Part Two: Birth Control Pioneers & the Jerk Who Tried to Stop Them

Some people have to fight for the right to use birth control, some people have to fight for the right to bear children. In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Katy Stoll about Emma Goldman, Angela Heywood, Fannie Lou Hamer, and the complex fight for reproductive freedom in the US.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and podcast stuff, cool, Margaret Post Phil Joy. Today
today was the most like I've been, like, oh my god,
the world. That was so Robert Evan to you. I
take it all back ship. Sooner or later it happened.

(00:25):
I don't feel bad about it. Made me feel bad
a little bit. I mean, I tell jokes now, So
after working with Robert and Cody for a while, Yeah,
well that's, um, that's good because this entire no, I
actually I don't tell tocom jokes. I don't think I do.
I actually don't really feel comfortable with it, but more
so than I did before I started working with those boys.

(00:47):
That's this whole thing where I'm like telling all this
story about people should be able to say whatever they want,
make talk dirty, and I'm like, but I'm still kind
of a proper lady about something. You know, I really
really that I don't like part jokes. I don't like
hoop jokes, like none of that, not like you know,
I don't want to like see those people like locked

(01:07):
up or I respect your right to to do those jokes. Yeah, yeah,
exactly defensive. You're right anyways, coming this is a cool
people who did cool stuff, and that's Katie Stool right right, Margaret, Yes,
and that is Sophie, who is our producer. By Sophie
Hi Hi. It is us yep and Ian who is

(01:31):
not present but is listening, is our editor, and he
rules because he cuts out all the awkward, weird pauses
like where my brain turns off because we're somewhere between
one and fifteen years into a pandemic and our brains
don't work the same anymore. So thanks, they sure don't
do the shout out. And so today it is part
two of our two part series on the Fight for

(01:52):
birth control. And if you haven't listened to the first part,
you should probably go listen to the first part. So
all that stuff from the first episode, all the fucker
and people fighting and dying for the right to control
their bodies and to not be possessions of their husbands,
that's the precursor to what gets called the birth control
movement in the United States. They actually didn't even use
the word birth control until but I'll get to that later.

(02:13):
The birth control movement in the United States started in
New York City in the nineteen tenths, and I want
to start with my favorite of these advocates, Emma Goldman.
If Anthony Comstock is Anthony fucking Comstock, derisively yes, Emma
Goldman is Emma fucking Goldman, but excitedly okay, emm a
fucking Goldman. Yeah. Emma fucking Goldman was a Jewish anarchist

(02:37):
and immigrant from Russia, a midwife, a groundbreaking feminist, a
famous orator who scared the piss out of cops and
governments everywhere she went, and basically the person who did
the most work to say you can actually enjoy life
and be a revolutionary. My one of my favorite of
her quotes, in order to open this little section is
I want freedom, the right to self expression, and everybody's

(02:58):
right to beautiful, radiant wings. I like that. Emma Goldman
was not born in nineteen sixty nine, despite my apparent
compulsive desire as a person writing the scripts for her
own podcast to type in nineteen instead of eighteen. Emma
Goldman was born in eighteen sixty nine and was now Lithuania,

(03:19):
but was then the Russian Empire. Her her mom's first husband,
had died of katie. Can you guess what he died of?
It's in the nineteenth century TB. He did. He died
of tuberculosis. The that first marriage. Her mother's first marriage
had been for love. The second marriage to Emma's dad

(03:40):
was arranged by the family. Emma's dad sucked. He used
to whip her. She went to school where teachers would
beat her hands with rulers. She got another teacher fired
when he tried to sexually assault her, and she physically
fought him off, which rules. I mean, it does not
rule that she had to do that, but no, you know. So,

(04:01):
her family moved around a lot. Her dad opened lots
of failed businesses and kind of like classic shitty dad mode,
Emma worked a bunch of jobs as a kid. She
wanted to keep going to school, but her dad set
her French books on fire and shouted quote, girls do
not have to learn much. All a Jewish daughter needs
is to know how to prepare, give filth, fish, cut
noodles fine, and give the man plenty of children. He

(04:25):
sounds like a good dad. Yeah, good dad. This actually
an epis. I love a good dad. They're so hot,
you know dad, Oh my god? Right, yeah. That it's
funny because the bar that we ask like like good

(04:45):
dad is one of the easiest bars to pass, and
it works on me. What do you what do you
actually read about a good dad? You're like, that guy's
amazing so much, and it's so unfair because I mean,
I'm not a mother, but what I understand of motherhood,
it's really hard and women get criticized so unfairly for

(05:08):
their mothering skills, whereas a dad just has to tell
his daughter to shut up and make the get filter fish,
and all of a sudden he's Dad of the Year.
You know I have to do is not be this
guy and your your dad? Yeah exactly, Um, the bars
on the floor, please lift your feet and don't scuffle.

(05:30):
So she doesn't go to school. Instead, she studies on
her own, and she studies those podcast alumni, the Russian Nihilists.
She really likes the Russian Nihilists. She especially likes the
ones who had just recently killed the Czar. Sure then
facing rising anti Semitism, some of which came out of
the fact that nihilists, including a Jewish nihilist, had killed

(05:51):
the czar. There's programs happening, and her family emigrates to Rochester,
New York in waves. First her sisters go, then Emma
goes her parents like, no, you can't go and she's like,
fuck you, I'm going to go, and then I think
she threatens to throw herself in the river if they
don't let her go. So she goes, and then her
parents and brother came soon after, because Russia not a

(06:13):
really good place to be Jewish right then, and she
gets the job as a seamstress in Rochester, New York.
She marries this impotent dude who quickly turns into an
abusive asshole in the classic I'll kill myself if you
leave me way. Yeah, So she left him and for
her Yeah, and then at one point she actually goes

(06:33):
back to him. No, no, she went back to him,
but she only goes back to him for like three months,
and then she's like, fuck him out again, good girl. Yeah.
And her parents, however, kick her out of the house
for being a slut for divorcing her husband. Okay, so
I'm going to include mom in the not good parents

(06:54):
mode really quickly. Yeah, that's not great. I mean, I
don't know, I don't know about their home life, how
much power. If that's what father believes of a woman
and what her role is, I can imagine that her
mom wouldn't have much say in the decision. That's a

(07:16):
that's a really good point. But I don't know. Yeah,
she could just be a bit, she'd be a fucking cunt.
I just love to say the word cunt. I think
so satisfying. It is really so, it's just all of
those consonants. It's nice, feels good in your mouth. I

(07:39):
know that feels good in your mouth. You can you
can quote me on it. I concur Okay. So, so
Emma Goldman gets into she's a teenager now she's sixteen
or something, and she gets into anarchism in the wake
of podcast alumni the Haymarket affair, in which eight anarchists

(08:00):
were put on trial pretty much just for being anarchists
in the fight for the eight hour work day, and
four of them were hanged. So Emma's like, okay, this
seems cool. So she fox off to New York City
and the first day she's there, she meets the man
that she kept around us, her friend with occasional benefits
for for decades, with whom she would soon plot a murder.

(08:22):
His name is Alexander Berkman, or Sasha for short, and
he's all right. He counts as cool people too, and
he's bisexual. Definite step up from abusive husband. Yeah he
sounds like like good people. Yeah, yeah, he's good. Now,
he's good. He there's like some stuff that you would
be like someone says, yeah, I won terms he's good.

