ustxtxb_obs_1975_11_28_50_00022-00000_000.pdf

N The Outpost Austin’s Best Barbecue 11:00-7:30 Monday-Saturday Closed Sunday David and Marion Moss -.345-9045 Highway 183 North Newspapers Magazines Political Specialists Printing Signs and Placards Bumperstrips By 1? 100% Union Shop Office Supplies IIIFFUTURA PRESS . Happiness Is Phone 512/4427836 1714 SOUTH CONGRESS P.O. BOX 3485 AUSTIN, TEXAS I ministers and their advisers, they won’t listen to you, and I’m sorry about the language, but I have lived through it.” Reid’s diatribe was received with a flutter from Lady Bird Johnson, a heavenly upward look from Carpenter, and a nervous thumbing-through-of-the-program 22 The Texas Observer 0. BROWSE TILL 10:00 P.M. MONDAY thru FRIDAY Now In Our 13th Year of mimic* to Austin GARNER AND SMITH-1 B.CSTORE 2116 Guidelupe Austin, Texts 717116 477-9725 by UT President Lorene Rogers. But Reid’s opening session speech was perhaps the best of the entire conference, for she spoke of reality; not glossed-over I’m-a-womanand-I-did-it, success stories. Her answer to the question “After Mexico City, What Next?” was “backlash” from men and women. “Now I didn’t want to say that here because it’s a very negative, tragic message, but that is the reality as I see it and if that is the reality and if we’re going to be realistic then we must acknowledge that and fight them and beat them, but not be blind to the reality and pretend it doesn’t exist.” Perhaps one of the few women there with enough courage to bring about the changes she spoke of, Reid had resigned her “unique” job in Australia. Why? After her radical deliveries to IWY in Mexico City as the Australian delegate, her women’s programs back home had been slashed to shreds. Backlash. UNLIKE REID, Barbara Jordan has more going against her than sex and radicalism she is black and a southerner. But it only took a minute of listening to her to see why Redbook magazine named her a top woman presidential choice. She left the crowd cheering after reciting the pledge of allegiance: “We want to look at the flag, hold our hands over our hearts, repeat those words and know they’re true.” Although it would be easy in 1975 to be optimistic about the advances of women, Jordan cautioned against forgetting women are still a minority. “We fail to define ourselves as whole human beings, full human beings,” she said. “Somewhere in the back of our minds is the thought that we are not quite equal and that’s nobody’s fault but out own.” Jordan delivered a few pokes at the governor in her hypothetical discussion of passing the ERA in Texas today. “First we would have to call in a Constitutional expert to explain it to the governor,” she joked. When the cheering subsided she added, “That is unfair. I’ve heard the governor knows how to read.” As if one potential candidate for the White House wasn’t enough for the conference, Martha Griffiths came along on the last day of the session promising, “Unlike General Sherman, I’ll run” if ANDERSON & COMPANY COFFEE TEA SPICES TWO JEFFERSON SQUARE AUSTIN, TEXAS ‘1S731 5.12 453-1533 Send me your list. Name Street City Zip nominated for vice-president by the Democratic convention. She didn’t volunteer that news, though, she was asked from the floor by India Edwards, who herself declined the nomination in 1952. Griffiths has just delivered a speech on “Power How to Get It and How to Use It,” something she said is hard to obtain with the heavy hand of tradition hanging over Congress. But Griffiths said something else something that might have shattered a few illusions in that auditorium. “In the beginning, if you are ever to be effective, you must say yes sir and no sir, and pay attention to what you are doing,” she advised, warning against enlightening men on their own mistakes. Anger consumed her voice as she contrasted the way laws protect men and their current wives “of just a few minutes” rather than the divorced wife of forty or fifty years. “But there are still those who say women should stay at home and be cared for by their husbands.” Nelson Rockefeller showed up for a “surprise” visit one evening, apparently at the invitation of Lady Bird. He said nothing even worthy of writing down, except to pat himself on the back for the women he has appointed to various commissions a total of three. “I know what women in political life have done and are doing,” he grinned. From. that point on, it became obvious the people who were running this conference were more involved in power struggles of their own than advancing the cause of women. Rockefeller made a sham out of the evening and the conference he stole the spotlight away from the women trying to conduct a serious symposium on women in public life and became the lead story in the newspaper instead of the conference. To top off his other attempts at being a “liberated man,” Rockefeller addressed the audience as “ladies.” Rockefeller can be excused since he’s always been a dodo, but then we get to Luci Nugent and actress Sandy Duncan. Duncan admitted she has always been a closet “women’s libber” and then bellowed, “But I’m comin’ out.” Undaunted, Duncan then suggested to Lady Bird Johnson that she change her name to Woman Bird John-daughter. That didn’t go over too big with the former First Lady, and emcee Cactus Pryor had to patch things over later. Then there was Luci Nugent, who somehow convinced the organizers to let her introduce Barbara Jordan. She shot off several stories about “Daddy” and how he used to sit her on his knee and say, “Luci America’s greatest untapped resource is its womanpower.” You had to hear it to get the inflections on “Daddy” and “Luci” right, but it was pretty plain she didn’t understand the purpose of the conference much more than Rocky. Despite those attempts to turn the