The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant

normal status for someone not yet convicted of anything

and released on her own recognizance, I was on parole, which

allowed me to cross state lines to go back to school without

violating the court’s rules. The system was being so good

to me.

64

The Grand Jury

A couple of months later there was an article in the New

York Times saying that the grand jury had found nothing

wrong with the jail. Everything had hinged on my testimony,

so they were also saying that I was a liar. I left the country

soon after, but seven years later, when the place was final y

closed, a lot of people thanked me. Years later Judith Malina

would say I had done it. When I challenged that rendering of

the politics, she said that political generation after political

generation had tried but I had succeeded - not that I had done

it alone, of course not, but that without what I had done, for

al anyone knew the jail would still be there, thirteen floors of

brutalized women. Most of the women in the Women’s House

of Detention when I was there and in the immediate years

before and after were prostituted women; I had the unearned

dignity of having been ar ested for a political offense. Frank

Hogan had a street named after him after he died.

Probably the best moment for me happened one day when

I was approached by a black woman on a Village street corner

while I was waiting for a light. She worked in the jail, she said,

and couldn’t be seen talking with me, but she wanted me to

know that everything I had said was true and she was one of

many guards who was glad I had managed to speak out. You

tell the truth and people can shit al over it, the way that grand

jury did, but somehow once it’s said it can’t be unsaid; it stays

living, somewhere, in someone’s heart.

65

The Orient Express

I was going to Greece. There were two countries in Europe

where one could live cheaply - Greece and Spain. The fascist

Franco was stil in power in Spain, so I decided on Greece. I

took a boat, the appropriately named SS Castel Felice, from

New York to a port in the south of England, then a train to

London. I had two relatives there, old women, hard-core

Stalinists, who talked energetically and endlessly about the

brilliant and gorgeous subway stations in Leningrad. It’s a

disorienting experience - listening to the worship of a subway

system. They saw me off on that legendary train the Orient

Express. It has since been rehabilitated, but in 1965 it was a

wretched thing. I had under $100 and the clothes I wore