CWLU Herstory Blog

EMMA, a play by Howard Zinn about the renowned American anarchist Emma Goldman will be opening at the Trap Door Theater on October 18 in Chicago. For more detailed info please visit their website.

It is being directed by Kate Hendrickson, the daughter of Ayrie Moore, who belonged to the Chicago Women's Liberation Union (CWLU) and Rising Up Angry.

Yes it is and the CWLU doesn't even have a MySpace page. How could it? The organization disbanded in 1977.

But that doesn't stop young people from decorating their MySpace pages with posters from the Chicago Women's Graphics Collective. The most popular ones are "Lesbian Pride", "Sisterhood is Blooming", "Lipstick and Blood" and "Abortion is a Personal Decision Not A Legal Debate".

After months of activity behind the scenes, we've launched the newly designed Herstory website. We really need your feedback as we debug the new site and add new features. Please feel free to comment or send us an This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it with your reactions. Special thanks to Dana Simpson for her work in transferring the old content over to the new site.

Anne Enke's new book called Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism is now in production. It is a study of Midwestern feminism to be published by Duke University Press in October 2007. Anne visited us a while back and we had a long discussion about the unique character of the Midwestern women's movement.

In the book, Anne Enke reveals that diverse women’s engagement with public spaces gave rise to and profoundly shaped second-wave feminism. Focusing on women’s activism in Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis-St. Paul during the 1960s and 1970s, she describes how women across race and class created a massive groundswell of feminist activism by directly intervening in the urban landscape.

They secured illicit meeting spaces and gained access to public athletic fields. They fought to open bars to women and abolish gendered dress codes and prohibitions against lesbian congregation. They created alternative spaces, such as coffeehouses, where women could socialize and organize. They opened women-oriented bookstores, restaurants, cafes, and clubs, and they took it upon themselves to establish women’s shelters, health clinics, and credit unions in order to support women’s bodily autonomy.

The cover of Anne's book includes a poster from the Chicago Women's Graphics Collective.

Contributors include: Barbara Caine, Richard Cándida Smith, Ellen Carol DuBois, Ann D. Gordon, Vivian Gornick, Kathi Kern, Michele Mitchell, and Christine Stansell.

"I picked up this book wondering what, if anything, even