Politics & Passions Blog

MARIE Tshirts now available

9/17/2019

Get your own Marie Equi t-shirt to honor the fiercely independent lesbian doctor who fought for equal rights and battled for economic and social justice.

I’ve created a Marie Equi Tshirt Shop at CafePress, an online product store. It’s simple:
Go to https://www.cafepress.com/MarieEquiTshirtShop
Place your order (there are “female” and “male” sizes)
Then proceed to check out and select among the payment options. You can also order by phone. You should receive your t-shirt in about two weeks.
Note: the back side of the t-shirt reads:
Marie Equi
Radical Politics & Outlaw Passions
A Biography
MarieEqui.com

Celebrate Marie! Take a selfie and show us on Facebook or send your pic to me at this site.

Not Her First Time in San Francisco: Marie Equi's Plaque Settles Into the City

8/10/2019

With the recent installation of Marie Equi's bronze plaque as part of the city's Rainbow Honor Walk, I thought you might be interested in Marie Equi's first visit to San Francisco.

The year was 1897. Equi and her girlfriend, Bessie Holcomb, left their Central Oregon homestead for the "Queen of the Pacific," as San Francisco was known. They took Southern Pacific's California Express from Portland, crossing the San Francisco Bay at Carquinez Strait in a ferry long enough to accomodate all the train cars. A few hours later, they reached the Oakland Mole, an immense wooden causeway that jutted into the the bay toward San Francisco. Passengers disembarked for ferries and the final leg of their journey. The newly built Ferry Building with its slender, graceful clock tower was set to open later in the year. Their ferry docked nearby.

Equi and Holcomb took rooms on Market Street in the seven-story Donohoe Building, one of the better addresses a dozen blocks from the Ferry Building. The department store Weinstock & Lubin filled the street level of the building. Equi took a cashier position at Miss Tillie Taylor's restaurant on Post Street. The elite Olympic Club faced Miss Taylor's establishment.

In 1899 Equi began her medical training first at the College of Physicians and Surgeons located at 14th and Valencia Streets. In the autumn of 1900 she transferred to the new campus of the University of California Medical Department, located on a fog-swept hill overlooking Golden Gate Park. Her studies were in one of three buildings that were linked to the city by a single trolley line.

Something apparently went awry during Equi's second year of study, and she chose to complete her medical studies at yet another school and in another city, Portland. She graduated in 1903 from the University of Oregon Medical Department.

Equi made several other significant trips to San Francisco. Look for more installments, culminating in Equi's stay on Barbary Lane (er, Macondray Lane) after serving time in San Quentin Prison.

Excerpts from "Marie Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions," Oregon State University Press, 2015. Available at bookstores and online.

Celebrants in Marie Equi t-shirts. Michael Helquist, author, fourth from right.

Michael Helquist (left), author, and Dale Danley

The Kids Are More Than All Right: Young Bike Advocates

7/25/2019

Tonight San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) members will gather to honor advocates of better, safer streets in the city. The 2019 Golden Wheel Award will be presented to former SF supervisor Jane Kim and to People Protected founders Maureen Persico and Matt Brezina. (People Protected mobilizes activists to form a temporary human barrier on city streets that lack adequate bike infrastructure).

To prep for tonight's celebration, I reviewed the latest issue of SFBC's "Tube Times." For me the 16-page newsletter is impressive for its production and editing quality, readability, and diversity of perspectives. Featured is the article "The Kids Are All Right." It highlights the work of young SF bike advocates who take their demands for safer streets to their schools and neighborhoods and to City Hall. In the words of 14-year-old Oscar Denmark, "It is important for kids to advocate because it is our world as well, and we will be living on it for many years to come." The youth advocates recently promoted -- and won! -- safety upgrades to a street where a soccer teammate was hit and killed by a driver. One of them advised readers of a city newspaper, "It shouldn't take our friend to die to fix this problem."

