The Mohawk Warrior Society: Book Launch and Screenings on Indigenous Sovereignty and Survival Join us for the launch of an unprecedented book, a public roundtable with members of the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnistensera, an activist group of Mohawk women from Kahnawake, and film screenings in celebration of Indigenous culture and resilience. The Mohawk Warrior Society: A Handbook on Sovereignty and Survival, is the centrepiece of our events. Containing new oral history by key figures of the Rotisken’rhakéhte revival in the 1970s, this compilation tells the story of the Warriors’ famous flag and other art, their armed occupation of Ganienkeh in 1974, and the role of their constitution, the Great Peace. This book launch is part of a two-day series of events and film screenings that foreground Kanien’kehá:ka activism, culture, and current issues within the broader rubric of Indigenous sovereignty. Watch the second day of this series here: https://youtu.be/BC_neUgR1fU Follow this link to purchase a copy of The Mohawk Warrior Society: A Handbook on Sovereignty and Survival: https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=produ…0:07 — Introduction 16:03 — Round Table Discussion 1:59:02 — Video Messages 2:46:57 — Q&A
The first collection of its kind, this anthology by members of the Mohawk Warrior Society uncovers a hidden history and paints a bold portrait of the spectacular experience of Kanien’kehá:ka survival and self-defense.
Providing extensive documentation, context, and analysis, the book features foundational writings by prolific visual artist and polemicist Louis Karoniaktajeh Hall (1918–1993) — such as his landmark 1979 pamphlet, The Warrior’s Handbook, as well as selections of his pioneering artwork. This book contains new oral history by key figures of the Rotisken’rhakéhte’s revival in the 1970s, and tells the story of the Warriors’ famous flag, their armed occupation of Ganienkeh in 1974, and the role of their constitution, the Great Peace, in guiding their commitment to freedom and independence. We hear directly the story of how the Kanien’kehá:ka Longhouse became one the most militant resistance groups in North America, gaining international attention with the Oka Crisis of 1990. This auto-history of the Rotisken’rhakéhte is complemented by a Mohawk history timeline from colonization to the present, a glossary of Mohawk political philosophy, and a new map of Iroquoia in Mohawk language. At last, the Mohawk Warriors can tell their own story with their own voices, and to serve as an example and inspiration for future generations struggling against the environmental, cultural, and social devastation cast upon the modern world. (From Between the Lines)
Louis Karoniaktajeh Hall was a prolific Kanien’kehá:a painter and writer from Kahnawake, whose work continues to inspire generations of Indigenous people today.
The first collection of its kind, this anthology by members of the Mohawk Warrior Society uncovers a hidden history and paints a bold portrait of the spectacular experience of Kanien’kehá:ka survival and self-defense.
Providing extensive documentation, context, and analysis, the book features foundational writings by prolific visual artist and polemicist Louis Karoniaktajeh Hall (1918–1993) — such as his landmark 1979 pamphlet, The Warrior’s Handbook, as well as selections of his pioneering artwork. This book contains new oral history by key figures of the Rotisken’rhakéhte’s revival in the 1970s, and tells the story of the Warriors’ famous flag, their armed occupation of Ganienkeh in 1974, and the role of their constitution, the Great Peace, in guiding their commitment to freedom and independence. We hear directly the story of how the Kanien’kehá:ka Longhouse became one the most militant resistance groups in North America, gaining international attention with the Oka Crisis of 1990. This auto-history of the Rotisken’rhakéhte is complemented by a Mohawk history timeline from colonization to the present, a glossary of Mohawk political philosophy, and a new map of Iroquoia in Mohawk language. At last, the Mohawk Warriors can tell their own story with their own voices, and to serve as an example and inspiration for future generations struggling against the environmental, cultural, and social devastation cast upon the modern world. (From Between the Lines)
Louis Karoniaktajeh Hall was a prolific Kanien’kehá:a painter and writer from Kahnawake, whose work continues to inspire generations of Indigenous people today.
How do we assert reproductive autonomy when far rightists are on the offensive and liberals have failed to stop them?
