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The . . . dismantling of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the federal safety net for poor women and children, [took] place with relatively minimal protest and outrage. Local welfare rights organizations planned demonstrations, the National Organization for Women (NOW) launched a day of protest, and a network of mostly academic women known as the Committee of 100 lobbied Congress and organized a picket at the White House. Progressive think tanks and public policy institutes expressed concern about the turn of events. But compared with the response from women nationwide when the legal right to abortion was threatened in the late 1980s or when Anita Hill charged Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas with sexual harassment, the end of welfare as we knew it became reality with a disheartening measure of public apathy. The lack of protest suggests that welfare, although it is the main economic support for women in need in the United States, is still not considered by most feminists a women’s issue. At the same time, civil rights organizations , seeking to challenge white Americans’ conflation of poverty and race, have been reluctant to make African American welfare mothers symbolic of the Black plight. And working-class movements have historically focused on workplace issues, distancing themselves from the non-wage-earning poor. These strategic choices and the deeply embedded negative stereotypes of women on welfare that permeate American culture have made welfare a difficult and unlikely issue around which progressives can organize. Yet, despite the difficulties of recruiting allies to their cause, poor Black women, along with other women of color, have fought for decades to demonstrate Expanding the Boundaries of the Women’s Movement Black Feminism and the Struggle for Welfare Rights PREMILLA NADASEN 168 8 bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb the connections among race, class, and gender injustice and to use the demand for welfare rights as a vehicle for developing feminist theory and action. The welfare rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s provides one example of this phenomenon. The feminist politics of the welfare rights movement were perhaps best summed up by Johnnie Tillmon, AFDC recipient and welfare rights organizer since the early 1960s. Tillmon’s 1972 Ms. article, “Welfare Is a Women’s Issue,” reflected the long struggle to define the welfare rights movement as a part of the larger women’s movement. Tillmon wrote: The truth is that AFDC is like a super-sexist marriage. You trade in a man for the man. But you can’t divorce him if he treats you bad. He can divorce you, of course, cut you off anytime he wants. The man runs everything. In ordinary marriage sex is supposed to be for your husband . On AFDC you’re not supposed to have any sex at all. You give up control of your own body. It’s a condition of aid. You may even have to agree to get your tubes tied so you can never have more children just to avoid being cut off welfare. The man, the welfare system, controls your money. He tells you what to buy, what not to buy, where to buy it, and how much things cost. If things—rent, for instance—really cost more than he says they do, it’s just too bad for you. He’s always right. Everything is budgeted down to the last penny and you’ve go to make your money stretch. The man can break into your house anytime he wants to and poke into your things. You’ve got no right to protest. You’ve got no right to privacy when you go on welfare. Like I said. Welfare’s a super-sexist marriage.1 . . . . In her analysis, welfare combined racial, class, and gender oppressions, laying the basis for an argument that it should be defined as a feminist issue. Black welfare activists like Tillmon formulated a distinctive and broadly based analysis of women’s liberation that spoke to the needs of many women who were not traditionally considered a part of the feminist movement. They put forth an insightful critique of the welfare system and the ways in which it controlled and regulated the sexuality and lives of women. The movement was comprised primarily of poor Black women on AFDC who organized protests and planned campaigns to demand higher welfare benefits, protection of their civil rights, and better treatment from their caseworkers. But it also drew support from other poor women of color and white women who THE STRUGGLE...

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