Clara Fraser (March 12, 1923 – February 24, 1998) was a
socialist feminist
Socialist feminism rose in the 1960s and 1970s as an offshoot of the feminist movement and New Left that focuses upon the interconnectivity of the patriarchy and capitalism. However, the ways in which women's private, domestic, and public roles ...
political organizer, who co-founded and led the
Freedom Socialist Party
The Freedom Socialist Party is a left-wing socialist political party with a revolutionary feminist philosophy based in the United States. It views the struggles of women and minorities as part of the struggle of the working class. It emerged fro ...
and
Radical Women
Radical Women (RW) is a socialist feminist grassroots activist organization affiliated with the Freedom Socialist Party. It has branches in Seattle, Washington, and Melbourne, Australia.
History
Radical Women emerged in Seattle from a "Free Uni ...
.
Biography
Early life and activism
Clara Fraser was born in 1923 to
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
immigrant parents in multi-ethnic, working class
East Los Angeles. Her father, Samuel Goodman, was a
Teamster
A teamster is the American term for a truck driver or a person who drives teams of draft animals. Further, the term often refers to a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a labor union in the United States and Canada.
Origi ...
and anarchist.
Her mother, Emma Goodman, was a garment worker and later a Business Agent of the
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), whose members were employed in the women's clothing industry, was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, one of the first U.S. unions to have a primarily female membe ...
.
Fraser joined the
Socialist Party
Socialist Party is the name of many different political parties around the world. All of these parties claim to uphold some form of socialism, though they may have very different interpretations of what "socialism" means. Statistically, most of t ...
's youth group in junior high school.
By 1945, after graduating from the
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...
with a degree in literature and education, Fraser was a recruit to the ideas of
Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
, whose campaign against
Stalinism had gained adherents worldwide. She joined the
Trotskyist
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...
Socialist Workers Party (SWP) that year. Fraser moved to Chicago and participated in a union drive at a department store. In 1946, she moved to the
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Tho ...
to help build the SWP's
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
branch.
As an assembly line electrician, Fraser joined the
Boeing Strike of 1948. When the union was slapped with an anti-picketing injunction, she put together a mothers' brigade to walk the line with baby strollers. After the strike, Boeing fired and
blacklist
Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist (or black list) of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list. If someone is on a blacklist, ...
ed Fraser, and the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
pursued her for a decade.
Organizing the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women
In the 1950s and 1960s, Fraser stayed active in the labor arena, worked to end
segregation Segregation may refer to:
Separation of people
* Geographical segregation, rates of two or more populations which are not homogenous throughout a defined space
* School segregation
* Housing segregation
* Racial segregation, separation of humans ...
, advocated for women, and opposed the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...
. She worked with her then-husband,
Richard S. Fraser, in developing Revolutionary Integration to explain the interdependence of the struggles for socialism and
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
freedom and argue the key importance of Black leadership for the U.S.
working class
The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colo ...
.
Within the SWP, Fraser opposed the party's support for the
Nation of Islam. The Seattle local conducted a long campaign to try to win the national party to its perspective, but a clampdown on internal party
democracy
Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which people, the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation ("direct democracy"), or to choo ...
brought this effort to a dead end. Fraser co-authored the branch's critique of the SWP's political and organizational degeneration in a series of documents that have been re-published under the titl
''Crisis and Leadership''(Seattle: Red Letter Press, 2000).
The Seattle branch left the SWP in 1966 and launched the
Freedom Socialist Party
The Freedom Socialist Party is a left-wing socialist political party with a revolutionary feminist philosophy based in the United States. It views the struggles of women and minorities as part of the struggle of the working class. It emerged fro ...
(FSP), founded on a program emphasizing the leadership role of the underprivileged in achieving progress for all of humanity. In 1967, Fraser formed
Radical Women
Radical Women (RW) is a socialist feminist grassroots activist organization affiliated with the Freedom Socialist Party. It has branches in Seattle, Washington, and Melbourne, Australia.
History
Radical Women emerged in Seattle from a "Free Uni ...
(RW), along with
Gloria Martin and young women of the
New Left. RW's ambition was to teach women leadership, theoretical skills, class consciousness.
Seattle City Light Career and Discrimination Lawsuits
After being fired by Boeing and blacklisted as a communist by the FBI, Fraser struggled to find stable employment. Fraser took a job as a receptionist in a psychologist's office, where her communist affiliations were accepted, and worked there for seven years.