(08:47):
He is. He's good. It's not that good, is he.
But unfortunately that's why we have to talk about most
men in our lives. We're like, he's not that. He
means well, he doesn't get it. Well, I wish he
got it anyway, that's a different topic. So so I'm

(09:11):
a gold Man. She falls in with this huge immigrant
community of socialists and anarchists on the Lower East Side,
and all of these folks would hang out on the
rooftops of the tenement buildings and they would shout at
each other across from rooftop to rooftop in German, Russian
and Yiddish about how to build class power and destroy
the capitalists and free themselves from the state which just
rules like what a time to be alive, you know, yeah,

(09:34):
I know, yeah, And now I feel like in the
last episode, I felt like this to all of these
people like you, imagining like, yeah I could have That's
exactly who I would have been. And maybe I was
I don't know where I stand on past lives, but
I love to fantasy. I love to daydream about, like yeah,
maybe I was there, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's I believe

(09:56):
in past you. I believe in current you as well. Um.
I don't know if you speak any of these languages,
but you should shout them across rooftops if you do,
or in languages you do know. So she's in her
early twenties when the Homestead strike happens, which is in
June two, and I even put the eight in the
date right correctly. This time, a unionized steel plant was

(10:20):
negotiating their contract with their asshole boss, this guy named
Henry Clay Frick, who was a huge industrialist at the time,
and he hates all of his workers. He hates the union,
so he locked during negotiations. So they go on strike.
So Frick hires some scabs and then some Pinkerton's who
are private security to protect the scabs. And on July
six two, they have a good old fashioned twelve hour gunfight.

(10:44):
Oh twelve hours. They must not be very good then, yeah, okay,
fair enough. It leaves It leaves seven guards and nine
strikers dead. This this gun fight at the factory. So
so Emma Goldman and her pal Sasha, she she called
him a pal out a boyfriend, and they were lovers
and friends, but not quite a couple because they were
very emphatically they're own people. That was a big part

(11:06):
of their politics. And so they're like, hey, hey, pal,
you want to do a murder. This guy is up
to no good. We will kill this frick asshole and
then all the workers will be like, hooray the revolution.
Let's throw off the chains of capitalist depression and create
a free society based on mutual aid. That's their plan,
no notes, perfect plan, solid, what could go wrong? No notes.

(11:30):
So they decided that Sasha, it couldn't have possibly gone.
Oh there's so many steps there that will all go correctly. Yeah,
So they decide Sasha is going to do the shooting
and or stabbing, and Emma is going to do the
telling everyone why they did that, to rouse the rabble,
to you know, throw off the yoke of oppression or whatever.
And at this point Emma Goldman tries sex work to

(11:51):
raise the money. But basically what happens, um she's street
walking and a guy picks her up and takes her
to a bar, and says, honestly, I don't think that's
the job for you, and then gives her ten bucks,
which is in today's money. So what did you say that?
That's kind of offensive? I know, I have no idea,

(12:14):
but you know, And and and also a lot of that
comes from her own writing about her life, right too.
So there's always the like, yeah, and there's also this
thing and I actually think this is probably what happened.
But there's this thing that I keep running into where like,
sex work is written out of history constantly. So many
people have or like have had past tensed engaged in

(12:37):
sex work, and it is just like not talked about
as soon as they do anything else. You know, no
one wants to talk about it. Yeah, but they get
together their money. I think that. Um. I think Emma
Goldman borrows money from her sister. Basically. I don't know
if she's like, hey, I want to do a murder.
Can I get some money for murder? But Berkman goes,
finds Frick in his office, shoots him three times, stabs

(13:01):
him once. But the problem here is that Frick isn't
just the owner of a steel factory. He's a fucking
man of steel or something because he survives. It's about
to say that sounds like overkilled, but it wasn't. It
was not overkilled. Henry clay Frick lives a long as time.
And this will be shocking to you. I know. The
workers weren't like, hooray, we two can take arms against

(13:23):
our capitalist overlords. Instead they were like ship, what the fuck?
Oh fuck, we don't actually want this, this is bad.
Oh dang. So people can't just be forced into changing
their perspectives like that over and now. Yeah, it's interesting.
I don't know. I was looking for something different, Like
of course you'd be like, yes, you're liberated, let's do this.

(13:47):
But a lot of people I'm treating the choir pay.
You get so limited by your cages. You you are
afraid to step out and and see because it could
be anything there or whatever. But like people, people are
are can be hard to convince that they're participating in
that this system is not is fucking them instead of

(14:09):
helping them totally totally. And so this this action the
attend taught, I believe they call it. It It was an
attempt at propaganda of the deed, which was like a
the anarchist style at the time. At the end of
the nineteenth century, which was do propaganda by mostly by
killing people who are bad, but but by like doing
things rather than just talking about things. But but it

(14:31):
turns out you can't just show up and kill a
guy and have everyone be like hooray, thanks for killing
the guy or whatever, you know, especially if he doesn't die.
Yeah I know, yeah, actually I wonder what had happened.
So and this sets back both the labor movement and
the anarchist movement unfortunately. And there's this one guy, Johan Most,
who was Emma Goldman's sort of mentor figure, who does

(14:51):
a lot of speechifying, and he goes around and his
whole thing is like revolutionary violence. We need more violence.
Violence is the way, you know, it's like this whole deal.
Compared to a lot of the other anarchists at the time,
we're like violence is like maybe necessary, but we're more
into mass movements and you're almost like the violence. And
then as soon as this assassination happens or happens, John

(15:12):
Most walks it back and it's like, oh, it was
a bad idea. He never should have done that. And
Emma Goldman is in the crowd when he's giving this
speech talking ship on her fucking pal. So she walks
up to the stage with a horsewhip and horse whips
him for talking ship. Oh oh my god, that's bold.

(15:34):
And then she breaks the horsewhip over her knee. I
guess the handle of it rows it at the stage,
and I think storms off and she regrets this later
she's like, maybe overreacted. Sure, who among us? Well, that's
what she says. Her quote that is basically whom among
us is quote at the age of twenty three, one
does not reason, I mean fairly accurate. Yea, yeah, I

(15:57):
mean I never used a horse whip. Well, they're just
not as readily available. I mean, you know you don't. Yeah, yeah,
it'd be like if you used to know no one
uses clubs anymore, like a club that for your car. Okay,
I think it's I think we all can agree. And
do you know what else is fair? I'm looking to
see how far into this episode we are it's fair

(16:19):
for us to move to advertising because done like a pro. Thanks, um.
I want to move it back to the bread and
butter of our podcast sponsors and tell you that um
potatoes are fairly easy to grow and other people can
also do the growing for you. You don't have to

(16:39):
do it yourself. And they're very good for you unless
you unless they're not good for you, because everyone's bodies
are different. Yeah, we metabolize things differently. And there are
many varieties of potatoes, such a point selfie and so
often overlooked when talking about potatoes. And also whatever else

(17:00):
these other ads are and we are back are and
we are talking about how poor Alexander Berkman, who has
just shot and stabbed a dude, because I know, he
gets sentenced to twenty two years in prison. And while

