1971 Revisited

Diary Excerpts:

January 9: Thayer comes over to take us to auction in Seabrook, NH. Greg & Warren and Carol and Madeleine and Dave & I got a community of the 3rd floor. Neato auction - we got $4 worth of costumes - a BARGAIN! I've passed the cycle of hating auctions and clothes and loving communism. What good did I do then? What good do radicals do? I dunno. Bourgeoise adopting of one kid does more from the kid's point of view than revolution.

January 17: "Howard Zinn vs. Ray Mungo" [They] are having a battle of wits inside my head. Ray says: any military is bad - leave the scene in the city - the blacks don't want you for help - don't do anything out of need that breaks your ethics - go to a farm. Zinn says also military is bad but DON'T GO TO A FARM - stay and help where there is trouble. Third world militants don't want you to remain a smug, middle class white; they don't want you to try to help them smugly and return to their good life at night; they don't want you to join them and pretend to be one of them. They are composites of opinion but I can serve those that ask - children don't care. If they already have shitty teachers, I might be a bit better [reparing to teach music in schools as a senior at BU].

January 25: Weathermen said they were sorry about da bombs and it was bad tactic. Now only the Panthers can look down their noses in this country. When with radicals, I do what the radicals do, and when with music ed straights, I do what music ed straights do. Am I strong? I dunno. Mary at work is incredibly ugly and dumb and lives at home. She cannot justify her life except to be in a book plot.

March 6: Went to Women's Day at Common and marched with the rads - so many thoughts and conclusions - esp. communism and slogans aren't were it's at. Def. needs aesthetic dimension. We "seized" a building (walked in) & I left. I guess they stayed. I didn't feel close enough to anyone to stay. I'm a coward. Home at 4 & nervously passed away time till bedtime. Can't live with D. or without him.


March 7: Women still occupying building. I deserted my sisters but it is a pretty dumb move. They'll get kicked out. Also none of them have to go to job or school, I'm a terrible radical. I am so free I can do anything & choose nothing. Ate too much cookies too.

June 9: [Visiting Woodstock for the summer] Rained last night & air clear & light & cool w/ mountain & streams. My room as W's golden record for "Na Na Hey Hey" & a huge comix shelf. Allus something to read, watch, knit or play (or bake or hoe or eat). S. had to learn to relax and do nothin' & I'm gettin there No luck at Oatmeal Stream [for a job] mebbee in 1 week, Went to Family and will do shift on Monday. Hotline, general Woodstock service center. Nice people - guessed my sign. I'm young in comparison and light soft (drugs).

June 10: S. says I should've said yes to the old ex-puppeteer who thought I had a spiritual face and wanted me to stay with him. Wrote to D. with the rent deposit - $40 his share. She kept $60 but we wrecked the couch and wall enough for that.

June 12: Nyoos: D.'s draft evading and may stay in Nova Iorke. [My] parents have no money. Eating too well these days with peanut butter sundaes every day.

June 22: Good noots! (My own noots are giving me a headache). Got jb w mo pa ($1.50/hr) typing for Woodstock Aquarian. Hot dog Money and new people. What shall I wear? What shall I say? What is my philosophy of life? What do I think about drugs? Good situation to shove myself into - I will have to answer for myself. The hammock guy is selling my stuff - gave me $3 & wants mo' purses so I goes to Kingston to get more string.

June 24: It's turribal the way I fit in nowhere. With SFA musicians I feel they're too straight, w/ woodstock hippies I feel they're too hippy-dippy & with politicos I feel intellectual and artistic. How stupid, huh?

June 29: Sore troat. Urg. Where do I get off karmically deserving such a summer? Had good day with A., boss at Aquarian. Can't help but identify with Magister Ludi introduction which states that in Siddhartha & Demian Hesse was not yet evolved to social consciousness, i.e., New Paltz revolutionary consciousness is better than Woodstock but I can't tell A that. I feel like I will never again be hassled by anything even though I know I will. W is printing up a copy of "Stay on the Farm" for the Aquarian.

July 6: S. keeps referring to my obesity and stupidity & losing her temper over everything but other than that, she's the best friend a girl could have. But it makes me ill to watch the women scramble around all over their men & smooch. Probably I'm just jealous. I'll work and cook & bake and recycle envelopes & be happy till I'm 30 at which time I'll be famous & rich but still politically conscious.

July 7: Ate too much s'getti & beebleberry pie. Oh to get back to 150 and then 140 & then 130, my ever goal, I could do it I guess - just at less when I'm ravished [famished] and less of starch & sweet. But why am I allus talking about diet? As if this mortal coil is worth much. Heh heh, my mortal coil is a bit much. A. liked my paraphrasing of Land & How to Shit Good article and said if the paper makes good I'll have a permanent job.

July 12: Sometimes I get a strange feeling that things are going to turn out so well - I will sing and play or something for people & become together enough to talk and say what I think. Erstwise I will get killed at an early age but that would be a drag. New lady has joined the band [Organ Grinders back]. What kind of person would be so loose & free to pick up with gypsies?

July 15: Mail from VISTA & teacher drop out [center]. I could teach if I just picked one song or one show to do & did it instead of wondering which ones to do and making a big deal out of it. They sold my purse for $5 only so I made 3 to pay the doc with. Took over 7 - 10 shift at Family.

July 16: Got my period I was actually a bit scared. My mention of the Sigmund Freud movie in the hotel room [sound engineer with Buddy Guy at BU, Howard Johnson's in Kendall Square] with Warren set off some strange energies. Of course S. isn't jealous; W. turned red. We're so amazingly immature and staid. Hysterical naked lady was brought into Family while we were at the free store. Everyone watched and a little girl said she didn't like all the yelling. S. goes about drinking sage tea to quell her desires. I keep wishing B would come back, I should renew pills. Of course if B cared at all he'd have been back already. [I had made out with and played with--literally--a member of a traveling band called the Organ Grinders, who had crashed with us in June.]

September 4: Discovery of $180 4BR apartment two doors down from J. Fantastic rooms but full of junk & a neighborhood hangout for kiddies and drunks. Man from real estate end of the phone: "You can't find any 4 BR apartments! You can't live in a coop! You can't live in a group! It's illegal without a boardinghouse license." Turd. To Durgin Park with J & N & J & J & B & E at 11p.,. Don't think I'd like to live with J & N - he's too cool and into dope more than us. I still not into smoking & feel out of it but be social and take 1 or 2 tokes.

September 6: Prof. B. hates pants on girls as he saw me entering my office with a frown [got a job at BU as a biology department secretary]. Here is nice homey atmosphere of wooden floors, Cambridge slums, etc. Hub visits & takes us to New Community Projects meeting - met Newlywed Game couple & no one else much. Hub is funny; can't figure if he's cool or no, Got his handwriting analyzed & discussed orgies with us ex-participants.

September 23: Oh, getting ripped off, etc. Poor K., half of her clothes were taken by a thief who no doubt wore a black mask and was fat & bald and had a red and white striped T-shirt on. I hope we get along with them [couple sharing apartment with D. and me]. K. talks incessantly & says negroes are afraid of large dogs & she didn't really mind getting raped. I must be completely blank personality to her because I never show true colors when I'm so far away from another's thought.

October 2: What to do when some jock calls you a pig hippie & kicks garbage all over you? B. yells Yay B.! Blue kitchen is class. Lock on door, shower curtain up, all's well & spent $10.

October 17: Day of rip-off discovery leading to political discussion with Marxist Marcia & Anarchist J. & Pacifist K. & Idealistic D. Get to know your roommates. K. does drink the wine a lot but big deal. Just makes her a bit verbose. J's comin' through better; "I'm searchin' for that urchin" [his song about the rip-off]. If there were 48 days in a month, a calendar would look like the United States of America.

October 19: L. said there was a job in music therapy at Newton part time. USE MY DEGREE! Be creative! Help people! But J. begged me to stay ween tho' everyone else says take it. Ate fruit all day only but ate huge dinner of Cambridge Community High School people. I'll teach piano if the kid calls e. Gonna go to Yoga Thurs. Nite & Astrology on Mon. Nite. Lots of good folks here. Talk w/ N. over accepting both pacifism & violent revolution at same time. Ho hassle for me--I don't take either seriously.

October 21: Told G. [boss] that I didn't earn my brains - was born into the right economic class, etc. I eat compulsively and have gained 10 lb. Urg.

October 27: All the rads took their titles off their doors & left only first names--they're too much. They must have some ego that they hide. Cool people are alone cause they are picky (me and J.)

