The June Mazer Lesbian Archives

The Los Angeles Women’s Community Chorus was founded in 1976 to enact consciousness raising and create a feminist community through music. They sang choral music by women, for women. The collective was attentive to the racism many women of color experienced in the women’s movement and attempted to represent diversity in both their music and membership, while also raising funds for social social organizations like Inside Out, which brought music to women’s prisons. The group ...put their feminist ideals into practice by including Spanish and Braille translations in their programs and songbooks and providing free childcare at meetings. One of their many performances is pictured in this photograph by Angela Brinskele from 1985. The chorus officially existed until 1990, but former members celebrated its legacy at a 20th anniversary event in 1997. #lesbian #feminism #lgbtq #lgbtmusic #musichistory

I’ve got big news!

On November 15th and 16th 1981, over 3,000 feminists traveled from around the country and the world to take direct action against U.S militarism and environmental destruction at the Pentagon building in Washington D.C. This action was the second held by the feminist antinuclear organization Women’s Pentagon Action, which used radical guerilla theater to make the deadly consequences of masculinist militarism and women’s empowerment visible and emotionally palpable. Thousands o...f women mourned the toll of militarism as they marched from Arlington cemetery and placed grave markers in front of the Pentagon. At the building, participants spilled containers of blood on the building’s walls, wove yarn around the doorways to symbolize a feminist web of life, and blocked the entrance with their bodies. By the end of these stages titled mourning rage empowerment and defiance, the police arrested 65 participants for obstructing entrance to a federal building. These photos of the action were taken by lesbian feminist Elaine Mikels, born in 1921 in Los Angeles. After surviving depression as a closeted woman in the 1940s, she founded the Conrad House in 1959 to help others suffering from mental illness. Soon after, she became radicalized and joined the anti-war and lesbian feminist movements. As she wrote, "When I broke away from the system in the late 1960's, I went through an amazing personal transformation, not unlike many others during this time of civil strife and the war in Vietnam. I was no longer afraid of authority figures." Her many contributions include working on the Feminary newsletter based in Durham and helping to found the Older Women’s Network and Older Lesbians Organizing for Change. You can read more about the Women’s Pentagon Actions in the article "Women's Pentagon Action: The Persistence of Radicalism and DirectAction Civil Disobedience in the Age of Reagan by Wesley G. Phelps or in this piece by Pam McAlister. http://activistswithattitude.com/womens-pentagon-action/ #lgbtq #lesbian #feminist #feminism #peace #pacifism #antinuclear #anarchism #directaction #protest

Tomorrow's the big day! Join us this Saturday for riot grrrl’s little siblings, a virtual event celebrating riot grrrl’s influence circa y2k with an emphasis on lesbian and queer empowerment, co-organized with @sororitytheatre ! *** We’re looking forward to sharing readings + music by a roster of incredible performers, as well as an archival show-and-tell of a new Mazer collection featuring Gina Young’s riot grrrrl materials! @ginagenius *** REGISTRATION REQUIRED at bit.ly/littlesiblings or click the link in our profile! The event is free, but donations are encouraged to support our lovely performers! *** Saturday, April 10 6pm - 7:30 pm PST zoom link will be emailed the day before *** Music from @ginagenius + @mackinnon_ian readings from @failureprincess @provvidenzac @sunintheskyletterj @midoriglory

Remembering Ivy by James Mills

International Women’s Day celebrates the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women, but also reminds us to recommit to the feminist struggle for equality and justice in the face of sexist oppression. To mark this occasion, we want to highlight the Joan Robins papers. Joan Ellen Robins co-founded the first consciousness - raising (CR) group in Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Women's Center. She was an early member of the organization Lesbian Feminist whic...h built solidarity with the LGBT community within the women’s movement and made lesbians visible within the National Organization for Women (NOW). Her leadership positions included becoming the director of education of the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women in 1975. Her archive illustrates the rich history of feminist movements in Los Angeles, from struggles for reproductive rights and lesbian rights to the fight against violence against women. This flyer advertising a rally on International Women’s Day to fight for safe and legal abortion is still relevant today, when many women around the world and in the United States are unable to access abortions. #lgbtq #internationalwomensday #womenshistorymonth #feminism #lesbian

We are so glad to hear this news.

From our subject files on The Women's Building in San Francisco. We are greatful to the many Black feminists who have led the way towards a movement that fights sexist oppression and empowers the marginalized people. We still have a long way to go and can learn from their struggles.

