Lathium:
Yeah, I was wondering about that too…was Judy not asked to sit in with us?
Debby Hamolsky:
I asked her if she wanted to come she said she wasn’t signed up for it. So it’s fine…
Interviewer:
Any last thing you think people who might dive into the archives should know about?
Roberta Lathium:
Well I think the community…the grown ups in the group if you wanna call us that…that developed out of it. Now I haven’t stay in close touch with these guys at all but I remember fondly, that the whole group of us that lived around fourth avenue and a lot of things that were starting around there businesses and so forth and people were all working together and supporting each other and it was pretty unique. Non-competitive you know and the people who didn’t have kids were appreciating the kids, those of us that had kids were appreciating those that wanted to take care of’em and I think it was an essence of a developing community at that time. I think you still see the remnants of it.
Debby Hamolsky:
So I have a question for both of you (points to Roberta Lathium:/Charlotte Lathium), we did childcare for the retreat at fifth avenue house. Do you have any like memory of that at all? Cause the men in the men’s collective took care of you guys at fifth avenue while the rest of us were all off at the retreat.
Charlotte Lathium:
I would say probably thirty percent of my childhood memories were at the fifth avenue house…
Group: (Laughs)
Charlotte Lathium:
Honestly…and there’s…and there all …..yeah…and it seemed like there were always like the staple people were always there in some capacity so I don’t remember there being a specific time when it was just the men but they were always so present also and in such a cohesive way that there wasn’t a gender discrimination there at all.
Roberta Lathium:
I wasn’t even really involved yet, so I’m not sure you were even there you know because I was in school or has some place to go…
Charlotte Lathium: I probably was because you were in school…
Roberta Lathium: It was right at the time I was graduating…
Charlotte Lathium:
If you just dropped the kids off at the fifth avenue house, somebody would be around you know…Tina was always there, Deb was always there…I think it was sort of an open door policy I don’t know…
Pam Hyde Nakai:
It was just another thing that came out of that community spirit at that time and a lot of the other people you’ve interviewed…the organizations…or the groups, not the organizations – groups that they participated in was all part of it and we just felt the need to create the kind of situation we wanted that didn’t seem to exist in the outside world…so and the world at large.
Charlotte Lathium:
So there’s a need and there wasn’t a pre-existing spot and so we made one for all of these things.
Roberta Lathium: Cool
Tina Efron:
I always like to tell people that I was part of the non-sexist childcare collective I don’t know why…
Charlotte Lathium: It has a great ring to it..
Tina Efron: Really?
Charlotte Lathium: Yeah it does
[Group chatter inaudible]
Debby Hamolsky:
The official name…and we spent hours…I mean on the list of suggestions was giant peach but the name that landed was Artemis childcare experience center.
Charlotte Lathium:
And then we went on to go to Miles exploratory learning center…
Group: Thank you…thank you.
[End of Interview]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • Artemis Childcare: Interview with Pam Hyde Nakai, Roberta latham, Debby Hamolsky, Tina Efron, and Char Latham
Subject
The topic of the resource
lesbian, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, 1970s, collectives, media
Description
An account of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • Artemis Childcare: Interview with Pam Hyde Nakai, Roberta Latham, Debby Hamolsky, Tina Efron, and Char Latham
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Anastasia Freyermuth, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
16 March 2013
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite, Lavina Tomer, and Deborah Dobson
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Relation
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Southwest Feminists Reunite
Format
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H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Artemis Childcare: 15:14 and 35.4MB
Language
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English
Type
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MovingImage
Alternative Title
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Interview with Pam Hyde Nakai, Roberta, Debby Hamolsky, Tina Efron, and Char
Date Available
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6 January 2014
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
16 March 2013
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/477868bbabdec3e804789847618eec63.mov
e2b8191060cfb1b544212ffa5eacd965
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
starting March 2013
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Lavina Tomer and Deborah Dobson, organizers for Southwest Feminists Reunite
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Relation
A related resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite and Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project
Language
A language of the resource
English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jamie A. Lee
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Debby Hamolsky and Sandra Anderson
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Transcription by Courtney Martinez
Interviewer:
All right so I’m gonna have you both introduce yourselves to the camera and then go ahead and tell me about the free clinic.