As we noted two months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision repealing Roe v. Wade marks a historic victory for the Christian right and specifically its fascist, theocratic wing. Defending access to abortion is an antifascist struggle, but that doesn’t mean the focus should be only, or even primarily, on combating the far right. What’s needed is a struggle on two fronts: against the various forces of the authoritarian right but also against their centrist enablers—the politicians and institutions that have long claimed to be defending abortion access while weakening opposition to the far right and giving ground to it step by step by step. These are different kinds of struggle and they call for different approaches.
This is what three way fight politics is all about: a recognition that the fascistic far right is interconnected with but distinct from the oppressive status quo, and combating them both requires interconnected but distinct strategies.
In the wake of Roe’s repeal, I’ve seen several excellent essays that use this kind of two-front framework to guide liberatory strategy. I’d like to focus here on three of these essays, to highlight what they share and also how their different perspectives broaden and enrich an ongoing discussion that’s vitally needed.
Noah Zazanis, in “On Our Own Terms: Class Struggle for Abortion and Transition,” argues that “Right-wing offensives against abortion, transition, and queer sociality aim to enforce the bourgeois family by any means necessary,” and calls for a labor-based struggle that challenges the constraints imposed by established non-governmental institutions (NGOs).
CrimethInc.’s “To Defend Abortion Access, Take the Offensive” advocates a carefully tailored approach to militant direct action in order to exert leverage where it can be most effective—on liberal politicians.
Reading these essays, I see three overarching themes—three key things that each of them calls on us to do: highlight interconnections between different groups or rights under attack, confront liberal NGOs and the Democratic Party, and develop a clear and militant strategy. Let’s look at each of these themes in turn.
Highlight interconnections
Both Elise Hendrick and Noah Zazanis frame access to abortion as a key form of bodily autonomy, and both specifically emphasize connections between criminalizing abortion and criminalizing trans people as two prongs of a larger right-wing strategy. Zazanis writes, “The surface logic of parental consent laws [for getting an abortion] is similar to the logic barring childhood transition: abortion is a serious, irreversible medical procedure for which youth under 18 are too young to give informed consent.” Hendrick denounces a recent New York Times column that tries to stake out a position that’s pro-abortion rights yet trans-exclusionary as a blatant example of divide-and-rule tactics.
Zazanis also emphasizes the ties between defending bodily autonomy and building a strong working class:
“Our fights for healthcare, and against criminalization, are inseparable from the labor rights of healthcare workers, and of the nonprofit workers doing unpaid overtime in the wake of the Dobbs ruling. More than ever, we must build strong, independent unions willing to defend workers who refuse to enforce these bans… It is no coincidence that the workers on the frontline of criminalization are in fields dominated by women, fields where queer workers are overrepresented and underpaid.”
Hendrick and CrimethInc. both highlight a further connection: between the fight for abortion access and the fight against police violence and repression. CrimethInc. urges abortion rights advocates to learn from the George Floyd uprising and writes, “Yes, there are fundamental differences between the movement for reproductive freedom and the movement for Black lives—but those who will be most impacted by the criminalization of abortion overlap considerably with those who are most impacted by racist policing.” Hendrick calls out implications for movement security, noting that criminalization of abortion means “the full weight of the surveillance state is coming down on millions of people who have previously been largely exempt from it…. That means making clear the importance of not talking to the police, not coordinating with police, protecting our identities, and…not posting unedited video of people doing illegal things on social media.”
In summary, drawing the connections between anti-oppression struggles helps us to understand the right’s larger agenda, build and strengthen coalitions, make our movements smarter, and honor the multiple and complex ways that people are affected by institutional violence.
Confront NGOs and the Democrats
All three of our featured essays sharply criticize the Democratic Party’s role as supposed defender of abortion access. Zazanis notes that “For decades, Democratic leadership has treated abortion as a cudgel for electoral gains” (and more recently has done the same with so-called “LGBT issues”). Hendrick adds that this approach has repeatedly meant whitewashing the shameful anti-abortion positions of some Democratic candidates, such as Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate Tim Kaine. CrimethInc. describes the effect of such opportunism as “the workings of the political ratchet, in which Republicans continuously push state institutions towards more oppressive agendas while Democrats continuously give ground, keeping those who are suffering invested in the state itself in hopes that it might one day be reformed.” As I’ve argued elsewhere, this dynamic doesn’t result from Democratic leaders’ subjective “weakness”—it reflects the party’s structural role as a vehicle to divert liberatory initiatives into support for an oppressive, capitalist order.
