by Donna Finn

Abstract:

In 1978 a small group of women in Dorchester, MA (the largest of Boston's many neighborhoods - a multi-racial, multicultural, primarily working class and racially divided community), celebrated the first of twenty-six annual Dorchester International Women's Day (DIWD) events. After the second DIWD the organizers founded the Dorchester Women's Committee (DWC) because they believed the energy that was expended on DIWD was needed year-round to address issues of concern to women in Dorchester. The DWC assumed primary responsibility for organizing DIWD events thereafter.

The DWC never publicly identified itself or DIWD as "feminist," and did not employ "feminist" rhetoric. Instead, in 1981, it adopted the motto: "Who is that loud-mouthed woman from Dorchester? She's all of us!" Loud-mouthed became its public persona. Hence, the primary project title.

As the subtitle indicates, the project is a case study of DIWD, its organizer-participants and, because the organization and the event were integrally connected during this time period (1978-1997), the DWC as well. The author was a DIWD organizer-participant and member of the DWC during this period, and makes no pretense to objectivity but does aspire to scholastic integrity.

First person interviews, primary materials generated by the DWC, and secondary literature relative to the history of IWD, the U.S. left, and feminisms, are utilized to examine and analyze the political content of DIWD events and the political persuasion of its organizer-participants. The study concludes that DIWD and its organizer-participants constituted a radical feminist presence in Dorchester in this time period. This was not "radical-feminist" (typically defined by scholars as separatist and concerned primarily with gender and sexuality), but radical [and] feminist in the tradition of women of color in the U.S., defined as working primarily with women to achieve equality and justice for all human beings.

Who might be interested in reading this work?

Anyone who: seeks reassurance that mainstream media proclamations on the death of feminism in the late 1970s and the dawn of the post-feminist era in the early 1980s were premature; still believes feminist movement has been fueled only by white middle class women; is interested in learning one small part of Dorchester herstory; can tolerate academic jargon long enough to satisfy their curiosity about feminisms.