Sandra Anderson:
Okay, I’m Sandra Anderson and uhm…I am now retired and I live in Tucson. I came to Tucson to…and I was teaching at the college of nursing, nursing is a whole part of my life story and is part of my connection with the free clinic.
Debby Hamolsky:
I’m Debby Hamolsky and I came from…you know…I kept coming west but the time before Tucson was in Cleveland and I was very involved with free clinics there and then I did this Sojourn in my van traveling around the country looking alternative healthcare delivery. Three weeks at Frontier nursing service etc. And…uhm…when I landed in Tucson, my first job in this city was doing this health care survey, the health department right and learning my way around the city through having this joyous thing of walking into peoples homes and taking surveys. Anyway so I was involved in free clinics then...uhm...became connected to the Tucson clinic...uhm...and the director of the free clinic was a woman by the name of Colleen Eligante whose…wasn’t able to come this week and she was the one missing member of the avenue group right…so…uhm...and Colleen had a lot of really great organizational skills…right?
Sandra Anderson: Yes, she did…
Debby Hamolsky: She was a real….
Sandra Anderson: It’s nice to remember her…
Debby Hamolsky:
….good organization person with a lot of passion and commitment to doing it. Uhm…and we li..we were in a little small place and then we moved to this very big fancy house on Franklin Street and I can remember having a very class based conversation with Colleen…where…you know…I come from a middle to upper middle class family and Colleen came from a poor family. And I was horrified that we were going to move into some fancy big place and spend money that way. And she was totally committed to having this beautiful place for people that didn’t have other resources and she won that argument and I think it was great that she did.
Sandra Anderson:
And that must have been 1974/75/76 maybe…those are the years I remember because, it’s very connected to the women’s clinic starting as an off chute to the free clinic…
Debby Hamolsky: That’s right…
Sandra Anderson: And I think the free clinic was located on Scott street wasn’t it?
Debby Hamolsky:
Uh-huh, originally, I think so, I’m not good at remembering names…
Sandra Anderson:
Scott or 6th Avenue…I’m not sure, I kinda have a picture of it…I wasn’t very involved with them…but then the women decided that they wanted to have their own clinic and it was…it’s all kinda vague to me…the part that I remember the most is above the pre-natal clinic…and we….
Debby Hamolsky: Cause that’s what you do…
Sandra Anderson:
That’s what I do, I was having babies and I had one and it was in the hospital and it wasn’t a good experience and the doctor did everything I asked them not to do. So I really had this experience of women not having a choice. I’d explained my position so well, I was so ready and the doctor just glared at me and said, “Well, I’ll decide that.” And I thought, “Well, you won’t with my next baby,” (laughs) and so I had a personal motivation and investment in the pre-natal part of this also. And I can remember people coming to our hou-to my house and we would meet at that new house that you grew to like…or at individual houses, cause I had a baby, I think that was part of people coming to my house. And I remember everybody sitting on the floor and we had these protocols and we were trying to….do out. Uhm…clinic charges, so the patient had ownership of this chart. That was like a really radical idea….
Debby Hamolsky: Revolutionary idea then…
Sandra Anderson:
…that somehow this information belonged to that woman and they would, they would keep their own chart…and Oh I, we…just…every line had so much discussion to it (laughs). Oh my goodness, yeah…so that’s, that’s part of what I remember. Uhm.. about the free clinic. And my memories are mostly…so did the free clinic continue and then the women’s clinic continued or did the free clinic move to that big house also?
Debby Hamolsky:
The free clinic also was in that big house…the free clinic was in the big house and it became expansive and actually I wound up, not initially, I was involved with it sort of collectively, but then I went on to taking a job for a period of time with the free clinic and I was the…what was I?....the follow up coordinator and kind of navigation I think
Sandra Anderson:
And she was so good. She says Colleen was good but this woman was wise beyond her years and a heart beyond the size of her body that was Debbie, yes.
