Photo: First International Women's Day demonstration in the U.S. in 23 years, March 8, 1969 with Laura X as both Isadora Duncan and Alexandra Kollontai, in Berkeley .

This is an urgent appeal for monthly donations to help pay for living expenses for a woman who is the living embodiment of the “Second Wave” of feminism in the late 1960s. Laura X was also a pivotal activist in the anti-nuclear, peace, and civil rights movements, and the Free Speech Movement in 1964. She remains active with her Women's History Library and Laura’s Social Movement Archives.

Laura is losing her home of 60 years on April 18! She needs the community's help to pay for a small apartment in Berkeley. Our strategy is to ask for a small donation from a lot of people. We are asking for a monthly donation of around $25 for the next year. Please see below for the details.

Laura earned international respect for her successful two-decade campaign in 45 states and 20 countries to end the legal privilege to rape one’s wife or date. In Spring 2024, Yorktown, Va. high school students are making a documentary about her work on marital rape for National History Day competition.

Keep Laura X in Berkeley!

At the age of 83 years, Laura X is still active in the struggle for women’s liberation and all human rights. Unfortunately, she has fallen on hard times. The bank has forced a sale of her house, and she is facing the prospect of homelessness in mid-April 2024.

Laura’s generosity also led her to share whatever resources she had with people in need, and with movements committed to fundamental social change. Now she has neither the assets nor the income to afford a rental apartment.

The reason Laura needs to remain in Berkeley is that this is where her support base and public benefits are strongest. And we need her here as a living link to the early feminism and other movements of the 1960s, whose issues are ongoing.

Our audacious goal is to raise $3,500 a month for the next year, to meet the soaring cost of livinghou of the Bay Area. This amount can be easily raised if a lot of people give a small amount of money.

Feminist trailblazer, now on hard times, needs your support.

We who work hard for social justice cannot allow our pioneers, who risked everything to build the movements we carry forward today, to spend their last years without a home. Please join the Friends of Laura X and Women’s Liberation in making a monthly donation of any amount to keep her housed for the next year.

Laura X brought International Women’s Day (IWD) back to the public’s consciousness in 1969 after it was last observed in the streets in 1947. Yes, IWD was reborn in Berkeley, by a Cal alumna! She inspired the first demonstration that Berkeley Women’s Liberation held for IWD on March 8, 1969. To expand the commemoration, she called for a National Women’s History Month to be built around IWD, and provided resources for such commemorations. The month of March is today recognized around the world as Women’s History Month.

Fifty states, Washington DC, and twenty other countries had banned marital and date rape in the 1990s, and at the UN 4th World Conference in Beijing, all the countries voted for wives' right to consent to each sex act in marriage. For more information on Laura’s life work, see http://ncmdr.org.

Celebrate International Women’s Day by Helping its Modern-Day Advocate!

In order to provide for Laura’s critical living expenses, we ask you to make monthly donations for the next twelve months.

We seek an average donation of just $25 a month. Some Friends are donating $50 to $100 or more–there is no limit. We’re also thrilled to receive smaller donations. Sorry, these donations are not yet tax-deductible.

To send checks: make out to Friends of Laura X and send to 2000 Allston Way #362, Berkeley CA 94704.

Please begin your donation immediately, because Laura must move out within weeks.

We stand on the shoulders of those who won important victories for women’s rights. Now it is time to lift them up. As many have said, “Lifting others up is the best form of exercise.”

Signed:

Ti-Grace Atkinson

Bettina Aptheker, Professor Emerita, Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz

Kathie Sarachild, founding member, NY Radical Women & Redstockings, 1967-1969 and current director of Redstockings Women's Liberation Archives for Action/www.redstockings.org

Carol Hanisch, Women’s Liberation Movement, MeetingGroundOnLine.org

Alix Kates Shulman, feminist writer and activist

Carol Giardina (Redstockings of the Women's Liberation Movement, Gainesville (FL) Women's Liberation)

Jenny Mansbridge, Co-founder, Cambridge Women's Center, 1971 see the documentary Left on Pearl); 2018 recipient of international Johan Skytte Prize in political science for "deep involvement and feminist theory.”

Rochelle G. Ruthchild, executive producer, "Left on Pearl" documentary; co- founder Cambridge women’s center; core faculty, Feminist Studies, Goddard Cambridge Graduate program in Social Change; Co-founder, Association for Women in Slavic Studies.

Kathy Scarbrough, MeetingGroundOnline.org, Feminists in Struggle

Candace Falk, Editor/Director: Emma Goldman Papers, and Author/Biographer: Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman

Pat Fineran Cervelli, Women's Liberation

Fran Luck, host/producer: Joy of Resistance Multicultural Feminist Radio @ WBAI

Dana Tiger, Mvskoke Seminole Cherokee, feminist artist-founder, Legacy Cultural Learning Community, Inc, www.tigerartgallery.com/, legacycultural.blogspot.com

Linda Franklin, Berkeley Citizens Action

Barbara Mehrhof

Basha Schanberg

Peggy Powell Dobbins

Heather Booth

George Lippman, vice-chair, Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission

Igor Tregub

Joe Bryak

Janice Schroeder

Andrea Prichett

Mavra Steinberg DeRise Stark

phil allen/SaveKMPXCampaign

Louise Bernikow, louisebernikow.com/

Susan Holper

for:

Friends of Laura X and Women’s Liberation

For background information on Laura X, founder/director of the former National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape and the Women's History Library, see:

http://ncmdr.org

For Laura’s Social Movement Archives:

http://lauraxinstitute.org

Laura's Facebook page:

https://facebook.com/laurarorthweinjr

Save feminist pioneer Laura X from homelessness!

Feminist trailblazer, now on hard times, needs your support.

Team Members