A Woman's Place Spring Schedule

If you're a camper looking for an alternative to RV heaven, look no more. A Woman's Place is a mountain retreat for women located on 23 acres in the Adirondacks. Its purpose is to provide an "unpressured environment where women can reevaluate their lives, interact with and gain support from other women coming from around the country, try our new skills, or simply rest."

AWP was started in 1974 by a group of women who had met at a retreat. They pooled their resources, purchased a former mountain resort, and established a collective dedicated to the support of a retreat for all women. The retreat consists of a main house in which the Collective lives and which contains the living and dining areas and the library. There are four cabins with room for 30 women and an old barn converted to a recreation hall. Campsites can accommodate an additional 30 women in summer. The 23 acres consist of open land and woods and a spring-fed pond.

Working toward the goal of self-sufficiency makes the learning and sharing of new skills and knowledge one of the focuses of AWP. The weekend workshop is one of the vehicles the collective uses

to work toward this goal. A list of the remaining workshops on the spring schedule appears below.

A WOMANS PLACE

Women who visit AWP are expected to share the responsibilities for maintaining the space, including cooking and cleanup. The meals are vegetarian. Suggested contributions for visiting AWP are based on a sliding scale. All women are welcome, regardless of their ability to pay. For more

information, write A Woman's Place, Athol, New York 12810, or call (518)623-9541.

May 6-8. Lesbians and Our Mothers. Talking with our mothers finding the links to support each other.

May 13-15. Astrology and Tarot. Working toward a feminist interpretation of these two ancient systems of knowledge.

May 20-22. Work Weekend. Help with preparing the garden for planting, digging a new septic system, and spring cleaning.

May 27-29. (Memorial Day) Body Massage, Shiatsu, Reflexology. Techniques for healing, body awareness, communication. June 3-5. Herbs. Herb walks on AWP property. Learning to identify herbs and edible plants. June 10-12. Auto Clinic. Some basics on how to do a tune up and oil change, also basic body work. June 17-19. Poetry. Share your writing with other women, or just listen; scheduled reading and writing sessions.

June 24-26. Music. Bring along musical instru. ments to play, learn to play, or just come to stomp and sing along.

FANNIE LOU HAMER Civil Rights Leader 1917-1977

page 6/What She Wants/May, 1977

Sharecropper, Organizer,

Leader

New York (LNS) -Fannie Lou Hamer, a former sharecropper and civil rights activist, died on March 14 at the age of 60. She was born in Mississippi, one of twenty children of a sharecropper family. She began to pick cotton at the age of six and worked in the fields and as a plantation time. keeper until 1962, when she lost her job after registering to vote. As one of the principal leaders of the civil rights movement in Mississippi, she inspired followers with her courage. In 1963, she was jailed and beaten for attempting to integrate a restaur. ant. She narrowly escaped being shot and her home was bombed in 1971.

As a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Hamer worked to organize the Mississippik Freedom Democratic Party. After that, she spent most of her energies organizing economic cooperatives in Sunflower County, where she lived.

The following is a brief excerpt from a speech Hamer gave in 1971 in New York City:

You know, people tells you, don't talk politics. but the air you breathe is pollutd air, it's political polluted air. The air you breathe is politics so you have to be involved. Sunflower County, where I'm from, is Senator Eastland's county that owns 5,800 acres of some of the richest, black fertile soil in Mississippi, and where kids there in Sunflower County, suffer from malnutrition.

We have a job as black women, to support whatever is right, and to bring in justice where we've had so much injustice. . . . We are organizing our. selves now because we have no other choice.

.. I would like to tell you in closing a story of an old man. This old man was very wise, and he could answer questions that was almost impos sible for people to answer.

So some people went to him one day, two young people, and said, "We're going to trick this guy today. We're going to catch a bird, and we're going to carry it to this old man. And we're going to ask him, 'THIS THAT WE HOLD IN OUR HANDS TODAY, IS IT ALIVE OR DEAD?' If he says. "dead," we're going to turn it loose and let it fly. But if he says, "alive", we're going to crush it.

So they walked up to this old man, and they said, "This that we hold in our hands today, is it alive or dead?" He looked at the young people and he smiled.

And he said, 'It's in your

hands."