Bella Abzug


Bella Savitzky Abzug, nicknamed "Battling Bella", was an American lawyer, U.S. Representative, social activist and a leader of the Women's Movement. In 1971, Abzug joined other leading feminists such as Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, and Betty Friedan to found the National Women's Political Caucus.
In 1970, Abzug's first campaign slogan was, "This woman's place is in the House—the House of Representatives." She was later appointed to co-chair the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year created by President Gerald Ford's executive order, presided over the 1977 National Women's Conference, and led President Jimmy Carter's National Advisory Commission for Women.

Early life

Bella Savitzky was born on July 24, 1920, in New York City. Both of her parents were Russian Jewish immigrants. Her mother, Esther, was a homemaker, and her father, Emanuel Savitzky, ran the Live and Let Live Meat Market on Ninth Avenue. Even in her youth, she was competitive and would beat others, including boys, in all sorts of competitions. She ran the cash register at her father's deli as a young girl.
When her father died, Abzug, then 13, was told that her Orthodox synagogue did not permit women to say the Kaddish, since that rite was reserved for sons of the deceased. However, because her father had no sons, she went to the synagogue every morning for a year to recite the prayer, defying the tradition of her congregation's practice of Orthodox Judaism.
Abzug graduated from Walton High School in New York City, where she was class president, and went on to Hunter College of the City University of New York and simultaneously attended the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. She later earned a law degree from Columbia University in 1944.

Legal and political career

Abzug was admitted to the New York Bar in 1945, and started practicing in New York City at the firm of Pressman, Witt & Cammer, particularly in matters of labor law. She became an attorney in the 1940s, a time when very few women practiced law. Early on, she took on civil rights cases in the South. She appealed the case of Willie McGee, a black man convicted in 1945 of raping a white woman in Laurel, Mississippi and sentenced to death by an all-white jury who deliberated for only two-and-a-half minutes. Abzug lost the appeal and the man was executed. Abzug was an outspoken advocate of liberal causes, including the Equal Rights Amendment, and opposition to the Vietnam War.
Years before she was elected to the House of Representatives, she was an early participant in Women Strike for Peace. Her political stands placed her on the master list of Nixon political opponents.

Congressional career

Elections

Nicknamed "Battling Bella", in 1970, she challenged the 14-year incumbent, Leonard Farbstein, in the Democratic primary for a congressional district on Manhattan's West Side. She defeated Farbstein in a considerable upset and then defeated talk show host Barry Farber in the general election. In 1972, her district was eliminated via redistricting and she chose to run against William Fitts Ryan, who also represented part of the West Side, in the Democratic primary. Ryan, although seriously ill, defeated Abzug. However, Ryan died before the general election and Abzug defeated his widow, Priscilla, in a party convention to choose the new Democratic nominee. In the general election Priscilla Ryan challenged Abzug on the Liberal Party line, but was unsuccessful. In the general election she was reelected easily in 1974. For her last two terms, she represented part of The Bronx as well. In 1976, she left her seat in the House in favor of an unsuccessful campaign for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Tenure

She was one of the first members of Congress to support gay rights, introducing the first federal gay rights bill, known as the Equality Act of 1974, with fellow Democratic New York City Representative, Ed Koch, a future mayor of New York City. She chaired historic hearings on government secrecy. She was chair of Subcommittee on Government Information and Individual Rights. She was voted by her colleagues the third most influential member of the House as reported in U.S. News & World Report. Although they were banned on the House floor, Abzug was known for her colorful and vibrant hats. She famously reminded all who admired them: "It's what's under the hat that counts!"
In February 1975, Abzug was part of a bi-partisan delegation sent to Saigon by President Gerald Ford to assess the situation on the ground in South Vietnam near the end of the Vietnam War. Abzug was the only member of the delegation to oppose continued military and humanitarian aid to South Vietnam, yet her views quickly gained support in Congress. Abzug herself was the one who later told South Vietnamese President Thieu directly that the U.S. would not provide "one more dollar" of support. The controversial withdrawal of support contributed to the collapse of South Vietnam.
Abzug was a supporter of Zionism. As a young woman she was a member of the Socialist-Zionist youth movement of Hashomer Hatzair. In 1975 she challenged the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, which "determine that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination".

Campaign for U.S. Senate

Abzug's career in Congress ended with an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination for the US Senate in 1976, which she lost by less than one percent to the more moderate Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had served in both the Nixon and Ford Administrations as White House Urban Affairs Advisor, Counselor to the President, United States Ambassador to India, and United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Moynihan would go on to serve four terms in that office.
President Carter "appointed her chair of the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year and, later, co-chair of the National Advisory Commission for Women".

Later life and death

Abzug never held elected office again after leaving the House, although she remained a high-profile figure and was again a candidate on multiple occasions. She was unsuccessful in her bid to be Mayor of New York City in 1977, as well as in attempts to return to the US House from the East Side of Manhattan in 1978 against Republican Bill Green, and from Westchester County, New York in 1986 against Joe DioGuardi.
She authored two successful books, Bella: Ms. Abzug Goes to Washington and The Gender Gap, the latter co-authored with friend and colleague, Mim Kelber.
She continually devised innovative strategies to further her vision of equality and power for women in the United States and abroad. In early 1977, President Jimmy Carter chose a new National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year and appointed Abzug to head it. Numerous events were held over the next two years, culminating in the 1977 National Women's Conference in November. She would continue this work as one of the two co-chairpersons for the National Advisory Committee for Women until her dismissal in January 1979, which would create a flash point of tension between the Carter administration and feminist organizations in the United States.