Debby Hamolsky:
This woman was my professor in the school universe professor in the school of nursing because when I decided to go back to school we wound up moving from a friendship to her being on the faculty of the place whether I was going to be going to school right…so it…you know…I have some wonderful pictures somewhere I couldn’t find’em…from that era too…but it was this profound...uhm…again…like with almost every topic this was the health care piece, right? This was the obviously services are needed; obviously, they are under, under, they’re not done well. And I mean still true, they’re not done well and their not done in the voice of…and we had…we had a women’s clinic we also had an elderly clinic, you know…where these old people were coming because of hypertension mostly…uhm…and…they…they…they had also felt like they were just off the edge, not important anymore and they came to this wonderful, I think it was Wednesday night clinic; so there were all these parts and I lived actually in a fear for awhile cause we were trained, a bunch of us who were not in anyway licensed in health care, well before we went to nursing school. Uhm…we were trained to do breast examines and pelvic's and paps…
Sandra Anderson: Oh yes…
Debby Hamolsky: Right? By uh…a couple of the physicians….
Sandra Anderson: Yes…
Debby Hamolsky:
….that were volunteering at the clinic, right? And in the brazen way that we were doing self-help and everything else, I lived in fear that one of these was going to come back and haunt me at some point after I had a license…but it never did. It was always…
Sandra Anderson: That was in the era of women reclaiming pelvic examines too…
Debby Hamolsky: Yeah!
Sandra Anderson:
…so we always had mirrors and this was always a show and tell (laughs)…and we were sitting around in these circles and just like, “Wow your cervix is so beautiful,” (laughs) we were just really checking out everybody (laughs) it was…and then…I was…
Debby Hamolsky: And it wasn’t sexual
Sandra Anderson: No…it was
Debby Hamolsky:
I mean it wasn’t for me…ever…and I was a lesbian right, so I…it had a whole other feel about it, it was about sharing and discovery just as much as all of our yacking was…
Sandra Anderson:
And I wasn’t a lesbian and this was so totally not important and it’s not important tonight…and…but that’s the way that clinic kind of functioned it was so, really a crazy combination of people. And what I was going to say also is, we were, that was a really alternative kind of track beyond. But many people also had a foot in a very established world. I…Winston Moore was a volunteer doctor he taught at the medical school. I came…
Debby Hamolsky: Winston Moore…
Sandra Anderson: Yeah!
Debby Hamolsky: There’s a name….
Sandra Anderson:
I came as a volunteer in…in the pre-natal unit and I taught at the college of nursing and I think some of what I did in the college of nursing, I could bring…bring…to the…to the free clinic. I also brought this self-pelvic examine to the college of nursing. I made a video that’s still in the medical school…(laughs) of how you do a pelvic examine with an empowered patient and it’s…it makes me blush now to think of it...but it was so…it was so unusual then and people thought it was…wrong also. That you would, that you would have a mirror there and the woman is looking at her own self. That was somehow considered really perverse or warped or something. Anyway…it was…I…with great pride, I made the first video on self-pelvic exams with the university.
Debby Hamolsky:
Right…and it infiltrated in lots of other important ways, first of all it gave us a skill set to bring wherever we went…right?
Sandra Anderson: Uh…huh
Debby Hamolsky:
…And then it was also…I mean there were a whole group of us who became patient advocates and you know sort of connected to Planned Parenthood and then we would debate all the time about whether we were just Planned Parenthood’s best volunteers and co-opted terribly or whether we were actually infiltrating with some influence...you know…and that to me went on for ever and ever…So it was an amazing time.
Sandra Anderson: That’s cool…
Interviewer:
I have one more that were just slightly late for but …is there any last thing that someone should know about?
Sandra Anderson:
Debbie’s great and I have such fond memories of her and of that time…it was a really special time with such special people….
Debby Hamolsky: It was a really special time…yeah…
Debby Hamolsky:
Exactly…and I stayed in your house when I was visiting Leslie when I first came through Tucson in the fall of ’72, right? But….
Sandra Anderson:
Wow, and just think all the again…the same title…generative, inspirational…in whatever little sub-topic is the theme is clearly the theme… Thank you so much.
Interviewer: Thank you.
End of Interview
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • Free Clinic: Interview with Debby Hamolsky and Sandra Anderson
Subject
The topic of the resource
lesbian, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, 1970s, collectives, media
Description
An account of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • Free Clinic: Interview with Debby Hamolsky and Sandra Anderson 12:07
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Anastasia Freyermuth, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
16 March 2013
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite, Lavina Tomer, and Deborah Dobson
Rights
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Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
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A related resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite
Format
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H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Free Clinic: 12:06 and 26.2MB
Language
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English
Type
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MovingImage
Alternative Title
An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific.
