The Portland Women’s Movement Part 2 – Building: From Activism to Institutions

The Portland Women’s Movement Part 2,
Building: from Activism to Institutions

History of Social Justice Organizing’s History of the Portland Women’s
Movement continues on March 7th with Building: from Activism to
Institutions featuring Ruth Gundle, Kristan Knapp, Ann Mussey, and May
Wallace.

Find us in the second floor Gallery of the Urban Affairs Building at
Portland State University, 506 SW Mill on Thursday, March 7, 7-8:30 pm.
The program is co-sponsored by PSU’s Center for Women, Politics and
Policy. Free and open to the public, as usual.

The Portland women’s movement of the 70s began with protests and
consciousness raising but quickly expanded to include projects and
services: bookstores, abortion information and referral, a rape hotline,
women’s studies at PSU, an independent feminist school, a building, a
health clinic and more. This panel will cover the Community Law Project,
the Rape Relief Hotline, the Red Emma collective, the Portland Women’s
Health Clinic and Prescott House.

Ruth Gundle was one of the founders of the Community Law Project in
1975, a feminist law collective that represented both women and
organizations such as the Trojan Decommissioning Alliance and the
Portland Tenants’ Union. Ruth won the first lesbian custody case in
Oregon, and brought the first sexual harassment case in Oregon. In 1979
she went to work for the state legal services program where she
successfully brought suit to strike down Oregon’s refusal to pay for
Medicaid abortions and the first successful civil suit nationally
against a police department for failure to arrest a battering spouse.
She will talk about how they tried to run the CLP on feminist principles.

Ann Mussey was a member of a feminist collective in 1971 Portland called
Red Emma (after leftist organizer Emma Goldman)  which was home to some
of the early founders of the Portland Women’s Health Clinic. She is
currently on the faculty at Portland State University in Women, Gender,
and Sexuality Studies teaching courses related to gender and sexuality
including queer activism.

Kristan Knapp joined the Red Emma Collective in 1972. She and Bonnie
Tinker worked with others to found Prescott House, a place for women
getting out of prison to readjust to society. By 1975, with the
development of feminist consciousness about institutionalized violence
against women, it evolved into Bradley-Angle House, the first shelter
for women escaping violence on the West Coast. From 2002-2009 Kristan
worked as Bradley Angle’s Development Director, and helped the
organization reconnect with its roots

May Wallace (formerly Susan Crawford) was a member of the Main Street
Gathering, a collective of activists working to create a just society.
She helped launch the Rape Relief Hotline in 1973 (now known as the
Portland Women’s Crisis Line). Presently she is an artist, activist and
recently retired art teacher.

History of Social Justice Organizing is an ongoing series of
presentations by activists and scholars on a wide variety of social
justice organizing topics in Portland and elsewhere. The mission of the
Center for Women, Politics & Policy is to increase women’s leadership in
public policy through targeted teaching and community service programs.
Contact us at 

Find upcoming programs at historyofsocialjustice.wordpress.com
www.facebook.com/historyofsocialjustice.

The Center for Women, Politics and Policy: cwpp.pdx.edu/

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