- Collection:
- Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives
- Title:
- Kurtz talks about the National Women's Political Caucus and the experience of working with other women (3:19)
- Creator:
- Kurtz, Linda Hallenborg, 1948-
- Contributor to Resource:
- Fowlkes, Diane L., 1939-
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 1998-04-03
- Subject:
- Feminism
Social movements
Women's studies - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Fulton County, 33.79025, -84.46702
United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Atlanta, 33.749, -84.38798
United States, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County, Pittsburgh, 40.44062, -79.99589 - Medium:
- audiocassettes
- Type:
- Sound
- Format:
- audio/mpeg
- Description:
- Linda Hallenborg Kurtz, known as Linda Hallenborg during her years in Atlanta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C., is admired as a political and feminist activist through her work as a lobbyist, administrator, consultant and educator. She was the founder and chair of the Georgia Women's Political Caucus (GWPC), an officer of ERA GA, Inc., vice chair and member of the board of directors of the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) and director of governmental affairs for Planned Parenthood of the Atlanta Area. She has also been a lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh, Georgia State University and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change, as well as the president of her own consulting firm, a political strategist and a campaign consultant.
Kurtz describes her childhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as being heavily influenced by her parents commitment to their Jewish community. She recounts her experiences at Brandeis University where she became involved in campus politics: A participant in the ant-war movement, she was photographed in Life Magazine protesting the Vietnam War. After graduating from Brandeis in 1969, Kurtz went on to pursue her MA at the University of Pittsburgh in womens studies and literature. It was there, she says, that she worked at the Moratorium against the War in Vietnam and also at the student health center, where she often helped to connect women who needed abortions with doctors. According to Kurtz, the events that led her to become involved in the women's movement were threefold -- consciousness raising groups that linked the community with intellectual interest, reproductive freedom for women, and equal pay. In 1978, after moving to Atlanta, Kurtz recalls being encouraged by Joyce Parker to become involved in the ERA Georgia campaign. Not long after, she became a founding member of the Georgia Women's Political Caucus. She discusses the conflict over how to proceed with the ERA -- whether groups should take a radical approach or project a non-confrontational, mainstream approach. Kurtz says that she saw herself as being able to help the ERA campaign by defusing misinformation about the amendment, and by presenting the amendment as a non-threatening piece of legislation. She describes her state-wide efforts to educate women on lobbying strategies, and to raise money. She also describes her work on the national level, as the Georgia Chair of the Women's Political Caucus. Kurtz vividly recalls the day of the vote for the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982, and explains how, even though it was a devastating defeat, there was a need to keep the momentum of the movement alive, and to focus on other important pieces of legislation that would protect the lives and legal status of women. In 1983, Kurtz ran for Vice-Chair of the National Women's Political Caucus: She served from 1983-1985. She describes how, during this time she traveled around the country teaching women how to organize, run for office, raise money and organize their communities. In 1985, Kurtz ran for the chair of the National Women’s Political Caucus and although she lost the race, as she explains, it was a wonderful experience to be able to manifest her vision for the women's movement through politics. After receiving a grant from the Kellog Foundation, Kurtz says that she was challenged to move beyond the political sphere and begin to find ways to create an “interconnected global community based on mutually interdependent economic, ecological and spiritual values" -- the focus of her three year grant at the Foundation. She describes her opportunities to travel and create connections and communities of women around the world. Looking back at the movement, Kurtz disagrees with people who think the women's movement did not accomplish its goals. She says, Now, I recognize and realize that the barriers to real equality are within each individual person and that the only way we can truly change is from the inside out.
Transcript of this excerpt: LHK: We just -- we had a wonderful group of women. We had a wonderful cadre of totally dedicated women that came together, that planned strategy, that just had this whole vision of what we needed to do. And the focus, of course, was the ERA, but we knew that in order to do that, we had to have a lobbying presence. We needed to have a statewide presence. So I just took up residence every day at the state legislature during the legislative session. I had the same experience that so many women have had [there], but, of course, once again, it is nevertheless always shocking when it happens to you -- when you go up to your first senator or legislator and say that -- introduce yourself -- and say that you are interested in the ERA. And, you know, he pats you on the butt and says, "Little Lady, I'm much more interested about who your husband is" or whatever -- and you just feel, "Oh, my God; this is like, unbelievable that he's treating me this way." But it's good actually to see that that's the way he's treating you: That there is such a differential in his perception of you as a woman than his perception of a man who would come up and speak to him about a serious issue. So what we were up against was really men who had a totally disparaging view of women. I can't say -- not to a man -- that's not true because obviously, we had supporters who believed in us. But the vast majority of Georgia legislators had a very, very disparaging view of women. But, of course, we are not going to be led astray by that. That's the groundwork on which we're working. Okay, now as smart women, what do we do? Well, we went forth and organized. I mean we literally had an understanding of -- every legislator -- who they were, where -- how to influence each one. Who were the people in each of the counties, [and] what church they belonged to. How do you influence these people [in] the way that the right wing would influence them? And so we started a whole, kind of, educational lobbying strategy where Roberta Malavenda was hired to be the ERA coordinator. And she would travel around the state, meeting with women in different locations to develop a grass roots network in as many of these key places around the state -- to teach them about letter writing, to teach them about lobbying, to teach them about raising money, to teach them about getting candidates to oppose the candidate -- the legislator that's there -- I mean, the whole gamut of political strategy, while we were kind of organizing the central, location down there at the [Georgia] legislature. So, really, the focus of our first several years of ERA [Georgia, Inc.] -- I mean of the caucus work, was on the ERA. It had to be because of the deadline. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/coles/id/2043
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/coles:2043/manifest.json
- Language:
- eng
- Additional Rights Information:
- Copyright to this item is owned by Georgia State University Library. Georgia State University Library has made this item available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
- Extent:
- 67 pages (three audio cassettes)
- Original Collection:
- Georgia Women's Movement Project Collection
Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives - Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
