Battling Bella: The Protest Politics of Bella Abzug by Leandra Ruth Zarnow

Abstract

Reviewed by: Battling Bella: The Protest Politics of Bella Abzug by Leandra Ruth Zarnow Joyce Antler (bio) Battling Bella: The Protest Politics of Bella Abzug. By Leandra Ruth Zarnow Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019. x + 441. "I've been described as a tough, rather noisy woman, a prizefighter, I've been called Battling Bella, Mother Courage, and a Jewish mother" (182). So Bella Abzug described herself in 1972, as she began the second of her three terms in the House of Representatives. The term aptly captures the audacious political figure that Leandra Zarnow explains so well in this astute political biography. Abzug was a political luminary with outsized charisma. She had been a peace and gender activist and then became a lawmaker with a mastery of detail and process that made her one of the most effective politicians of her era. But few have emphasized the Abzug that Zarnow portrays: a left-wing progressive New Politics Democrat committed to a bold socialist vision for more than a half century. This Bella was a radical populist devoted to gender equity, gay rights, peace, civil rights and civil liberties, as well as Jewish issues and Zionism. Zarnow emphasizes that Abzug was especially dedicated to economic justice and labor rights. She suggests that Abzug was "intersectional" before the term ever arose, but class may have been most prominent among her passions, an overlooked key to her politics. Judaism introduced Abzug to concerns of social justice and the need to fight injustice. From childhood onward, Abzug found sustenance in Conservative Judaism and Socialist Zionism. She joined Hashomer Hatzair and Avukah, remaining a Social Zionist. Abzug found common cause with many kinds of political radicals; as a pro-Israel Jewish progressive, she sided with leftists on every issue except Israel. At various times, her strongly held Jewish identity led to uncomfortable differences with feminists and leftists. Zarnow points out other disagreements Abzug had with women's liberationists. She never completely supported the ERA, for example, though she was identified with it throughout her life. In her congressional years, after she had become a symbol of women in politics, the fight against gender inequity, particularly its structural manifestations, became a primary objective. Zarnow emphasizes protest as the continuing motif of Abzug's activism. No matter the arena—her law practice, her activist and lobbying groups, the United States Congress, or later in her life, global NGOs—Abzug pushed hard for change. "I'm hardly likely to turn and change from tiger to pussy cat," she remarked during her first run for Congress on the Democratic ticket, proud of her actions as a political maverick (118). She took the tools she had cultivated as a socialist outsider into Congress yet recognized that in order to win major battles, she had to build interparty and bipartisan alliances, so she modified defiant stances [End Page 483] when necessary. This was not selling out, says Zarnow. Though some others have seen Abzug as an accommodationist, Zarnow argues that she was practicing "pragmatic radicalism" (146). Doing so enabled Abzug to remain "an outside agitator working on the inside of the US government," pushing through policies that advanced women's and gay rights, familial well-being, market productivity, and support for Israel (294). Zarnow is very good on the personal as well as political qualities that inspired Abzug's career and her celebrity. Abzug's authenticity was key to both: her openness, her audacity, even her body—"unquiet and uncontained" (180). Abzug often broke the rules of civility for a public figure. Her flamboyant persona as well as her protest politics made her a cultural target that could attract cruel antigay, antisemitic, anti-Communist, and anti-woman commentary, as well as deep admiration and loyalty. The fervor of the opposition to her reveals the extent to which Abzug was a deep threat to conservative forces—a "galvanizing symbol of everything rotten with liberalism" (186). Battling Bella offers fresh accounts of Abzug's legislative and policy accomplishments and revisits a number of the most interesting political events of the late twentieth century, with which Abzug's career was entwined. I count among them the establishment of the National Women's Political Caucus in...