October 31: I ain't no sexist pig but D. is totally hopeless. Skips last 2 possible sleeping together nights & plans to go to PL meeting in NYC with his little buddies from the band. I have a right to feel the way I do (outcast, unloved, and unsatisfied!) Understanding talk won't help. Seriously, I think it would be good to get away from this kid altogether. (I cry.) I've learned at least not to repress these things; rode to SFAA with arguments & we had a big scene in the glass booth. Wiz of Oz play fantastic (people think I'm beautiful when a witch) & got real high during & real down after play. Dave stayed over.

November 11: Angela Davis committee. Hoo hoo, I get to go & be big keed. Is this all I'm doing for politics? Soon I will be so sick that I will get into NDAG, etc. Really want a women's group. Yeah - gotta visit a center & get ego up so I can say what I think around all J's MCP friends and persuade all the women to leave their awful asshole men wards. Black keeds trying to "donate" to the yoga can of money. No shame in saying blacks steal around here. They need it the most, They are they too.

November 13: Diet remains unbroken and 8 pounds gone off. As much as smudge [the cat, eventual mother of Mung]. Such big ugly deals going on [J the roommate turns out to be a dope dealer]. D. says they're politically cool w/ dope, it's radicalizing, but I basically think it's a waste of money to do it so much & disintegrates vibes. Went to BU circus farce (all DGE kids) & fell asleep before saying g'nite to D. Woodstock alone conditioned me.

December 1: I'm not as together as I think. Came home to a telegram saying I've been placed in Philadelphia - forgot about VISTA. Identity crisis: could I just pack up & leave all the little joys of this life & D. & astrology & Yoga, etc? I'm much too detached. Even tho I won't go it made me feel untogether to get so upset. 100 secretaries fired by BU & they want me to strike (A. does). Whoo boy. D's a schmuck cause he said he'd go to VISTA & is too busy to sleep w me Y is weird and tense. I don't know what's left.

December 29: Rindge Tech building rent control farce carnival w/ shouting hippies & cops throwing people about (women mostly) & organizing. We'll withhold I spose but I'm so scared to go against authority. Still, it would be nice to be evicted.

I Do My Best Thinking When I'm Not

. . . thinking, that is. I bought a Mac laptop on sale from MBPP (My Benevolent Patriarchal Plantation) yesterday. They told me, "Well, you've come over from the Dark Side," and I figured there must be some history there beween PCs and Macs. I'd be curious, but I'm not. I mean, they are tools, not people. They don't run our lives.

So I took my tool and promptly froze with fear at how to initialize it, since my last computer (a Dell PC, on sale from a Parade Magazine ad for $599) always said, "Welcome, BoBYWWPA," or some such thing, because I hit "Uzbekia" instead of "United States" when I first programmed it. It never left and certain operations were forever not allowed because it didn't recognize non-cyrillic writing. But that's another story, and you know it now, so you don't think I'm completely techphobic.

But I did stare at the box that contained my GPS last July (birthday present from Brother Dear With Money) for a month before I opened it. Now I'm completely smitten with Hilda, my GPS and savior.

So a kid at work hooked me up (ain't that the way?) and I took it home to my comcast + router wireless set up. The Dell would take an hour to get to the net sometimes, but I figured with this pretty white petite Mac, that problem would be history. The little white Mac worked well on MBPP's wireless system, but when I took it home and turned it on (yes, it had been battery charged; I can read), nothing. It wanted a password for my MARCIA network, and when I finally found that little piece of paper that Parapura Rajkumar (my brilliant, young, and handsome downstairs neighbor) set up, I put it in with a grin on my face. Nothing. "Cannot connect." I tried all the passwords I could think of, threw in a few more possible names, cursed, paced, almost burned dinner, messed with it some more, and finally went to sleep. Frickin' tools. I thought they were here to serve us, not the other way around!!!!

At approximately 3 a.m. (I'd guess) a thought came: take the machine closer to the router when you turn it on, and try the password in lower case. I went back to sleep, calm and happy.


In the morning, I tried it closer to the router and used lower case for the password. It worked like a dream.

The moral of the story? I do my best thinking when I'm not.

Later, kiddos

The Bourgeoise Trip, Asheville, NC, 2008

Jumping to the present day, my cousin and I once again did a big trip together, but this time, with cash for hotel rooms and a GPS. It was different from our 1975 driveaway car from Philly to Los Angeles in every possible way. But then again, we are 60, not 25.

Ten days, two hotel rooms, two cousin's spare bedrooms, Hilda the GPS, waitresses in VA, NC, and PA, fast food places (Huddle House?) and Cherokee diners (one living with a tree through the roof, one dead), the Cherokee res with signs in English and Cherokee, my cousin's roots search (Aunt Billie was 1/16 Cherokee, if we did the math right), two old ladies named Evelyn who did not remember who I was in 1952, my sacred objects, coolers and a food scale, mountains, cousins (city mouse, country mouse, all mixed up now), Kendall and Steve, Silkie the reliable 1998 Corolla, summer, fall, and winter within three days, Ed Pavel and his magic shoes, deer hunters for Jesus, Warren Wilson College and Preston Cottage, where Angela Davis posters have replaced little three-year-old me saying "I'm gonna be hungry and thirsty all the time!" into a tape recorder.

Finding Dad's thesis at home and digging out his answers to a Columbia Teachers' College alumni questionnaire from 1993 . . . "List publications:" His answer: "Only free lance." There is a gene that he got from his mother and I got from him, with that "only" judgement, killer of a simple, happy life. If you're not the best, if you're not Famous, there's no point in trying. This idea is planted by someone telling you this falsehood early in life, and you internalize it without knowing. My writing this blog is a Bronx cheer in the face of that ancient Protestant ethic US competitive judgement. One's task is to produce and love and find out what pond is the one where one can be recognized and grow, not one that is out of one's reach. There are lots of happy scrapbookers out there, and lots of miserable, suicidal Phi Beta Kappas.

What follows is a day by day accounting of Asheville Trip, 2008.

Cambridge Domestic Partnership/ 1976

“CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS--IT'S ALWAYS BEEN A LITTLE QUEER”

Marcia Deihl


Gay Rights Comes of Age, 1992-2000

“The People’s Republic of Cambridge” has long been known for its freewheeling spirit and left-liberal slant. One recent “Cambridge” joke tells of “[a] professional gentleman dining at the Harvest Restaurant in Harvard Square, [who] upon hearing that the hammer-and-sickle flag had been lowered over the Moscow Kremlin for the last time said, ‘Prague, Warsaw, East Berlin, Bucarest, and now Moscow. Well, at least we still hold Havana and Cambridge.’” The city boasts agencies such as a Peace Commission, a Human Rights Commission, and a Women’s Commission. Its collection of street musicians and poets, along with its Harvard and MIT academics, philosophers, and hangers-on, ensures that the public comment portion of the weekly City Council meetings is rarely dull.

Although Cambridge likes to promote the appearance of diversity and inclusion, the wry quote of the above title was taken from a button made by the gay rights group the Cambridge Lavender Alliance (CLA). They thought it was funny, but also a bit too literal. In 1990, when the group first started, Cambridge might well have been “a little queer,” but was it representative of its gay and lesbian citizens? As one CLA member observed, “In this city there is a liberal veneer, but no one is openly gay or lesbian in city government.”

The first chance to crack that veneer and win a substantial material benefit—paid health coverage for the same sex partners of gay city workers—came in September of 1992. After two years of strategizing sessions with gay activists, proposals, Ordinance Committee hearings, and public hearings, Mayor Alice Wolf proposed a Domestic Partnership (DP) Ordinance. This law would give qualifying same sex and unmarried heterosexual couples equity with married couples regarding hospital visitation rights and parental rights in the public schools. Moreover—and this was the material benefit--city employees would receive paid family health coverage and family-related leave time. At the time, only nine other cities in the country had such ordinances, and if Cambridge passed this one, it would be the first city in the Commonwealth to do so.

It was a bold move. Wolf, who had been dubbed an “honorary lesbian” for her previous work on feminist and lesbian issues, had been instrumental in passing the city’s 1984 Human Rights Ordinance, another first in the state. This ordinance laid the groundwork for the language used in her DP proposal. It outlawed discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation” and/or “marital status,” along with race, age, and gender and other potentially discrimination-prone categories. As Mayor, she opened up City Hall on the day of the Gay Pride March in Boston in 1991, starting the annual city-sponsored Gay Pride Brunch. The gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (hereafter called “gay” for the sake of simplicity) community had welcomed all these benefits, but until the DP proposal, such actions were largely symbolic.