Interview with Debby Hamolsky and Sandra Anderson
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
6 January 2014
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
16 March 2013
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/4b3785c6f3c97411db5c1131c406889d.mov
3bee0a6b8506826d2402d428704516ce
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
starting March 2013
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Lavina Tomer and Deborah Dobson, organizers for Southwest Feminists Reunite
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Relation
A related resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite and Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project
Language
A language of the resource
English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jamie A. Lee
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Elaine Santo, Hannah Witzemann, Penny Spicer, and Janet
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Transcription by Courtney Martinez
Elaine Santo:
My name is Elaine Santo; I have been a pony contractor for 25 years. Hannah and I back…and Penny…all met at…
Penny Spicer: My House….
Elaine Santo:
At Penny’s house and it was in dire need of repair, plumbing and a lot of things. And we just meet up and realized that we all shared a common interest in the trades. And in doing alternative things. So that was kinda how we all got together.
PENNY SPICER:
I don’t know how exactly I found either one of you to come and help me.
ELAINE SANTO: I don’t know either
HANNAH WITZEMANN:
I don’t remember that either. But it started out you and me (Points to PS) and then you came by (Points to ES) and that’s how I caught up with you and then you and I finished (points to PS).
ELAINE SANTO: Well Hannah worked…well tell her where you came from..
HANNAH WITZEMANN:
Okay, I can from San Francisco and I worked for the gas company. I was one of the first women to work for Pacific gas and electric company. And so…the discrimination and stuff that I felt there was that most men just totally ignored me…
INTERRUPTION (JANET walks in)
ELAINE SANTO: So Hannah, finish your story.
HANNAH WITZEMANN:
Anyway, so I worked for the gas company in Tucson…err San Francisco for about three years and then I moved to Arizona and Uh…just started doing…just started helping women out that I saw that their gas appliances weren’t running correctly and I just said, “Can I fix this?” and then word of mouth people just started asking me to help out…anyway…so then I met up with Penny and Penny and I restored a house, it was adobe and that was a pretty amazing and powerful thing that we did. If you wanna talk about feminism and stuff like that for us, I think what was really hard is that we were working class women and there were women that had money and had status, that was different then us. So we were discriminated…
JANET: Were they also in the trades?
HANNAH WITZEMANN:
No, but when we talk about feminists, most of the time we’re talking about… cause they had the time to sit around and talk about this stuff…right…so we needed them to be in the foreground or whatever, to be doing what they’re doing politically, because for God’s sake…we were doing everyday…we were in the trenches…dealing with the men that didn’t want to sell us the right part so that we had to come back two or three times because they were jacking us around and wouldn’t listen to us. They would tell us, “oh you don’t need that part, you need this part,” you know just bullshit and so uhm…yeah…yeah…I don’t want to say any more until other people have said something. Go ahead Penny.
PENNY SPICER:
Well, I grew up with a mother who did all the plumbing, all the wiring all the carpentry in the house, so it never occurred to me that I couldn’t as a woman do it which most girls don’t have that advantage. I started doing plumbing before…while I was in school and I had such a horrible experience with teaching and I had been putting myself through school by doing this plumbing and carpentry, building saunas and stuff and uhm…I...uh had such a horrible experience that that summer I had several people offer me some jobs remodeling a kitchen, putting in a porch, et cetera et cetera and it was a choice of taking those or getting a or trying to find a teaching contract so guess which one I took? So I ended up doing plumbing for about five years. Gosh…you got a lot of plumbers here… (Group laughs).
JANET: (Inaudible)
PENNY SPICER:
So when I bought this house…somehow we got together and I brought Hannah in as a partner in the house and the only male energy that went into that house was my father with cancer digging a trench for us.
HANNAH WITZEMANN: We did everything…
PENNY SPICER: We had JANET:…
HANNAH WITZEMANN:
striking, digging doorways…We had Elaine in there helping us…Uhm..but you..