(17:21):
he's in prison, he discovers his bisexuality, he has relationships
with fellow prisoners, and he he doesn't like prison. That's
like the highlight of prison for him. Um, he prison
sucks him up, Honestly, I'm not trying to make light
of it. Um. He becomes a prison activist and he
fights for conditions for the other prisoners. And because he's
constantly doing this, he's constantly in solitary confinement, often in

(17:44):
a straight jacket. Yeah. So his friends do what nineteenth
century anarchists did best, which is digging a tunnel. They
rent a house across the street from the jail and
they get to it, they dig through rocky soil, they
go some gas mane. It means they have to start
putting ventilation. Yeah no, they yeah that. This is another

(18:05):
theme of cool people who did cool stuff. Is that
a ton of people in the nineteenth century break out
of prison by digging tunnels. It's fucking wild and one
of the anarchists hangs out, well, everyone else is digging.
One person's job is to play piano and sing to
cover the sound of people digging. Oh my god, it's
like a cartoon, you know. And could you imagine what

(18:27):
that singing and played would be like if your soul
job is to cover the percussive sounds of digging. But
speaking of cartoon, unfortunately, on the day before the escape,
a random construction had dumped a load of stones in
blocking his path to the tunnel. Oh so he doesn't

(18:49):
get out through the tunnel. That is a cartoonish development,
I know. And then before the construction scared and he
can get out through the tunnel, some kids sneak into
the now empty house and they discover the tunnel. And
because there are a bunch of dumb snitch as kids,
they tell the grown ups, idiot kids. And so now

(19:10):
the tunnel is discovered into the jail, and there was
no proof that it was Berkman who had been trying
to escape, but the prison is like, whatever it was Berkman,
it was obviously Berkman. And he spends a year in
solitary instead of getting out and reuniting with his He
does get out after fourteen years in the end um,
but you know, legally, and the whole thing had probably

(19:33):
been a bad idea. Emma wrote Sasha at one point
and said, acts of violence, except as demonstrations of a
sensitive human soul, have proved utterly useless. So in the meantime,
while Sasha's in jail, Emma Goldman does two things. One,
she becomes a midwife. She goes to Vienna and she
studies Midwiffrey in nursing. And then she works in the

(19:54):
tenements and the immigrant populations at the Lower East Side
and later for the middle class US born progressive movement. Wow.
And it was partly this work that helps her realize
that this sort of all or nothing attitude that a
lot of like her male revolutionary comrades had was fucking bullshit.
Because reforms matter as she helps so many people give

(20:16):
birth and terrible conditions. She wrote, I saw that it
was a mockery to expect them to wait until the
social revolution arrives in order to write injustice mm hmmm,
that you can do tangible things right now, not just
talking about the big ideas. You can help people in
their lives right now, totally and like, and that's why

(20:37):
it matters that we make sure that people have access
to abortion and you know, all of those things. Like.
So she also becomes the US's most popular anarchist orator,
and she weaves both feminism and aestheticism into her speeches.
Basically her whole things like women are their own people,
and beauty matters for its own sake, and it is

(20:57):
important revolution and the right to beauty was as important
to her as the right to freedom is. Actually, what
she's most famous for today is there's a paraphrasing of
a quote of hers. The paraphrasing is, if I can't dance,
it's not my revolution. So by beauty she means like joy, yeah, totally,
and like aesthetic stuff too, Like she's like into like

(21:18):
literature and art and like, you know, she's like these
things matter, quality of life, matters. Yeah, absolutely. So one
day she's dancing at this party and these like very
serious man revolutionaries are chastising her for being too i
don't know, free and enjoy in her life. And she
said to them, or she said later about them, I

(21:38):
guess I did not believe that a cause which stood
for a beautiful ideal for anarchism, for release and freedom
from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life.
And joy I insisted that our cause could not expect
me to become a nun, and that the movement should
not be turned into a cloister. And so this is
kind of how she ends up, kind of on the Well,
she's been part of the sexual liberation kick the entire

(21:58):
actual time. But and what's interesting is that, like all
of this stuff has been a big part of the
left and anarchism the entire time, but it was not
being talked about as much by like the big name
important figureheads of history, but the people who were actually
like just trying to be revolutionaries and ship we're all
about this stuff. Yeah, the newspapers and communities were constantly

(22:23):
discussing it, and they did more than discuss sex constantly,
and at one point this older European anarchist Peter Kapacken.
He's like anarchist Santa Clause, I don't know. He visits
and he asks why the newspapers are wasting so much
time talking about sex here in America. Emma Goldman said,
all right, dear comrade, when I've reached your age, the
sex question may no longer be of importance to me,

(22:45):
but it is now. H I love her, I love her.
I know. So Okay. It's not just that she was
down to funk or whatever, but it says she read
as they're fighting for society based on cooperation, and the
cooperation is born out of love and love, family relationships,

(23:06):
all of that, what those things look like is of
paramount importance. And she was also down to fuck. Her
quote is can there be anything more outrageous than the
idea of a healthy, grown woman full of life and passion.
Must deny nature's demand, must subdue her most intense craving,
undermine her health and break her spirit, must stunt her vision,
abstain from the depth and glory of sex experience until

(23:29):
a quote good man comes along to take her onto
himself as a wife. Totally fine. A sex before Mary incredible,
but she wasn't part of the suffrage movement because she
didn't like states. She considered the right to vote to
be a distraction, and she also saw that a lot
of the American suffragettes were very puritan and flavor at

(23:53):
this point. Especially at this point, as a block women
supported the Comstock laws. Actually, even though Comstock fucking hated women.
The voting block of some of the first women to
vote in America also disenfranchised sex workers and supported prohibition.
And Emma Goldman was against the prohibition movement the banning
of alcohol sales. She said, quote it sanctions the spread

(24:14):
of drunkenness among men and women of the rich class,
yet keeps vigilant watch on the only place left to
the poor man, basically saying like, when you make ship illegal,
the rich people get to do it and the poor
people don't. Yeah, alright, one more quote. It's not the Latin.
We'll pretend it's one more quote. Her feminism can be
summed up in her own quote. Her development, her freedom,

(24:36):
her independence must come from and through herself, first by
asserting herself as a personality and not as a sex commodity. Second,
by refusing the right of anyone over her body, by
refusing to bear children unless she wants them, by refusing
to be a servant to God, the state, society, the husband,
the family, etcetera. By making her life simpler but deeper
and richer. So I like her. I like what she

(24:58):
has to say. And she incapable of not running a
foul with the law, which is fair since she her
whole purpose is to do away with the concept of
a society based on top down laws. In three, she
was incited for Sorry, she was arrested for inciting a
riot because she'd um incited a riot. She told a

(25:21):
crowd of three thousand hungry people. This is during a
whole bunch of hunger and starvation was happening in the US.
She told the crowd, demonstrate before the palaces of the rich.
Demand work. If they do not give you work, demand bread.
If they deny you both take bread. It's like feudal England,
all a working class people rising up and showing at

(25:44):
the gates of the wealthy landowners, you know, the lords,
and demanding Yeah, yeah, totally. And when she was arrested
for for this, she was arrested like a week later,
they caught up with her, and I think Philly, even
though I think the speech had been in New York.
The arresting all Sir has her in a train and
basically says like, snitch on your buds and we'll drop
your charges, which m en gooldman does not do. Yeah,

(26:06):
I was gonna say, I doubt she takes that deal. Yeah,
No one said she throws a class of ice water
into his face. Did you get sentenced to a year
in prison? Which she served. The press dubbed her the
modern drone of arc for this. It just increased her
fame in reach and like when she gets out of jail,
it helps with her speaking tours and it it also
sucks up with her health. And I'm sure it's sucked,

(26:28):
but like overall it it worked. It's sort of in
her favor in a way. But the next time she
goes to jail, or the next time I'm going to
say about the time she goes to jail did not
work in her favor. N One, an anarchist named Leon
show Gosh, assassinated President William McKinley. And this was not
a very strategic move, to say the least. Show Gosh

(26:50):
wasn't really part of the anarchist movement, even though he
was an anarchist. I'm trying to claim he wasn't, but
he was. He was a poor man, the son of
Polish immigrants, who had had enough with the whole system
and decided basically to go shoot a guy. He'd actually
been kept out of the anarchist movement because he kept
sketching people out. He basically would like show up and
be like, hey, guys, you want to like do some crime.
I love that description of someone sketching all the anarchists out. Yeah, totally.

