Naomi Jaffe
Encyclopedia
Naomi Esther Jaffe is a former undergraduate student of Herbert Marcuse
and member of the Weather Underground Organization
. Jaffe was recently the Executive Director of Holding Our Own, a multiracial foundation for women.
on a small family farm run by her Jewish parents. Her father was a poultry farmer and her mother an elementary school teacher. As a child she was influenced by her Communist relatives, their influence was reflected in her later revolutionary involvement. After high school she went on to attend Brandeis University
and studied Marxism
in a few classes with the professor and political theorist Herbert Marcuse
.
at The New School for Social Research where she was pursuing her graduate degree in sociology. During graduate school she formed a friendship with future Weatherman, David Gilbert. While in the SDS Jaffe worked for the independent publication New Left Notes and published an article about equal rights for women called “The Look Is You” coauthored with Bernardine Dohrn
.
Jaffe, a known member of the group Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (W.I.T.C.H.), participated in the 1969 demonstrations at the Miss America Pageant
in Atlantic City. The demonstrations were held to speak out against the consumer driven oppression of women, and to say that the Miss America Pageant perpetuated false stereotypes about the capabilities of women. In 1969, as a member and leading feminist of the SDS, Jaffe traveled with a group of people to Hanoi
to talk to young Vietnam
ese about the American antiwar movement
.
people; that they should have a revolution
of their own without the total involvement of white middle class
people. She also joined because the group was radically anti-racist and anti-imperialist. As quoted by historian Dan Berger, Jaffe says the Weather Underground was “the most vital show in town.” The organization was also aligned with her Marxist ideals. To join she had to set aside her feminist convictions, yet she always believed that the WUO should have focused more on women’s liberation.
In September 1969 she participated in “jailbreaks”, actions in which high school students were encouraged to leave class and run through the halls as though they were being freed from the prison that was their school. This action was to gain support for the "Days of Rage
" also called the National Action. She and 25 other Weatherwomen, including Cathy Wilkerson, were arrested in Pittsburgh, PA for that act. From October 8-11, 1969 Jaffe participated in the "Days of Rage" in Chicago
where members of the WUO, after having taken control of the SDS, ran through the streets smashing windows and causing chaos, she was arrested on October 11 for battery and resisting arrest. In 1970 Jaffe was indicted in Detroit, Michigan
for her participation in the 1969 Flint, Michigan War Council, the final public meeting of the Weatherman controlled SDS before the dissolution of the SDS in January 1970. According to scholarly researchers, such as Dan Berger, 13 people were indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit bombings and murders. These charges were later dropped.
townhouse explosion in March, 1970, Jaffe went underground. She found it necessary to cut her beloved long hair which she had been growing since childhood; she also cut ties with her tight-knit family because it was what she needed to do to become a revolutionary (or, simply, to elude capture by the FBI). Although her whereabouts from 1970 to 1978 are mostly unknown, in 1971 the FBI lifted her fingerprints from an abandoned apartment in San Francisco, California
. Summaries of surveillance files indicate that the apartment had been rented by Weathermen from 1970 to 1971 and contained bomb
making material; the FBI called the apartment a bomb factory. While underground Jaffe helped to design and publish Weather’s short-lived publication, http://www.antiauthoritarian.net/sds_wuo/osawatomie_no_2/osawatomie.htmlOsawatomie.
Around 1975, while living on the East Coast, Jaffe expressed concerns about the direction the group was taking: because of her feminist background she most likely wanted them to refocus on women’s issues, and this led to her becoming estranged from the group. She was living on her own and not in a collective
, so when she showed up to a planned meeting and no one else showed, she realized she was out. Jaffe resurfaced in 1978. In an unpublished critique of Prairie Fire, written soon after Weather split up, Jaffe wrote harshly about the problems with the Weather Underground’s lack of focus on feminist issues.
issues, and anti-racism
in New York State. Today Jaffe is a mother of one son and lives in Albany, New York
with her life partner. Having continued a life of activism, Jaffe has worked on a local Free Mumia Committee and she is also the former Executive Director of the organization Holding Our Own, an anti-racist women’s funding foundation. Jaffe was also prominently featured in the 2002 documentary film The Weather Underground
.
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
and member of the Weather Underground Organization
Weatherman (organization)
Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization , was an American radical left organization. It originated in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their...
. Jaffe was recently the Executive Director of Holding Our Own, a multiracial foundation for women.
Early life
Jaffe was born in upstate New YorkNew York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
on a small family farm run by her Jewish parents. Her father was a poultry farmer and her mother an elementary school teacher. As a child she was influenced by her Communist relatives, their influence was reflected in her later revolutionary involvement. After high school she went on to attend Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
and studied Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
in a few classes with the professor and political theorist Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
.
Students for a Democratic Society
After receiving her undergraduate degree Jaffe founded a chapter of the Students for a Democratic SocietyStudents for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)
Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
at The New School for Social Research where she was pursuing her graduate degree in sociology. During graduate school she formed a friendship with future Weatherman, David Gilbert. While in the SDS Jaffe worked for the independent publication New Left Notes and published an article about equal rights for women called “The Look Is You” coauthored with Bernardine Dohrn
Bernardine Dohrn
Bernardine Rae Dohrn is a former leader of the American anti-Vietnam War radical organization, Weather Underground. She is an Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law and the immediate past Director of Northwestern's Children and Family Justice Center...
