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| ... my Take Back the Night Walk hat ... |
I joined a small band of women called the Calgary Status of Women Action Committee (CSWAC).
I can’t even remember how I found them now.
Yes, I do know how I found them.
I read every notice on every billboard and telephone pole.
A young accountant, Mutriba Dinn, was in charge. She said that the previous year, it had been just Mutriba and her sister.
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| ... Tonia asked if she could have this when I die ... |
The years I went to their meetings, there may have been about six people or so. Soon Bonnie Wyora came along. The next year, Mary got a summer job working with CSWAC.
They had a conference, memorable to me, and although I don’t remember exactly how it was organized, I do remember that they were concerned with the plight of working women and brought someone in from Saskatchewan as the main speaker.
Since I am curious now, I did a google search on CSWAC and the Glenbow has extensive archives on the work they did. I found papers on the working women conference. They called the papers Prostitution: Women Working on the Margins workshop. 1991 – 1993 (Fond M-8224-177).
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| ... the most requested button when I am through with my hat .. I no longer remember where I got the button. |
When a woman in prostitution had a bad trick, she would give either the license plate or a description of that person or his vehicle to the newsletter, and then one of them would distribute that newsletter to everyone on the streets, Friday night, a paper warning them about previous tricks gone wrong.
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| In the union we call ourselves brother and sister, thus I have a union button that says "Sisters from Hell". It could double for a radical Relief Society slogan though. |
I saw my mother doing community service, inside of a religious organization.
I didn’t understand yet, the mechanisms that allowed women to gathered together to do this kind of work.
About the same time, or perhaps earlier, I remember that I had seen the film Not a Love Story (Bonnie Sherr Klein. 1981). I was shaken to my core.
Why did I go to that film?
As I had been walking along 24th Avenue by the St. Pious Church, on their billboard I had seen a film advertised that night. Only a handful of people were there to view it.
During my lunch hour, at the university, I saw Silverlake Life: The View from Here a 1993 documentary film by director Peter Friedman shortly after that. This time I was the only person there. Both radical films.
At any rate, all of these memories seem to be associated with my time with the Calgary Status of Women Action Committee.
Those were powerful years for us. It was pretty empowering seeing you harnassing yourself (and thus us, your children) to the amazing work done by CSWAC. I just have a hard time imagining those years without those forms of activism. thank you!
ReplyDeleteArta: here is a message to you from Alexandra Dobrowolsky (now in Nova Scotia!). "Arta, congratulations on your your big birthday and what a fabulously feministy, meaningful and memorable, way to commemorate your 80th year! Why am I not surprised?! Loved reading your recollections of SWACs groundbreaking efforts and the wonderful women involved...including you, who served as an inspiration, instigator, and invaluable member of the collective! In awe of your many, many, and continued, achievements. Wishing you all the best, Alexandra. [adobrowolsky@smu.ca]
ReplyDeleteSandy,
ReplyDeleteHello and such a surprise to see this message. For some reason your note brought back happy memories I didn't even know I still had. There was a happiness in the CSWAC meetings, a feeling that the world was changing, even if it was only my world that was different. Thank you for the wonderful memories, relived again in the present.
My CSWAC summer job was my very first full-time paid job. The previous year I had started a group for "young feminists." Sort of funny to me now, because at 45 i still feel young, ha, ha. Anyway, the women at CSWAC put in a grant to get a student seed loan of some type so they could pay me to work out of their offices that summer. I basically assembled a newsletter and organized meetings for the young feminists. I remember using their computer to make the newsletter and learning how to use my first database software to be able to create address labels for the envelopes. They also had a "stamp" machine that I would feed the envelopes through and would print a stamp directly on the envelope and keep track of how many envelopes were getting stamps. It must have been some sort of pre-paid machine from Canada Post. One of the issues we were working on as a group was anti-racism work. I remember some of the women of colour in the groups expressing frustration (and probably much more) about how it was being approached. I see now that this was when I first began to learn about my own white privilege and what it truly means to be an ally. This is a journey I am still on.
ReplyDeleteYes, Mary. You are still a young feminist. =) I agree with you. We were so lucky to start our more formal journey in activism with the support of a collective. I too still draw on memories of that time as I continue to grow my understanding of self and others.
DeleteOccasionally when I am invited to a vegetarian pot luck party, those early CSWAC years come to mind and I like to tell people I was going to vegetarian potlucks back in the 80s when the only people having this kind of get-together were feminists, environmentalists and lesbians. So grateful to my mom for bringing my teenaged-self to all these gatherings and events. What an amazing group of women I got to observe and learn from.
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