A Quiet Revolution? Women's Activism across the Information Age, 1980s-present
Women’s rights activists developed coalitions which structurally redefined social movements in the Information Age.
Reproductive Rights and Women's Activism (1980s-present)
As clinical violence cases rose throughout the 1980s and 1990s, women activists affirmed the rights of sexual autonomy and reproductive planning. The National Organization for Women (NOW) and the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) stood in solidarity with reproductive rights proponents, and gathered around abortion clinics. The vigils transformed the facilities into symbols of women’s resilience, which raised public awareness about clinical violence.
Operation Rescue and other pro-life activists adopted similar grassroots tactics as NOW and FMF, and held demonstrations at courtrooms and clinics. The rallies further established clinics as points of contention, which revealed the importance of public spaces in the abortion debate.
The California Abortion Rights Action League (CARAL), NOW, and FMF worked through the state’s legislative framework, which expanded the pro-choice position beyond grassroots activism. The coordination between CARAL and grassroots advocates reflected the trend toward leaderless movements, which guided women’s activism into the 21st century.
NOW's Vigil for Reproductive Justice
There is no way that a woman’s right to control over her reproduction can be burned down. We are still here. — Edith Berg, clinic director
After threats of clinical violence in January 1985, Hollywood’s Feminist Women’s Health Clinic stationed guards around the premises. In solidarity, NOW members and other activists congregated at the clinic and assisted with the facility’s protection. The vigil included women and men who, despite the danger, defended the clinic’s right to exist.
However, a fire broke out at the clinic in April, which further complicated the issue. While the investigations were inconclusive, the fire did not deter the clinic and activists' advocacy for reproductive justice and women's rights.
In ’93, ’94 time period, where we really were working all over the country, almost half of all clinics were experiencing either severe threats or acts of violence. — Katherine Spillar, Feminist Majority Foundation Co-Founder.
Katherine Spillar and other pro-choice activists established the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) in 1987 as a sister organization to NOW. FMF, upon initiation, became independent from NOW because of disagreements between both groups. The contention reinforced women’s rights organization’s trend toward decentralization.
The foundation also affirmed reproductive rights, and countered Operation Rescue’s clinic blockades with separate demonstrations. From FMF’s efforts, the U.S. Congress ratified the FACE Act of 1994. California’s state legislature followed suit with the FACE Act of 2001-2. Both acts protected women’s reproductive rights through effective criminalization of clinic violence.
Operation Rescue
If unborn children are human beings, then we are transporting body parts. — Susan Odom, Operation Rescue staff member.
Pro-life activists Randall Terry and Joseph Schneider established Operation Rescue in 1987, which directed clinic blockades in Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego county. Women at the grassroots level supported the action organization, and invoked cultural ideas of babies and motherhood at public demonstrations. With pro-life women advocates’ involvement, Operation Rescue succeeded with the disruption of abortion clinics across Southern California throughout the late 1980s and 1990s.
Demonstrations at Long Beach and Tustin (1989)
Approximately 300 Operation Rescue demonstrators organized a sit-in at the Long Beach Women’s Care Medical Group offices in March 1989. The event became another point of contention for the abortion debates. The local police’s response to the sit-in satisfied Operation Rescue, while Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union voiced disapproval.
Webster v. Reproductive Health Svcs., the Supreme Court’s ruling for reduced state abortion funding in July 1989, emboldened pro-life advocates toward more clinic-blockades. A demonstration at the Santa Ana-Tustin Medical Pavilion heightened the pro-life and pro-choice activists' disagreements, which carried over into subsequent decades.
We have the numbers on our side. We’re going to prove that being for abortion is good for a politician — Robin Schneider, CARAL executive director
A branch of the National Abortion Rights Action League, CARAL lobbied for reproductive rights and financed pro-choice politicians’ campaigns during the late 1980s and 1990s. The special interest group adopted tactics from out-of-state advocates such as New York’s Westchester Coalition for Legal Abortion, which demonstrated the collaboration between reproductive rights organizations. The collaboration transformed into coordination as CARAL women activists applied knowledge from California political elections to other states’ legislative campaigns. Despite CARAL and other pro-choice lobbyists’ efforts, states across the country ratified 835 measures from 1995 to 2017, all of which reduced women’s reproductive rights.
Social Media and Women's Activism (2006-present)
Tarana Burke posted “Me Too” onto MySpace in 2006, which preceded the eponymous social movement by a decade. Early online activist groups shared Burke's post among one another, which transferred her message across social media platforms.
According to communications scholar Allissa V. Richardson, African Americans used Twitter more than any other ethnicity from 2006 to 2014. Black digital users visited social media, and developed communities such as Black Twitter. Other activists followed suit, and expanded into other platforms over the next decade.