Zazanis and Hendrick are similarly critical of liberal NGOs for being structurally and financially tied to a “respectability politics” that weakens—or simply betrays—liberatory struggle. Hendrick warns that “Liberal non-profits will try to narrow the focus of this movement, to divide bodily autonomy into specific niches… and channel our energy and our anger into avenues that don’t make the ruling class nervous. They will resist any attempt to defy these laws and the cops who enforce them outright, and they will try to prevent any kind of solidarity and cross-pollination” between political struggles. Zazanis gets more specific, calling out Reproaction for trying to police the boundaries of acceptable “direct action” and Planned Parenthood, the Guttmacher Institute, and the National Center for Transgender Equality for union-busting and abusive management practices. Even smaller, more independent NGOs engaged in vitally important support for self-managed medication abortion have “effectively ignored the question of who runs the clinics and how they operate, or how to defy those who seek to close them.”
Hendrick sums up part of the lesson with regard to both NGOs and the Democratic Party: “Only by maintaining our independence from these institutions can we exert the sort of pressure that is necessary in order to force them to do the right thing.”
Develop clear, militant strategy
To varying degrees, all three essays offer suggestions on what’s needed to protect abortion access and bodily autonomy more broadly. Zazanis advocates breaking with respectability politics, recognizing that effective direct action “makes oppressors feel victimized,” and forming independent networks both to help criminalized people survive and to lay a foundation for more comprehensive institutional change in the future.
Hendrick elaborates on Zazanis’s point about direct action:
“If we want the ruling class to even consider restoring our right to bodily autonomy, we need to put the hurt on them. We need an or else.
“Historically, the movements that have extracted meaningful concessions from unwilling ruling classes have been those that attack the two major pressure points of capitalist society: profitability, which is the point of the entire system, and governability, which calls the system’s very existence into question.”
As reference points, she cites two recent large-scale militant initiatives: in Poland in 2016, mass protests and a strike (an attack on profitability) that forced the government to walk back a proposed total abortion ban, and in the U.S. in 2020, widespread militant attacks on both police stations and big box retail stores (governability and profitability) following the police murder of George Floyd. Hendrick argues that calls to abolish the police have not succeeded because they threaten capitalist society on a deep level, but that U.S. capitalists are not committed to banning abortion and would restore abortion access “if we make it clear that they can’t afford not to.”
CrimethInc., too, argues for a militant approach, but they are particularly concerned with how militancy is targeted:
“if your goal is to exert leverage, you have to identify a group you can actually exert leverage on—a group that is likely to change course as a consequence of your intervention…. You have to make sure that the target of your efforts has a choice—then make them an offer they can’t refuse.”
They cite two counter-examples. On one hand, many abortion rights proponents have joined public rallies that help to boost participants’ morale but have no specific target. On the other, a number of anonymous groups, operating under the name Jane’s Revenge, have vandalized anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers.” The latter actions “may inspire people to take action on their own, but do not offer a participatory space in which to build collective momentum.” In addition, although the vandalism actions have a specific focus, “in targeting anti-abortion centers, they are taking on the most intransigent opponents of abortion…” CrimethInc. continues, “If it is possible to exert leverage on anyone who is complicit in criminalizing abortion, it is probably not far-right religious cult members, but their centrist accomplices”—in other words, liberal and moderate politicians who could be persuaded to defend abortion access if the cost of not doing so is high enough.
Here, too, the movement against racist police violence offers a useful reference point:
“At the high point of the George Floyd uprising, when millions of people had ceased to accept the legitimacy of the police and were acting accordingly, we saw terrified liberals like the mayor of Minneapolis suddenly take the demands of the movement very seriously, promising to take steps towards police abolition… Later, when the politicians had reestablished control, they betrayed those promises—showing that our effectiveness hinges on keeping our social movements lively and strong, not on winning concessions.”
