“I raise up my voice — not so I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard … We cannot succeed when half of us are held back.” — Malala Yousafzai
As we wrap up Women’s History Month, I thought I’d feature one of our own homegrown heroes. You may not have heard of Deborah Z., but you most likely stand on her shoulders. Z has been fighting for the rights of others since she was knee-high to a grasshopper and she’s not finished yet.
PGN: Tell me a little about yourself.
DZ: I was born in New York City, but I moved to Philadelphia when I was 20, 44 years ago. I’d consider myself pretty close to being a Philadelphian without having been born here.
PGN: What was the household you grew up in like?
DZ: I grew up in Queens, in a white, middle-class Jewish family. I have an older sister. Both of my parents were teachers; in fact, most of my relatives are or have been teachers. I somehow managed to escape it. I went to a big high school and was involved with a semi-professional drama company when I was in high school and into college.
PGN: Do you think as you moved into activism that your theater background helped?
DZ: [Laughs] It certainly helped me learn to project my voice! I think it helps you develop the ability to be able to stand in front of people and communicate.
PGN: Were your parents activists?
DZ: They had been to a certain point; they were both involved in organizing teachers’ unions. But when the Rosenbergs were executed it really shut them down. They pretty much said, “Nope, we can’t do this anymore.”
PGN: Scary times, then and now. What was your earliest memory of understanding injustice in the world?
DZ: I don’t ever recall not understanding about injustice. When you grow up in New York City, you are exposed to a diverse population. I went to school with people from all walks of life. I guess the lesson of having parents who lived through the Holocaust is that if you are in a place where everyone is the same, there is danger. The only way to be safe is to live in an area with all different kinds of people. And that’s not an intellectual understanding, it’s something I’ve always felt in my gut. It’s always been part of my temperament to seek out different types of people and that leads to a better understanding of oppression.
PGN: Yeah, it wasn’t until I moved to Radnor at 10 that I experienced anti-Semitism. Some kids were making derogatory statements about a Jewish neighbor and I said, “I don’t get it, aren’t you all white kids?”
DZ: White is a very mutable thing; it only really exists in contradistinction to “not white.” There’s no reality to it so it can be anything you want. St. Patrick’s Day reminds us that when Irish people first came here they were not welcome or considered white. The same for Jewish people. It shifts as groups get to be accepted and then some people are considered white while others are not.
PGN: So what did you go to school for?
DZ: I was an anthropology major at State University of New York at Binghamton and that was wonderful. There was an enormous sense of relief to realize that the way things are in this country are not the only way they can be. That was very important for me. I was like, OK, there is opportunity to live differently.
PGN: How did you end up in Philly?
DZ: I came to go to Penn but that was a mistake, it was a bad fit. At the time, it was very anti-Semitic and there were no women professors in the department. That was the first time I encountered institutionalized discrimination, which was bizarre for an anthropology department. I was young and took it personally instead of realizing that it was institutional. I left after a year.
PGN: What did you do from there?
DZ: I made hoagies! That’s what you do when you have one year of liberal arts and no other particular skills.
PGN: What was the first “formal” activism you engaged in?
DZ: When I left school it was during the second wave of feminism and the development of a significant lesbian movement. The first place I got involved with was the Penn Women’s Center. There was a project called the Free Women’s School, which eventually left the university and moved into the community. It was a free university offering classes from consciousness-raising to cake decorating, taught by students and teachers we recruited to participate. It later became a literacy school that my housemate Sharon Owens coordinated.
PGN: What was the Women’s Encampment?
DZ: It was an anti-war group. Women I knew at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and at the American Friends Service women’s program in Philly were working with people protesting the Seneca Army base where they were shipping nuclear cruise missiles to Europe. The groups got together to purchase a farm near the base and set up camp to put up opposition to the base. We had women who climbed over the fence and tried to sabotage the missiles and get the base shut down in nonviolent ways. There was a big media presence there around what was happening.
PGN: How was women’s music a part of what was happening?
DZ: It was empowering. It was a community builder. It projected a message that was important.
PGN: I think it also affirmed identities. Some of the first references I ever heard about women loving women were from artists like Holly Near and Meg Christian. It’s also what I used as code to find other lesbians.
DZ: Yes, it created a culture and helped us do the work we needed to do. You need support when you’re embattled all around by the society you’re trying to change. It’s still true. I’m part of a community singing circle that meets at the Cancer Wellness Center to help people who are living through or have survived cancer.
PGN: What was the coming-out process for you?
DZ: I kind of came out twice. I’m eternally grateful for the State University of New York for matching me with my lovely roommate whom I fell in love with. We had a relationship and at first we thought, Oh no, we’re lesbians, this must mean we’re abnormal. We were terribly worried about what it would mean and after a few days, we were like, You know, what’s the problem? There really isn’t one. And that was that. But that ended and when I came to Penn for grad school, I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but over time I came out again in the context of the lesbian feminist movement.
PGN: One of the things I noticed is that you’ve always championed a variety of causes, not just gay or women’s rights.
DZ: I’ve been pretty politically active all of my life. When I was about 10, my sister took me to the lunch-counter boycotts happening here in solidarity with the boycotts down South. As a teen, I did some farm-worker solidarity work and later was a part of the Young Socialist Alliance in New York. When I was in college, before abortion was legal in New York, I volunteered transporting women and guiding them to get safe abortions. I was very lucky to have had very early experiences that way. My parents took me to the first March for Jobs, Peace and Freedom with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
PGN: Isn’t it ridiculous that we’re still facing so many of the same problems?
DZ: Oh God, I just cannot believe it. You win something and then you have to win it over and over again.