(27:18):
So no one wants to play with him. So he
just goes. He finds McKenley, and he shoots him in
the gut, and this kills McKenley. It takes a couple
of weeks, I think it. McKenley eventually dies of an
infection caused by the wound, and the left in general,
including a lot of the anarchists, rushed to distance themselves
from from Leon shows I'm a Goldman, though she refused

(27:38):
to condemn his action, even though she didn't she didn't
think it was a good idea, and she'd also got
blamed for inspiring him because under investing under probably torture.
He said that he had like seen him a Goldman speak,
you know. But Emma Goldman saw the assassination as cause
and effect. You treat people like ship long enough, someone
might fucking shoot you. And this time the press call

(28:00):
her the high Priestess of anarchy. It's also not a
bad title, not at all. That's actually a very sick title.
But of course they did that. Cho Gosh was tried
and executed. He he never repented. His last words were,
I killed the president because he was the enemy of
the good people, the good working people. I am not

(28:21):
sorry for my crime. I am sorry. I could not
see my father because his father didn't come to see him,
because his father was like, sorry, kid. Yeah. Emma Goldman
was arrested for this. There was no evidence connecting her
to the crime, and after two weeks in custody she
was released. And once again, this assassination fox the anarchist

(28:43):
movement up um. Roosevelt comes into office and basically says,
all right, I'm gonna funk up all the anarchists and
everyone who was sympathetic to the anarchist That's like his
first thing, which I mean fair right. There are the
people who are just killed his predecessor. He he passes
the Anarchist Exclusion Act of nineteen o that says you
can't immigrate to the U. S If you're an anarchist.
And because of this crackdown and basically how wildly unpopular

(29:07):
the assassination was, anarchism goes from it used to be
the leading leftist tendency within the United States and it
falls behind a more reformist socialism after this, as people
are like, oh, yeah, that's wow. Yeah, yeah, I guess
that makes sense. Yeah, it kind of. I'm with Emma Goldman.
I'm like, it is what it is. You know. It's

(29:28):
like I mean, I am too, but I mean, when
when you're sketching it out, like it makes sense how
public perception of what uh being an anarchist means or
why is lost because of you know, the way it's framed.
And then but yeah, I am also, but I think

(29:48):
that a lot of people identifies that. Like now, it's
a conversation that comes up a lot on Twitter, a
different version of it, let's say, you know it. Yeah anyway, yeah,
I I do tend to agree like, yeah, well he
was a bad man and support this person's actions per
se to say, because I think it's a bad idea.

(30:09):
But if you're a bad person and you're doing that,
what do you expect um someone might snap? I remember
during the I think it's like the two thousand eight
financial crash instead of the more recent financial crash or whatever.
And there are all of these like headlines in the
UK that were like, some people broke up bank owners window,

(30:30):
like at his bed, at his house, and I'm kind
of like, I'm not like that. It doesn't solve anything,
right to go and break this bank owner's window. What
do you? Yeah, what do you fucking want? You? Just
like you just sucking drove millions of people into poverty
and they broke your window? Powerless? Like yeah, I mean
the same conversation during Black Lives Matter here and protests

(30:54):
and the way everything was framed, especially here in Los Angeles,
and yeah, totally Los Angeles, a lot of what do
you expect? No, I do feel bad. I do. I
feel bad for that mom and pop restaurant. I'm really
glad they have insurance to cover it. But these the
that's it's gonna suck to clean up this mess. But
eyes on the prize much more important, And why are

(31:16):
people upset anyway? No, totally. So Emma Goldman goes on
to do I mean she does so much ship that
I could easily do a two parter just on her.
She travels around, She lectures and midwives midwife midwifferies helps
deliver babies. She mid whiffs it. Yeah, yeah, uh, nothing
mid about. I'm gonna try and use slang just to

(31:38):
make everyone cringe. Nothing mid about her whiff. Nope, So
he's giving me the No I like it. No, I
think I full support. All right, this is safe space,
I think, Yeah, I know what's listening. She she falls
in love with this hobo doctor guy who specializes in

(31:59):
treating venereal to these, named Ben Rightman. She runs a
magazine called mother Earth that combines anarchism with cultural issues,
literary criticism, poetry, and the arts in general. Her politics
shift away from individual acts of violence and away even
from mass movements and towards popular education. She starts talking
to a more middle class crowd, which pisces off a
lot of her friends, but she stays a percent down

(32:21):
for the cause. So whatever, people can hate whatever. And
then the reason we're talking about her in today's episode,
The Modern Birth control movement kicks off and Emma Goldman
jumps in from the ground floor. The birth control movement
got its name from a guy named Auto Bobsky, but
it was popularized by Margaret Sanger and also by the anarchists.

(32:42):
And Emma Goldman did a lot for birth control, but
she didn't suffer for it like some of the other
people I'm talking about. She suffered for other things. Everything
was all tied together for her. All of these different
issues boiled down to oppression and people having power over
other people. So nineteen fifteen, she goes on a nation
wide speaking tour talking about contraception, which was not legal

(33:03):
for her to do. She distributes texts written by her
home a boyfriend and also by Margaret Sanger about how
to not have kids, which is also not legal. So
in February eleven, she was arrested for violating the comp
stock laws. That fucking asshole back in the story, fucking asshole,
I'd almost forgotten about him. I know, I know will

(33:25):
die in four years. Um. She refuses to pay a
hundred dollar fine, and she spends two weeks in prison,
And I mean, I don't want to go to prison
for two weeks, but it doesn't compare with what other
folks ended up facing. So no, of course, to fast
forward her life after birth control, she gets involved in
and by that I mean there's several more paragraphs better.
I really loved her so much. Cool she she did.

(33:46):
But she gets involved in the Anti Conscription League in
New York Um during World War One, because everything is
better when you add league to the end of your
causes name. It definitely makes it more official or fun sounding. Maybe,
and he probably have capes. You know, I thought you
said cakes, but capes. Capes and capes. I'll take both. Yeah. Yeah.