The Lesbian Schoolworkers formed in 1977 to defeat the infamous Briggs Initiative, a proposition which would have banned lesbian and gay people and their supporters from teaching in public schools in California. Lesbian Schoolworkers followed organizations like the Gay Liberation Front and The Furies by linking the struggle against the Briggs imitative to a wider anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-capitalist agenda. This 1978 pamphlet depicts State Senator John Briggs as a ma...levolent rhino trampling abortion clinics and public libraries and urges the LGBT community to stand in solidarity with African Americans against the death penalty and attacks on affirmative action and with women to defend abortion. The attack on gays who work in the schools must not be seen in isolation. It is one of a growing number of attacks on the rights of people in America. While the group was known for speaking to civic leaders and presenting a slideshow entitled Don’t Let it Happen Here in protest of the initiative, they also participated in mass marches as seen in the first photograph. The collection also contains photographs of the schoolworkers in the classroom and with children, as seen in the second photo. The Briggs initiative was defeated by a powerful coalition, and schoolworkers leader Amber Hollibaugh argued that while discrimination remained, this moment proposition was critical because it exposed sexual dynamics as central in this society. Yet, California became the national epicenter of mass incarceration in decades to come, and organizations like @blackandpinkorg are carrying on the intersectional legacy of Lesbian Schoolworkers by fighting against all forms of oppression. #lgbtq #lgbt #teachers #lesbian #gay #lgbtrights #socialistfeminism

Broomstick magazine empowered women over 40 to confront ageism, ableism, sexism, and homophobia throughout its publication from 1978 to 1993. Maxine Spencer and Polly Taylor founded the independent periodical in the San Francisco Bay Area to expand feminist publishing to address the oppression of older women in patriarchal culture. The magazine featured letters, poetry, and prose from readers on issues that mattered to them, from healthcare to work to homophobia. The Crone or... witch often appeared in the magazine’s illustrations and marketing materials and symbolized the wisdom and power of older women and the oppression they faced historically. Years later, feminist theorist Sylvia Federici argued that the terror of the witch hunts punished many of society’s most independent women and forced women to submit to the unwaged housework that made capitalism possible. Broomstick reclaimed the revolutionary legacy of witches and women’s skills, ability to speak out against injustice, heal society, and change the world. Our collections also include the records of Old Lesbians Organizing for Change, a national organization for lesbians over the age of 60, which continues to speak out against ageism and make older lesbians visible today. #feminism #feminist #lgbtq #witches

Gloria Jean Watkins, who writes under the name bell hooks, writes groundbreaking intersectional feminist texts like Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism that continue to inspire countless people to embody egalitarian and antiracist feminist principles in their daily lives. In this clip from 1999, she speaks about the impact of women’s bookstores like Sisterhood Bookstore on her career as a writer and society at large. Discussing her recent autobiographical work, Watkins ...reminds the audience of the urgency of telling Black women’s stories when structural inequality kills many Black women prematurely. I feel always an urgency in my words and an urgency in my remembering. The feminist literary community provided avenues for writers like Watkins to tell their stories and further the struggle against sexist and racist oppression. Sisterhood Bookstore, founded by Simone Wallace and her sister in law, was one of L.A’s most iconic feminist spaces from 1972 to its closing in 1999. It was a space for women and LGBTQ people to learn about themselves and even find community events. Although the bookstore closed after Watkins gave this speech, its legacy lives on and the Mazer featured an exhibit commemorating its rich history in 2018. #feminism #lgbtq #bellhooks #intersectional #intersectionality #blackfeminism #womenwriters #blackwomenwriters

In another devastating loss to the LGBTQ community today, the St James Infirmary has reported that its founder and namesake Margo St. James, a pioneering sex-wo...rk advocate and activist, passed away earlier this week at the age of 83. St. James was an internationally recognized advocate and founder of the organizations COYOTE: Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics; WHO: Whores, Housewives and Others (others meaning lesbians); and the St. James Infirmary, a sex-worker organization. She fought for the decriminalization of sex work and pushed LGBTQ and feminist organizations to incorporate sex worker advocacy as part of their work. As her colleague Tallulah Bankheist notes, St. James’s advocacy wasn’t just about sex workIt was about poverty, it was about basic human rights, sex workers rights touch so many different areas. And it wasn’t just feminists. It was the gay community, the straight community, the trans community, the disabled community, everybody. And we were also speaking up for the clients that got policed. Click below to read the obituary of Ms. Saint James in the San Francisco Chronicle. Also check out our primary source set on sex work here: https://www.glbthistory.org/primary-source-set-sex-work.