NOW at 19 Reaffirms Its Priorities : With Election of Eleanor Smeal, ERA Fight Will Resume

With the National Organization for Women a year shy of 20, the mood at the annual conference was perhaps best summed up by former Equal Employment Opportunity Commission head Eleanor Holmes Norton, who told delegates: “We are not what we were--and we are not what we can be.”

The spirit at the weekend gathering was far different from a year ago in Miami Beach where NOW members, tasting real political power, greeted presidential hopefuls who had come to court them with chants of “Run With a Woman! Win With a Woman!”

First Woman Nominee

But the trouncing taken at the polls by Mondale-Ferraro--with Geraldine Ferraro, NOW’s choice, as the first woman nominee for vice president--was being perceived here less as a defeat for the ticket than as a victory for women.

Ferraro, who was visiting China with her family, spoke to this meeting via videotape. With her candidacy, she said, feminism’s 19-year dream of being “on the inside” in American politics had come true. “NOW has helped open wonderful doors for women,” she said. “With your help, I know we will go through them.”

Ann Lewis, executive director of Americans for Democratic Action, noting that the male Establishment must have “breathed a sigh of relief” in November and told itself “we won’t have them to kick around anymore,” put it this way: “Well, that ain’t true. It’ll never get back to normal.”

Lewis cautioned, however: “We have to be very firm on who we are and what we stand for.”

Those priorities, reiterated at this conference, include abortion rights, passage of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1985, which would restore prohibitions on sex discrimination at federally aided institutions, and gay and lesbian rights.

And Eleanor Smeal, the charismatic feminist who reclaimed the presidency of NOW as the Pied Piper who will lead women into the streets in massive marches and demonstrations, has another goal:

To resurrect the fight for an equal rights amendment, a campaign that has been more or less in deep freeze since defeat of the ERA in June, 1982. The new campaign will begin with a drive for ratification of a model state referendum in 1986 in Vermont.

Smeal will take office Sept. 1, which means that for the next two years, at least, the days of low-key lobbying, the preferred tactic of outgoing president Judy Goldsmith, are over. In the closing session here, Smeal, a woman who says she is powered by “the fumes of feminism,” served notice: “I intend to raise a little hell.” She added: “I believe that America is holding its breath.”

Right-Wing Enemy

NOW has met the enemy and has identified it as the right wing. Smeal did not hesitate to say that President Reagan’s victory in November, and the nation’s conservative climate, helped set the stage for her comeback as president of NOW, a job she held from 1977-1982.

“(NOW) people are feeling real frustrated,” said Nikki Heidepriem, a former Mondale-Ferraro staffer who came here in support of Goldsmith. “This may be a reflection of that kind of fury.”

Lois DeBerry, a member of the Tennessee state Legislature, cautioned that the ultra-right movement is “growing by leaps and bounds.”

And Norton emphasized that that movement is no longer composed of “primitive sexists repeating beliefs of the ages, scattered conservatives bewildered by change.” Rather, she said, “they have coalesced into a power block of reaction, led by an Administration that has put the government itself at their disposal.”

Feminists are angry about attacks nationwide on abortion clinics and incensed that the Supreme Court might overturn its 1973 decision legalizing abortion. Goldsmith had announced here a “Save Women’s Lives” campaign, to climax in January with presentation in Washington of a pro-choice statement signed by 1 million Americans. Smeal says she will follow through, but has called for more aggressive action, including a massive march and rally in Washington in March.

NOW is angry, too, about statutes in 25 states that, it says, discriminate against lesbian mothers in child-custody cases. And NOW is angry that public policy does not respond to the need of women in the work force for affordable and accessible quality child care.

It is angry about racism, angry about unequal opportunities for women in the hierarchies of major religious denominations and about the feminization of poverty.

Violence Toward Women

And it is angry about pornography that depicts violence toward women, but for some time feminists have had trouble grappling with this issue because of reluctance to endorse any action that might smack of censorship. About 75 protesters, led by NOW’s Andrea Dworkin, swept through the city’s French Quarter, only a few blocks from the Convention Hotel, Saturday night. They waved “Say No to Porno” placards in the shadow of topless-bottomless clubs along Bourbon Street and, above the strains of jazz, shouted “1-2-3-4, Porno Out the Door.”

In passing a resolution recognizing that the membership is “deeply divided” on whether pornography is harmful to women and whether laws against it would reduce violence against women, NOW made its strongest statement to date, allocating $10,000 to explore solutions ranging from product labeling laws to better sex-education programs.

NOW is angry with Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority and angry at President Reagan for Administration policies that have cut back or eliminated social programs that benefited the poor and the disenfranchised, many of whom are women.

Not all of NOW’s anger is directed at others. There is considerable disagreement within about whether the organization, with 250,000 members the nation’s largest feminist group, is doing enough, and doing it right, to attract minority women.

Colette Roberts, a black woman who chairs NOW’s Committee to Combat Racism, which was established in 1983, exploded at a minority caucus:

“I am strongly opposed to women of color being shuttled into one workshop and then we’re not seen again, we’re not supposed to be seen again.”

There are no minority women among NOW’s newly elected national officers. But Roberts did express her pleasure that there were “more women of color attending this conference than we have ever seen.”

White-Women’s Issues

Do your homework, she urged--let minorities know NOW isn’t just an all-white group absorbed in white women’s issues.

Joyce Johnson, a black woman who is minority-rights liaison at NOW national offices in Washington, said feminists should keep in mind that white women’s issues and black women’s issues in common include child-care programs, affirmative action and government funding for abortions.

