Chude Pamela Allen

“It was thrilling, absolutely thrilling, and hard. You have to take yourself seriously, and nothing in this culture encourages you to take yourself seriously. In the beginning of the women’s movement, women as well as men told me I was wrong. Over and over again. ‘You are wrong, women are not oppressed.’”

Chude Pamela Allen was an early organizer of the Women’s Liberation Movement, first in New York City and then in San Francisco, where she taught anti-racism workshops for women’s liberation groups and the YWCA. She is author of Free Space, A Perspective on the Small Group in Women’s Liberation, and wrote the chapter, “Woman Suffrage: Feminism and White Supremacy” in Reluctant Reformers: Racism and Social Reform Movements in the United States. In 1977 she became editor of Union WAGE, the newspaper of Union Women’s Alliance to Gain Equality. She wrote Jean Maddox: Labor Heroine and co-edited ORGANIZE! A Working Woman’s Handbook and Woman Controlled Conception.

Chude is a member of the Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Their website, www.crmvet.org, includes her poetry and experiences. She coordinates speakers for schools and community groups and has spoken widely.