(34:10):
Once it's a society, you move up from capes to cloaks.
I think fair and honestly, who wants to hang out
with those types? I know, I know. The league is
where the funds at. They play, they get drunk. Yeah,
they eat cake, cake, they scream as they eat cake
in their fancy capes. Yeah. This is going to tie in. Well, okay,

(34:34):
So as much as the government doesn't like birth control,
it really does not like antimilitarism. She's basically going around saying, hey,
you don't have to you can fight conscription. You don't
have to go fight in this war. On June fifteen,
her and Berkman. He's still around. They're still pals. Uh.
They get arrested in an office full of propaganda, and
according to the nineteen seventeen New York Times article about

(34:56):
their arrest, she asked if she could go put on
a more presentable out it for her arrest. Okay, they
say yes. She goes upstairs to a room and she
comes out wearing a royal purple gown. Because that's kind
of lady she is. I love it. And then, even

(35:17):
though she did not, to my knowledge, invent a system
of dates to replace A D and B C, she
did represent herself and Berkman in court, and possibly because
she didn't come up with a system of dates to
replace A D and b C, she fails. She does
not successfully defend them in court. They lose, and they

(35:38):
both get two years in prison. Two years man. He
spent a lot of time in jail. While Imagleman's in prison,
she makes friends with another anarchist woman who's in prison
for smuggling bombs onto a train to go not to
blow up the train, but to go blow up up
I don't know somebody important, probably, and also a socialist
woman and they team up despite their differences. They're different

(35:59):
political ideas, and they fight for better conditions for the inmates.
Um which is the TV show that I want to
watch out of all of this. No, I mean this
one's good too. Yeah, they get out. They caught up
in the first Red Scare pretty much immediately and you
can't get a break here, No, they really can't. Along
with more than five other anarchists and communists, they get deported.

(36:21):
I think it's something like the Palmer Raids. I think
it's something like ten people get arrested, and basically it's like,
you're a filthy comedy, get the funk out of the country.
They get sent back to Russia, where both of them
are originally from. And they're actually excited about this, right
because it's nine and Russia is seving a revolution and

(36:42):
they're like, we like revolutions, maybe this one will be good.
So they go there and they're actually again excited. The
Bolshevik Revolution was very like contentious among the left in general,
but like overall, even the people who don't like the state,
like the anarchists, were like, well, let's see where they're
going with this, right, So they get there and then
they realized that the Bolsheviks suck there. They're banning free speech,

(37:05):
workers are in shitty conditions. Everyone fighting for better conditions
gets fucking branded account of revolutionary and thrown in jail.
People are getting murdered by the Bolsheviks, all the anarchists
are getting rounded up. It just it sucks. So they
get out and sounds like bullshit. Ship Okay, I'm mean
to do it. That's the best thing ever to come
out of this podcast that sounds sarcastic but actually like it. Okay,

(37:28):
I feel like that's another probably beingo thing is Margaret talks.
And so they wander. Basically they wander around Canada, Europe
just or like they don't have a place because they don't.
They can't. They're not trying to hang out in Russia.
They're not allowed back in the US, and they just
keep getting kicked out of different places and wandering around.

(37:50):
Alexander Berkman dies in six He takes his own life
after a bout of illness and some unsuccessful surgeries. He's
basically like fucking him in pain and he side stand it.
Emma Goldman is in a different city and when she
finds out he's dying. He like kind of doesn't. I
try not to talk about the details of suicide on
the show, but he like doesn't succeed right away, right
and he takes a little while fromim to die. Um,

(38:13):
so he's he's sick, you know, basically. So Emma Goldman
rushes to a different city too to be by his
side as he dies, and he recognizes her but he
can't speak, and then he falls into a comma and dies.
But then the silver lining to all of this, she's
sixty nine years or I don't know she's old. She's
in her late sixties at this point. A few weeks

(38:34):
after Berkman dies, Emma Goldman gets to go live her dream,
the thing that she's been fighting for her entire life,
because the Spanish Civil War alumni of the show, Spanish
Civil War has broken out, and she moves to Barcelona
and she spends three years living in an anarchist society
made up of millions of people. Um. And she told

(38:56):
the workers there, this actually gets to your point earlier.
You're talking about people kind of misunderstand in anarchism and
show Gosh's not helping that. She tells the workers they're
your revolution will destroy forever, the notion that anarchism stands
for chaos. Yeah, and I wish that were It does
prove it to anyone who looks at the Spanish Civil War,
but that history gets buried. That's really beautiful that she

(39:18):
got to go there and experience that. I know, it
makes me really happy. Like did she die there? No,
she died shortly after the fascist takeover. She flees to Canada.
Sucking fascists, I know they're sucking everywhere. Um, and she
dies I think within a year or something less than
that of of having to leave Spain. But if I

(39:42):
make it to seventy and get to spend most of
the last three years of my life living in an
in an anarchist society, Like how many fucking happy, especially
back then? Yeah totally, you know, yeah yeah uh. In
she dies from a stroke in Toronto. The US actually
gives permission for her body to be returned to the

(40:02):
States and she's buried next to the Haymarket Martyrs in
in Illinois, the people whose deaths were the reason that
she went on this whole crazy journey that was her life.
So just need to point out traveling was so hard.
Also shout out to her for not dying of TV.

(40:23):
Has not died of TV or didn't die of TV entirely.
But the amount of time and commitment energy to uplift
your life, to uproot everything and go to all these
different environments is pretty wild if you think about it
took to achieve your dreams like this, to achieve this,

(40:46):
the amount of work to get to anyway. Yeah, is
she the one that started in Vienna? Or am I
confusing people's narratives here? Now? She started in um Lithuania, Lithuania,
I met somebody went to Vienna to study Midwiffrey or something. Oh, yes, yes,

(41:07):
this is I mean just that Lithuania, then in America,
and then you're off to Vienna to study, and then
you're coming back and everything that's happened, that's as a
poor woman woman. Yeah, at this time, it just it
really does blow my mind. The sheer magnetitus, the sheer
strength of will and fortitude you have to do to

(41:29):
accomplish literally anything but and not die of TV and
not die of TV. And speaking of dying of TV,
you know what time it is, Margaret. Yeah, I was
trying to come up with I had it all head
in my head where I was going to be like,
how do we go with? Okay, you know who else
takes a lot of your time and energy? Advertising said,

(41:52):
and here is some more of that, and we are
Batman and we have just left. I'm a Goldman resting
comfortably in the ground after a long life and now
in Illinois. It's sort of a she deserves it. Yeah,

(42:12):
it's kind of a place of pilgrimage. A lot of
people go out there and see um the martyrs and
her and Lucy Parsons and all these other people. And
and so I don't know entirely how much credit Ama
Goldman deserves for invigorating the birth control movement, because everyone
likes her so much that anything she touches, people like

(42:34):
Ama Goldman was there, you know. And I mean she
went on a nationwide speaking to her and got arrested
for it, right, And but I just literally can't other
people do know. I'm not saying it's unknown. I'm saying
I don't know. But she might have been a footnote
who gets written in all the stories because everyone thinks
she's so cool, or she might have been a more
central player. She had in her hands and a lot

(42:56):
of pies because she was so good at getting things
off the ground. It's as possible that her influence is
a huge reason why things got off the ground. But
she didn't stay in the particular fight for birth control
because she was too busy getting repressed and being kicked
out of various countries. Other people stayed in the fight.
The most famous of these is the most complicated person
going to talk about today, Margaret Sanger. Oh yeah, I

(43:23):
always want to root for a Margaret. Problem is that
fifty percent of the women with um English or Irish
names in history are Margaret's and of those fifty another
fifty percent are probably bad. Yeah, there's a lot of
notably bad ones. And Margaret, this Margaret not not me, Margaret.