Many councilors were wary. Added costs to the city budget were one concern. When city councils set their agendas, money can often be the defining issue. As John W. Kingdon has pointed out, “budgets [can] act as constraints, holding some items low on (or even off) the agenda because the item would cost more than the decision makers are willing to compensate.” Legal issues involving home rule were another potential problem. Under certain “home rule” charters or amendments, cities can take greater leeway in their actions without consulting the state. Since the state had never ruled either for or against same-sex partnership benefits, Cambridge might need coverage under a Home Rule Amendment. And for the four more conservative (“Independent”) members of the nine-member council, it was clearly a moral issue. Councilor Sheila Russell said in a newspaper interview, “I don’t think taxpayers should have to support alternative lifestyles.” Councilors Michael Sullivan and Tim Toomey, like Russell, counted on a largely working class and Catholic voting base. And Councilor Bill Walsh, one of the most outspoken Independents, submitted an amendment offering similar benefits for any family member or members under one roof: mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents. “Never is it acceptable to claim to cure alleged discrimination against some members of society when the claimed cure imposes absolute discrimination against other members of society,” he wrote in an order. Although some of the liberal (Cambridge Civic Association or “CCA”) councilors agreed to explore such issues, the CLA saw this move as a disingenuous way to turn the proposal into an expensive messy monster which would have to fail.

In the end, the ordinance was passed by a 5-4 margin, a ratio that showed the intensity of feeling on both sides, and on November 16, twenty-eight smiling couples registered at City Hall, paid their $15.00 and got their cards. The next June, the Gay Pride Resolution, read at the third City Hall Gay Pride Brunch, passed with the same 5-4 margin, with all four Independent councilors voting “present.”

Fast forward to August of 2000. At the tenth annual June Gay Pride Brunch, all nine councilors voted in favor of the Gay Pride Resolution. With Cambridge’s local ordinance being challenged by two “big dogs”—the courts and the state legislature—the entire city government, from councilors to professional managers, is staunchly defending its 1992 ordinance. Even Mayor Anthony Gallucio, a young Independent who cast the lone vote against the 1995 Gay Pride Resolution, has become a passionate speaker in defense of his city’s gay citizens.

What happened here? What forces caused the council to sway from weak support to strong support for such a volatile national issue? In this paper I will try to answer that question by proposing that it was due to the growth of the Cambridge Lavender Alliance, of which I was a member. I will show that phase one of this group’s influence was similar to what Browning, Marshall, and Tabb might label a “protest/demand” tactic phase. The CLA got attention by using the press, distributing rabble-rousing flyers within its ranks, and making alliances with sympathetic individuals and groups who were already established in city government. Phase two was an “electoral mobilization” phase, in which the CLA ran candidates from its own ranks. I will show how the group used coalition building, community organizing, and identity politics mobilization of formerly slack resources to consolidate its power, ultimately resulting in longstanding political incorporation in the city. Finally, I will explore other, larger reasons for such a big change of attitude.

DEMAND-PROTEST . . . AND BEYOND: TRIAL BY BUREAUCRACY

As Bachrach and Baratz’s model of the political process asserts, any group in power, whether liberal or conservative, seeks to maintain the status quo. A newer challenging group of any kind must successfully pass through several steps if it wants to win real concessions. First, it must overcome the unquestioned biases in the current governing body’s myths and symbols. Next, it must jump several institutional barriers--procedures, orders, ordinances and hearings. Third, it must win the vote. And last, even if the vote is in its favor, the challenging group must watch closely as the details of fine-tuning, administration, and implementation are worked out.

Although most Cambridge liberals were supportive of gay rights in a vague sort of way, to jump such hurdles would demand lots of time and organization. The CLA successfully negotiated all four hurdles. First, it sent out press releases and enlisted sympathetic local newspaper writers to publicize its existence and its local agenda. The first article introduced the group: “The group wants to run openly gay men, lesbians and bisexuals for City Council and School Committee, set up a drop-in center for gay teen-agers, and work with the police and other city officials to improve the atmosphere for gay people. ‘I think people got tired of going across the river (Boston),’ said Donna Turley, an alliance member. ‘There are a lot of Cambridge issues.’” Photos and personal stories of group members made the group seem a bit less “other” to the heterosexual community. Biases built into any U.S. city will default to heterosexual assumptions until they are questioned by non-heterosexuals. The issue of gay rights, except for the 1984 Human Rights Ordinance, had been a non-issue on the city agenda. Until the DP vote, other laws favoring Cambridge’s gay community were simply not brought up. Until Mayor Wolf introduced it, DP coverage was a “nondecision,” completely off the radar of the other city officials.

The next step was the hardest: simply to wait, quite a challenge for a group of formerly protest-based members. In order to proceed any further, they had to endure committee meetings, closed ordinance meetings, open public hearing, reconsiderations, and all of the mundane and time-consuming business of a municipal government. The CLA, made up primarily of veterans of gay pride marches and AIDS funding actions, was, in the words of Michael Lipsky, a “relatively powerless group” in that it was “lacking in conventional political resources.” Since a domestic partnership ordinance was a new concept, and since such laws had to go through proper channels, the group organized to pass through all the barriers of procedure.
The fact that it did was impressive for two reasons. As Lipsky wrote, "Relatively powerless groups, to be influential, must cross the 'threshold' to engage in politics.” Secondly, a relatively powerless group finds it more difficult to implement new policy than to simply challenge current policy. Since this was a threshold (speakers at public hearings had to literally brave the foreboding City Hall building’s threshold) and a constructive new policy, not just an “anti-” policy, it was a victory for the CLA.

Patience was the first resource that it had to utilize. A protracted series of steps led to the council’s vote on September 14, 1992. On June 22, the City Manager asked for information on the cost. Michael Gardner, the Personnel Director, estimated costs (based on Seattle’s similar ordinance and population) as a wildly ballpark $603,000. There was a committee meeting on June 26, and finally, on July 22, there was a public hearing at which several legal experts, community supporters and CLA members spoke in support of the measure.
Evidence that the CLA was becoming more strategically sharp was evident at this meeting. Mayor Wolf opened the evening, saying that the ordinance was “a matter of family values in the truest sense.” She referred everyone to the draft of the Domestic Partnership Ordinance. The gay community had done its homework and rallied its supporters and allies. Testimony in favor of the ordinance came from the Chair of the Human Rights Commission, the President of the Boston chapter of NOW, several clergy members, two union presidents, several gay parents, and general members of the CLA. Also testifying that July night was Mary Bonato, an attorney for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD). She offered that the legal issue was whether the city had the right to compensate nontraditional families in a manner equal to its compensation of traditional families of employees, citing several precedents of law. She also said that although home rule legislation was a legitimate option, it was not necessary in this case because Cambridge already had the power to provide these benefits as an employer. No testimony was offered in opposition. A motion to send proposed amendment back to the City Council for action was offered and was carried with a voice vote, with Independent Councilors Sullivan, Toomey, Walsh, and Russell voting present. The second reading was on August 12, followed by another public hearing on the definition of "family," and on August 14, the Ordinance Committee met to discuss it. Finally, on September 14, a vote was taken--five in favor, four against. Councilor Walsh filed for reconsideration, but his motion failed.

Even though they had won the vote, supporters of the DP Ordinance still had to watch the last stage of its implementation carefully. There were details of procedure to work out at local, state, and national levels. At the local level, not all of the city’s unions agreed to honor the additional health coverage. In November of 1993, then-Councilor Katherine Triantafillou (a candidate from the ranks of the CLA) worked with the City Manager and the Personnel Director to enable the city to offer the benefits without the union’s approval. At the state level, there were questions about whether home rule decisions could be applied in terms of legal language (the definition of “spouse” and/or “dependent”) and if the city’s right to provide equal employment benefits for its workers could be applied to gay workers.

There were legal differences of opinion as to whether or not Cambridge could get away with this ordinance. The legal case for the ordinance grew out of Cambridge’s Human Rights Ordinance, which barred discrimination on the basis of, among other things, “sexual orientation” and/or “marital status. City Solicitor Russell Higley noted that in a legal precedent, Bloom v. Worcester, 363 Mass. 136, 155 (1973), “[Preemption of a city’s rules] may be inferred if the Legislature has explicitly limited the manner in which cities and towns may act on that subject. [However], if the state legislative purpose can be achieved in the face of a local ordinance . . . on the same subject, the local ordinance . . . is not inconsistent with the state legislation, unless the Legislature has expressly forbidden the adoption of local ordinances . . . on that subject.” He concluded, “Because, (a) marital status and sexual orientation are today deemed an unlawful basis for differentiating between people in the dispensation of employment benefits, and b) the definition of family appears to be expanding, it is arguable that the same Legislature that enacted G.L.c.32B and G.L.c.151B, ss.3 and 4 could not intend G.L.c.32B to be construed to differentiate on the basis of sexual orientation or marital status. Given the state of the law and the arguments that any challenger to the Domestic Partnership Ordinance could make against it, perhaps a legislative solution should be considered.”

At the federal level, tax specialists noted that spousal equivalents could not qualify for federal exemptions of such benefits, so the extra amount of health coverage that went to the gay workers’ partners had to be taxed.