PENNY SPICER:
I found a new store opened up and he was an electrical supply place and we had to do this…there was a whole bunch of electrical stuff to do and he was wonderful. I didn’t have quite the same experience as you (looks at HW) cause he told me everything to get and what to do and how to do it. And he came and did some of it for me…for us and uhm…from 1980 on I did electrical work. He was the only man probably in the whole city who tolerated women in the trades but he was not a licensed contractor and I couldn’t work for him so I never got a license because I was not gonna work for any of those…
JANET:
Just a little footnote, this woman is probably the best electrician in Tucson…that is my opinion.
ELAINE SANTO: She wired my place…
HANNAH WITZEMANN Word…
JANET: She would have wired my place but I’m poor…
ELAINE SANTO:
I would like to say something relative to feminism okay because I think for me, I never looked at myself as a feminist…I mean I obviously was just because I’m a lesbian and because of growing up in a situation where you had to hide everything…even you skills for that matter. I never though of myself as…you know doing something…it was unique…but it was what I did…it was what I was good at. And I think all of us you know…if you have that knack that ability…my father fostered it in me I’m sure your dad was a mechanic…
JANET:
I think it was innate don’t you…didn’t you all want trucks and stuff when you were little but you wanted dolls too…Isn’t it part of your DNA to be a hands on like…
ELAINE SANTO: Well that’s what I’m saying…
PENNY SPICER: I’m extremely mechanical
ELAINE SANTO: Me too…
JANET: I think that’s why I am…
ELAINE SANTO:
And so we never looked…I shouldn’t say we…I would say me, I never thought, wow…I just thought it was a great gift you know that my father fostered in me and allowed me to develop. And so I just said…Like Penny was a teacher…and I loved my kids and I loved teaching, but I hated the administration, I couldn’t work for the institution, it drove me crazy and so when I had this opportunity like Penny, that somebody came and…and I did have a male mentor and he took me in and he taught me everything and he was wonderful just the same way. And there are men, good men out there who do that. But then, like Hannah said, there’s a bunch of bozo’s that wanna…don’t want you because you’re taking away from them. But I never thought of myself as doing something so far out there that…I thought it was totally normal. You know…Hannah and I were talking that, we used to service elderly folks, elderly women who felt comfortable…JANET: was a plumber too…Where having a man come in your house and they bang around and they break things and they charge you crazy things and you know and they don’t explain everything and you know…they’re not sensitive
JANET: They don’t clean up…
ELAINE SANTO:
Yeah…When Hannah and I and JANET: and I’m sure Penny too…when you get to an elder and you know they’re living on fifty dollars a week and you charge fifty dollars an hour, you’re not gonna say you know…pay up. I know for me, I had a lot of elder women who would be, “Oh, I made you some cookies,” and I’m like, “Cool” and they’d say, “What do I owe you?” and I’d say, “$2.00 for the gas,” and you know that’s it because that’s all they could afford but if you said to them, “Oh, nothing,” They were offended because they wanted to give you something…so you just had to go with the flow and it’s like when you had five of those people, then you would go to someone wealthy and you’d say, “you owe me five hundred bucks,” (group laughs) to pay for the three hours I spent with the cookie lady.
JANET:
Wanna hear something funny, while I was talking about the both of the top of the person with the two letters and the bottom of the person with the two letters…I was talking to somebody today about those two women and it was so bad and I was like laughing… (Inaudible)
HANNAH WITZEMANN (to JANET:) So tell us about your experience.
JANET: My experience…
HANNAH WITZEMANN
She drove these big things that had wheels that were as big as this room.
ELAINE SANTO: Janet was a coal miner
JANET: I thought you were talking about plumbing.
Group: No go ahead…we’re talking about trades
JANET:
I started out…I became a plumber because I met Elaine at a party…it was a good party…Elaine had good parties. And then we started talking and we were talking about what I did for a living which was I used to be a plumber and got laid off cause, well cause they’re asses and wanted to move the company or something and so uhm…Elaine and I were talking and I says, “What you doin in the mine,” and I said I was a mechanic, I don’t know exactly what I said but I was a mechanic I’ll, tell you now, and she goes, “Okay, I’m looking for somebody and you’re hired,” do you have tools and that’s how quick that happened, just like that and I was only in town for a week I think. That was pretty great, so that’s how my plumbing started out. I started out as like…when Elaine was taking earlier and how I interrupted and said I think it’s innate in all people…of like even you sitting here…I think it’s part of your DNA…you know like it’s, “my brother trucks and my sister got dolls, one older one younger…I was like I want them both,” I wanted them both and I think that’s….the motherly part of me is I’m really motherly you know…but the wanna play with the trucks part of me….I played with some pretty big trucks…(inaudible).