Maria Saiz, a national board member from Miami, confronted Roberts angrily and said of Roberts’ committee: “I don’t think you all do a damn thing to help me . . . or to help minorities in my region. I don’t see you working on my issues. It’s time we talked the truth.”

“Racism is quite prevalent in our organization,” another woman said. “We do not understand the issues in the black community. The black woman is also concerned about her man. A lot of white women don’t understand that. They’ve got to deal with color first, then the issue of being women.”

A Florida delegate said Cuban women “don’t even know what NOW is” and NOW has nothing to offer them.

To a degree, the caucus had been used as a political tool. It took place just before the election for president and those who spoke out were, for the most part, lined up philosophically either on the side of Smeal (more militancy) or Goldsmith (progress takes time).

At session’s end, chair Roberts was in tears. “People in this organization do not have minority rights as a priority,” she said. But, with establishment of the committee and, recently, tips on combatting racism sent to all chapters, “a lot of groundwork has been laid,” Roberts said.

Roberts, a NOW member for 15 years, said, “black women come in and then they leave.” She has stayed, she said, because “I do not think NOW is a racist organization and it’s better to work from in here. The chapters do need to reach out but minority women need to investigate us and see what we’re doing.”

Divisiveness within is one thing NOW cannot afford as it presses its agenda and gears up for the 1986 congressional races.

A successful challenge to an incumbent president was unheard of. The closeness of the fight (a margin of 136 votes with 1,542 cast) and the passion with which it was fought, inevitably led to some bad feelings.

Still, there did not appear to be a major rift. Goldsmith took the first step toward unity, issuing this statement: “Ellie is a proven leader who, I know, will build a strong NOW and move us quickly toward equality.”

If she was bitter that Smeal, the woman who had supported her as her successor when she herself was forbidden by bylaws to seek a third term, had come back to haunt her, she did not, for the most part, show it publicly.

Goldsmith was not defeated because the membership disliked her; they simply like Smeal and her give-’em-hell approach better.

“Judy is not bad,” said Phyllis Wetherby, a delegate from Pennsylvania, Smeal’s home state, “but the cool is maybe not quite so inspirational. Ellie’s a fighter and once you’ve gone to battle with a general. . . .”

“It’s not what was wrong ,” said Don Cannon, a pro-Smeal delegate from Ventura. “Judy is certainly a very capable leader. But Smeal has a charismatic style.”

But Cannon does not see a lasting schism. “There’s some hard feelings,” he said, “but they’ll stay in and fight.”

Pro-Goldsmith delegate Patti Headland-Wauson of Anaheim, while lauding her candidate for “a great job,” acknowledged: “I feel that Ellie will produce.” A big question, she said, is whether Smeal can get people “riled up” without the emotion of an ERA deadline campaign as she had during her presidency.

Susan Silberstein of Long Beach NOW, who also supported Goldsmith, said: “I think a lot of people were remembering what was happening when Ellie was president (before), the excitement of the ERA campaign. Everyone was so charged up then. Even though we lost it felt great.” Perhaps, she said, these people “want to bring back those good feelings.”

Heidepriem agreed: “A lot of women had their first experience with feminism with NOW, under Ellie” and, she suggested, there is residual longing for the good old days.

The New Militancy

She added: “I don’t think (the call for new militancy) reflects how a lot of women in America feel, but NOW’s never claimed to represent them all. Women who aren’t comfortable with that can go with another organization.”

Carmen del Rio, a Baton Rouge, La., delegate wearing a “macho is sicko” button, said: “I respect both women highly but Ellie’s a very exciting person and NOW could use that excitement right now, especially to appeal to younger women who are reaping the benefits (of feminism), but have become quite complacent.”

With either leader, she said: NOW would “continue and do,” but “Ellie had a little more fire in the belly.”

Goldsmith, gracious in defeat, entered the hall for the first time as lame-duck president to tumultuous cheers and chants. Working the crowd under a shower of confetti, she embraced her supporters, among them Sandra Farha, NOW’s California coordinator.

At the podium, she smiled and said: “All that has really happened is that you have moved me to a premature action” on career planning.

Goldsmith has expressed interest in running for Congress from her home state of Wisconsin. In an interview here she said: “I’m very interested in the possibility of a feminist think tank. I love to write. And a part of me yearns to go back to a nice quiet academic life.” (She is a former English professor.)

She asked the members, “Be gentle and kind to each other.” And she assured them: “None of us is going away. And we tend to be feisty types. . . . I do not intend to ever become a good loser. I don’t like it and I will avoid it in the future.”

Now, she said, “we’ve got our work cut out for us so let’s get back to it.”

For 20 years, Eleanor Holmes Norton, now a professor of law at Georgetown University, said, “we have both failed and succeeded.” Recognizing that “great movements must reinvent themselves,” she said it is time for NOW to “reassess, rethink, reevaluate.”

Not only have times changed, she said but “we ourselves have changed the times.” Now, she said, it is important to remember that, while there are women in numbers in the professions and in management, “the great majority of women must still be classified as work have-nots.” She spoke of two classes of working women, “an elite that progresses and a majority that is stymied” in low-pay service jobs.

Goldsmith in conversation pointed up another challenge to the feminist movement: “In the beginning you get rid of most of the disgusting, blatant forms of discrimination and then people say: ‘What do you women want, anyhow?’ What’s left is much more difficult, the bedrock,” such as comparable worth pay and insurance company policies that don’t discriminate against women.

Several speakers said that it is the feminists’ durability that is being tested at this point in history.

As delegates headed home, some elated, some disappointed, most re-energized, Nikki Heidepriem observed: “The women’s movement in this country is too strong to be affected by what’s happening in any one organization. This is a deep and abiding and serious movement.”