This Monday February 9th on KPFA Radio’s Women’s Magazine Kate Raphael talks with Arlene Eisen about her new memoir In the Worldwide Family of Militant Women. Arlene has been a militant in the struggle against imperialism and white supremacy since the 1960s—first as a protester facing tear gas and later as a teacher and writer. She edited the newspaper called The Movement, and was a leading voice in the anti-imperialist women’s movement of the 1970s.
At various times as she raised her two sons mostly as a single parent, she was a lecturer in sociology and women’s studies, a machinist, a journalist and public health expert. During the first ten years of her children’s lives, she was on welfare. In 2012 Arlene Eisen authored the groundbreaking study, Operation Ghetto Storm, published by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, which revealed that an unarmed Black person is killed by an agent of the state every 28 hours in the united states.
In the Worldwide Family of Militant Women traces Arlene’s journey from New York to Berkeley to Vietnam, China, Cuba, and back to San Francisco. She narrates her deep involvement in the Black Freedom struggle, the sixties counterculture, the movements to stop the Vietnam War, to support anti-imperialist struggles from Iran to Puerto Rico people, and the growing importance of feminism in helping her make sense of her own life.
In the Worldwide Family of Militant Women is available from Iskra Books.
And in the second half of the show Lisa Dettmer talks to composer and Musician Adrienne Torf. Adrienne Torf and her collaborator Raymond O Caldwell have produced an intimate portrait of well known local legendary black feminist and activist scholar, teacher and poet June Jordan by combining her words of fierce commitment to justice and self determination for all people with music and movement. The show, “Poetry for the People: The June Jordan Experience” is being performed in Berkeley for one night only on February 24th at the Freight and Salvage. This show is performed by six actors from the Fountain Theatre, Los Angeles production and Jordan’s collaborator and partner, composer/pianist Adrienne Torf. the show features Jordan’s poetry, interviews, and other writing, along with her work set to music by Torf, John Adams, and Bernice Johnson Reagon. “Poetry for the People: The June Jordan Experience” was honored with the Theater Washington Helen Hayes Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play in 2023. This performance on Tuesday February 24th at the Freight and Salvage will be the only one outside of Los Angeles this year. *Premium tickets include admission to a post-show reception with the cast and sponsors.