ELAINE SANTO:
She drove them in the mine…she was a coal miner. And JANET:, tell them about the men you worked with and how you were….
JANET:
Hannah was talking earlier about uhm…you know how you had to prove yourself and shit and I felt that in the coalmine. Like I never did, I was like…look at me I’m in La-La land and I am in La-La land (laughs). So I went underground because this woman who was very powerful said, “Come on JANET:, Let’s do it, we can do it,” she left in two years and I stayed for seven more…seven more years and so you know. When she was there it was much easier because she was big and tall and I was strong. She was too but…and then so they didn’t really mess with us much, they would just tell my friend, which I’m not gonna use any names, (oh, that’s pretty amazing huh…I’m controlled, I’m not usually this controlled…just stop me at any time), so that’s where I learned how to work with a different group of people who I didn’t grow up with and then I became a mechanic you know…I went up the ladder, I was (inaudible) and any time a job came open I bid on it and the only qualifications were, “how long have you been there?” Well towards the end I was there…like I was one of the toppers you know and so that’s how I got the jobs, so I did all those jobs they were talking about. I was driving equipment, I did jobs like shoveling a lot of coal, a lot (inaudible) that’s why I got strong because I worked out, I was trying to be a bodybuilder…oh well (laughs). So I could be a coal miner cause I’m goofy, you know I was the third woman down there. The first two women they were totally opposite; the one woman was a rancher and uhm…was a rancher her whole life and so she applied at the job so she was the second person. The first woman was real tall and very beautiful and made up in make-up and the other one was a rancher, she had long blonde hair…I love’em you know…she was a cowgirl…a cowgirl...it was really cool. And she was…the big tall women seemed more like…I kinda looked up to her cause I thought…she seemed older…that woman owned a restaurant…they hated her guts she had the top men wrapped around her finger it was really wonderful to see. It was…
ELAINE SANTO:
With you on the low end of the totem pole and a lesbian did not have anybody wrapped around your finger…
JANET:
Well I did after awhile…it takes a little conniving, you can’t be straightforward although in a way you are. You have to play the game but better that’s all, that’s the way life is…you gotta play the game just a little better…
HANNAH WITZEMANN: So Janet on the same note….
JANET: Oh, I’m sorry…
HANNAH WITZEMANN: No, don’t be sorry
JANET: You stopped me perfect…
HANNAH WITZEMANN:
No, no, no no…it’s alright, it’s just I wanted to say that there was a woman ahead of me at PG&E so I was the second woman in the gas company in San Francisco
JANET: Where?
ELAINE SANTO: Pacific Gas Company
HANNAH WITZEMANN:
The first woman, she told all the men that she could do exactly what they could do, she could handle any job that they could handle and then so she would get on the radio and you would hear her saying, “I need help, I need this, I need that,” and so it was embarrassing. Now I said to these guys, I basically just said, “look if I can’t get a bigger wrench and I can’t move it with a bigger wrench then I’m gonna call you on the horn and you’re gonna come and do it.” I said, “But I’m gonna do what I can do, you know and I’m not going to sleep with any of you, I’m not going to do any of that,” and there were some days when I would walk into the shop and I didn’t even want to see any of them because none of them wanted to see me. You know, so I just got my report and did what I did but you know on the same vain it’s like she was just so embarrassing because she just complained and whined and yet said she was the most…just as strong as they were and I never said that, I just said, this is what I need. But again, coming back…coming back to Arizona, what we did in Arizona, all I can say is that felt to us like we just did it, we were doing it where other people were talking about it. And yet, we also needed them to just be out there politically for us because you know…it was like day in and day out. I mean like, Elaine and I or Penny and I would be covered with plaster or covered with tar or whatever and who in the hell wanted to turn around and go to a meeting?
PENNY SPICER: That’s a lot of energy…
HANNAH WITZEMANN:
Exactly and then it was just all this (sound effects) and what’s the meaning of the meaning and it’s like….who gives a shit?