(43:44):
I'm only two good things, but you are the exception
to the role this. Margaret does both good and bad things.
Oh so, Margaret Sanger most famous as the for two things.
Margat Sanger is famous as the founder of planned parenthood
and for being a eugenicist. Just to get that out
of the way, and we'll talk about both those. When
she was young, she flirted with anarchism briefly and was

(44:07):
influenced by it and ran a newspaper called the Woman
Rebel No God's No Masters, No God's no Masters, being
a common anarchist slogan. But she then moves away from
socialism and further into eu genesis. Eugenis bad stuff. Genesism.
She wasn't a white supremacist, she was actually far from it,

(44:28):
but she absolutely helped white supremacism by helping the broader
eugenics movement, which has done irreparable harm to marginalized people.
The right wing likes to misrepresent her beliefs and like
claim that she was like actively racist, but she she
did not believe in a racial component to eugenics. She
fought to stamp out bigotry in the movement, and she

(44:49):
worked with black black leaders constantly. Um, but it kind
of doesn't matter because intentions, well what part of okay?
Because because okay, yeah, well one of the most complicated things.
I actually kind of tried to write this whole thing.
At first, I was like, I'm just not gonna talk
about Margaret Singer. I'm gonna stop everything. And then I

(45:10):
was like, because I because it's so fucking messy. But
the thing that I learned is that, um, the first
time I learned This is a little while ago, and
it blew my mind. The left was also really into
eugenics back in the day, and they were into different
types of eugenics depending on the leftist, but certainly the
anti authoritarian left was into sort of eugenics by choice.

(45:32):
People like, if workers choose to have fewer children than
the the workers will have more power at the bargaining
table because there's fewer of them and the capitalists need
them more, and ship like that. Weird, Yeah, weird a
is a a really good way to put it. But
Margaret Sanger does go beyond that and leaves the non

(45:55):
coercive eugenics, which a ton of famous popular people that
people avoid talking about as eugenicists were into. It was everywhere.
It was everywhere. I mean, I'm doing I'm working on
something right now, and the person who creative b am I.
It all fed into eugenicists handed that you know and study,

(46:19):
taking study of people and finding an average and that's
the ideal. But you're of portion only studying white men,
and then everything below is underweight and everything above is overweight.
And that is literally R B M I to this day.
But it was also baked in and informed all sorts
of eugenicists. And so my point being is like, yes,

(46:40):
it's sneakily is in healthcare and then in public policy,
uh you know, and and you know criminal justice everywhere
all the aspects of society. No, totally, yeah, and and
and I keep talking about in history mustly because that's
what I look at. But it is absolutely right, like
used up to the present day in a lot of ways.

(47:01):
It usually doesn't use that name anymore, right, um, but right, yeah, anyway, yep.
So Margaret Sanger she was the child of socialist Irish immigrants,
and like Emma Goldman, she was a nurse practicing on
the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She illegally distributed information
about birth control to people in the tenements. And she
might have been abortionist at this time, but because I

(47:24):
read about how she helped women quote, terminate their pregnancies.
But the other thing is that she was actually fairly
anti abortion, which I had no idea. She only believed
in abortion when it was necessary to save the mother's life.
Her whole thing about birth control was this way, we
don't need abortion. Well, right, that is what planned parenthood
continues to be. It's like, well, we're providing a service

(47:44):
which reduces abortions. Yeah, it's Margaret's magazine, the woman Rebel
that sparks the birth control movement. Or rather it was
calm Stock, his his final act, his repression of it,
that sparks the birth control movement. Route that the year
before he died, Anthony Comstock was after her, so he's
still working in his fucking seventies, sucking asshole. She's a

(48:07):
wanted woman. She's facing twenty years in prison for running
a magazine. So she decides to do what many wise
people have done, and she fucks off out of the country. Sure,
she goes up to Canada and then gets a forged
passport and heads over to England. But the case brings
out a ton of supporters and a real movement starts forming.
So she comes home to face the music stand trial
and the government looked at all of her supporters and

(48:29):
we're like fuck this, and they dropped the charges. Wow,
Which is why it's good to have a movement behind you. Yeah,
it's also good to be rowdy enough that being behind
someone actually makes things matter, because if you know, if
millions of people mar march to stop the invasion of
I rock in two thousand three to do ship. It

(48:50):
really depends on the context here, but yeah, yea, so
now free. In nineteen sixteen, she opens the first birth
control clinic in the US in Brooklyn, and it was
opened nine days before the cops raided and arrested the
entire staff, including Margaret, which makes her even more of
a hero, and she uses that fame to start a

(49:11):
new magazine called The Birth Control Review, which talks about
birth control and about eugenics and about sterilizing unfit people.
Oh boy, oh boy, it's it's basically after as far
as I can tells, after World War One that she
becomes like a eugenicist and starts believing in course of eugenics,
and she leaves socialism and anarchism far behind, falls into

(49:34):
this nonsense. And at the beginning she started off saying
women should be quote the absolute mistress of her own body.
And then at the end she talks about wanting a
government department that overseas who gets to have babies. Oh,
this is bad, this isn't This isn't like light eugenics.

(49:55):
This is like eugenics I know and like. And part
of the problem about researching her is that everyone either
really likes her really hates her, and so if you
really like her, you downplay all over eugenics, and if
you really hate or you play them up or you
play up the racist elements of them. Right. So it's
hard to find out some of this stuff because it's

(50:15):
so biased. But this, this thing that she's saying is
not particularly controversial. This whole government should decide who gets
to sucking babies, if anything, that's probably least controversial than
less controversial than like in birth control. Yeah, well, I
mean actually, and that's like something that I kind of
don't quite get to in this script because I don't
feel like I don't have I didn't have enough time

(50:36):
to really do it justice but now pretended to adjustice us. Now.
One of the things that I realized is that, um,
the shift towards birth control, like as soon as like
birth control started winning, then the government's like, yeah, yeah,
birth control, birth control, we can use it to make
the master race, you know. Yeah, And so I don't
know what, Okay, I mean, that was a good point. Yeah, thanks. Um.

(51:01):
So it doesn't feel like a coincidence to me though,
that she's moving away from socialism and anarchism as she
moves into eugenics, and in ninety Margaret Singer called for
a birth strike to reduce over population, hoping to avert
faminine war. Right. But the thing is is that the
left at least now understands a few things about overpopulation. First,
and most importantly, the world isn't lacking in food. The

(51:23):
world is lacking in equitable distribution of food. Yes. And secondly,
something that we know this because of actually work of
people like Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman all these other people,
is that when people have access to family planning, it
actually does curbt population growth. And there's no need for
any institution. No institution needs to direct or control it.