Exerting leverage in this way is very different from allying with liberals against the far right, or with, say, the federal government against state governments. As CrimethInc. puts it, “compelling one [state] institution to limit the power of another can be strategic, provided it does not contribute to legitimizing any of the institutions involved. It must be clear to everyone that the power that drives social change derives from grassroots organizing, not from state institutions…”
Concluding thoughts
How do we go about asserting reproductive autonomy in the face of a major defeat, when far rightists are on the offensive and the forces of liberal respectability have failed to stop them? The three essays I’ve examined here grapple with this question in related ways. That doesn’t mean that their authors necessarily agree on every point, but it’s striking to me how much their arguments complement each other, and I do think the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. At the least, there’s a lot here that can inform and inspire further discussion and strategizing.
I started this discussion by invoking three way fight politics as a framework for strategy. None of the three essays uses that terminology, but at least two of them make points closely related to it. CrimethInc. notes that the far right are not defenders of the established order but rather advocates of social change (increased repression and oppression) and have used sustained pressure campaigns and a range of tactics, including bombings and murder, to bring it about. Hendrick emphasizes that those who advocate banning abortion are “a minority of bigots who are useful to capital, but far from essential to it,” and it is precisely this gap that opens strategic space for advocates of liberatory politics. These three essays insist that we have choices beyond surrendering to fascism on one hand and subordinating radical possibility to liberal holding actions on the other.
Anticipating the overturn of Roe v. Wade, lots of people are quietly gearing up to provide abortions outside the medical and legal system, generally with abortion pills. The technology is new, but underground abortions are not. Millions of women had illegal procedures in the century when abortion was illegal all over the U.S., between 1873 and 1973. The Guttmacher institute estimates that between 200,000 and 1.2 million abortions were performed each year in the 1950s and ‘60s.
But a century of underground lawbreaking didn’t change the law. Only public action did that, including publicly breaking contraception and abortion laws in order to change them. This history suggests some risky but potentially powerful strategies for us to use now.
Secret vs. public
Secret provision of abortion may carry legal risks for all involved, but it has immediate rewards. An abortion instantly gives someone a measure of control over their life, a big feminist effect for something so simple. Abortion patients may even join the movement through contact with underground efforts. In the early 1970s, Jane, the now-famous underground abortion service in Chicago, provided women’s liberation literature along with respectful care during 11,000 safe abortion procedures.
In 1963, Carol Giardina saw so many classmates drop out due to pregnancy that she started an abortion referral service out of her dorm at the University of Florida. Giardina recalled that she did referrals “without much thought of the politics of it until 1968 when the politics of it were made clear to me in the Women’s Liberation Movement. I continued the referrals, but began fighting publicly for abortion and women’s liberation.”
As Giardina suggests, it was only when feminist organizers made abortion a public, political issue that they were able to force the power structure to make abortion legal. First, they had to make the hidden public. After discovering in consciousness-raising meetings that many of them had had illegal abortions—and that everyone was terrified they’d need one—women’s liberationists made their discoveries about their oppression public, recruiting millions. They invaded abortion reform hearings to give their own testimony, conducted speak-outs detailing their illegal abortions, and filed lawsuits on behalf of women affected by the abortion laws. They swept away tepid reforms with their demand for repeal of all abortion laws. Their grassroots theory leadership and mass action made abortion legal in New York State by 1970, a model followed by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade three years later.
Among the many strategies the movement used was publicly breaking the laws to change them. Their civil disobedience followed the example of the birth control movement, which at the time was still fighting to free up contraceptive distribution everywhere, and to legalize it in a few holdout states. In Connecticut, doctors were prohibited from providing contraceptives to their patients, so in 1961 Estelle Griswold opened a clinic in New Haven to do just that. The police shut it down, but her case went to the Supreme Court and established the right to contraception for the married in Griswold v Connecticut (1965).
Acts of civil disobedience by birth control campaigner Bill Baird secured this right for the unmarried. Baird was arrested when he handed out packages of contraceptive foam and condoms to unmarried college students at a talk at Boston University in 1967. In Eisenstadt v Baird (1972), the Supreme Court struck down the Massachusetts law.
