EDITORIAL
As announced in WSW June/July, 1980, we chose not to produce a July, 1980 issue under separate cover. We, the friends and members of the WSW collective, freed ourselves from the usual monthly editorial, production, and business tasks to hold our fourth annual summer retreat. The weekend provided an opportunity to discuss, evaluate, and plan—in short, to examine what we do and how we do it. Producing a monthly newspaper requires a set of
News
National
March for Dignity in Mississippi.
Clara Fraser Gains Support....
DES Update.....
Local
Abortion News....
Women of All Red Nations.
The Blue Cross Blues....
Features
Refusenik Women in the USSR...
technical skills-editorial, typesetting, design, layout, graphic, etc. Publishing a feminist/women's paper provides a context for the exercise of technical skills, and demands analysis to arrive at a perspective on social/political/economic change. Working collectively requires individual and group commitment to a cooperative organizational structure within which skills (technical, analytic, interpersonal, etc.) are defined, assigned value, and exchanged.
Skill-sharing is central to a collective structure since skills, or more generally, information, are the basis for decision-making. Equal participation in decision-making is one of the goals of collective
CONTENTS
Vol. 8, No.
Take Back the Night/August 2, 1980. Vernie Weaver's Story.....
9
6
Letters...
2
6
Poetry....
10
7
Boos and Bravos..
13
5
3
Classified Ads.......
15
3
Find It Fastest..
back cover
8
What's Happening.
Cover Graphic by Arline Bognar
What She Wants
14-15
What She Wants goes to production the third weekend of the month. Copy should be submitted by the 15th of each month so that we can discuss it and edit collectively at our editorial meetings. Contact us for specific deadlines. Please print or type-articles. Mail material to WSW, P. O. Box 18465, Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118.
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WHAT SHE WANTS IS:
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A MONTHLY NEWS JOURNAL PRODUCED FOR ALL WOMEN. We always like input from our readers in the form of articles, personal experiences, poetry, art, announcements, and letters. We welcome women who are willing to help us in specific areas of the paper (writing, lay-out, advertising, distribution, publicity, etc.) and/or who are interested in our collective.
WHAT SHE WANTS ADVOCATES:
...equal and civil rights
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...the right to earnings based on our need, merit, and interest .access to job training, salaries, and promotions we choose ...the right to organize in unions and coalitions to advance our cause ...the right to decent health care and health information ...the right to safe, effective birth control and to safe, legal abortions ...the right to accept or reject motherhood
...the right to choose and express sexual preference without harassment ...access to quality education and freedom from prejudice in learning materials
SUBSCRIPTIONS:
A one-year subscription to WSW includes
11 regular monthly issues
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Individual -$6.00 Contributing $15.00 Sustaining $25.00
Non-Profit Org. $10.00
For Profit Org. — $15.00
DISTRIBUTION OUTLETS:
East: Appletree Books, Coventry Books, CWRU Bookstore, CWRU Women's Center, Food Communities, Food Project, Genesis, Hemming & Hulbert Booksellers
Central: Barnes & Noble,. Publix Book Mart, Rape Crisis Center, Something Different, WomenSpace West: CCC Bookstore, Plants Plus, Six Steps Down, Tish's Shoe Repair & Emporium
Chagrin Falls: Little Professor Book Center
Akron: Cooperative Market (formerly Nature's Way)
Kent: Kent Natural Foods Store
Columbus: Fan the Flames Bookstore
Boston, MA: New Words Bookstore
Business Group
Marycatherine Krause/Coordinator Alana Clampitt
Dianne Fishman
Marcia Manwaring
Editorial Group
Carol Epstein/Coordinator Gail Powers/Coordinator Marycatherine Krause/Coordinator Loretta Feller
cupyright © 1979.
Production Group
Linda Jane/Coordinator Mary Walsh/Coordinator Willow Bentley Christine Hoffman Jean Loria Pat O'Malley Barbara Silverberg Michelle Vanderlip
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organization.
Collective decisions are made on the basis of consensus, but this is as much an agreement to disagree as to agree. Collective members must share certain fundamentals; however, this does not exclude questioning and dialogue. Rather, criticism and selfcriticism must be valued as the necessary tools for the development and elaboration of a useful political perspective.
One of our most pressing concerns during. the retreat was collective structure. Other topics included the politics of the paper/the politics of the individual staff members, the distribution and flow of monthly tasks, and fund-raising.
No less important, we were able to get together, get out of town, and talk in a relatively stress-free atmosphere. "Relatively" because, although conducted without the pressure of an upcoming issue, these discussions demanded a degree of candor and attention too often absent during the regular production schedule.
However, our concerns and the difficulties that arise in confronting them are by no means peculiar to WSW. We share them with numerous publications in the U.S., Canada, and wherever feminists have grasped the importance of print media as a tool to promote the women's liberation movement.
Each publication must come to terms with the print media's power of legitimation. Granted that reading is not believing. But some of what is printed is read, and what is read does, in some way, enter into the reader's thoughts, actions, perception, etc.. The decision to publish material is not an easy one, especially in the framework of a movement that pulls in many, sometimes contradictory, directions. But the ability.to confront this concern is vital to the survival of feminist small press publications. -The health of the women's liberation movement is, in turn, dependent upon the ability of feminists to communicate. The role of feminist media then, as a vehicle to connect women over space and time, is essential in our continuing struggle.
UPSTREAM, A Canadian Women's Publication, has produced its final issue. This issue (Vol. 4, No. 5) is primarily devoted to detailing the reasons that led the UPSTREAM collective to decide to stop publishing. What follows are some of the problems cited by individual members and the collective as a group. These are applicable to WSW, to feminist/women's publications, and may be of interest to any woman committed to the expansion of the movement.
In their words, "...we hope to explain to our readers, our sisters in other publications, and the women's movement in general, the factors which have contributed to this decision, which now seems to have been inevitable":
1. "...failure to thoroughly understand the necessity for a defined and evolving politic."
2. "an inability to understand and implement a collective structure.”
3. that the failure to focus politically and develop a collective structure "indicates, at some basic level, our profoundest inability—that is, the inability to take ourselves seriously.'
4. that the inability to understand and implement a collective structure resulted in "unresolved, often longstanding differences among the women at UPSTREAM, isolated individuals and fragmented the paper.
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5. that the informal decision-making process that prevailed denied the "individual members of the group full and equal access to decision-making, `among the consequences of which are confusion, insecurity, and mistrust."
6. "...our inability to analyze [the above situation] or our unwillingness to change because the status quo was acceptable to those of us in power".
7. "...we often felt we were putting the paper out in a vacuum...it's a demoralizing situation, because (continued on page 2)
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