Social media has been our key essential tool to creating this movement ... [W]e can actually go live and say our message right to all of our viewers. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s created a platform and a voice for the voiceless — Jasmine Abdullah, Black Lives Matter Pasadena Activist.
Jasmine Abdullah was among the activists who followed Black Twitter’s example, and carried on the digital community’s legacy through the Black Lives Matter movement. Abdullah’s remark also noted how BLM and women’s rights groups circumvented traditional broadcast institutions. Unlike the Feminist Majority Foundation, organizers reached out to the public through social media platforms, which expanded social movements’ presence from physical to digital spaces. The shift reflected women activists’ adoption of technological innovations throughout the 20th century, and made the same tactics applicable to social media in the early 21st century.
Black Lives Matter Movement (2013-present)
In 2013, a jury acquitted George Zimmerman of the 2012 Trayvon Martin murder. Black activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi developed the hashtag “Black Lives Matter” into a movement, which honored the memory of Trayvon and other victims of police brutality. Mike Brown’s murder and the Ferguson Riots of 2014 expanded the movement, which included Black and marginalized communities. Black Lives Matter (BLM) organizers also advocated for Black trans women’s autonomy, which strengthened the alliance between BLM and LGBTQ+ activists.
Garza, Cullors, and Tometi started BLM as a leaderless movement, which branched off into 40+ sections. Activists established chapters such as Black Lives Matter Pasadena, which addressed local and regional concerns. As the larger movement coordinated with other activists groups, so did the chapters. BLM activists adopted prior movements’ tactics like sit-ins, and relied on the social media techniques Black Twitter developed.
Activists occupied San Francisco’s Market Square and honored the memories of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, victims of police violence in Louisiana and Mississippi respectively. The demonstrators borrowed from prior social movements, and adopted the sit-in near Powell Street as a visible reminder of solidarity with Sterling and Castile. There, women and men participants listened to protest organizers read over 500 peoples’ names, all of whom police killed over the past year. The demonstration thus strengthened the alliance between BLM and women activists, and repurposed the sit-in for contemporary era social movements.
BLM Pasadena began in 2015 at a park near the Rose Parade. Jasmine Abdullah and other activists drew inspiration from Garza, Cullors, and Tometi’s framework, and codified a set of guiding principles for the chapter. Each tenet echoed the common ground between BLM and women’s rights, as both movements emphasized grassroots organization.
The principles became BLM Pasadena’s foundation, as its Twitter post proclaimed the chapter’s presence and harkened back to Black Twitter’s digital techniques. The chapter’s Twitter posts all reinforced the tenets, especially one to Pasadena mayor Terry Tornek. Both documents revealed the common ground BLM and women’s activists shared.
Since...2015, many of the groups that were birthed in Ferguson under the broad Black Lives Matter campaign either have rebranded, merged, or dissolved — Allissa V. Richardson, Communications Scholar.
Richardson’s observation reflected BLM’s trend toward decentralization throughout the late 2010s. She and Alicia Garza both identified the movement’s shift away from demonstrations, and subsequent focus toward political engagement at the local level. As BLM maintained a grassroots presence, the preoccupation with municipal concerns during the Trump presidency resulted in a greater dependence on MeToo and other social movements for widespread demonstrations. Women activists thus acquired a more optimal position from BLM’s reliance, and facilitated coalitions between advocacy groups from late 2010s into 2020.
MeToo Movement (2017-present)
At the Philadelphia Women’s March, a participant’s sign proclaimed:
I MARCH, TO HONOR MY MOTHER, TO EMPOWER MY DAUGHTERS, TO TEACH MY SON, TO RECTIFY OUR WRONGS.
Her statement embodied the goals of #MeToo, a nationwide grassroots movement initiated in 2017. Several women spoke out about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and rape, and inspired others to recount similar experiences of sexual violence.
Donald Trump’s presidency also led to an increase in marches and grassroots advocacy, which strengthened coalition networks. Women’s rights, Black Lives Matter, and LGBTQ+ activists thereby raised public awareness about sexual justice and autonomy.
Women marchers often wore pink hats, which symbolized solidarity and identity. The hat wearers reclaimed pink from stereotypes about womanhood, and re-situated the color as an assertion of sexual autonomy.
Others did likewise, and reaffirmed the common ground between the MeToo Movement and human rights. An Oakland Women’s March participant echoed LGBTQ+ and Black Lives Matter activists’ message on her sign, which reinforced the event’s emphasis on dignity and self determination.
Symbols and acts of marching demonstrated MeToo’s physical presence in public spaces, which transferred the movement’s goals to a wider audience.