(51:45):
You literally say, hey, people who are capable of having babies,
here's how you choose whether or not to have a baby,
and the population levels off. If that matters to you,
that is how it is done, and that is how
it is effectively done. Like, I really, I don't know
I get worked up about that. I mean, as you should. Yeah,

(52:07):
as we also, I mean we all know, I know,
we all relate to this. I mean it's just it's
wild to be sitting here talking about it. So absolutely,
and that this is still the conversation and next birth
controls right now, but the next one up is I mean,
abortions up right now. But the next up is birth people.
And it's mad. It feels I don't like to be

(52:29):
careful about language choice, but it truly feels madness, Like
it's madness. What are we doing? It's my body? Yeah,
And I mean it kind of reminds me because I
feel like they'll come for birth control and then start
continue to do force sterilization, which we'll get to in
a little bit, and it, frankly, it reminds me of

(52:50):
Nazi Germany, where they specifically were like, actually, Nazi Germany
was one of the countries that legalized some abortion because
they really wanted unfit people to have abortions. And uh
and then of course, yeah, of course they did. So anyway,
she has an American Birth Control League, which in two
becomes Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood today makes it absolutely clear

(53:14):
that they disavow Sanger's eu genesis beliefs and is like
upfront about being like, this is the incredible amount of
harm that those beliefs did. But Sanger dies in nineteen
sixty six, the year after the Supreme Court legalizes birth control,
and which I believe, and I didn't write this down
in my notes, so this is unsourced. Um that that judgment,

(53:35):
the Supreme Court judgment that legalized birth control, relies on
a very similar the same concept as Roe v. Wade,
which comes after. But yeah, and so I want to say,
I'm like glad she got to see birth control become legal,
but I only like her in the first act. So
I kind of don't give a ship. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, well,

(53:55):
ultimately you sucked. So I mean, from a storytelling perspective, sure,
we like to see people have payoff for the things
they've worked for. And it is undoubtedly a good thing
that absolutely worked for ye, but the rest of it's bad.
So I don't really care about her. Yeah, no, totally. Yeah,

(54:20):
Like it kind of evens out. Yeah, I don't actively
hate her, but I don't like her either, So yeah, totally. Again,
it was It was funny because before I started researching this,
I was like, oh God, I'm gonna have to fucking
I'm gonna have to cover margat Sine. Yeah, I'm not
looking forward to this. Also because I like knew that
she was involved with the anarchists. I'm not proud of that.

(54:40):
So I'm like, uh, you know, yeah, you're like, don't
give us a bad name. But then there's another weird
part of me where I planned parent is not perfect,
but I'm kind of like it was cool started by
someone who you say, no guys, no masters or whatever.
You know, Um, yeah, it is cool. So it's both things.
So she's a good segue to move from talking about

(55:02):
the yea the right to not have children, to the
dark legacy of the same fight, the second fight people
out of wage the right to have children. So I
want to talk about Fannie Lou Townsend Hammer, who is
not part of the dark side of the story, or
rather the dark side of story happens to her. But
she's sucking awesome. She's cool people who did cool stuff

(55:24):
like no, no, I feel complicated, just no qualifications. She's
up there with Ezra Heywood and Emma Goldman like and
she's born on October six in Mississippi. She's the last
of twenty children born to a black sharecrupping couple. I
know by the time she was six she wasn't working
in the fields picking cotton. By the time she was twelve,

(55:46):
after sixth grade, she quits school for work. Her parents
ruled they taught their kids to be proud to be black,
and her mom carried a handgun around to protect her
kids from the white landowners who were like often would
beat black kids. Yeah. In one Fanny leu Hammer had
surgery to remove a uterine tumor, and while she was

(56:07):
under the white doctor gave her hysterectomy without her consent.
This racist sterilization was really, really fucking common. Fanny coined
a word for it, the Mississippi a pendectomy, And she
later said that in Sunflower County Hospital, I would say
that six out of ten of the Negro women that

(56:27):
go to the hospital are sterilized with their tubes tied. Yeah,
and this ship still happens yep. And after this she
becomes one of the most important figures in the civil
rights movement. In nineteen sixty two, she went on a
bus with the Student Unviolent Coordinating Committee to register to vote.
All seventeen passengers on the bus were refused since they

(56:48):
failed literacy tests that were imposed by Jim Crow laws.
They got pulled over and find a hundred dollars for
the nonsense charge of the bus was too yellow and
they weren't allowed to leave. Yeah, the like, I mean
the costs. Just like, let's go funk over those people
they pull over the bus. They're like, a bus is
too yellow. I don't know why they have that accent,
and your boss is too yellow. Gotta give us a

(57:10):
hundred bucks before you go on your way. Just I
didn't do the calculations like I sometimes do, But it's
a lot of sucking money. They and they they scraped
together the money before they were able to leave. She
gets home and her boss fires her from her share
cropping job because she was a you know, dangerous rabble rouser,
and confiscates a bunch of her and her husband's property.

(57:32):
This did not stop her. In nineteen sixty three, she
sat at a whites only restaurant and was beaten so
badly in jail by cops that she never fully recovered,
and that did not stop her. In sixty four, she
helped organize Freedom Summer, and hundreds of college students of
various races showed up to help register black voters in
the South, including podcast alumni Heather Booth. I get really

(57:52):
excited trying to tie them all the podcasts it's into
one thing, but they're all it's all connected, all the
cool people fucking interweave. The person who founded the Jaine
Collective came down for Freedom Summer, which had been organized,
including by part by Fanny, and she kept working the
political system. She even wound up alongside two others as

(58:13):
part of the first group of black women to run
for Congress. But eventually she soured on political change, which
just kept sucking, not working, so she started doing ship
that I think is even cooler, to quote the writer
Deborah Michaels. Frustrated by the political process, Hamer turned to
economics as a strategy for greater racial equality. In Night,

(58:33):
she began a pig bank to provide free pigs to
black farmers to breed, raise, and slaughter. A year later,
she launched the Freedom Farm Cooperative, buying up land that
black people could own and farm collectively. With the assistance
of donors, including famed singer Harry Belafonte. She purchased six
forty acres and launched a co op store, boutique, and
sewing enterprise. Co Operative economics also are one of these

(58:57):
things that tied through all of it, even the idea
of like cooperative owing enterprises was actually a big part
of the Russian Nihilist when they weren't trying to blow
up the czar, they started, Yeah, the whole thing they read.
This book was actually one of the books that Emma
Goldman really was inspired by. It's called What Is to
be Done? Not the later one by Lennon or the
later one by Stalin, but the first one by the
guy whose name IY don't remember. Um Um. It basically

(59:19):
is like, hey, you should start sewing cooperatives and that's
how you should raise up enough money to start having
an economy where paul take care of each other. And
I don't believe that Fanny was necessarily like inspired by
that or with the through line or whatever, but it's
instead it's something that people figure out, is that cooperative
economics and like collectively creating economies um a really good
way to protect wealth and communities that have the wealth

(59:43):
taken away from them. On a regular basis, throughout her life,
she faces an endless slew of racist attacks, racist poison
their farm animals. When she's a kid, she people try
to drive by shooter and she's this short, thick black
woman with a thick Southern accent and no formal education.
When she was supposed to speak as a Democratic delegate
nineteen sixty four, President Lyndon Johnson like personally blocked her

(01:00:04):
from speaking because he didn't want, you know, uneducated black
woman or whatever on stage. And when she was given
an honorary degree, prominent assholes both white and black were
piste off because she didn't deserve it, because she wasn't
fully literate. But other black leaders believed in her. Malcolm
X believed in her, and it was while speaking alongside

(01:00:26):
Malcolm X in Harlem in nineteen sixty four that she
gave her most famous speech, in which she said, I've
been tired so long. Now I am sick and tired
of being sick and tired, and we want to change.
She rules. She she dies of breast cancer in seventy seven,
only fifty nine years old. And there's there's still people
doing that economic work. She started the Federation of Southern
Cooperatives as a coalition of black farmers. It's been around