Join our first ever @PeopleProtected crosswalk! Weds May 1, 5-6.30pm Montgomery @ Mkt. @SFTRU @walksf @sfbike & @PeopleProtected are demanding SFMTA implement turn restrictions and get cars off market now! Cars slow buses and kill people walking & biking https://t.co/EBfP1RhhMk pic.twitter.com/tv5elOPSD7
— People Protected □ □ □ (@PeopleProtected) April 24, 2019

✨The Golden Wheel Awards are TONIGHT! Grab your ticket online and meet us at the Green Room to celebrate. ✨https://t.co/hT5tBuInV4
— SF Bicycle Coalition (@sfbike) July 25, 2019

San Francisco Museum Features LGBTQ+ Journalism in Early HIV/AIDS Years

7/14/2019

A new-to-me find today: The American Bookbinders Museum in SoMa (35 Clementina St, San Francisco). Engaging and interesting for its bookbinding machines of all sorts, displays of book art and covers, and its lecture series. Well worth a visit and a look also at the special exhibit about LGBTQ+ publications of the first decades of the 20th century.

Today's event featured long-time gay journalist Randy Alfred who talked about the city's LGBTQ+ Journalism in the early days of AIDS/HIV. During this period he worked in print (as editor of The Sentinel newspaper) as well as the host of a popular radio program where he interviewed pioneers in AIDS research and clinical care.

These were the years (1980s) when the "Bay Area Reporter" newspaper's readership was primarily gay men (as intended), when the bi-weekly "The Sentinel" newspaper slipped from offering breaking news about AIDS policy, and when the monthly publication "Coming UP!" (today's Bay Times) emphasized diversity and inclusiveness of matters of importance to women as well as to men, provided in-depth analysis, and presented extensive coverage of the political, medical, social behavioral aspects of AIDS in San Francisco. (disclosure: I wrote for "Coming Up!" from 1982-1985)..

Alfred offered his reflections on both the commendable AIDS coverage as well as the Initial unconscionable lack of reports about the AIDS/HIV epidemic in different publications. Thanks to Randy Alfred and to the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco for co-sponsoring of the lecture as part of the Queer Voices lecture series presented by the American Bookbinders Museum.

#lgbthistory #museum #HIV/AIDS #bkbindersmuseum

National Park Service, Oregon Sec State Honor Marie Equi

6/24/2019

Just in time for Pride Month, lesbian activist Marie Equi (1872-1952) is being honored by the National Park Service (NPS) and the Oregon State Secretary of State for her courage and commitment to economic and social justice.

The New Bedford Whaling National Historic Park, part of NPS, triggered the attention to Equi with an exhibit featuring her contributions during the 2018 Pride Month. The profile of Equi highlights her early life, her role as an early woman physician in the West, her controversial fights for women’s and labor’s rights, her romantic and intimate relations with women, and her adopting a child. Equi’s inclusion in the story of the United States by the National Park Service is significant for spotlighting, for the first time, a lesbian doctor and political radical. Read her NPS profile here.

On the West Coast, the office of the Oregon Secretary of State has included Marie Equi among the “Notable Oregonians” featured on its website. Equi is recognized for woman suffrage work, her fight for labor justice, and her opposition to World War I. The site also notes that Equi was the first publicly known lesbian in Oregon.* Equi first settled in the state in 1892 when she joined her girlfriend on a homestead outside The Dalles, Oregon along the Columbia River. After a relocation to San Francisco, Equi returned to Oregon to receive her medical degree and to practice in Pendleton, Oregon and then in Portland. She lived the rest of her adult life in the state. Equi was beloved by many for her commitment to justice and her fierce defense of the underdog.

*Based on research for Equi’s biography, “Marie Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions,” Oregon State University Press, Michael Helquist, 2015. Available in print and kindle, from independent bookstores and online at Amazon. Also see marieequi.com.

Marie Equi Leaves San Quentin, Recovers at Barbary Lane

6/22/2019

Hold on, Mary Ann Singleton, you’re not the first to seek refuge on Barbary Lane. Before you escaped Cleveland for the enchantment, intrigue, and sexual freedom of 1970s San Francisco, lesbian agitator Marie Equi camped out there in 1921, direct from doing time at San Quentin Prison. The difference, of course, Mary Ann, is that your muddled, earnest striving fits neatly into the raucous print and film series “Tales of the City,” created by novelist and screenwriter Armistead Maupin. He placed you and the other fictional denizens in a mansion-like set of apartments along the legendary Barbary Lane.