The better question is to ask how many women can actually say, ‘Not me too?’ Because for the most part, we, as women, have been subjected to those things — Diane Velarde-Hernandez, Chicano Movement Activist and High School Teacher.
Women’s rights activist and educator Diane Velarde-Hernandez reflected on patriarchal systems, and gender disparities. Velarde-Hernandez’s question further contextualized the extent to which MeToo resonated with women, alongside the movement’s call to action. The question also noted how social movements throughout the 20th and 21st centuries fought for women’s rights, even when threatened with power, intimidation, and control. Nevertheless, ‘[n]ot me too’ disclosed the persistent obstacles for future activists in the struggle for women’s rights and equality.
Endnotes
- Claudia Goldin, “The Quiet Revolution That Transformed Women’s Employment, Education, and Family,” in the American Economic Review 96, no. 2 (May 2006): 18-19, doi: 10.1257/000282806777212350.
- Leo Jarzomb, "Vigil at Hollywood Women's Health Center," photograph (Jan. 19, 1985).
- Peter H. King, "Hollywood Clinic Carries on Despite Blaze," in the Los Angeles Times (Apr. 10, 1985).
- Carol McGraw, "The low point was in 1985, when the clinic burned down. We didn't give up. We did screenings from a van parked outside," in the Los Angeles Times (Feb. 14, 1989).
- Katherine Spillar and Peg Yorkin, interviewed by Natalie Fousekis, April 6, 2017, Beverly Hills, CA, Oral History #5963.1, transcript, WPA, COPH, CSUF, 53-54.
- Michael Haering, "Operation Rescue demonstrators," photograph (Aug. 8, 1989).
- Greg de Giere, Crimes against Reproductive Rights in California (Sacramento: California Senate Office of Research, 2002).
- Haering, "Abortion demonstration, Long Beach," photograph (Mar. 25, 1989).
- Louise Stern, "Anti-abortion rally," photograph (July 8, 1989).
- Lynn Smith and Carol McGraw, "Long Beach Lets Abortion Protest Wither," in the Los Angeles Times (Mar. 25, 1989).
- Webster v. Reproductive Health Svcs., 492 U.S. 490 (1989).
- Eric Bailey and Lynn Smith, "It will be the poor women...," in the Los Angeles Times (July 4, 1989).
- Mike Stergieff, "California Abortion Rights Action League," photograph (Mar. 21, 1989).
- John Balzar, "Justices Open Door to Change in California's Abortion Policy," in the Los Angeles Times (July 4, 1989).
- Seth Mydens, "For Abortion Rights Groups, Small Contest is a Big Tent," in The New York Times (Aug. 7, 1989).
- Bonnie Grabenhofer and Jan Erickson, "Is the Equal Rights Amendment Relevant in the Twenty-first Century?" in "ERA Roundtable," edited by Mary F. Beery, in Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies 38, no. 2 (2017): 32, doi: 10.5250/fronjwomestud.38.2.0001.
- Abby Ohlheiser, "The woman behind 'Me Too' knew the power of the phrase when she created it—ten years ago," in The Washington Post (Oct. 19, 2017).
- Allissa V. Richardson, "Dismantling Respectability: The Rise of New Womanist Communication Models in the Era of Black Lives Matter," in the Journal of Communication 69, no. 2 (Apr. 2019), 197. doi: 10.1093/joc/jqz005.
- Jasmine Abdullah (Richards), interviewed by Carie Rael, Aug. 24, 2016, Los Angeles, CA, Oral History #5900, transcript, WPA, COPH, CSUF, 8.
- "Herstory - Black Lives Matter."
- Pax Ahimsa Gethen, "Sit-in during San Francisco July 2016 rally against police violence," photograph (July 8, 2016).
- @blmpasadena, "Demands to Mayor Terry Tornek," Twitter post (Feb. 5, 2018).
- @blmpasadena, "Black Lives Matter Pasadena Guiding Principles," Twitter post (Feb. 5, 2018).
- Richardson, "Dismantling Respectability," in the Journal of Communication, 206.
- Rob Kall, “womensmarch2018 Philly Pennsylvania -MeToo,” photograph (Jan 20, 2018).
- In 2020, a court of law found Weinstein guilty of rape.
- Tom Hilton, "Women's March Oakland," photograph (Jan. 20, 2018).
- Cyndy Sims Parr, "'Me Too.' Mother Earth," photograph (Jan. 19, 2019).
- Diane Velarde-Hernandez, interviewed by Helen Yoshida, Nov. 9, 2017, Acton, CA, Oral History #6003, transcript, WPA, COPH, CSUF, 30.