via Colorlines
Activist Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez once wrote in an essay that “there is no separating my life from history.” And it’s true: her life is like a thread weaving through the movements for self-determination and justice. Born in 1925, she has lived more than nine lives: as a member of New York’s heady literati in the 1940s and 50s, a link between the Black Power and Chicano movements in the 1960s, a feminist critic of the sexism and homophobia within Third World solidarity groups here in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s, and a respected public intellectual in the left throughout her entire career.
In March 2000, Betita authored an essay for Colorlines that asked “Where Was the Color in Seattle?” engaging a new generation of organizers of color, wanting to make the link between global capitalism abroad and austerity measures impacting communities of color, here at home. Connections, wrote Betita, “absolutely crucial if we are to make Seattle’s promise of a new, international movement against imperialist globalization come true.” It was through this essay that I first came into contact with Betita and her ideas, as a young organizer of color both influenced by the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO), yet also critical of a movement that was largely comprised of white, middle class males. Her words helped me think about how inclusion figured in other struggles, such as the antiwar movement and, more recently, Occupy Wall Street.
It was with these questions in mind that I had the privilege to engage both Betita and her old friend Olga Talamante in dialogue this past Sunday. The two have a friendship going back more than 35 years. They first met when Olga was released from prison in Argentina, where she was incarcerated for one year as a political prisoner, and was tortured the hands of the right-wing Peronist dictatorship. Now, Olga heads the Chicana/Latina Foundation, which develops the leadership of young Latinas, and is active with local LGBT advocacy groups.
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