(01:00:47):
for fifty five years, is still around. They work to
keep farmland in black and cooperative hands throughout the South. Wow.
And but she's also one of uncountable number of people,
mostly people of color, who or coerced or tricked into sterilization,
mental patients, prisoners, women on welfare, people who showed up
at the hospital for completely unrelated surgery. The state just

(01:01:10):
was fucking wild about population control, and they would be
like the Board of Eugenics would decide, it's so creepy. Yeah,
and it's it's explicitly racist. Yeah, I know, I know.
It's like it's one of those things where you kind
of like the fact that it, like, I mean, it
still happens, but the fact that it was like even
more above board happening like fifty years ago. Yeah, that

(01:01:32):
was common. It's hard for me to wrap my head around.
It's so evil, you know, Yeah, because it was just
so recent how recently are thinking collectively? Was just very medieval.
It blows my mind. And yeah, it's very important to
note that it does still happen. Um, there was a

(01:01:56):
huge thing recently. I guess I don't even know. Time
just feels like a vacuum. But expose about all the
migrants in in custody who under rent forced to direct
me um and in prisons, women, uh, you know, or
people with reproductive people. That's not the phrase that is

(01:02:17):
not the word. I am tired, but you get my
people who give birth, thank you. Yeah, forces directed me.
It's it's sickening. And now it's just not talked about.
Is that it happens totally, And it was women were
targeted more than men. There were men also forced to um,

(01:02:40):
you know, have forced sterilization, but not as much. White
poor folks weren't exempt, but they were targeted at least
three times less often. And it's it's fucking genocide. Like
the North Carolina Eugenic Sport had a whole plan to
quote breed out black people by sterilizing black men. And
in cause you were wondering, the US was the first

(01:03:01):
country to get really excited about compulsory sterilization, like hundred
more than a hundred, like hundred twenty years ago or something.
So's it's not really a surprise that the black power
movement in late sixties early seventies was not actually excited
about birth control and abortion for a while. In the
nineteen seventies, somewhere between a quarter and half of Indigenous
women who came into the Indian Health services for health

(01:03:22):
care services, for any health care services were sterilized. Latin
x people face this in a group of Mexican American
lawyers filed a class action lawsuit in Los Angeles, and
they actually used Roe v. Wade, basically saying that Roe v.
Wade should protect the right to bear children as well
as not bear children. Um, because all these people like

(01:03:43):
sometimes it was like forced, like you're tricked, and they
just do it while you're while you're under Sometimes they like, here,
sign these forms, sign these forms. Okay, you signed the
forms and you didn't read it or you can't read
it's in English or whatever, you know, m hm. And
so so they sue using Roe v. Way Aid, and
they lose, and the ruling was racist as fuck. To

(01:04:04):
quote a of course, it was to quote one essay
by um Emily Mash in the Immigration and Human Rights
Law Review. The judge wrote that the plaintiff's emotional distress
was not caused by the sterilizations, but rather by the
patient's cultural background as immigrants from rural Mexico, who accredited
a woman's worth to her ability to raise a large family. Yeah,

(01:04:28):
oh my god, oh those poor DearS. They've lost their
value and their in their society and our society. The
value is for sterilization. That's disgusting. Yep, apologies for some
of the ships started showing up in the early two thousands.
Occasionally laws would be repealed that the stuff that had

(01:04:49):
allowed the involuntary sterilization the thousands, Jesus fucking Christ. Well,
and Washington State still has the law in the books.
Ah and it and almost no compensation is handed out
when they're like, oh, sorry about that, and their excuse was, well,
most of those people are dead, and like, we didn't

(01:05:09):
really keep records of it, so how would we even
find the people to give money to who we did
this horrible thing too? Oh my god, that's awful, And
as you pointed out, it is still happening today to
especially to prisoners and people held by ice. Um. I
try not to end on doom and gloom, So I
want to say, kind of similar to the last episode,

(01:05:31):
that these people who fought, they didn't lose, because we're
still in this fight and we haven't lost, and we
we win every time we protect any given individuals right
to choose whether to have a kid or not in
either direction, and and all of the bad ship still happening.
But but yeah, it's really important because we wouldn't. First off,

(01:05:55):
we wouldn't still be having this fight if it wasn't
for their work. But we've remarked several times over these
two episodes about how it wasn't even that long ago,
and I think it's really important to note that because
it wasn't that long ago, and look at how different
it is now. And I mean it's not that it's

(01:06:16):
fixed by a long shot, of course not. But you
move the ball forward, and I find hope in that.
Does that make sense, like even though it feels hopeless
right now that we're still, but but that you can
see how progress has happened now I'm thinking about, like, well,
happening but we're still. That's the tape. I think. I'm

(01:06:41):
a little like more progress neutral and that I think
a lot of times we win some and lose some,
and we get ahead for a while and we get
knocked back for a while, Like I mean sometimes about
like places in medieval Europe where it was totally chilled
to be a trans woman, and then we get jealous,
you know, um, and then like but I'm gonna use
a throwaway line and people are gonna be like, what

(01:07:02):
is it. I'm kind of speaking very vaguely here. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
but we like win by fighting. We win by making
our lives better and the lives of people around us better,
and by by just like not letting them do this ship.
Sometimes we're gonna do let them. Yeah, it's like, well,
I can't not do something. I still get to get up,

(01:07:24):
get up tomorrow and keep doing it. So even if
it's exhausting, you gotta keep and and that gives me
and there's hope in that. Yeah, totally. And as Emma
Goldman taught us, we can still dance and have fun.
We can still dance and have fun, find the beauty.
What a delightful journey. This has been good. Thank you

(01:07:44):
so much again. I had written into the script saying
we needed um, we needed Katie to take a stab
at a speech about why we can. But Katie did it.
I prompted. Ye oh wow, yeah, no, I know my role.
That's what I was smirking about. That's really funny. I
was like, look at Katie being you just you just

(01:08:07):
manipulated me into doing it. You just wrote a show
that that brought me to that spot where I felt
inspired to give you that. So that's that's a testament
to your tire work here and speaking of of of
other people's work, Katie, do you have any plugs you'd
like to plug here For a second, it was like

(01:08:28):
Katie plug other people's work. Yeah. Sure. You can check
out our podcast even more news and our YouTube channel
some more news. I'm on Twitter, Katie Stole. That seems
like a good place to start. That's solid, and Margaret,
anything you want to plug at the end here. You

(01:08:48):
can follow me on Twitter at Magpie Killjoy if you
want to see me participate begrudgingly in discourse and you
can um fake be grudgingly. And you can follow me
on Instagram at Margaret Killjoy if you want to see
pictures of my dog and videos of me playing hurdy
gurdy and other weird ship. You're getting a follow today,

(01:09:11):
all right. I have a book coming out called We
Won't Be Here Tomorrow, which ironically comes out after tomorrow,
September twentie in fact um working against the OWE. I'm
gonna stop trying to make puns out of the title,
but you can you can probably pre order bys I'd
be listening the ray k Press and if not, it'll
be soon. Fighting congratulation, Thanks and We'll be back next week. Bye.

(01:09:43):
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