.
Jaffe, a known member of the group Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (W.I.T.C.H.), participated in the 1969 demonstrations at the Miss America Pageant
Miss America
The Miss America pageant is a long-standing competition which awards scholarships to young women from the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands...
in Atlantic City. The demonstrations were held to speak out against the consumer driven oppression of women, and to say that the Miss America Pageant perpetuated false stereotypes about the capabilities of women. In 1969, as a member and leading feminist of the SDS, Jaffe traveled with a group of people to Hanoi
Hanoi
Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...
to talk to young Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
ese about the American antiwar movement
Opposition to the Vietnam War
The movement against US involvment in the in Vietnam War began in the United States with demonstrations in 1964 and grew in strength in later years. The US became polarized between those who advocated continued involvement in Vietnam, and those who wanted peace. Peace movements consisted largely of...
.
Weathermen
In 1969 the SDS was heading in a more radical direction and Jaffe became one of the founding members of the Weatherman Organization, yet never became a leader. Jaffe joined the Weather Underground because the group believed in the self-determination of African AmericanAfrican American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
people; that they should have a revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
of their own without the total involvement of white middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
people. She also joined because the group was radically anti-racist and anti-imperialist. As quoted by historian Dan Berger, Jaffe says the Weather Underground was “the most vital show in town.” The organization was also aligned with her Marxist ideals. To join she had to set aside her feminist convictions, yet she always believed that the WUO should have focused more on women’s liberation.
In September 1969 she participated in “jailbreaks”, actions in which high school students were encouraged to leave class and run through the halls as though they were being freed from the prison that was their school. This action was to gain support for the "Days of Rage
Days of Rage
The Days of Rage demonstrations were a series of direct actions taken over a course of three days in October 1969 in Chicago organized by the Weatherman faction of the Students for a Democratic Society...
" also called the National Action. She and 25 other Weatherwomen, including Cathy Wilkerson, were arrested in Pittsburgh, PA for that act. From October 8-11, 1969 Jaffe participated in the "Days of Rage" in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
where members of the WUO, after having taken control of the SDS, ran through the streets smashing windows and causing chaos, she was arrested on October 11 for battery and resisting arrest. In 1970 Jaffe was indicted in Detroit, Michigan
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
for her participation in the 1969 Flint, Michigan War Council, the final public meeting of the Weatherman controlled SDS before the dissolution of the SDS in January 1970. According to scholarly researchers, such as Dan Berger, 13 people were indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit bombings and murders. These charges were later dropped.
Underground
After the Greenwich VillageGreenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
townhouse explosion in March, 1970, Jaffe went underground. She found it necessary to cut her beloved long hair which she had been growing since childhood; she also cut ties with her tight-knit family because it was what she needed to do to become a revolutionary (or, simply, to elude capture by the FBI). Although her whereabouts from 1970 to 1978 are mostly unknown, in 1971 the FBI lifted her fingerprints from an abandoned apartment in San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
. Summaries of surveillance files indicate that the apartment had been rented by Weathermen from 1970 to 1971 and contained bomb
Bomb
A bomb is any of a range of explosive weapons that only rely on the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy...
making material; the FBI called the apartment a bomb factory. While underground Jaffe helped to design and publish Weather’s short-lived publication, http://www.antiauthoritarian.net/sds_wuo/osawatomie_no_2/osawatomie.htmlOsawatomie.
Around 1975, while living on the East Coast, Jaffe expressed concerns about the direction the group was taking: because of her feminist background she most likely wanted them to refocus on women’s issues, and this led to her becoming estranged from the group. She was living on her own and not in a collective
Collective
A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together on a specific project to achieve a common objective...
, so when she showed up to a planned meeting and no one else showed, she realized she was out. Jaffe resurfaced in 1978. In an unpublished critique of Prairie Fire, written soon after Weather split up, Jaffe wrote harshly about the problems with the Weather Underground’s lack of focus on feminist issues.
Recent history
After she resurfaced, Jaffe spent a great deal of time reassessing her priorities as an activist. In the last 20 years she has focused much of her attention on feminism, lesbianLesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
issues, and anti-racism
Anti-racism
Anti-racism includes beliefs, actions, movements, and policies adopted or developed to oppose racism. In general, anti-racism is intended to promote an egalitarian society in which people do not face discrimination on the basis of their race, however defined...
in New York State. Today Jaffe is a mother of one son and lives in Albany, New York
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
with her life partner. Having continued a life of activism, Jaffe has worked on a local Free Mumia Committee and she is also the former Executive Director of the organization Holding Our Own, an anti-racist women’s funding foundation. Jaffe was also prominently featured in the 2002 documentary film The Weather Underground
The Weather Underground
The Weather Underground is a 2002 documentary film based on the rise and fall of the American radical organization The Weathermen. Using much archive footage from the time as well as interviews with the Weathermen today, the film constructs a linear narrative of the militant organization.The film,...
.
External links
- FBI files: Weather Underground Organization (Weatherman).
- Full text of the book The Way The Wind Blew, by Ron Jacobs (1997) about the Weather Underground Organization.