Herstory of Seattle NOW

The Seattle Chapter of the National Organization for Women was founded in 1970. Originally named the Seattle-King County Chapter, it was the 36th chapter of NOW chartered in the United States. The founders' intent was to work "peacefully and within the system, through the courts, through all of the constitutional means available to effect the changes that our system has channels for." In 1972 our then president, Elaine Day Latourell, expanded upon that intent by stating, "NOW is dedicated to working within the system and when that doesn't work, to raising hell". For 35 years Seattle NOW has not strayed from the commitment made by our founding mothers to pushing buttons, breaking barriers and opening doors for women and girls.

Before the mid-seventies Seattle NOW had helped to establish the Seattle Women's Commission which later established the Seattle Office for Women's Rights. NOW members founded the Washington Women's Political Caucus and Seattle NOW paid the Caucus' first bill. Seattle NOW was instrumental in securing the right of a married woman to sue alone for personal injuries to herself, to manage her own earnings and to co-sign with her husband when joint property was sold. The word "sex" was added to laws against discrimination in employment, public accommodation and real estate transactions. We helped to make it illegal to cancel women's auto insurance and credit cards merely because a divorce had occurred.

Using a letter-writing, advertising and lobbying campaign, Seattle NOW "raised hell" until the Seattle Times and the Seattle PI complied with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and ceased publishing classified ads as "Help Wanted Male" and "Help Wanted Female". Seattle NOW worked with the Seattle Public Schools to identify textbooks and educational materials that included persons of color as well as men and women in non-traditional roles. Seattle NOW established "Peace as a Feminist Issue" as a part of the National NOW agenda and we are a long-term respected member of Seattle's peace and justice community.

NOW was a prime sponsor of the Washington State Equal Rights Amendment ratified by our Legislature. In the face of the national wave of anti-abortion terrorism, we continue to work to protect the rights guaranteed by Washington's 1991 Reproductive Privacy Act. We have established the Feminist Overground Railroad which pays for transportation and safe lodging for women who must travel to Seattle for abortion services which, though legal, are not available in the majority of Washington's counties.

Seattle NOW worked to pass the laws that allow a woman to press charges against her rapist even if there are no other corroborating witnesses. We were instrumental in the establishment of King County Rape Relief. Seattle NOW helped to enact Washington's marital rape law and provided an amicus brief with the coalition that succeeded in making the "Battered Women Defense" legitimate in Washington State. Seattle NOW worked in coalition to achieve Seattle's and King County's Domestic Partnership Law and we continue to work to expand it to the State. Seattle NOW was instrumental in facilitating the successful suit brought by the women incarcerated at the Women's Correctional Center at Purdy to achieve adequate health care and we continue to work to bring the library at Purdy up to a reasonable standard.

In 1992, 9 women accused our then senator, Brock Adams, of drugging and molesting them. All but one of the women remained anonymous and the statute of limitation had run on all but the one incident. Seattle NOW began a recall campaign only to discover that voters cannot recall a Senator. We petitioned the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate, but after much negotiation, they refused. Senator Adams never ran for reelection and he moved permanently away from WA. While we failed in our original intent, our efforts were rewarded the next year when Senator Robert Packwood was accused of sexual harassment. The Senate Ethics Committee could not refuse to investigate a second Senator. They did investigate Senator Packwood and he was removed from the Senate.

Seattle NOW's Homeless Women's project has provided essential items, from toiletries to clothing, for homeless women in our area and works to increase the number of shelters and services for homeless women. Seattle NOW was a plaintiff in the litigation challenging the anti-homeless statutes. While we did not succeed in overturning all of those statutes, we were successful in removing the restrictions on some of them. On one occasion we also brought gift bags and gift certificates to the women of Rose of Lima House. We gave them money, NOW t-shirts -"control yourself not me" - and posters. They cooked dinner for us at ROL House in appreciation for our contributions.

We organized a coalition that has established the Womentor project, providing women as mentors for young lesbian and bisexual women. This was solidified into the Lambda House project that provides many services for GLBT young persons, many of whom are homeless. We have always been active participants on issues important to the LGBT communities, including our National Valentine's Day Action, "Right To Marry".

Seattle NOW actively participated in National NOW Merchant of Shame Award (Woman Friendly Workplace Campaign). We locked arms with our sisters in Normal, IL who were being subject to outrageous sexual harassment at the Mitsubishi plant in Normal, IL by picketing the Mitsubishi Dealership on Aurora every Thursday for a year. The dealership went out of business. In the end the president of Mitsubishi had to apologize to the women of the Normal, IL plant. In the context of the Japanese tradition of maintaining face this was a major accomplishment. Shortly thereafter Seattle NOW hosted a group of women from Japan who wanted to know about American feminism. We met for 2 hours, with an interpreter, and had a marvelous discussion. Their movement was in some ways about 30 years behind us, but they were thrilled that we provided mentorship for them to return to Japan and begin working for their greater freedom.

A woman who worked at Paul Allen's Vulcan Company came to us when she hit the glass ceiling. She was passed over many times by men for higher positions. When she told them she was going to NOW for help, they fired her. We picketed Vulcan in Bellevue for one day. The woman was well-compensated for the discrimination that she had suffered. It is important to remember that it was Seattle NOW to whom the woman turned because she knew we would take her seriously and do what we could to make a difference.

Seattle NOW co-sponsored the "March for Women's Lives" through downtown Seattle several years ago. As part of National Abortion Rights Appreciation Day, Seattle NOW has co-sponsored and organized "thank you" parties, complete with gifts and flowers, for those few brave providers who still perform abortions in this area. We organized and held a march downtown publicizing the rape camps that had been established in Bosnia as part of the civil war between Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Serbs.

We worked on the National Campaign to make female genital mutilation illegal in this country. In addition we succeeded in preventing Harborview Medical Center from instituting a policy offering "minimal" scarification to families that wanted to rituals performed but did not want full pharonic infibulation performed. We have continued to try to locate the few midwives who still work in Seattle performing FGM.

Seattle NOW convinced and worked with the State Patrol and State Crime Lab to obtain the funding that enables the crime lab to process DNA from cold cases, including numerous unsolved rape cases that have since been successfully prosecuted.

We have over the years held innumerable public forums on issues such as abortion, "Jane's House", Social Security, breast cancer, body image, welfare reform, education, AIDS and woman, the effects of advertising on women, self-defense, and racism/white privilege. . We toured high schools, middle schools and WIC programs presenting "Still Killing Us Softly" and educating our audiences about tactics to avoid the oppression of advertising. We helped to successfully lobby the Seattle School District to provide equal time to peace groups and military recruiters in the high schools and to forbid the establishment of JR. ROTC in Seattle High Schools.

Here's to the next 35 years!!!