Donate to Save feminist pioneer Laura X from homelessness!, organized by George Lippman (2024)

Photo: First International Women's Day demonstration in the U.S. in 23 years, March 8, 1969 with Laura X as both Isadora Duncan and Alexandra Kollontai, in Berkeley .

This is an urgent appeal for monthly donations to help pay for housing for a woman who is the living embodiment of the “Second Wave” of feminism in the late 1960s. Laura X was also a pivotal activist in the anti-nuclear, peace, and civil rights movements, and the Free Speech Movement in 1964. She remains active with her Women's History Library and Laura’s Social Movement Archives.

Laura is losing her home of 60 years in April! She needs the community's help to pay for a small apartment in Berkeley. Our strategy is to ask for a small donation from a lot of people. We are asking for a monthly donation of around $25 for the next year. Please see below for the details.

Laura earned international respect for her successful two-decade campaign in 45 states and 20 countries to end the legal privilege to rape one’s wife or date. In March 2024, Yorktown, Va. high school students are making a documentary about her work on marital rape for National History Day competition.

Keep Laura X in Berkeley!

At the age of 83 years, Laura X is still active in the struggle for women’s liberation and all human rights. Unfortunately, she has fallen on hard times. The bank has forced a sale of her house, and she is facing the prospect of homelessness in April 2024.

Laura’s generosity also led her to share whatever resources she had with people in need, and with movements committed to fundamental social change. Now she has neither the assets nor the income to afford a rental apartment.

Laura needs to remain in Berkeley where her support base and public benefits are strongest. And we need her here as a living link to the early feminism and other movements of the 1960s.

Our audacious goal is to raise $3,500 a month for the next year, to meet the soaring housing costs of the Bay Area. This amount can be easily raised if a lot of people give a small amount of money.

Feminist trailblazer, now on hard times, needs your support.

We who work hard for social justice cannot allow our pioneers, who risked everything to build the movements we carry forward today, to spend their last years without a home. Please join the Friends of Laura X and Women’s Liberation in making a monthly donation of any amount to keep her housed for the next year.

Laura X brought International Women’s Day (IWD) back to the public’s consciousness in 1969 after it was last observed in the streets in 1947. Yes, IWD was reborn in Berkeley, by a Cal alumna! She inspired the first demonstration that Berkeley Women’s Liberation held for IWD on March 8, 1969. To expand the commemoration, she called for a National Women’s History Month to be built around IWD, and provided resources for such commemorations. The month of March is today recognized around the world as Women’s History Month.

Fifty states, Washington DC, and twenty other countries had banned marital and date rape in the 1990s, and at the UN 4th World Conference in Beijing, all the countries voted for wives' right to consent to each sex act in marriage. For more information on Laura’s life work, see http://ncmdr.org.

Celebrate International Women’s Day by Helping its Modern-Day Advocate!

In order to provide security for Laura’s housing needs, we ask you to make monthly donations for the next twelve months. Unfortunately, GoFundMe does not allow recurrent donations. Therefore we ask you to donate now for March, and we will be back in April with a new link to all automatic payment of your pledge.

Donate to Save feminist pioneer Laura X from homelessness!, organized by George Lippman (2024)

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