ELECTORAL MOBILIZATION

Gay/Identity Politics

Sexual orientation status is not exactly like racial minority status, but there are similarities. Both groups are minorities, in both numbers and status. Both groups have been historically discriminated against. And both groups experienced a cultural awakening in the 1960’s and the 1970’s. On the other hand, since a gay identity is not visible, per se, like a black or brown face, it’s easy to “pass” as privileged if you’re white. Although the gay community includes all class and race levels, activists in a city such as Cambridge are most apt to be white, middle class, and educated. However, many gay people don’t want to pass. They feel much happier when they’re not living a secret life, and once they are “out,” they can share a sense of pride and accomplishment with their home community. But of course, some gays are African-American, Latino, and Asian, and they can experience double discrimination. Historically, for the more traditional families of some minority groups, there has often been a moral objection to the idea of same sex couples. Lastly, gay people don’t pass gayness on to their children genetically, like an ethnic cultural heritage, and they don’t usually live in segregated areas (outside of places like Fire Island, San Francisco, and Provincetown).

When Katherine Triantafillou, a lesbian, a feminist, a civil rights activist, and an attorney, decided to run for her first election in 1993, most of her campaign committee consisted of CLA members, of which I was one. That first year, I learned the ropes of leafleting, holding a coffee to raise money, and educating myself about Cambridge’s Byzantine, one-of-a-kind system of proportional representation voting. Simply put, in this system, a quota is established by taking a percentage of the total votes cast. If any candidate gets that number or more, the votes (in order) above the quota are given to that voter’s second choice, and on down the line. As each candidate reaches quota, he or she is eliminated, until all votes are counted. Sometimes it takes eighteen or nineteen “counts” to finish the job.

So I, along with the other campaign committee members, thought of all my friends--from feminists to musicians to co-workers to bisexual and lesbian neighbors--and asked for their individual and allied groups’ support. In this way, I was one of many supporters who were “pyramiding” her base. She addressed all sorts of issues, not just gay or lesbian ones, in her brochure. She took positions which showed both a concern for low-income citizens and an embrace of new immigrants (her father was a Greek immigrant and she forged a strong connection with the city’s Greek community). As a lawyer, she had a sharp eye for the lack of budgetary oversight, and she was highly critical of the City Manager. Different pages addressed issues of Youth and Education, Budget and Finance, Public Safety, Elders, Housing, and Diversity. She appealed in specific ways to several different “reference publics.” Her campaign workers were still surprised when she won, and they celebrated a new era—a community-based lesbian activist had entered city politics. Not only that, she went on to win a second and third election. Speaking of that first victory, Sue Hyde, a CLA leader, told the press, “There are plenty of people who say this organization elected, in significant part, Katherine Triantafillou.”

The December before she won that first election, Mayor Ken Reeves had come out as a gay man at a public dinner in Boston. Putting an end to “the world’s best-known secret,” he remarked, “Alice may be an honorary homosexual, but I am not an honorary homosexual. I am a real homosexual.” This made him the nation’s only “out” gay African-American mayor. He had not come from within the CLA, but he acknowledged that their existence had help pave the way for him. And he added a gay face to the local African-American community, despite his fear of offending his “church ladies.” As it turned out, he had nothing to fear, and he continued to be welcome at his Christian church. Seeing a 20% gay council gave a boost to every gay citizen who watched the locally televised Cambridge Community TV weekly council meetings.
But before they could win political incorporation, Cambridge’s gay and lesbian candidates had to reach out to other groups. A candidate, as a leader, has to manage the four constituencies noted by Lipsky—a base of close supporters, the press, sympathetic groups, and target groups. In this case, the “target” was the entire city of Cambridge, given the “at large” system of voting. Complicating matters was the Proportional Representation System, where voters could pick their number one favorite, number two favorite, and then keep going, if they so wished, through the entire 19 or 20-person candidate’s list in order of preference. Although this system favored minority constituencies, it also pitted similar candidates against each other. As Alice Wolf noted, “In this kind of voting, you often compete with people close to you. You are competing for the same constituency and in a sense, that makes it tougher. . . The test, then, is establishing coalitions with groups other than natural constituencies and having an agenda broader than self-interests. In the past, gays have focused on civil rights and equal protection issues. But raising children—and the myriad of issues associated with that, ranging from custody battles to education—is emerging as a particularly galvanizing issue for both straight and gay communities.” Triantafillou, whose law cases had often dealt with gay parents’ rights, reached out to the lesbian community and her fellow progressive lawyers. Her campaign committee members worked with her to access her probable "reference publics"—tenant’s rights, leftist, and feminist organizations.

CLA and CCA: A Mixed Bag

By 1993, the CLA had the potential to become an independent interest group in the city’s two party (Independents vs. CCA) political scene. Although not every item on its agenda was related to the elections, its political profile was raised when it made its first annual endorsements of candidates for City Council and the School Committee. Questionnaires were mailed to each candidate, and the CLA held public endorsement nights where the candidates came to pitch their platforms. These endorsements put gay issues on the map, and as time went on, candidates from all the different factions attended candidate’s nights and were grilled on their opinions of gays in the military, funding for AIDS research, and ROTC in the public high school. (We gave extra points for using the words “gay” and “lesbian” instead of “diverse” or some such skittish term.) Did the more conservative candidates fear the clout of the CLA? That is highly doubtful, given the city’s proportional representation/at large system. A minority had a chance, but it certainly couldn’t block anyone else’s chance. Most CLA members worked on campaigns for both Triantafillou and Reeves, but they were free to work for any candidate they liked.
The most obvious potential coalition group for Triantafillou was the CCA. As Lipsky noted, “The established civic groups most likely to be concerned with the problems raised by relatively powerless groups are those devoted to service in the public welfare and those ‘liberally’ oriented groups.” As a progressive (pro-rent control, race-and class-conscious) group, the Triantafillou campaign agreed to a Pledge of Mutuality with the CCA, promising to, among other things, “work diligently and consistently with all interested parties to accomplish its Priority Agenda.” In terms of Proportional Representation, the CCA offered this advice: “If challenged on the question of PR, defend it. The best short explanation we know of the purpose of PR is: ‘PR is a fail-safe guarantee that the mix of those elected will reflect the mix of interests and priorities of those voting.’ (And it’s true.)”
Within the four years since the CLA’s appearance on the scene, the “alternative lifestyle” complexion of the city council had changed radically. There were two gay councilors and they had a base of voters which was an additional pool to future candidates. By 1995, Councilors Toomey, Russell and Sullivan all voted in favor of the Gay Pride proclamation. Councilor Anthony Gallucio, however, voted against it. Some of his conservative Christian constituents had objected to a photography exhibit in the schools which showed happy gay and lesbian parents with their children. A new chapter of the Christian Coalition was started in the city that same year. Being more visible often creates a backlash. A few letters to the editor of the Cambridge Chronicle about parental objections to such public school events started appearing. In fact, the battle for gay rights largely moved into the schools in terms of hate speech workshops and curriculum. But in a city with voters registered as 62% Democrat, the CLA was vigilant but not worried.

For a city of nine councilors, a 5-4 vote reveals a controversial issue. For decades, rent control was the fulcrum which tipped right or left, depending on who was voted in that year. Since city council elections were held every two years, any given council could be more liberal or more conservative. But the annual Gay Pride Resolution was an indicator of the city’s consensus on questions of gay rights, and after 1996, there were no objections. Independent members of the council sometimes abstained or were absent, but there were fewer and fewer votes opposed. And, to the delight of his many liberal enemies, Councilor Walsh, one of the most outspoken opponents of rent control and the DP legislation, was convicted of 29 counts of bank fraud and sent to prison in 1996.

Gay Is Not Enough: Pitfalls of Identity Politics

Back in the 1991 election, the CLA refused to endorse City Council candidate Elaine Noble, a well known “out” lesbian and former state representative. Several newspaper writers wondered why a gay group would not endorse this “famous” gay candidate. But the CLA was not just interested in gay and lesbian “identity” politics. “She did not present a compelling case for endorsement,” said Sue Hyde. “She did not demonstrate a high level of knowledge or information or even interest in Cambridge.” The story continued, “When Noble took a verbal swing at the present Cambridge city council in an August 8 interview . . . she upset members of the Lavender Alliance who believe the city council incumbents advocate well on their behalf. . . . Noble said that a June 19 Boston Herald column by Howie Carr was an accurate appraisal of the Cambridge body. Typical of Carr’s gay-baiting rhetoric, the column ridicules Cambridge city council sessions and exploits Mayor Alice Wolf’s title of ‘Honorary Lesbian.’” The headline of the piece suggested that it was a “cat fight”: “Making the Political Fur Fly in Cambridge Election.” But it was more than that. Noble had not mentioned any of the local racial or low income housing issues which the CLA embraced. And knocking their newly approachable city council didn’t help. Noble’s style was the type of “elite minority” politics that Peter Skerry wrote about in Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority. She was more like the Mexican-American politicians in Los Angeles, as opposed to the ones in San Antonio. She was backed by Boston officials like Barney Frank, David Scondras, State Auditor Joe DeNucci and former Mass. Attorney General Frank Belotti, but she had no community base in Cambridge. Her strategy was “reaching out instead of down.” It failed.