Marie Equi’s journey to “Barbary Lane,” however, was all too fraught with real danger, conflict and suffering. She struggled with being an outsider most of her life. She was the daughter of immigrant parents; her father was Italian, her mother, Irish. The family was snubbed for not being enough of either community. Equi’s family was working-class, and she had to drop out of high school to help support her six siblings. She worked in the gritty textile mills until she could take it no longer. Her plight was even more precarious since she was uninterested in marriage as a means of financial support; besides she was attracted to women. It was a time, in the 1880s and 1890s, when the word “lesbian” was neither known nor used.

Equi fled to Oregon to live along the Columbia River on a homestead with her girlfriend. She studied medicine on her own, and then bucked the trend to enter medical school when few women did. She graduated in Portland in 1903, and she became known as a passionate advocate for social and economic justice. That’s how Equi got in trouble. She fought for woman suffrage, she distributed birth control information when it was illegal, and she provided outlawed abortions. She marched with jobless workers, picketed at labor strikes, and fought with police. When the U.S. joined World War I, Equi objected to its exploitative, capitalist motives. For speaking out against the war, the federal government charged Equi with sedition. She was convicted and then sentenced to three years in prison at San Quentin, starting October 19, 1920.

Ten months later at San Quentin, “Equi collected her possessions changed into the new clothes and hat provided by the state, and said goodbye to her cellmate “KT” and the other women. …The other inmates cheered her release, and she vowed not to forget them. She completed the required paperwork, took the five dollars cash allotted each discharged prisoner, and walked with guards through the gates. There one of her cousins waited to take her to the ferry and leave San Quentin behind.”

From the San Francisco dock, Equi was driven to her refuge on Macondray Lane, not the fictitious Barbary Lane where transgender landlady Anna Madrigal tended to her family of seekers and supposed misfits featured in “Tales of the City.” (The actual pathway was named in 1912 to honor the pioneer San Francisco merchant Frederick W. Macondray). Instead of Anna Madrigal, Charlotte Anita Whitney welcomed Marie Equi into her mid-block one-bedroom apartment.

Whitney was from an aristocratic family in Oakland, across San Francisco Bay. Like Equi, she was unmarried and had worked as a suffragist before becoming a political radical convinced that fundamental economic and social change was needed in the country. Whitney and Equi had known each other for nearly ten years. They were confidants, perhaps lovers, and they supported each other in the ways independent women must. Two months before Equi’s release, Whitney had taken an apartment on the wooded, well-tended walkway lined by a serpentine rock outcropping on the south side and houses and apartments on the north – all situated high on San Francisco’s eclectic Russian Hill.

From the windows of Whitney’s home, Equi could scan the Marin County headlands across the bay. San Quentin Prison, mercifully, did not mar the view. After months in close concrete quarters, she was just a few steps away from the flowers, shrubs, and trees of the hideaway lane. No longer confined with strangers, she spent her days and nights with an intimate companion of her own choosing, and she tried to make sense of her prison ordeal and what lay ahead.

Macondray Lane for Marie Equi, and Barbary Lane for Mary Ann Singleton. One real walkway and one imagined path. Both held the promise of what so many of us seek then and now -- a safe home and companions of our own choosing.
----
If you’re new to “Tales of the City” by Armistead Maupin, treat yourself to a romp through San Francisco by reading all eight books in the series. Don’t miss the excellent and most recent web miniseries of the same name that premiered on Netflix June 7, 2019.

For the life of the fiercely independent Marie Equi, see “Marie Equi, Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions,” 2015, Oregon State University Press, Michael Helquist. A Stonewall Honor Book. Available at independent bookstores and online. At Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Marie-Equi-Radical-Politics-Passions/dp/087071595X

Marie Equi Closer to Memorial in San Francisco

6/11/2019

Ready for production: prototype of Marie Equi plaque with David Perry, RHW director; Michael Helquist, Equi bio author; and Dale Danley, Equi bio editor.