PGN: What are you doing now, what’s your work gig?
DZ: I am the director of the Public Citizens for Children and Youth Child Health Watch help line. We advocate on an individual basis for kids who need health care and insurance. We do a lot of policy work. Currently we’re working on changing state laws so that undocumented kids can be covered. They’re about the only ones who can’t get some kind of coverage. It’s ridiculous, why should those kids be punished? It kills me to have to tell someone I can’t help them, to tell them that Pennsylvania is too backwards to provide insurance for their children. All I can do is apologize, then go take a walk to calm down. Luckily, I can help most anybody else. Right now we’re doing a “Give Kids a Smile” week and we’ve recruited 600 slots of free dental care so we’re really trying to reach immigrant communities who need it most. That’s when I love my job; well, most of the time I love my job. We’re able to get a lot done and help a lot of people. It’s nice to get the immediate gratification. With activism, you hope that maybe 10 years from now it’ll make a difference, but with this I can make a difference in someone’s life in a matter of days. And, through translators, I get to talk to all kinds of people in every language imaginable. Yesterday I talked to someone in Bambara. I didn’t even know that was a language!
PGN: What’s the most hair-raising situation you’ve been in?
DZ: One time I was going down to an anti-Klan rally in D.C. and the bus broke down in the middle of rural Maryland. We were not in a place where people of color felt safe getting off the bus. A number of the white and lighter-skinned people felt they’d be OK so they decided to hitchhike or find another way to the rally. The people left behind were not happy and felt like people were using their privilege to get out of the situation. Knives were brought out both in anger and fear that they might have to defend themselves and it got a little scary. My friend and I stayed and just tried to hunker down in our seats and pretend we were asleep. The bus company finally got it fixed and we made it there just as the rally was ending, and then we all had to take the same bus back. It was, needless to say, uncomfortable.
PGN: What’s one of your best stories?
DZ: It might be when we were protesting the Hardwick decision. A bunch of us went to the steps of the Supreme Court dressed as the Lesbian Court of Justice. We had lavender robes and each of us represented a different element of justice. I don’t know why but they took a very, very long time to arrest us. We were getting bored so we started to do the Hokey Pokey on the steps. When they finally put us in the bus, we sat there for so long we began to take each other’s plastic handcuffs off and then had really interesting, frank, amazing discussions with the gay men about what was similar and what was different about our lives. Eventually they took us to the courtrooms and, back then, most people didn’t give their real names, so the bailiff had to stand there at the arraignment and call out, “People v. Connie Lingus. We need Connie Lingus now,” while the Radical Fairies who had come out in fluffy tutu outfits skipped and danced around the courtroom. It was quite a scene. Even the court officers couldn’t keep a straight face. It was one of the funniest court experiences I ever had.
PGN: How many times have you been arrested?
DZ: I don’t know, maybe six? I don’t really do that stuff anymore. I’m getting a little too old to be arrested. I’m afraid I’d go to a sit-in and not be able to get up! But you never know. It could happen.
PGN: What drives you?
DZ: Well, I grew up Jewish and it’s an important part of my identity but I’m not a real religious person in the way I think about the world. Though certainly the values I got as a Jew growing up have informed who I am, but what I do believe is that it’s our responsibility to leave the world a better place than we found it. I can’t imagine why else I would be on the planet. It gives a lot of meaning to my life. I don’t sit and wonder what I should be doing.
PGN: Despite bad knees, are you doing social-justice work now?
DZ: I just joined a group called SURJ, Showing Up for Racial Justice. Two weeks ago, there was a nationwide presence to confront the “Three Percenters,” the group that took over the bird sanctuary in Oregon. My partner couldn’t go but she made me a sign that I took along. We also posted a sign of support and sent a card to one of the mosques in our neighborhood and asked them if they would like us to stand guard when all this recent anti-Muslim stuff got stirred up by Donald Trump.
PGN: Yeah, as soon as I get a chance I want to take a plant to the mosque that got the pig head thrown at their door.
DZ: It makes a difference. I was also involved in the early Ferguson protests and I’ve been doing a lot of environmental actions because, if we don’t have a planet, we can’t make it better. Almost forgot, I’m also doing some immigration work with the New Sanctuary project, which we got connected to through Rabbi Linda Holtzman.
PGN: Ever faced direct homophobia?
DZ: My partner and I were victims from some of the kids in the neighborhood and it was really hard because we’d put a lot of energy and time in with the kids. It was fine until they got older and the cool thing to do was to harass the homosexuals. There was one guy who was cognitively challenged and the kids egged him on. Things escalated and he broke into our apartment. It was in the summer and we were sleeping in no clothing at all and he came in and sat down, drank a beer and took his shoes off before coming into the bedroom where we were sleeping. Fortunately peacekeeper Z woke up first and I just got up, took his hand and led him out of the bedroom. Eventually, I was able to get him out of the apartment, locked the door and called the police, who he then told that we had stolen his shoes, which he’d left next to the beer bottle! We moved very quickly after that. It was sad because my partner had been very involved with community-building and it really shut it down.
PGN: How long have you and your partner been together?
DZ: Well, we got married last year but we’ve been together for 36 years [laughs], so one or 36 years, depending on how you want to look at it. Her name is Kathleen O’Donnell and she’s wonderful. We met at a Take Back the Night where we were both organizers. When we were first together, we were part of a triple. Because in those days, you couldn’t just have a relationship, you had to have all sorts of complicated combinations that were just exhausting. That lasted about two years but we continued. She was kind of an Internet librarian with the Institute of Scientific Information. She’s retired now but works part-time at the tool library. She’s a poet and a woodworker and a really good cook.
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