She spoke truth to power – every day
Maybe it’s because she was loud and opinionated, and I was chronically afraid to make trouble; maybe it was her moral courage; maybe it was because she kept fighting way after others gave up. Or because she was very funny. Or because pushy and rough as she could be, she always spoke of her husband Martin and her daughters with great tenderness Maybe it was her omnipresent hats. Bella Abzug, who died in 1998 – too soon to be interviewed for MAKERS – is definitely my hero.
Several years after she died my colleague, the late Mary Thom, and I began working on an oral history of her life. We interviewed people who had worked with her and against her, people who were inspired to do more than they thought they could by her, and those who felt they owed their own success to her. Geraldine Ferraro, Walter Mondale’s running mate in 1984 and still the only woman on a major party presidential ticket, tried to sum up her impact on women. “If there had never been a Bella Abzug, there would never have been a Gerry Ferraro,” she said. Bella “didn’t knock lightly on the door. She didn’t even push it open or batter it down. She took it off the hinges forever. So that those of us who came after could walk through ….” Read More at MAKERS
To Learn More about Bella Abzug, visit:
Bella Abzug Leadership Institute