Fraser was then hired as a job coordinator for a federal anti-poverty program, where she worked until she was recruited by
Seattle City Light
Seattle City Light is the public utility providing electricity to Seattle, Washington, in the United States, and parts of its metropolitan area, including all of Shoreline and Lake Forest Park and parts of unincorporated King County, Burien, N ...
.
In 1973, Fraser began work at
Seattle City Light
Seattle City Light is the public utility providing electricity to Seattle, Washington, in the United States, and parts of its metropolitan area, including all of Shoreline and Lake Forest Park and parts of unincorporated King County, Burien, N ...
as a training and education coordinator. Fraser was charged with designing and implementing an all-female Electrical Trades Trainee (ETT) affirmative action program to integrate women into the trades. Fraser's hiring and the creation of an all-female ETT program was a calculated political move by Gordon Vickery, the superintendent of City Light at the time. Vickery, the former chief of the
Seattle Fire Department
The Seattle Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency medical services to the city of Seattle, Washington, United States. The department is responsible for an area of , including of waterfront, with a population of 713,700. There is ...
, had been exploring the possibility of running for
mayor
In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well ...
. He was appointed to the superintendent position by Seattle mayor
Wes Uhlman
Wesley Carl Uhlman (born March 23, 1935) is an American attorney and politician who served as the 47th mayor of Seattle, Washington.
Early life and education
Uhlman was born in Cashmere, Washington. He attended Aberdeen High School, Seattle Paci ...
in an attempt to forge an alliance and prevent a future electoral challenge. In his role, Vickery was tasked with reducing City Light's budget through work speed-ups and wage cuts. Vickery and Uhlman chose to hire Fraser, a known radical, to implement a successful program for a few women in the hopes of avoiding discrimination lawsuits like the ones filed against the city by Black workers in the late 1960s.
In addition, Vickery hoped to make a successful ETT program for women a cornerstone of his experience in future electoral campaigns.
![Seattle City Light Superintendent Gordon Vickery with prototype electric car, 1973 (34772918810)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Seattle_City_Light_Superintendent_Gordon_Vickery_with_prototype_electric_car%2C_1973_%2834772918810%29.jpg)
As a recruiter for the ETT program, Fraser used her connections and targeted the feminist community, resulting in over 400 women applying for the ten open positions.
Three of the trainees selected (
Megan Cornish,
Heidi Durham, and Teri Bach) were members of Radical Women, and there were trainees who were members of other feminist groups. In redesigning the program, Fraser diverted from strategies employed by an earlier series of failed affirmative action programs at City Light for Black men. The women were trained and worked together, instead of being spread out into all-male divisions. The trainees were given two weeks of physical and classroom instruction, including swimming. In addition, the trainees were allowed membership into the union,
IBEW
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) is a labor union that represents approximately 775,000 workers and retirees in the electrical industry in the United States, Canada, Guam, Panama, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands; ...
Local 77, as soon as they began the program.
In 1974, Vickery released a new employee code of conduct that was considered by many to be draconian. In response, City Light employees organized a
walkout
In labor disputes, a walkout is a labor strike, the act of employees collectively leaving the workplace and withholding labor as an act of protest.
A walkout can also mean the act of leaving a place of work, school, a meeting, a company, or an ...
on April 10, 1974. Over 1000 people participated, and the support of mostly female non-unionized clerical workers, organized by Fraser, was essential to the walkout's success. Vickery's new rules were dropped, and a greater sense of solidarity emerged in the workplace strengthening Fraser's relationship with the IBEW. Relations between Fraser and Vickery, however became hostile as a result of the walkout. Fraser was removed from her position as the ETT coordinator,
and a paper trail of memos revealed increased micro-management from Vickery and her superiors.
Fraser was laid off without notice in July 1975, officially due to budget cuts, but the move was largely seen as an act of retaliation. In September 1975, the ETT program was terminated, and all but two of the trainees were laid off. Originally, Fraser was refused unemployment benefits and ordered to pay back severance fees she had already received. These charges were dropped. however, after Fraser protested publicly. In June 1976, the training and education coordinator position that Fraser has occupied was refilled by a man who had less experience.
Following her dismissal, Fraser filed a discrimination complaint that documented pervasive
political bias
Political bias is a bias or perceived bias involving the slanting or altering of information to make a political position or political candidate seem more attractive. With a distinct association with media bias, it commonly refers to how a r ...
and
sexism
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers pri ...
