BRATTLEBORO — A standing-room-only crowd assembled recently to view a “work-in-progress” screening of a film that documents the tumultuous series of events that resulted in a first-in-the-nation women's crisis and health-care center.
An audience filled the New England Youth Theatre seats on the evening of Feb. 4 to watch Left on Pearl, directed by Susan Riva and edited by Iftach Shavit.
The Women's Freedom Center of Brattleboro organized the screening of the film, which documents the takeover and occupation of 888 Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Mass., in 1971 by Bread and Roses, an activist women's collective in search of a meeting site.
According to the film's website, the occupiers “dramatized” the need for a women's center by occupying the building and issuing demands for “child care, health referral, legal aid, self-defense, and a safe space for lesbians, as well as support for community demands for low-income housing in the nearby Riverside area, better education of black high school students, and an end to police brutality.”
The film tells the story of the occupation using news footage of the time and contemporary interviews with some of the hundreds of women who marched there on that International Women's Day.
According to a story in the Harvard Crimson, Bread and Roses “labeled their police approved route the 'Trail of Abuses' because it passed the State House where 'men make laws which deny [women] freedom,' the Charles St. stores 'where women are fashioned into sex objects,' the Massachusetts General Hospital, which 'pays men more than women for the same job,' and the Charles Street Jail, 'a symbol of rampant political repression which now reigns.'”
Instead of continuing to Harvard Square, where such demonstrations customarily end, the marchers unexpectedly turned left on Pearl Street - hence the film's title - and continued to take over a vacant building owned by Harvard University.
The film, in production for 10 years and still incomplete, covers the women's occupation of that building, an event that was later seen as an iconic moment in the modern feminist movement.
Left on Pearl highlights the long struggle for women to find equality in the eyes of the law and society through documenting the “second wave” of feminism in the late 1960s and 1970s. The “first wave” of feminism began in the 1850s, largely in the form of women's efforts to fight for their right to vote.
Left on Pearl firmly sets down for the record the history of women's crisis and health centers today, access many women take for granted without understanding the struggle it took and continues to take to maintain these centers.
Susie Katz, one of the occupiers, present for the screening, recalled the consequences of the takeover.
“Even though we left the building before we could be arrested, the success of the occupation could be measured [in that] someone donated $10,000 to buy a building [for a women's crisis center],” Katz recalled.
The donor's identity is revealed in the film.
Riva noted that a group of women went from 888 Memorial Drive after the occupation directly to a dinner meeting, “where they started discussing where to look for a building to buy with the money donated.”
Within a year, a building had been found and bought and opened on Pleasant Street in Cambridge, becoming the first women's center in the country.
Of the decision to leave the building before a heavily announced police raid happened, Katz recalled, “You have to try to understand that these were early days in the 'second wave of feminism,' and we were a bunch of women. And we were scared. We didn't know how far we could go.”
“We were afraid of what the police would do to us, and we had meetings about that: what if there was violence?” she continued. “You have to remember that some of these women were there because they felt powerless in the face of the abuse they were met with at home.”
The decision to leave the building was a combination of the wish to avoid confrontation with the police, as well as the promise the donor had made to help buy a building elsewhere in Cambridge.
The images convey the joy of the women streaming out of the building just ahead of the police raids, along with a tinge of their glee at the “success” of the women's occupation of 888 Memorial Drive for 10 days.
Through interviews with many of the women who were part of the takeover, Riva demonstrates with delicate humor the struggle to come to consensus through the duration of the occupation, as recounted by some of the women describing some of what was going on inside.
Katz spoke with the audience, referring to several of the statements by straight-identified women interviewees who recalled their reactions to living with 100 or so other women, at least half of whom were gay or “came out” during the occupation, she said.
“It was very difficult to pretend any longer that lesbians didn't exist,” she observed.
“We had a discussion at one point about whether making out during meetings was okay,” Katz said. “We finally decided that it was disruptive, though it was made clear it wasn't because it was two women kissing.”
Katz said the tensions inside the building between the gay and straight women were palpable for most of the duration of the occupation.
“For many, it was the first time lesbians became visible,” Katz said.
One straight woman in the film noted that “it was impossible to move around in there without stepping over or around women sleeping and some of them shared sleeping bags that were zipped together, their arms draped around each other.”
One woman commented, smiling, “There's nothing more beautiful than [...] a woman sleeping, or a whole building full of women sleeping.”
Katz recalls members of the press at the time telling the women they would do better going home and taking care of their husbands.
“What they weren't getting was that many of the women needing such a place [as the women's center that the occupiers were demanding] were the victims of rape and abuse from men at home,” Katz said. “They didn't have a safe home to go to.”
A young woman audience member said she was participating in Occupy Wall Street and noted some similarities. She asked if Katz noticed marginalized groups such as homeless people and immigrants gravitating toward the contemporary protest movement in ways that are similar to the modern movement.
“Oh, yes,” Katz said.
Starting a women's center
Riva explained, “As soon as we found a place [in Cambridge] and opened our doors, all of a sudden all these women who had no place else to go showed up.”
She enumerated the different types of clients who came into the center: “women escaping abusive relationships, mothers seeking child care for their children while they worked, prostitutes, women living on the streets, women who had just arrived in the U.S., didn't have jobs and needed health care for themselves or their children,” as well as all the non-white women who had been marginalized by U.S. society.
“It was part of the civil rights movement even though it wasn't [necessarily] seen that way at the time,” Riva said.
Katz noted that the Occupy movement is dealing with the same difficult issues as their second-wave feminist movement did.
“We spent hours in many, many different groups talking about issues we faced [while occupying 888 Memorial Drive in 1971], trying to come to consensus,” Katz said. “Any of you in the Occupy movement now know how difficult and long a process that can be.”
Riva noted that in response to several rapes that occurred in the Occupy Boston encampment, a “safe tent” had been erected so that any woman occupier who didn't feel safe in their tent could sleep there, safely.
“Women's issues are ongoing,” she said.