Early lesbian physician and political agitator Marie Equi will be memorialized next month in San Francisco with a 3 by 3 foot bronze plaque installed in the sidewalk of the city’s historic Castro Street neighborhood. Her likeness, signature, and a brief description of her will appear on the plaque. Equi was selected for the honor once her story of service and activism in the United States became better known following publication of a biography of her in 2015.

On June 3rd the Rainbow Honor Walk (RHW) hosted an unveiling of the next nine LGBTQ honorees, including Equi. Their plaques will be placed in mid-July. The nine will join 28 others installed already. RHW seeks to honor and preserve LGBTQ history with recognition of deceased individuals who contributed to their communities and beyond.

The honor for Equi comes in stark contrast to public regard for her at the peak of her medical and political career in the World War I era. The U.S. government castigated her as one of the most dangerous radicals on the West Coast because of her professional stature and her following among many laborers fed up with low pay and long hours. Authorities also resented Equi’s refusal to be intimidated. She was also controversial for living openly with her female lover. (She and Harriet Speckart are among the first publicly known lesbians on the West Coast).

In addition, Equi roiled the body politic by providing women with birth control information and abortion services. For speaking out against US involvement in World War I, Equi was tried and convicted for sedition. She served ten months in the women’s wards of San Quentin Prison.

Equi's plaque reads:

Marie Equi
(1872-1952)

American physician and political radical who fought for peace, an eight-hour workday, women's suffrage, and their right to birth control.

Others to be honored in the July installments include Chavela Vargas, a Costa Rican singer; ballet dancer Alvin Ailey; singer Josephine Baker; Queen frontman Freddie Mercury; trans activist Lou Sullivan; U.S. Congressman Gerry Studds; and English poet W.H. Auden.

For a list and description of all the honorees, see www.rainbowhonorwalk.org. For more information on Marie Equi see marieequi.com and the biography of her, which I wrote, “Marie Equi, Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions), Michael Helquist, Oregon State University Press, 2015. Book is available at Amazon and independent bookstores in print and ebook formats.

#stonewall50 #castrostreet #lgtqhistory #marieequi #womansuffrage #gay #lesbian #freddiemercury #pride #womenshistory #RainbowHonorWalk

How Arizona Reminded Me of Paris

3/26/2019

Going to Arizona last month relatively soon after major back surgery – and with my neurosurgeon’s approval -- reminded me of an episode 26 years ago when I astounded my doctor with my travel plans.

“You want to go to Paris now, in the winter, after having PCP?” he asked. “It’s going to be cold and wet. Couldn’t you go somewhere south, somewhere it’s dry and warm?”

It was mid-November 1993, and I had just beaten a bout of the often deadly AIDS-related pneumonia. After ve days in the hospital, I was discharged to ten days of IV treatment at home.

A few days later I was proposing to my doctor a long flight to Europe where my lungs would be subjected to the cold, fog, and rain. I explained that my partner at the time had his heart set on celebrating his 40th birthday in his favorite city. My doctor relented with warnings to stay warm and dry and avoid long exposure outdoors. (I’ve always thought he agreed partly thinking I should do what made me happy given my overall prognosis. Unexpectedly, I became a long-term HIV survivor).

So off we went on the day after Thanksgiving for nine days in Paris. It WAS cold and wet and I stayed indoors more than usual. The city was amazing in winter. We were grateful to be staying in a large, warm and cozy apartment in a 400-year-old building on the Ile St. Louis.

Back to last month and Arizona. My husband, Dale Danley, and I had planned this trip long before my diagnosis of disk degeneration. The surgery went well, but a fair degree of nerve pain had yet to resolve. We knew travel would be uncomfortable for me and that our long hikes would be curtailed. I was good for about a mile with a cane. But it was Arizona, sunshine and warm days. Or so we thought.

Our first night it snowed. The next morning the temp was 26 degrees. Our windshield was covered with ice. I scraped some of it off with the end of my cane. We were so not ready. We had debated at home how many T shirts and shorts we’d need.

But we had a wonderful trip visiting longtime friends in Sedona and in the tiny town of Clarkdale before settling in Tucson at a sprawling luxe hotel where a Leadership Conference for LGBTQ choruses was convened. Dale attended sessions while I walked around the compound, spent time in the fitness room, and slept a lot. I loved being in the desert again.

