AC_1965_Web

30 AN T I OC H CO L L E G E C L A S S O F 19 6 5 5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y B O O K A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z D i S A L V O toricist interpretations, till eventually the department told me to go run our own seminars. The eruption of feminism turned our intellectual and personal worlds upside down, especially for me fol- lowing the co-op period I had spent in the consciousness raising commune of the Grail, an unprecedentedly radi- cal, international, originally Catholic, feminist movement with which I have evolved for fifty years. Consequently, my research focused on Milton, the brilliant religious radical of the bour- geois Puritan revolution, and William Blake, his poetic heir and proletar- ian critic, who traced the history of Western consciousness and religion in obscure, rarely studied prophetic epics, incredibly anticipating not only Marx, but Freud, gender analysis, sex- ual revolution,heterodox modern spir- itualties and even relativity! Scholarly articles, presentations in sometimes international academic forums and my book, War of Titans: Blake’s Critique of Milton and the Politics of Religion ,garnered for me something of an international reputation and membership in the ex- clusive Milton Seminar alongside the most prestigious literary scholars from Harvard,Yale, etc. I was hired at Livingston College at Rutgers, established in response to student radicalism and demands for affirmative action, and this was a per- fect fit for me. Eventually, however, change in the political environment rendered it too radical for the admin- istration, and it was dissolved into Rutgers College. For helping lead the battle to save Livingston, and for my politics in general as grievance hearings and court cases ruled, I was denied tenure there. It probably didn’t help that I was also a leader of a Marxist collective, had a radi- cal bookstore in my name where we held programs and study groups, and helped form the influential People’s Independent Coalition that led pro- gressive struggles and ran three inde- pendent Congressional campaigns. Fortunately, I eventually received tenure at Baruch College at the City University of NewYork (CUNY).There I taught mostly the working class, the poor and students of color in classes like world literature and literature and politics and in addition offered semi- nars at the Graduate Center in my specialties as well as in ’60s culture and women’s studies. In addition,sub- sequent to leaving Rutgers and mov- ing to my beloved Brooklyn, after de- cades of frustrating relationships, not uncommon then for feminist rebels, I met Doug Ferrari, and after being my closest friend and comrade for 26 years and a long engagement, we finally got married. Doug is the kind of person we on the left had always dreamed of, a working class auto-di- dact, dedicated to the class struggle, Jackie with husband at Chalice Well. who educated himself politically, sought and found the socialist move- ment completely on his own, and be- came a great radical analyst and or- ganizer. He now works for my union and we share in the movement the rewarding camaraderie of some of the most wonderful, caring, generous and talented people in this country. Thus, once again I could merge my academic and political life in helping transform the CUNY union into the most progressive in the N.Y. area and far beyond.For the last ten years I have been a Delegate in the Assemblies of our American Federation of Teachers (AFT) local,the NYCAFL-CIO Council, and the national AFT, where we cre- ated its Peace and Justice Caucus and are leaders in the struggle against the present attack on teachers’ unions and public education. Finally, after sleeping on the sidewalk across from City Hall in a protest against an austerity budget, I became a founder of Occupy Wall Street (OWS). There I formed the Labor Working Group, which con- vinced Occupiers that unions were central to the struggle of the 99% against Wall Street and the 1%, and, by joining, at picket lines and rallies, their valiant resistance to the gut- ting of unions and working families’ standard of living, won the support of 40 labor organizations which pro- pelled OWS into the mainstream. As a result I acquired a dubious renown (and possibly the updating of my FBI file) of being interviewed through- out the media, including Al Jazeera, and having my name splashed across the press, such as The New York Times and the front page of the Washington Post and being quoted in a number of publications like the New York Review of Books and several dissertations and books, some of which I contributed to. My latest article, a critique of the anarchism in Occupy, just appeared in Science and Society . At present I am still an activist, but, partially retired, surely must be getting too old for this.