. After a seven-year battle, Fraser was victorious in a ruling that affirmed the right of workers to speak out against management and to organize on their own behalf. She returned to her former job at City Light just as a new furor broke out over discrimination against women in non-traditional trades. Fraser joined with women in the field and the offices and pro-
affirmative action men to form a new organization to combat sex and race discrimination: the Employee Committee for Equal Rights at City Light (CERCL).
Freeway Hall case
In 1984, an ex-FSP member named Richard Snedigar brought a harassment lawsuit against Fraser, seven other party leaders, and the organization as a whole. This case came to be known as the Freeway Hall case.
Snedigar wanted to take back a substantial donation given years before to a fund for obtaining a new headquarters after the party was evicted from its home base at Freeway Hall. He also demanded FSP minutes, membership lists, and names of contributors. At one point, Fraser and the party's attorneys were sentenced to jail for refusing to divulge financial information, but their sentences were stayed and ultimately overturned. The FSP pursued this case to the state
Supreme Court, where
civil liberties attorney
Leonard Boudin
Leonard B. Boudin (July 20, 1912 – November 24, 1989) was an American civil liberties attorney and left-wing activist who represented Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame and Dr. Benjamin Spock, the author of '' Baby and Child Care'', who ...
argued that
privacy rights
The right to privacy is an element of various legal traditions that intends to restrain governmental and private actions that threaten the privacy of individuals. Over 150 national constitutions mention the right to privacy. On 10 December 194 ...
are essential to the freedom to express dissent. The FSP was finally vindicated in 1992.
Later life and death
Clara Fraser had two sons, Marc and Jon. She died on February 24, 1998, from
emphysema.
Philosophy and Political Thought
Clara Fraser had emphasized that a feminism focused only on feminism would be insufficient, and thought that ultimately, it wouldn't realize its own goals. As she said, "the logic of feminism is to expand inexorably into a more generalized radicalism."
The oppression of different sexes, classes, and so on all depend upon each other, and so, focusing on any single issue would be a detriment to the others. In the case of feminism, "single-issue feminism" would inevitably be dominated by white, upper-class women, who would think that they're representing all women. There are many quotes throughout her writing that express this view:
"The single- issue is the dead-end issue. It always ends up smack against the wall. True, it is large, but it is also, invariably, diffuse, ambiguous, contradictory, deceptive and mercurial... It moves to the right, not to the left, and it moves radicals along with it."
"Without
ocialist feministleadership, the women's movement, like every other movement, will petrify, corrode, adapt and drown inside the Democratic Party or inane, single-issue liberalism. Or it will adopt an ultra-left, insanely sectarian and/or terroristic stance, born of desperation and bitterness."
Clara Fraser expresses many of her views in her book ''Revolution, She Wrote''. In her paper "How Marxists Think", she expresses a disdain for classical logic. In her summary of Aristotle, Aristotle had contributed three laws to formal logic:
# "A" equals A: the law of identity. A thing is always equal to itself.
# "A" cannot be non-A: the law of contradiction.
# "A" cannot be both A and non-A: the law of the excluded.
Fraser cites five critiques of these laws:
# These laws are only true if one assumes the world is something fixed and unchanged. Nothing moves and develops, because motion implies self-contradiction. As she says, "Does a dollar always equal a dollar? Hardly."
# Formal logic creates impassable barriers between things, but in reality, everything grows out of and into other things: paper into money, and money into paper again; rivers into seas and seas into clouds; bacteria into animals and animals into humans.
# A can equal not a; formal logic has too rigid a view of identity. The working class for example, is a heterogenous and contradictory mass. In her words, "a worker is not a boss, but can think and act like one."
# These laws present themselves as absolute, final, and eternal. But in reality, everything is relative, inter-dependent and changing, and as a consequence, so are the laws of governing them.
# The laws of formal logic cannot explain themselves; they cannot account for their own origin or cause of being.
This is where Hegel and Marx come in for Fraser. Fraser states that Hegel had realized these flaws and developed a logic which had taken motion and change into account, but was still plagued by a kind of idealism, a privileging of non-material substances (such as the Absolute Spirit) over material conditions. This is where Marx "fixes" Hegel, seeing changing rooted in the natural conditions of a society. Fraser states that all science is the study of the motion and behavior that matter, and Marxism is simply the study of human motion and social behavior.