The Boston papers always seem to enjoy writing about Cambridge’s squabbles. Another story followed the relationship between Cambridge’s two “out” councilors. “The politics of distinction is palpable these days in City Hall where Triantafillou and Ken Reeves, the city’s first black and openly gay mayor, forge what has been an uneasy professional relationship. That relationship began on a sour note when Reeves trumped the CCA—the party that had endorsed both Reeves and Triantafillou—and gained his second election as mayor by aligning with the Independents, the rival political group,” wrote a Boston Globe reporter in 1994. Reeves was angry at the CCA for its middle class outlook, as evidenced by forcing the largely African-American private Commonwealth School to move out of the city due to “traffic concerns.” Triantafillou, on the other hand, ran on the CCA slate, united by feminist and reform system style “clean government” and non-patronage issues. Class and race politics was always an undercurrent between the two “out” councilors, even though many people considered both of them radicals.

In 1998, there was a rude awakening for Triantafillou about feeling secure in a coalition with a more established group. “In the craziest mayoral election many observers can remember,” wrote a Cambridge Chronicle reporter, “City Councilor Katherine Triantafillou was the first to get five votes Monday night, but Councilor Frank Duehay was elected mayor. The turnaround sparked a wild scene at city hall, complete with screaming matches, accusations of lying and mean-spiritedness, and even a call to the police.” The CCA councilors had changed their votes during the later process, and one by one, they voted for Duehay instead of Triantafillou. The anger of an “oppressed minority” came through loud and clear when one of Triantafillou’s lesbian supporters yelled, “A bunch of straight, white men. I am just so disgusted.” Triantafillou felt betrayed as well by her former allies in the CCA. She had been assured that they would vote for her as mayor. “Minutes before the vote, Councilor Duehay once again assured me that the vote was firm, looked me right in the eye and denied that he and the others were going to switch their votes. I recall commenting that that was good because I had assured all the doubting callers that Councilor Duehay was an honorable man who would stand by his word,” she wrote in a letter to the editor of the Cambridge Chronicle. The following week, a Duehay supporter wrote a letter to the editor saying, “If Triantafillou really had been a loyal CCA councilor, she would have supported City Councilor Frank Duehay for mayor. . . Instead of voting for Duehay, however, Triantafillou unilaterally thrust herself forward and insisted that the CCA councilors vote for her.” Any dreams Triantafillou had entertained of gaining the city’s highest office had failed. She had learned that “the CCA giveth, and the CCA taketh away,” and she no longer valued that former alliance over her independence. After this, she became closer to Reeves, and for the remainder of her council tenure, they made up an unaligned, more race-conscious and leftist gay mini-party within the council, further eroding the old two party slate system.

In 1999, Triantifillou lost her fourth bid for the Council, to the surprise of most observers. Was it the angry outbursts that night from her loyal supporters? Her split from the CCA? Was she “too pushy”—or, as her supporters assumed, too feminist, smart, loud, serious, and lesbian? Did her campaign workers slack off, assuming she would win? No one knows, but Cambridge showed itself once again to be a pluralistic system—unstable and subject to change over time--supporting Robert Dahl’s community power theories.

Not Gay Enough?

Within the CLA, there was another “identity” issue for me. I was often the only bisexual member who came to meetings. For two years, the group voted to keep calling itself a “gay and lesbian” organization, but all that time there was a national push by bisexual organizers to come out as bisexuals within gay groups. We had been there all along—as lesbians and gay men—but many of us had decided that the best “truth in advertising” label was the one which revealed an attraction to both men and women. For feminist bisexuals who once identified as lesbians, there was often a wrinkled nose and a cold stare—we had “sold out to the enemy.” But like the various communities of mixed race people of Asian-American or African-American descent, my identity was fluid, depending on the context. If attacked from without, I would take on a larger, less personal label, one which would increase my larger groups’ political power. But within more friendly territory, if there was no political reason to use a such a general term, I preferred a more particular one. I always supported gay rights, and would happily call myself “gay” if the situation demanded, although I had not been in a relationship with a woman for years. In fact, I was one of the four women pictured above the first article about the CLA, with the headline “Proud to be Gay,” and I didn’t mind at all. Still, I felt second class until 1993, when I was surprised by being given a community recognition award at the annual Gay Pride Brunch. Ironically, the word “bisexual,” which had been discussed but voted down by the CLA that year, mysteriously appeared in the Pride Proclamation. (Some people thought it was a typo, taken from an earlier draft, but there it was. This again showed the importance of following a decision to its implementation!) By the time of Triantafillou’s second campaign in 1995, bisexuals were included in all the CLA literature. Until then, it was considered something the youth went for, like the word “queer,” but for the old guard, it watered down the strength and seriousness of the gay and lesbian movement. Bisexuals usually countered that they weren’t gay bashed on just one side, and that the heroes of New York City’s Stonewall Rebellion of 1969 (in which gay bar patrons resisted arrest and rioted) included a Puerto Rican bisexual crossdresser. It did feel good to be incorporated in the group, and when I told my bisexual friends about my mug, which read “Marcia Deihl, You’ve Always Been A Little Queer,” they responded, “Ah, give her a cheap old mug, she’ll follow you anywhere!” In their eyes, I should have been doing more bisexual politics all along. Bisexuals share these fluctuations of identity and connection with biracial people, but being a “bridge” can be as enriching as it is aggravating. Truth be told, the CLA was more fun than any of the other groups I found. The leftist “Cambridge Rainbow” folks were mostly very serious heterosexual couples. The CCA was much too professional and middle class for my tastes. But the CLA was cutting edge, exciting, and the meetings were funny as hell and full of bad puns. Since I was the only bisexual, I had to earn my way in by working hard, but eventually, I felt like I was home.

Over the course of the ten years, Lavender Alliance weathered internal and external challenges as well, but it is still alive and still part of the political fabric of Cambridge civic life. One early member told a reporter, “I’ve learned more through this than through civics courses. I feel much more connected to the city itself.” The steady presence of the Cambridge Lavender Alliance was probably the main factor having do with changing attitudes towards gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people in Cambridge. A 1998 photograph taken of the post-brunch crowd on the City Hall steps shows citizens who are secure in their city’s center.



OTHER FACTORS

CLA—Good But Not That Good

Looking back, the CLA’s power was not necessarily indicated by the DP ordinance victory, largely the work of a sympathetic mayor and years of planning by earlier groups. A popular and strong mayor, as well as a long time human rights activist, Alice Wolf was instrumental in jump starting the group’s process. As a "relatively powerless group,” the CLA had to leverage change from protest tactics into a relationship with the city government. For some, simply appearing at a public hearing was a risk, and Wolf remarked that her term in office was immensely gratifying. "I saw some people in tears at the first Gay Pride brunch, not quite believing that City Hall would really welcome them, and I thought, 'Wow--this is really something."

Over the course of ten years, the CLA weathered various phases ranging from euphoria to disillusionment. Identity politics infighting, back room old boy network deals, the fickle system of proportional representation, and shifting waves of general support for the various reform, conservative, and unaligned factions, all affected the its power. A number of CLA members didn’t even want to participate in electoral politics in the first place. They worked on projects like forming of a parent/teacher group (the CLA/PTA), creating a non-discriminatory St. Patrick’s Day Parade (to compete with Boston’s anti-gay one), offering forums like “What’s Left of the Gay Left?” and supporting the gay public high school group, Project 10-East.

Even the material concession of the DP health benefits for city workers’ partners was not a large one. The funds that were actually appropriated were certainly not indicative of great power. Personnel Director Michael Gardner’s initial estimate, using the Seattle rate, was $603,000. In reality, out of a total of 463 Domestic Partner couples registered by 1999 (71 of whom used the health coverage benefit), only $194,452 was spent by the city, a miniscule percentage of its $296,466,580 total budget. (Cambridge used these statistics to bolster its case in court.) But regardless of its material value, the DP ordinance was an important symbolic victory for every gay person in the city. Everyone supported the DP public hearing testimony as an important first action. Not “gay marriage,” not entry into the military--two national agenda items that most leftist gays didn’t even want--it was one issue they could win.

