BODY POLITIC : Women on the Verge of an Activist Crackdown

Last April, poet/writer and veteran scenester Nicole Panter and rock poet Exene Cervenka gathered a group of female friends--musicians, poets, performance artists, rabble-rousers and various other “bad girls who climbed out of our windows after dark and took taxis home at dawn”--and threw a tea party. The idea, Panter says, was to tank up on sugar and caffeine and transform these “daughters of Lilith, Lily Munster, Patti Smith and Emma Goldman” into a potent force for political change. Thus was born the Bohemian Women’s Political Alliance.

“If you’re a bohemian woman who lives on the fringes of society, you’re doubly disenfranchised,” explains Panter. “You’re a woman, and you’re some kind of underground/artist person, not a nine to fiver.”

Armed with a manifesto that is “pro-woman, pro-choice, pro-child, pro-minority, pro-queer, pro-earth, prolific, prodigious, profane, pro-arts, pro-change and pro-union,” this “weird girl” army blitzes L.A.-area espresso bars, clubs and other underground haunts seeking kindred spirits, registering voters and cultivating activism.

Monthly benefit concerts staged by the group have raised thousands of dollars for such causes as the Homeless Writers Project, Tuesday’s Child, and Jackie Goldberg’s bid to become the L.A. City Council’s first openly gay member.

Although it claims only 150 members of varying levels of participation, that talent pool includes such alternative artists as actress Mink Stole, the Apache Dancers and Tequila Mockingbird, as well as non-member supporters such as former Blaster Dave Alvin, Flea and performance artist John Fleck.

Decisions are made by committee, which Panter believes prevents the organization from becoming an autocracy. The question of men, however, is problematic. “Currently, we don’t allow any in the group,” Panter says. “But that is something that might change.”