See also
*
Megan Cornish
*
Heidi Durham
*
Seattle City Light
Seattle City Light is the public utility providing electricity to Seattle, Washington, in the United States, and parts of its metropolitan area, including all of Shoreline and Lake Forest Park and parts of unincorporated King County, Burien, N ...
*
Freedom Socialist Party
The Freedom Socialist Party is a left-wing socialist political party with a revolutionary feminist philosophy based in the United States. It views the struggles of women and minorities as part of the struggle of the working class. It emerged fro ...
*
Radical Women
Radical Women (RW) is a socialist feminist grassroots activist organization affiliated with the Freedom Socialist Party. It has branches in Seattle, Washington, and Melbourne, Australia.
History
Radical Women emerged in Seattle from a "Free Uni ...
References
Further reading
Articles and interviews
* Carol Beers,
Activist Clara Fraser Dead At 74 —– 'Life Spent Contemplating Your Own Navel... Helps No One', ''Seattle Times'', 28 February 1998.
* Florangela Davila,
Still Active — Radical Clara Fraser Turns A Feisty 73, ''Seattle Times'', 17 March 1996.
* Jack Hopkins,
Seattle’s Grande Dame of Socialism, ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'', 11 September 1988.
* Lisa Schnellinger,
Socialism’s Flame Flickers on in Seattle, ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'', 5 May 1989.
* James Wallace,
The Socialist and the Holy Man, ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'', 28 July 1990.
* Jane Hadley,
Memorial Rite Set for Clara Fraser: Seattle 'Revolutionary' is Dead at 74, ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'', 2 March 1998.
* Imbert Matthee,
Boeing Strike has Parallels to '48 Walkout, ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'', 4 December 1995.
Archives
Clara Fraser Papers 1923-1998. 36.7 cubic feet . At th
Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections.Clara Fraser Defense Committee records.1979-83. .42 cubic feet. At th
Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections.Clara and Richard Fraser Papers.1905-1949, 1970. 100 items (2 boxes). At th
Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections.Megan Cornish Papers.1970-2003. 10.26 cubic feet. At th
Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections
Heidi Durham Papers and Oral History Interviews.1937-2017, 1.57 cubic feet. At th
Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections
Melba Windoffer papers.1933-1990. 7.42 cubic feet (8 boxes). At th
Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections.
Freedom Socialist Party Seattle Branch Records 1984-1992. 3.14 cubic feet. At th
Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections
Freedom Socialist Party National Office (Seattle) Records 1976-1998. 3.09 cubic feet. At th
Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections
Radical Women Seattle Office Records 1991-1997. 0.37 cubic feet. At th
Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections
Radical Women National Office (Seattle) Records 1976-1998. 1.28 cubic feet. At th
Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections
Melba Windoffer Papers 1910-1993. 7.42 cubic feet. At th
Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections
External links
at
Marxists Internet Archive
Marxists Internet Archive (also known as MIA or Marxists.org) is a non-profit online encyclopedia that hosts a multilingual library (created in 1990) of the works of communist, anarchist, and socialist writers, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Eng ...
*
Barbara Love
Barbara Joan Love (February 27, 1937 – November 13, 2022) was an American feminist writer and the editor of ''Feminists who Changed America, 1963–1975''. With the National Organization for Women, Love organized and participated in demonstr ...
, editor, ''Feminists Who Changed America'' (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006).
* Gloria Martin,
Socialist Feminism: The First Decade, 1966-76' (Seattle: Freedom Socialist Publications, 1986).
* ''The Radical Women Manifesto: Socialist Feminist Theory, Program and Organizational Structure'' (Seattle
Red Letter Press 2001).
* ''They Refused to Name Names: The Freeway Hall Case Victory'' (Seattle
Red Letter Press 1995).
* Robert J. Alexander, ''International Trotskyism: 1929-1985, A Documented Analysis of the Movement'' (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fraser, Clara
1923 births
1998 deaths
People from East Los Angeles, California
Members of the Socialist Workers Party (United States)
Members of the Freedom Socialist Party
Activists for African-American civil rights
American anti–Vietnam War activists
20th-century American Jews
American trade union leaders
American Marxists
American anti-poverty advocates
Jewish feminists
Jewish socialists
Marxist feminists
American Marxist journalists
Journalists from California
American socialist feminists
20th-century American journalists