Electoral participation has waned. Although the CLA still endorsed City Hall and School Committee candidates, by Triantafillou’s last campaign there was a noticeable lack of shoe leather on the streets and an increased burst of computerized strategies and big money soliciting for television ads. Campaign workers like me became saddened that even little Cambridge, where you got to know every street and met every "enemy" face-to-face, was becoming more and more like the Big Boys in the federal two party system. And just as City Hall can embrace you as a gay or lesbian or any type of minority person, it can also reject you. Much depends on the shift of which nine people get voted in, and which groups they align themselves with.

National Intercohort Change

A minority population of approximately 10% can not rely on brute force or monetary power. They may simply have to prove by example that they are “just like everyone else,” and deserving of justice. The City Council’s change in support of Cambridge’s gay rights may well have been due to face-to-face interactions with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people--week after week on the council and year after year at candidates’ nights and brunches. Of course gays had been in the city’s factions and agencies all along—they just may not have been “out.” Increasingly, the gay community was visible, from the individuals in city hall to the increasing numbers of people who showed up, children in tow, at the June brunch. More constituents of all nine candidates had probably worked with an “out” gay person on the Peace Commission, the Women’s Commission, a tenants’ group, or a joint leafleting drive with another campaign.

Over the last ten years, national tolerance for nontraditional families has increased greatly. Part of this is the change in the typical “Ozzie and Harriet” family configuration overall. According to U.S. Census data, of 91.1 million families surveyed in 1988, only 27% fit the traditional definition of two married, opposite sex parents living with their children. Supporting these statistics, Robert Putnam claims that such family units were sliced by more than a third, “from 40 percent in 1970 to 26 percent in 1997.” Another change is generational, or “intercohort.” “In 1973 nearly half of all American (45 percent) favored banning from the local public library books that advocated homosexuality, but twenty-five years later that figure had fallen to 26%. Between 1987 and 1999 the fraction of Americans who favored firing homosexual teachers fell from more than half to less than one in three.”

Alice Wolf agrees that time alone may account for more of the change than the need for more gay votes by Independents. “What was it Sheila Russell said when we added ‘transgender,’ as well as ‘bisexual’ to the Human Rights Ordinance? Something like, ‘Oh, you know Cambridge, we have everything.’ What a change since 1992!” Sue Hyde noted the process by which her own mother eventually came around. Dismayed when Sue pronounced herself a lesbian at age nineteen, her mother said on her death bed nine years later that she wished Sue and her partner a long and happy relationship and a good life together. “I think [my mother’s] transformation was made possible by [our] being a part of her life in a consistent way without engaging her in some kind of debate about the goodness of gayness. We were just there all the time. We went to her house every holiday. . . And I think that my mother, like many people, came to respect our relationship. By respecting our relationship, she came to respect our individual identities because we would not hang our heads and act our of fear and shame.”

Circle the Wagons, Lizzie!

A third reason for the turnaround is fierce loyalty on the part of all Cambridge’s diverse communities when they’re attacked from the outside. When their city is used as a punching bag by Boston’s conservative columnists, even Independents are proud of their “People’s Republic.”

The legality of Cambridge’s Domestic Partnership Ordinance hangs in the balance today. Literature on the uses of home rule addresses the fact that the more powerful entity will usually prevail in federal, state, and city governance. But as Bernard H. Ross and Myron A. Levine note, even though states reign supreme, some local government autonomy has always prevailed under home rule, partly because if local governments don’t solve ongoing problems, state legislatures will have to. In March, a court case filed by the Catholic Action League and the American Center for Law and Justice challenged an executive order implementing DP in Boston. When they won their case, the Supreme Judicial Court struck down all other existing DP orders, saying that they violated the state’s definition of “dependent.” They recommended that it was time for the state legislature to rule one way or the other. Therefore, no city could legally continue to offer such benefits, although by this time, Brookline, Northampton, and Springfield had also enacted such laws. Cambridge continued to offer its DP benefits, and its defiance was rewarded with another lawsuit by the same two groups. City Solicitor Higby’s statement of eight years earlier had come to pass: the legislature was charged with deciding the fate of all the state’s DP rulings. But they didn’t, at least this year.

Although Alice Wolf, now a State Representative, and her allies worked on a similar DP bill to Cambridge’s, and although it passed the Senate twice, the House of Representatives balked. The bill died at the end of the legislative session without a vote. It was not an easy sell, given that the state as a whole is much more conservative than the city of Cambridge. While following these cases and votes, the nine Cambridge councilors must have felt like they’d “been there, done that” in terms of their earlier moral objections, and their defense of their city is probably like that of a typical family: big brother can pick on little brother, but if someone outside the family picks on little brother, they’re in real trouble.

CONCLUSION

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender citizens of Cambridge went from being politically untried and merely tolerated in 1992 to being fully incorporated in their city government by 2000. Some of this change is due to national trends in the acceptance of homosexuality overall, and part of it reflects a fierce hometown loyalty because Cambridge’s gay-supportive Domestic Partnership Ordinance is under fire at the court and state legislative level. But electing gay officials was crucial to this change. Having visibly gay and lesbian councilors helped, but mere representation was no substitute for the daily grind of learning the ropes of Cambridge’s electoral system, with its Proportional Representation balloting and its reform “strong manager/weak mayor” nine councilor form of government. By sustaining a membership base who lived in the neighborhoods, used city offices, and voted year after year, and by nurturing coalitions with all of the many other leftist/liberal city groups, the Cambridge Lavender Alliance was instrumental in gaining power and influence for the city’s gay citizens. In the last ten years, a gay mayor and a lesbian councilor were watched (and applauded or decried) by the whole city. Today, gays hold a strong, but probably not equal, place in the cohesive liberal dominant coalition. Although alliances have shifted, both between the gay community and its allies, and among the gay officials themselves, a supportive majority coalition has held over time. This ensures that the weekly council agenda often contains an item or two about AIDS funding, gay history programs in the schools, or outreach to gays for city jobs and police advisory boards. Attitudes about gay people and gay rights have changed considerably in eight years. This has been both cause and effect of what Browning would call “very strong” political incorporation.

MAKING AN EXAMPLE OF MYSELF

Although Cambridge has a population of 95,000, to me it feels like a small town. According to the city’s web site, it is the picture of diversity, with children from 82 different countries attending the public schools. Of the entire population, a little less than half (43,440 people) are registered to vote, and they identify as 62.7% Democrat, 6.7% Republican, and 30.6% “other” or “unenrolled.” Only seven miles across, the city has definite boundaries. As a non-car owner, I am comfortable riding my bike quickly from east to west or north to south. In fact, my “triangle” of work-home-shopping is about a ten minute bike ride from one to another.

Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone made me even more grateful for the small town feeling of such a culturally cosmopolitan city. Because of my last ten years of activism, my city councilors know my face, and my landlord’s daughter-in-law, who is also the City Council Secretary, helped me get back my stolen bike tire from the kid next door without police intervention. When Katherine ran for her first election, I could gather a group of old feminist and leftist cronies from a radius of two miles for a fundraising coffee and, as a renter, help her with low-income housing policy. When the CLA focused on securing votes in favor of DP at the state level six years later, I called my friends Helen and Judy (a lesbian couple I knew through neighborhood women’s potlucks) to lean on Tim Toomey, my State Representative as well as a longtime City Councilor. I knew he had voted in favor of recent Gay Pride Proclamations, and Helen and Judy had worked hard with him to prevent railroad noise in East Cambridge. He supported us.

I can’t be the only one who was affected by getting involved in my own city and feeling some gratifying personal results. There must be many others besides me who now feel incorporated into the city and hence are less strident, much like the Mexican community in San Antonio as written about by Skerry--less shrill, more secure, more rooted, and more assured of getting respect. But the CLA suffers from the same problems that Putnam outlines. The early CLA had a mailing list of 75 and 30 people showed up for the meetings. Today its mailing list contains over 800 addresses--many of whom are couples--but only 8 to10 people usually turn out for a monthly meeting. These figures show both the waning civic participation noted by Robert Putnam and the rhythms of “slack” in the use of potential political power noted by Robert Dahl. Apparently, many of the old CLA members are letting their leaders (“Homo politicus”) have direct influence while they lapse into “Homo civicus,” using their indirect influence by simply voting in local elections.

