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country. According to executive director Shoshana Rosenberg, the building provides meeting space and such services as rape counseling, job training, and legal aid to over 1,000 women each week. It hosts aerobic and selfdefense classes, shelters dozens of nascent projects, and is also home to the San Francisco National Organization for Women (NOW).This "room of our own community" is located in a four-story landmark building in San Francisco's predominantly Hispanic Mission district. The muralists chosen—with over 100 years of combined experience—seized the opportunity to reclaim women's history with openly, powerful images from women's culture that patriarchal societies have long suppressed. High above the doorway on the building's entrance facade, a seated nude goddess with butterflywings sits, pregnant with girl-child. The goddess holds the sun on high: below her cascade streams of water, alive with fish. She's the single fantasy goddess of the piece, created by Susan Kelk Cervantes to embody light and life-giving energy. "All women can learn to have control over their own destinies. She holds the sun [symbolizing] that potential," says the artist. The procreative goddess, culturally subversive in her unabashedly uneroticized corporalicy, provoked an early challenge: The San Francisco Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board found her out of character with the historic building facade and threatened to block municipal funding of the project. As repeated delays threatened the project's implementation (dependent on much donated labor), "We called in the press," says Cervantes. Opposi- The heads of Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchu (center), a Laplander (left) and an Asian American woman (right) frame the mural designed by seven artists: (left to right) Juana Alicia, Miranda Bergman, Meera Desai, Yvonne Littleton, Irene Perez, Susan Kelk Cervantes and Edythe Boone. tion dissipated with the painstaking demonstration that paints could be removed. The completed Maestrapeace, which covers two 65' by 80' window-punctuated walls of the building at 18th Street near Valencia, illustrates the contributions of women throughout history from all parts of the world and the healing power of women's wisdom over time. The roughly 12,000 square foot (including gables), colorsaturated painting rises to heights where only a few core muralists ventured, atop seven and a half levels of scaffolding. "It's very big, it's very public, it's beautiful—a spectacular visual celebration," said Tim Drescher, muralist, teacher, and author of San Francisco Murals: Community Creates Its Muse. The "San Francisco seven" muralists worked collaboratively for nearly a year and a half along with about fifty volunteers to complete the two-part mural. They are carrying on a community-painting tradition that dates back to the New Deal era work of Diego Rivera and the thirty-odd Coit Tower muralists, four of whom were women. Women have been leaders in this city's community-mural movement since the late 1960s, when mural-making ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995
This year, give the gift your friends are sure to love... and save up to 20%*, too! My I st gift to: My name is: State State Zip Name Address City State Include my subscription ID New • Renew Total order at $ 11.75 each $ • Payment enclosed • Bill me Holiday Gift will be mailed in your name. New subscriptions begin with the Winter 1995 issue. Canadian subscriptions add $4; other foreign add $7 (surface mail) or $20 per year (air mail) payable in US funds. ON THE ISSUES is published quarterly. *Savings off the $14.95 basic I year price. 64BGI
Page 1 and 2: THE PROGRESSIVE WOMAN'S QUARTERLY W
Page 3 and 4: page 21 COLUMNS 1 CONFESSIONS OF A
Page 5 and 6: "Now is the time. This is the hour.
Page 7 and 8: Courageously continuing to speak ou
Page 9 and 10: CRAFTY She used to be on welfare. N
Page 11 and 12: COLUMNIST ELAYNE RAPPING The Hillar
Page 13 and 14: COLUMNIST PHYLLIS CHESLER The Dead
Page 15 and 16: C O V E R S T O R Y Confessions of
Page 17 and 18: Subscribe to ON THE ISSUES m and sa
Page 19 and 20: men's locker room was usually open
Page 21 and 22: Busting Mister Short Eyes "This is
Page 23 and 24: "When Willie Sutton was asked why h
Page 25 and 26: The Big Chill Corporate war chest p
Page 27 and 28: ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 including
Page 29 and 30: JMarianne Diaz-Parton knows about L
Page 31 and 32: crude form of equity feminism to ex
Page 33 and 34: ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995
Page 35 and 36: Americans are marrying less, divorc
Page 37 and 38: in a house full of strangers." Anot
Page 39 and 40: "clinical subjects" tells me. I mak
Page 41 and 42: We seem to have regressed mightily
Page 43 and 44: uterus that made walking and sittin
Page 45 and 46: into its essence: Making a diagnosi
Page 47 and 48: again. Her "world vision" has appar
Page 49: -r. • • • A bold new mural on
Page 53 and 54: Details of the immortals: Coyoixauh
Page 55 and 56: HOFFMAN (continued from page 5) gen
Page 57 and 58: THE DEEP DIVIDE f WHY \MER1CAN WllM
Page 59 and 60: Nine-term Congresswoman Lindy Boggs
Page 61 and 62: ness and range, including The Golde
Page 63 and 64: she was "non-functioning," "psychol
Page 65 and 66: RAPPING (continued from page 10) ea
Page 67 and 68: • •MEN'S HEALTH ISAWOMEN'S ISSU

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