How Bella Abzug Inspires Me to Never Give Up
When my father told me the results of the election, I stumbled to school, feeling numb. There was no outrage, heartbreak, or shock left in me. As a biracial person, I felt betrayed. It felt like I was grieving for the loss of my country. After writing articles for my school newspaper, spreading information, canvassing and handing out sample ballots at the polls, I felt hopeless. How could I not when the country voted for a felonious rapist over a skilled, Black and Indian woman? But I knew I couldn’t stay in this place of inertia, because apathy accomplishes nothing.
In the middle of my existential crisis, I saw one of my mom’s posters on the wall, depicting the feminist icon Bella Abzug.
The daughter of immigrants, Abzug grew up poor. She became a lawyer when doing so was unusual for women. She fought for human and civil rights and even started her own practice. Eventually, Abzug went on to fight against McCarthyism. She battled the House Un-American Activities Committee, despite the risk that they could have branded her as a Communist spy and endangered her livelihood. Still, her commitment to her values was strong and emboldened her to fight back.
Later, Abzug won a seat in the House of Representatives. In her three terms, she promoted gay rights, anti-discrimination measures, and pacifist views. She defended the right to both birth control and abortion. She advocated for the Equal Rights Amendment, which would mandate equal rights for women under the Constitution (and, unbelievably, has still not been passed).
And she wasn’t afraid of taking up space. She was known for wearing flamboyant hats whenever she could.
We are still fighting for many of the issues that Abzug fought for, including peace, labor rights, equality, and civil rights. If she were with us today, I’d like to think she would view the results of this election, not with frustration, but with determination.
After three terms in the House of Representatives, she ran for the Senate (which at the time was all-male) because she wanted more. If even today women are told to take up less space, keep our voice down, talk less, and stop fighting, I can only imagine what it was like for someone born in 1920. But she had a fire in her soul; ambitions that transcended man-made boundaries.
And she lost. She ran for Congress, again, and then for the mayor of New York City. And she lost those, too. But she didn’t give up, and her story didn’t end when she left office. She continued to contribute to her causes in important ways. She founded Women USA, a group advocating for pro-women policy from a grassroots level. This was a reaction to being ejected from Jimmy Carter’s National Advisory Committee on Women after vocally disagreeing with the Carter administration’s economic policy.
I appreciate that, to Abzug, speaking her mind was more important than sucking up to the president. One of the themes in Bella’s story is a refusal to stay down when pushed into a corner. Instead of allowing herself to give in, she went and founded a group that would do what the Carter administration wouldn't.
That’s why I admire Abzug. She thrived under conditions where others would have wilted. And today, where a fascist with a far-right agenda was just elected, where Black people receive racist spam texts telling them to “pick cotton,” where men’s rights activists comment “your body, my choice” on women's TikTok videos, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the injustice in the world.
Abzug’s story teaches me that the fight is never over. To borrow a line from the Harris campaign, when we fight, we win. Like Abzug did, we need to focus on nurturing and enlightening ourselves, then uplifting our communities. That is how we enact change on a national level.
Instead of listening to “Freedom” by Beyoncé (Kamala Harris’ campaign song) and mourning what could have been for the umpteenth time, I will turn to face the future. Rage is just a feeling. Action needs to be the result. I will go to the Women’s March and attend every protest. I will write letters to my representatives, and I will keep speaking out. In two years, I will vote. Because it is an abdication of civic responsibility to be silent. To be silent is to forget our history to not contest the actions of the new administration’s every step.
This piece was written as part of JWA’s Rising Voices Fellowship.