But I am one of the eight to ten people who show up for CLA meetings. I took some “slack” time during the decade of the 1980’s when I rested from spending the 1970’s being an activist and playing music in a socialist/feminist string band. When I moved back to Cambridge in 1989, I wanted to get involved in politics again. Unlike the suburbanites in Putnam’s book, I do go out to face-to-face meetings, I do feel involved in my block and in my city. And as Putnam notes, such social interactions can yield more than emotional benefits. I found my Cambridge apartment of twelve years through the “old girl network” of feminist friends from the 1970’s. While searching through the city archives, I found my first floor neighbor listed as a member of the early Domestic Partnership Task Force. An official of my workplace union testified at the original DP public hearing. (The archives themselves were rather endearing to this semi-Luddite. Since city records were not computerized until 1995, each ordinance’s file was a huge roll of paperwork, much like a roll of paper towels, secured by a rubber band. I had to mash the pages down with books in order to uncurl them as I sifted through the accounts of the early DP hearings.) I attend Old Cambridge Baptist Church because I liked its liberal gay minister, Irv Cummings, whom I met when he was honored with a CLA Gay Pride Brunch community award. When I was invited to the Marriott Hotel for Katherine’s first council inauguration reception, our committee made up the rowdiest table, but I couldn’t help feeling impressed by being included in such a fancy event.

Of course, I am only one person. But if I got involved in the city thanks to gay politics, I’m sure others did too. There was a base of new people like me over the past decade, learning ward and precinct lingo and the name of every street in town. And to actually win elections, given our status and population minority numbers, made me feel like reciprocating, not just grouching about “politics as usual.” Heck, it made me a good citizen, one who reads the newspapers before my votes, watches the city council on cable TV, and feels comfortable calling up my city and state officials.

Katherine’s three city council campaigns educated me about Cambridge politics and changed me from a “homo [sic] protestus” to a “homo civicus.” By enabling me to move politically from a solely “protest” person to a “politically incorporated” person over the last eight years, my participation in the CLA and in the council campaigns moved me at the personal level as well.

I became, in the end, more “empowered”—to use an overdone but still apt word. As we early women’s liberationists used to say, “The personal is the political.” Conversely, in this case, “the political was the personal.” Today, post-rent control Cambridge offers $1200-per-month studio apartments and a speedy computerized vote counting program for the Proportional Representation system, not the cadre of “blue-haired ladies” who hand counted ballots at the Longfellow School for three or four days running. Computers now count the votes, flopping number one votes for candidates who have met their percentage-of-total quote to the number two candidates, finishing in a fraction of the hand count’s time. But what has been lost? Social capital, that’s what--one place where all types, friends and enemies, saw each other face to face in a common endeavor. Tolerance (at the least) was nurtured. Cambridge is becoming a richer, whiter, more fast-paced city, but for the last decade, I have known the precious neighborhood feeling gained by long term participation in the city’s political center. I, for one, do not “bowl alone.”



Marcia Deihl
August 2000













































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Peter Skerry, Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority (Harvard University Press, 1993).

Brad Skillman, “A Family Matter,” The Chambridge Tab, June 9, 1992.

Alexander Von Hoffman, Letter to The Cambridge Chronicle, February 5, 1998.

Alice Wolf, telephone interview of July 27, 2000.




“Life is a cafeteria line of experience. Attaching any significance to one event over another is simply a human fiction. Any cat knows this. Humans will rationalize any idiotic act; this is the underbelly of our great cognitive tool.”

She wrote this sentence in her diary at age twenty-six. She re-read it, quite pleased with herself. After all, it was true. So far.


Years later she would laugh at this analysis. Only a naïve young woman could have written such an adolescent defense. For each decision has a different effect on one's future. 1976 bared some of the consequences which had been hidden in 1973’s decisions.


After all, that sign that this guy “Kendall” had posted led to her women's band, The New Harmony Sisterhood, which led to women as lovers, which led to her first glimpses of self care. One new layer led to another. Was it just a means to the final end? What end? Self-knowledge? And when she got there, that end became another means. At twenty six, she thought there was an end, a place where she could rest and know who she was. There was, in a way, but that end was a process, not a resting spot. She knew who she was now, but “who she was” was always going to grow. It was just fine tuning instead of gross tuning, like with the harpsichord.

Each choice gets decided by emotion, reason, or a combination of the two. It's almost irrelevant which one predominates, for we always get something we didn't count on, both pleasant and awful. The best choices, "best" meaning creating a more healthy, integrated, happy future usually combine both rational and irrational reasons, but in the end, a complete rational choice can end in disaster (D#2) and a completely irrational choice can be lots of fun (my VW bug).


She wasn’t sure which paradigm to adopt. On any given day, her life might look like a great success or an utter failure. There could be three realities:

You get what you settle for.
You get what you deserve.
You get what you get.







THEMES

1976 + Writers in my family, Edna, Dad, me, Brian. The star gene and trouble too. Wanting to make something fine, write better than the Bible, destined. Dad quote.

1976 = wrong: cafeteria line of life, making a living at music (shock of housing prices now), This is IT!, doormat, oblivious (P.), friends and lovers mixed up somewhat.

LOVE: Why dumped? C. & B,? Negative, sarcasm at first, but nothing under it. Stabs in the dark at relaxation techniques, sex as anticipation mostly.
Characters: R, A, C, B, Ch.

JOB: HCHP, not BC. Steady pay, weight strategy, union. Split, agony.
Characters: T, K, L

MUSIC: book, record. Didn’t think we were good. Now I do. Misunderstood our small pond. Characters. NHSB, Maurice, et al.

Spiritual search: wanted desperately not to care. Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ les to lose (see Rumi).

Right: Two Strand River. From age 10. Political struggles, monk/punk, practicing, kindness, women and men both exciting for different reasons. Secrecy, queerness, outsider view. Fat girls & drag queens. Feminist hated drag queens but I didn’t. Year before, grey rabbit. We always rationalize our libido.

HOW RELATED TO EDNA’s: Topics, she defaulted to children when she accepted her marriage and her lot. Damage to grown sons, objectify them as children and good little Christians and then out like a light. (To the Lighthouse).

FAMILY LOYALTY: Finally I see why I was upset about dad’s body donation. I figured out why I’m different from Dave and Ma. I feel an animal connection, spiritual, history, invisible, illogical, that because he’s mine, he’s special and important. Was brought up to be “fact” based and logical, and I never cheered for our side on the team unless I thought we “deserved it.” Had to earn respect, we all said in the 1970s of our parents. But there’s a different awareness, my cat is beautiful because she’s my cat. Not statistics, polls, outside based. Real, not from intellect. That’s why I was upset by his giving his body “to science”; I got this sense and others didn’t. Not breast fed, all was intellectual love from ma. Not nurturer. Why not? Nana was.



Secrecy and Bruises: How did I get there? Loved drama. Little self protection. Fed up with crunchy feminism.

Music people, picked because I was shy in college, harpsichord NOT, grad school, Rounder.

Day Job: Union at work.

Housing: Adelaide Road, still there, porch, piano. Describe. Search for relaxation, no mention of Priscilla, except when she was mad. Invited to leave. Bro loved naked photos.


My Car. Window of mobility, fluke, $500, clueless. Bike next 25 yrs.

Jan: , Dec., Ch. Crushes. Little did I know, P coming, investment co. (next chapter)

"Singers! Tired of sexist, racist music on the radio? Join us at the Redbook Store, Cambridge, Mass."

This little sign launched a saga of music, women, and politics that would change her forever. She entered 1973 a virgin, a lapsed Phi Beta Kappa music history graduate, an out-of-focus young woman who spent her days battling thoughts of the boxes of sugared cereal in the pantry.

It didn't help that in the apartment with the Davids, the cereal was right next to the phone and the ancient salvaged armchair, the most comfortable one in the apartment. This was the apartment of the Summer of Watergate. Also a baseball game, which She knew from the fact that the television set was never off and the Davids and Bud walked around shirtless and hairy, smoking ciggies and cigars and drinking endless beers, talking baseball and revolution.

She had Tai Kwon Do on Monday nights, Women's Issue Group of Science for the People on Tuesdays, Food coop meetings on Sundays, and since she was getting unemployment, she spent her days at the public library looking up old folk songs and what they said about women. She had just signed up for a graduate degree at a radical school called Cambridge Goddard. Its "campus" was a brick building near Porter Square, one room for files, one room for childcare, another room for Community Meeting, where the womyn yelled at the Marxists and She cowered in the middle. As usual.

S.H., a former Abbie wife, taught a course called "Let the Children in on the Revolution." She lectured that she was an "oddist," yes, spelled that way and that we were all oddists or could be. M.L., of Rounder Records, taught about Dolly Parton as a sub rosa feminist, entirely aware of her image and how to use it to her advantage. M.L. and ____ were starting an affair, but M also had her male lovers too. She wore a black cape and her witchy green eyes never betrayed any shyness. Our heroine idolized and hated her, and when B. asked our heroine to move in to Rounder house, she didn't know which one on whom to have her main crush, M. or B. To be or to have? Girls or boys? Question authority, even gender authority. But where did that leave you? Especially when you woke in the morning to a note from B.: "Make yourself at home." the night before he had said, "Having sex should be like shaking hands," deflowered her, and got up early to write anarchist articles for Black Rose.