PENNY SPICER:
But then there was Arizona Trades Women, which we started in 1980 I think it was and I was the first president and that was, I think that was out political statement.
HANNAH WITZEMANN: Yeah, there you go.
ELAINE SANTO:
Because we had women in unions that had a whole different set of baggage you know, they were…they had to be within a qualification, they had to be between twenty-two and twenty-six and they had to weigh 140 pounds…kinda like stewardess’s…you know…
PENNY SPICER: What job was this?
ELAINE SANTO: Some of the unions
PENNY SPICER: Oh…
JANET:
No way…not in my union, not even at NCI at the cash register…
ELAINE SANTO:
this was back then JANET:, these women did…there was only a window of time…
JANET: They didn’t have to geez….
ELAINE SANTO:
…that you could be a part of the union and they had different things like different issues but they came to our meetings and they sat with us and we heard each other out. It helped us avoid things you know and then we would realize, like for me I got busted because I wasn’t a contractor like Penny at the time, the state came after me the city came after me…you know cease and assist and you know...so all because I was advertising in a women’s magazine. You know and so we’ve all gone through those things but along the way I think the long and the short of it is, you find good people, good men good women who are doing it. And I do wanna say that the women that we did work, even though they wanted us to go to the meetings, they did promote us…
PENNY SPICER: And they also hired us…
ELAINE SANTO: And they also hired us so for that reason I say thank you all
(Group speak inaudible)
[END OF INTERVIEW]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • Women in the Trades: Interview with Elaine Santo, Hannah Witzemann, Penny Spicer, and Janet
Subject
The topic of the resource
lesbian, Tucson, activism, history, feminists, 1970s, collectives, media
Description
An account of the resource
Southwest Feminists Reunite ~ “40th Anniversary Event” • Women in the Trades: Interview with Elaine Santo, Hannah Witzemann, Penny Spicer, and Janet, 19:20
Southwest Feminists Reunite celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Southwest Feminist Festival Retreat held north of Tucson. That powerful experience in March 1973 and the dynamic creativity and political action that followed sparked feminists and lesbian feminists to reinvent their lives and organize for change over the next four decades. This collection consists of oral histories and digital scans of photographs from the past 40 years.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Anastasia Freyermuth, video producer
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
16 March 2013
Contributor
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Southwest Feminists Reunite, Lavina Tomer, and Deborah Dobson
Rights
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Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Relation
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Southwest Feminists Reunite
Format
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H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Women in the Trades: 19:20 and 42.8MB
Language
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English
Type
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MovingImage
Alternative Title
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Interview with Elaine Santo, Hannah Witzemann, Penny Spicer, and Janet
Date Available
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6 January 2014
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
16 March 2013
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
-
https://azqueerarchives.org/files/original/cff843aeebc72b381dcebc22bdf1210a.mov
2353e73e4605181ae5df3d2d494657cf
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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T. Stephen "Steve" Cody Interview
Subject
The topic of the resource
Gay, homosexuality, HIV, sex, peace, coming out, family, Stonewall Democrats, activism, discrimination, challenges
Description
An account of the resource
Steve Cody shares his stories as part of the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project. Steve tells about his ‘coming out’ process and how his mother participated on a church panel about his sexuality without his knowing. He talks about his challenge to be peaceful throughout his health struggles. He discusses his activism and work with the Stonewall Democrats.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
MiniDV tapes recorded on Panasonic DVX-100A digital video camera
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jamie A. Lee, Project Director, Arizona Queer Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
21 March 2009
Contributor
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T. Stephen “Steve” Cody for the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project
Rights
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Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Relation
A related resource
Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project
Format
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H.264 300Kbps streaming QuickTime movie, 320 x 240
Language
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English
Type
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MovingImage
Coverage
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Tucson, AZ
Alternative Title
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Steve Cody Interview
Date Available
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15 January 2014
Date Created
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21 March 2009
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Rights given to the Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project and the Arizona Queer Archives
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jamie A. Lee
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
T. Stephen "Steve" Cody
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
T. Stephen "Steve" Cody ~ interview clip 13
Subject
The topic of the resource
Gay, homosexuality, HIV, sex, peace, coming out, family, Stonewall Democrats, activism, discrimination, challenges