Bella Abzug Quotes

These are very special times we live in. The priorities in this country-against the will of the people-are upside down. At this moment, as the 92nd Congress is about to convene, the mood of the country is one place and its government is someplace else.

Without getting scientific or psychological or historical about it, it's long been my judgment that women have been at the forefront of social change. When we first got the vote, we used it to clean up the sweat shops, to clean up the horrors of child labor, and so on. Then we got sidetracked. Instead of carrying forth Carrie Chapman Catt's notion that women should organize as a political movement, the movement became nonpartisan and followed the League of Women Voters route. So between their nonpositions and Madison Avenue's assigned stereotype of women as flowers in the home who can be sold all kinds of products to beautify themselves, and Hollywood with its awful stereotypes, women were sunk. Up until now, we've been laboring under the concept of women as appendages to men and children and subjected to constant brainwashing by Madison Avenue, Hollywood, TV-and the descendants of John Adams who know when they have a good thing going. We now see the concept changing because the women's movement, which renewed itself several years ago as an intellectual revolt of the bored middle class housewife, has grown into a broad movement seeking complete economic, social and political change in all arenas. It's like the black movement, which started out over the right to a seat in the front of the bus and then extended itself to pursue for the black people their rightful piece of the whole system. The women's movement, like the black movement and the movement of the young people, comes at a time when the system is not responding to the largest numbers of its people. This puts all these movements in a very critical perspective, because out of all this ferment the last thing we can realistically expect is for things to remain the same. (p 202)

Women are both affected by and effectors of the environmental crisis. We must be part—a central part—of the solution. Our views on economic justice, human rights, reproduction and the achievement of peace—all elements of the environment/development crisis—must be heard at local, national, and international forums wherever policies and decisions are made that can affect the future of life on our planet.

Earth’s most valuable and most neglected natural resource: women.