Would You Celebrate Women’s Suffrage If You Had Lost the Right to Free Speech?

6/27/2018

What would Marie Equi do? Would she be getting ready to celebrate in 2020 the centennial of women finally getting the vote? In states across the U.S. women today are planning to honor the thousands of suffragists who persisted and finally won suffrage in 1920. Yet Marie Equi, a longtime suffragist and political agitator, was in a far different situation from her feminist colleagues when the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. She was a few months from doing time in San Quentin prison after being convicted for sedition. Specifically, her offense was publicly voicing her opposition to the war. She exercised what she thought was her right to free speech and gave talks describing the war as a capitalist, imperialist venture in which working-class people would suffer the most.

Earlier this year I was invited to imagine how Marie Equi might have reacted to the news of women getting the vote in 1920. Desiree Root, a senior Gender Studies student and assistant in Professor Kimberly Jensen’s Honors Colloquium at Western Oregon University, conducted the discussion. It was published with other interviews as part of the Oregon Women’s History Consortium, a statewide organization that supports research and education about the history of women in Oregon. You can read my interview here.

Intrigued with this fiercely independent woman, physician, agitator, and one of the first publicly known lesbians on the West Coast? Check my website michaelhelquist.com and look for my biography “Marie Equi: Radical Politics & Outlaw Passions,” Oregon State University Press, at bookstores and online retail sites.

Marie Equi, inmate at San Quentin prison, Easter Sunday; Oregon Historical Society

National Park Service Honors Marie Equi during LGBTQ Pride Month

6/20/2018

For the first time, the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park of the National Park Service is recognizing LGBTQ Pride during the month of June. The inaugural Pride exhibit features Dr. Marie Equi, the longtime agitator for social and economic justice who spent her early years, 1872 to 1892, in New Bedford along the southeast coast of Massachusetts. The exhibit, curated by Aneshia Savino, presents descriptions and photos of Marie Equi with five primary themes from her life as an Activist, Daughter, Doctor, Lesbian, and Mother. Participants at the exhibit’s opening night were offered pins with Equi’s likeness to wear.

Born in 1872 on Second Street along New Bedford’s famed whaling waterfront, Equi was the fifth child and fifth daughter of John Equi, and Italian immigrant from Tuscany, and Sarah Mullins, and Irish immigrant from County Tyrone, Ireland. Four additional children followed. She attended grade school in New Bedford but had to drop out of high school to work in local textile mills to help support the family. Equi later homesteaded in Oregon, self-studied her way into medical school, and became an early woman physician in Portland.

Equi was a strong advocate of women’s rights. She used her professional standing to help drive the campaign for woman suffrage. She also believed in reproductive rights and was jailed with birth control advocate Margaret Sanger for distributing pamphlets about limiting family size. Her passion for justice also led her to provide abortions to her patients. She protested unjust working conditions for laborers and aligned herself with the radical labor union, the Industrial Workers of the World. She objected to World War I and lectured against unfair wartime measures.

Although no organized LGBT community existed at the time on the West Coast, Equi lived openly with women in intimate relationships. In 1915 she and her lover, Harriet Speckart, adopted an infant together in what was one of the first occasions when a publicly known lesbian legally adopted a child.

Marie Equi had been little known in her hometown of New Bedford until the last few years. When I took my book tour to the city and to the greater Boston area, local enthusiasts asked why they had never heard of her. I spoke at the New Bedford Public Library, the Rotch-Jones-Duff House & Garden Museum, and was interviewed on 1420 WBSM radio. I’m excited that Marie Equi is receiving more recognition in her home town and in Massachusetts and that the National Park Service has recognized her historical significance.

The Marie Equi exhibit continues through June. The New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park office (with the exhibit) is located at 33 William Street, New Bedford; open from 9am to 5pm Sunday through Saturday, closed on Wednesdays. (508) 996-4095 for more information.

For more about Marie Equi, see the website marieequi.com and check out my biography “Marie Equi: Radical Politics & Outlaw Passions,” at Amazon and other online book outlets and local bookstores.