The Kendall who had put up the sign was a girl. The group at the Redbook met in the basement, hence the eventual moniker of The Red Basement Singers. She spent the autumn learning words in the unemployment line. "The Cutty Wren" was an old English worker's ballad that spoke of boiling up the landlord for dinner. They sang revolutionary Greek, South American, and North Vietnamese songs for anyone who would listen. "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh" wowed them at anti-war rallies. The group had the usual fights about elitism and hierarchy (should someone who couldn't carry a tune be allowed to take a solo? Of course! This was people's music!) and where to perform.

1970 Revisited

* denotes important day

1. Feb 5: J. [my former humanities teacher] loved "Master Game" and recommends hash for sex. Have to try it.

2. Feb. 12: . . . school called strike. Of course I'm not supporting it because I hate student radicals and group influence and want to rise above transient trends. Flaws: the world is changing and has to be changed. I am simply accepting group values of another group.

3. Feb. 13 Shevelov (Russian music history prof at BU) had a lot to say about the strike. 1) We don't know what oppression is--true, but for our times it still is that and things have to be changed. [Ellen] Bender wrote him an 8-page letter.

4. Feb 23: Supposedly 80% of BU supports the strike. (Hope they don't find out at F & E that I stole this pen). I had to barge through irate pickets with my forceful cry of "mmff" to get in school.

5. Feb 25: Good day because good play, "Approaching Simone" (by Megan Terry!) given with DB [my boyfriend] on flute at SFA Day. Cashed savings bond and had rotten sandwich and sundae at Brigham's.

6. Eva is so bitter in NYC. Hates DGE as an illusion. Being a student or living in Cambridge--is it a copout on old USA or a good example/alternative?

7.March 19: Gail talked to me about women's Lib. and I was never more ready. Then DB and I made up & loved each other & after work--Women's Lib--great people and we all told about ourselves. I feel vastly inferior. Live with Gail?

8. March 24: I feel finally here, not projected somewhere off in the future. Women's Lib. helps a lot--esp. all the 25 year olds who don't know what they're doing either.

9. Love women's lib meetings. I'm finally in Boston! They're actually p.j. parties without pajamas. Good people, most of them crazy officially. I feel left out and unfucked up (literally, too). I couldn't reveal the Man. Stayed over as a special treat and it was. I think sex is dumb. Love counts. But I wish I could mutually turn on DB like he can me.
[Honey, hello, he’s gay] Book: Love with a Harvard Accent

*10. April 5: Why do people expect high school kids to know what they want to do when they're so young and immature? They only consider being a doctor or a musician; they don't know they can be doing something GOOD. I didn't know and now I've wasted a lot of time. I have to change. I can't do into music. I know that David wants to go to Cuba. I don't think I could take it. I have to be a Satie if I stay in music and aren't talented enough. Heard Kunstler on top of it all. Oh, politics, where have you been? I don't know what to do and life is suddenly too hard to take.


11. Apr. 6: I always dug competition because I was always on top. Where does it lead? Nowhere. Woodstock Nation is the only good worth working for---peopleness. Corny? Commie? What to do? Ans: Music education. Radicalize high school kids (by example), teach day care to little kids. Today I switch. I am fully enlightened. I don't want fame & recognition or money. I want to be happy. I hope I get fired for being political.

12. April 15: The Revolution is starting. After all my radical conversion and all, still didn't march today. I am a sheep to DB and my weak self, not the crowd. I do hate crowds though. Harvard Square was under siege when I came up at 8:30 to go to the concert. Heavy fighting. I am confused. But I can't agree with violence at all. I am too idealistic though.

13. April 23 Talking politics at a women's lib meeting with Tess and Diana & ? I'm scared of being committed 'cause it will be a farce when I am found out [as a virgin].



*14. May 5: Strange things are happening. A dichotomy: you can't live your life without becoming involved in politics (Cambodia, 4 kids killed at Kent U., but you can't become a revolutionary cause you will get shot down. Sheesh. That's too defeatist. You can't force people. So BU is closing and there are no more finals. DB went off to join a march and I took Alice home for tea. What a mess this world. I am fooling myself.

15. May 10: DB and I went to big hippie rally at the Nickerson fake astroturf. Buddy Miles was there showing off and marching in da streets. Made me mad when they started singing to the National Guard, then yelling.

16. May 13: Women's Lib is gradually becoming real to me. . . I think most of them are more together by virtue of their years. I want to learn to give the finger to guys who yell at me on my bike.

17: May17 - Dad's last sermon [fired; my grand philosophy, monkpunk appears]


18. June 3: Crazy women's lib. goose chase. Ran to D's with macaroni under my arm and she left a note to go to the boathouse so I got soaked walking home to the BU boathouse full of naked men. How bizarre! Finally they came & got me (guys covered their parts as I asked where the women’s liberation picnic was).


19. June 4: I'm into A.S. Neill like crazy. He can save the world.

20. June 15, Mon. Diana and Sandy came to Zinn's class--a wipe out and I said so. I really didn't care what people thought of me. I knew I was right. Knowing no one was right. Myles, a 25 yr old ex teacher came home with me to talk but left when DB came home. Oops.

21. June 16: Gail is coming back to W Lib meeting to say why she isn't coming. I think you can't tell people how to dress and what to buy, but you have to limit them from hurting others through greed. But I don't know how to get around it without 1984 the wrong way. Not everyone is lucky enough to be creative, A. S. Neill.

*22. June 27: Had to get up and out for women's lib. play in Cambridge. It was funny but some lady really got POd over it. Intellectually I'd say we should tell her to be moral, but I felt it in my insides that I wanted her to be confronted (even if I'm too chicken to do it). I feel bad about it though, sort of sick of women's lib.

*23.June 29: Read Old Mole about Gay Liberation. A lot of B & R folks are in for it. Seems just as driven as hetero dating bars, etc. Gotta get Diana to come to meetings again; she's my saving grace only wish that I could speak my mind, but I don't have one. I see all sides but one.

I like politics and understand violence more all the time.

25. July 3 - fire island: The 3 guys were very uptight about the "fags" and I campaigned for Women' Lib. No oggling and people doing what they want. I can't convince them that homosexuality is OK. I think it is. Esp. DB doesn't but I can see why,

*26. July 6: Betty Friedan says be a person--help shape the future. Jerry Rubin says "don’t go to school, be a Yippie, don't join the system. Neither is right, but my background draws me to Betty. Why am I better than secretaries who care only about dates? I mold the future? Is loving better? We killed the roaches.

*27. July 25: Got a sudden political surge & read a ramparts and got 3 books on Cuba. My thinking has changed vastly on violence but I don't know where it takes me. 1) No good yelling peace and moderation & law and order when one group is in definite control: Peace is OK for them but is only a putting-in-place of the exploited.. 2) the system must be confronted. People are entitled to their opinions but when the issues are clear cut, racist, etc. there is a right and a wrong. Put these together = revolutionaries. But I can't throw rocks.

28. August 23: slept in rain at Tanglewood; Alice's restaurant.

29. October 8: Communiversity [my women's group taught women's course]. About 20 people were there and 5 of us - general rap session cause organization fell through. Hope some come back. I feel good doing this stuff--if it's an illusion of the time, that's cool. I wonder what my next stage will be?

*30. Oct. 9: Big dance at da gym for Women's Center thing--great band & the folk singer but I couldn't get into some of the heavy anti male stuff. [Bev G. and New HavenWLRB?]

31. Oct. 30: Visited Trout Fishing in America.

32. Nov. 5: Talk at Communiversity on Women and Media. Well, tape anyhow.

33. Nov. 6: Saw James Montgomery at BU coffeehouse--thinking of old times, DGE, picnics by the ribbah, how I idolized him. He's gonna be famous.

34. Nov. 19: I gotta take librium to survive these days, sit around and worry about everything. Went to NAEY Conf. of free schools. Kate Millett is great and looks like Amanda (my cat). Sat with DeeDee and Sandy. RIGHT ARM!

35. Nov. 30: Draggy season to go to work (downtown ins. co) thru the downtown mess of hare Krisnas, Salivation Armys, general beggars and Process people.

January, 1970

See John Cage, 4:33

Fly Free, Little Blog

With this post, this blog has turned from a tadpole for a Harvard journalism class assignment into a frog, I mean, blog, for the world.

What do I have to say? What can I add to the pile of media blitz out there? What can you tell me? Fran, come in, please. You tried to post a comment but I didn't receive it. Is this some science fiction weirdness?

I know people with thousands of Friends on Faceook. What is a friend these days?
I sort of like seeing people's eyeballs to call them friends, window to the soul and all that.

Why would anyone want to read this? I love me, Barney loves me too, but really, I gotta go out in the world and tell you what I see. That's worth my time at least.