Army of Three
Starting in 1962 in northern California, pioneering abortion campaigner Patricia Maginnis, who died last year at 93, relentlessly distributed referral lists of abortion providers in Mexico, Sweden and Japan. This violated state and local laws. Her goal was not service but arrest, prosecution, and overturning the law. Maginnis and two comrades she recruited through her activities, Rowena Gurner and Lana Clarke Phelan, were known as the “Army of Three.” A San Francisco arrest for “unlawfully advertising abortion” got rid of that local statute. Escalating, they advertised and taught do-it-yourself abortion classes in 1966 and 1967, always inviting the police. After many tries, Maginnis and Gurner were finally arrested mid-class. Their case eventually overturned the California code that muzzled speech on abortion.
Following Army of Three techniques, pioneers in the Women’s Health Movement, led by Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothman, toured the country teaching classes in menstrual extraction. Rather than enduring a period with several days of bleeding, women learned to use a device of Rothman’s design on each other which suctioned out the menstrual blood. If you happened to be pregnant, this could provide an early abortion. Teaching the system was not without legal risk. At one point Downer was arrested and put on trial for practicing medicine without a license for treating someone’s vaginal yeast infection with yogurt. Downer beat the charges in a widely-publicized trial that established some legal space for women’s self-help clinics.
Putting pressure on the laws
The 1950s and ’60s saw a police crackdown on doctors who performed abortions. Dozens of skilled practitioners were arrested or had their licenses revoked, and many were jailed. A few brave doctors practiced openly, challenging the laws. Dr. Milan Vuitch, a Yugoslavian immigrant unconcerned with the approval of the medical establishment, was arrested twice and exonerated twice. After these hassles, he decided to do abortions openly in Washington D.C., broadly interpreting the health exception in the D.C. law. Arrested a third time, he managed to get the law overturned, effectively legalizing abortion in D.C. in 1969.
Referrals were the typical way non-doctors broke the law. In 1966, Margaret Sanger’s biographer, Lawrence Lader, published Abortion, a pioneering history of the practice for which he interviewed doctors who gave abortions clandestinely. Women were soon asking Lader for the doctors’ phone numbers, which he provided. At a press event for his book, he let slip that he was providing this service, and soon he was spending half his workdays fielding urgent inquiries and maintaining doctor lists. Lader went on to co-found the National Association for Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) with Betty Friedan and others, and wrote Abortion II, an important 1973 history of the movement.
Radical clergy, led by Reverend Howard Moody at Judson Memorial Church in New York announced on the front page of the New York Times in 1967 that ministers and rabbis would provide abortion referrals to anyone who needed them as the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion. “Mr. Moody acknowledged that the project involves ‘some legal risk,’” the Times noted, “but he added: ‘We are not willing to admit that it is illegal.’” The service eventually grew to 3,000 clergy in 40 cities. They tended to refer across state lines, and also to Puerto Rico and England, hoping this would slow down prosecutors.
Nonetheless, in 1969 Cleveland minister Robert Hare was indicted for aiding and abetting a criminal abortion in Massachusetts; he was eventually exonerated. In 1970, Rabbi Max Ticktin, director of Hillel at the University of Chicago, was arrested and his case became a student rallying point. The indictment came from Michigan where furor over the case strengthened demands for Michigan to repeal its law entirely.
By the early 1970s, feminist groups at most colleges were providing abortion referrals. The school newspaper at the University of Florida published a referral list in 1972. When the printer refused to print that page, staff inserted the list in every copy. University administrators kicked the paper off campus for this crime. To this day, the Independent Florida Alligator has no official ties to the university.
In Chicago, the Jane abortion service became public involuntarily, when a police raid led to seven arrests in 1972. Each woman was charged with 11 counts of abortion and conspiracy to commit abortion, a possible 110 years each. Despite the arrests, the service continued to provide abortions until Roe made it possible to open abortion clinics in Chicago. Their charges were dropped after the Roe decision.
Featured image: #ShoutYourAbortion brought the #AbortionPillsForever message to the streets of Jackson, MS in early 2022. A QR code on the back of the truck led to ShareAbortionPill.Info, a site with more info about the pills. The action recalled Estelle Griswold’s 1961 arrest for providing contraception to married couples. Her case went all the way to the Supreme Court and helped end bans on contraception.
Jenny Brown of National Women’s Liberation (and author of Without Apology and Birth Strike) on the early struggle for abortion rights that led to Roe and what we can learn from it for today. And journalist David De Jong, author of Nazi Billionaires, on how respectable German businessmen became loyal Nazis.
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