Episode 38: Militant Women w/ Arlene Eisen

Arlene Eisen joins us to discuss the transformations in the anti-war movement across the Vietnam War, the interrelation of feminism and anti-imperialism, and what decades of state repression can teach today’s movements about security and survival.

Works mentioned: In the Worldwide Family of Militant Women

Arlene Eisen has been a militant in the struggle against imperialism since the 1960s—first as a protester facing tear gas and later as a teacher and writer. She edited The Movement newspaper, and was a leading voice in the anti-imperialist women’s movement of the 1970s. For the next half century, she joined the anti-apartheid movement, the movement for justice in Palestine, including the olive harvest in the West Bank, the struggle for the right to return to New Orleans after Katrina, the movements against fascist U.S. police and their deputized militias and against the holocaust in Gaza—always standing in solidarity with national liberation struggles both inside and outside the U.S. Empire.

She is the author of Women of Viet Nam, Women and Revolution in Viet Nam, and the influential report Operation Ghetto Storm, which documented police killings of Black people in the United States. Her latest book, In The Worldwide Family of Militant Women, is a social history and memoir of revolutionary movements from 1962 to 1982. You can find her work here.

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Theme: Eye for an Eye, Haram (2017)

Art: Vivek Venkatraman

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