International Advocacy

Abzug founded and ran several women's advocacy organizations, in 1979 Women U.S.A. and continued to lead feminist advocacy events, for example serving as grand marshal of the Women's Equality Day New York March on August 26, 1980.
In the last decade of her life, in the early 1990s, with Mim Kelber, she co-founded the Women's Environment and Development Organization, in their own words "a global women's advocacy organization working towards a just world that promotes and protects human rights, gender equality, and the integrity of the environment". As WEDO president, she became an influential leader at the United Nations and at UN world conferences, working to empower women around the globe. Among its early successes was the World Women's Congress for a Healthy Planet held in Miami in 1991, where 1,500 women from 83 countries produced the Women's Action Agenda 21. Extending its perspective into the next century, this is a blueprint for incorporating women's concerns into development and environmental decision-making at all levels.
Following through on her belief that women's direct participation is absolutely necessary for social change, Bella developed the Women's Caucus, which used new methods to get women involved in every phase of planning and development for UN conferences. The Women's Caucus analyzed documents, proposed gender-sensitive policies and language, and lobbied to advance the Women's Agenda for the 21st Century at the UN Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Bella and WEDO went on to play a leading role at the UN. They worked through the Women's Caucus to highlight issues of greatest concern to women in both ongoing policy-making and at major UN conferences, including the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. During UN conferences, governments would make commitments, promising to meet some of the goals furthered by the conference. WEDO developed strategies to monitor governments and make the results public.
and President Jimmy Carter
During her last years, Bella kept up her busy schedule of travel and work, even though she traveled in a wheelchair. Bella led WEDO until her death, giving her final public speech before the UN in March 1998.
After battling breast cancer for a number of years, she developed heart disease and died on March 31, 1998, from complications following open heart surgery. She was 77. Abzug was interred at Old Mount Carmel Cemetery, Glendale, Queens County, New York. She was inducted into the Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls and is the recipient of numerous prestigious national and international awards. A year before her death, Bella received the highest civilian recognition and honor at the U.N., the Blue Beret Peacekeepers Award.

Personal life

In 1944, Bella Savitsky married Martin Abzug, a novelist, and stockbroker. They met on a bus in Miami, Florida on the way to a Yehudi Menuhin concert and remained married until his death in 1986. They had two daughters. Her cousins were Arlene Stringer-Cuevas and Stringer-Cuevas's son Scott Stringer who were also involved in politics in New York City.

Honors and legacy

In 1991, Abzug received the "Maggie" Award, highest honor of the Planned Parenthood Federation, in tribute to their founder, Margaret Sanger.
In 1994, Abzug was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Abzug was honored on March 6, 1997, at the United Nations as a leading female environmentalist.
In 2004, her daughter Liz Abzug, an adjunct Urban Studies Professor at Barnard College and a political consultant, founded the Bella Abzug Leadership Institute to mentor and train high school and college women to become effective leaders in civic, political, corporate and community life. To commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the first National Women's Conference, a ground-breaking event held in Houston in 1977 and over which Bella Abzug had presided, BALI hosted a National Women's Conference on the weekend of November 10–11, 2007, at Hunter College. Over 600 people from around the world attended. Besides celebrating the 1977 Conference, the 2007 agenda was to address significant women's issues for the 21st century.
In 2017, Time magazine named Abzug one of its 50 Women Who Made American Political History.
Various landmarks in New York City bear Abzug's name. On March 1, 2019, the recently built Hudson Yards Park was renamed Bella Abzug Park as a tribute to women's history month and its location in her former Congressional district. In New York City's Greenwich Village, a portion of Bank Street is named for Abzug.

In popular culture

She appeared in the WLIW video A Laugh, A Tear, A Mitzvah, as well as in Woody Allen's Manhattan, a 1977 episode of Saturday Night Live, and the documentary '.
She appeared as herself in Manhattan at a real function that was shot by the film. In 1979, the Supersisters trading card set was produced and distributed; one of the cards featured Abzug's name and picture.
Abzug appeared in Shirley MacLaine's autobiographical book Out on a Limb. In the 1987 ABC Television mini-series "Out on a Limb" based on the book, Abzug was played by Anne Jackson.
Abzug appears as a character in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season 3, Ep. 5 – It’s Comedy or Cabbage. She and Zsa Zsa Gabor attend a televised party in the after hours in Miami.
In 2019 Manhattan Theater Club, in New York City, produced Bella Bella a one character show written and performed by Harvey Fierstein. In the show, Fierstein portrayed Abzug and created dialogue, "from the words of Bella Abzug."
In the 2020 FX limited series, Mrs. America, Margo Martindale portrays Abzug. The program examines the unsuccessful multi-year battle to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. That same year, Bette Midler portrayed Abzug in the film The Glorias.
Abzug was featured in a segment in the 2007 documentary ', which explores in-depth what life was like during the year 1977 in Manhattan. An excerpt from a press conference of Bella Abzug is used when discussing the differences in political views between Abzug and fellow mayoral candidate Ed Koch. Geraldo Rivera gave detailed commentary on Bella's personality and political style.
Jeff L. Lieberman is directing a documentary film entitled Bella! about Abzug's life and political achievements. The film is anticipated to include interviews with Barbra Streisand, Shirley MacLaine, Hillary Clinton, Lily Tomlin, Nancy Pelosi, Gloria Steinem, Maxine Waters, Phil Donahue, Marlo Thomas, Charles Rangel, David Dinkins and Renée Taylor. It is currently scheduled to be released in 2020, coinciding with the 100-year anniversary of women winning the right to vote in the U.S. via the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Selected bibliography

Books