A new podcast aims to highlight the historic Bronx native, Battling Bella Abzug, a civil rights activist, political powerhouse and larger-than-life feminist icon.
Political Anchor for Spectrum News NY1, Errol Louis hosted a special two-part series of the “You Decide” podcast called, “Bella’s Battles” in which Louis and a chorus of New York’s political elite tell tales of a brazen go-getter who championed women, the poor, Black and Brown people and LGBTQ rights.
Louis peppered the series with audio of Abzug’s captivating speeches, like when she spoke to a group of women about the misconceptions of the feminist movement.
“I’ve been to hundreds of meetings of women, maybe thousands all over this country,” Abzug said in a recording. “I have yet to see a bra burned or a man exorcised, but I have seen the burning indignation of women in every single part of this country.”
For the past several years, the “You Decide” podcast has been creating documentary style profiles of prominent political figures in New York history. Louis told the Bronx Times that this year, Abzug emerged as a clear and necessary choice. While the Bronx-born phenom enjoyed a great amount of notoriety during her lifetime, her story had not resonated so loudly through the decades as her distinctive Bronx accent.
“Bella Abzug was relatively unknown, especially to some of the younger women in our newsroom, which I found, personally, somewhat alarming, because she’s a very important figure,” Louis said.
Although her time on the political stage was short, it was marked by historic legislative successes that carry great significance more than 50 years after their enactment.
“She was kind of like a comet across the sky, if you’re talking about electoral politics,” he said. “She came and she went. It was brief and brilliant, but it was over by the late 1970s.”
But “Bella’s Battles” makes clear that Abzug was much more than a three-term congressional representative; she had been challenging norms and fighting for social justice from day one.
“The thing we tried to bring forward in the podcast is that she had been a full blown national and nationally and even internationally known activist for 20 years before she ever ran for office at age 50 for the first time,” Louis said.
Abzug was born in the Bronx in 1920 to Russian Jewish immigrant parents. Abzug’s father was a butcher and she said that she grew up in a house that was always conscious of social justice, which led her toward her work in civil rights and politics.
In true Bronx fashion Abzug often said that she was “born yelling,” according to a 2019 biography, “Battling Bella: The Protest Politics of Bella Abzug.” Assembly Member Jeffrey Dinowitz, who represents the Northwest Bronx and worked on two of Abzug’s campaigns during his 20’s, spoke of her loudness with admiration.
“ She was smart,” Dinowitz said. “She was loud in a good way. She was from the Bronx, so she didn’t take any garbage from people.”
Growing up in a Jewish community in the Bronx, Abzug was fiercely dedicated to her faith and it’s one of the earliest places where she demonstrated her fearless determination to stand up for what was right.
“Bella’s Battles” details accounts of when Abzug’s beloved grandfather died, Abzug went to the synagogue to recite a mourners prayer called the Kaddish, which is said at the temple for a year following the death of a loved one.
Traditionally the Kaddish was only recited by men, and Abzug was told that she could not participate, but she was undeterred, and honored her grandfather by reciting the Kaddish for the full year.
Louis told the Bronx Times that this act of defiance set the tone for the rest of Abzug’s life.
“She immediately starts basically trying to change her position or the position of women: what they were recognized as able to do or not do,” Louis said. “She starts right out challenging that, and that sets the pattern for the whole rest of her life— that if you’re not willing to speak up, you’ll be literally shuffled off to the side and left in the shadows.”
She attended Hunter College and later graduated from Columbia University Law School after being rejected from Harvard. Abzug entered the legal profession at a time when women were rarely welcomed, but forging new paths in the face of adversity had come to define Abzug’s professional life.
Early in her career, she took on civil rights cases, representing individuals facing discrimination and political repression. She famously took on the case of Willie McGee in Mississippi, who was a Black man accused and convicted of raping a white woman in what is largely believed to be a false accusation constructed to cover up an extramarital affair.
A staunch peace activist, Abzug was a prominent figure in the anti-war movement, and frequently protested the Vietnam War and advocated for nuclear disarmament. She was eventually honored with the United Nation’s highest civilian recognition, the Blue Beret Peacekeepers Award.
During the second act of her life, Abzug entered politics, winning election to the House of Representatives in 1970 for New York’s 19th Congressional District and becoming part of a new wave of women entering Congress. She coauthored numerous pieces of historic legislation like Title IX, the Freedom of Information Act, The Equality Act of 1974 and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) of 1974, leaving an undeniable legacy during her short time in office.
In “Bella’s Battles,” Louis included audio from those who knew Abzug, like former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, who shared how her strength and demeanor were fearless.
“She was extraordinary in what she accomplished, and how she presented herself, and unlike almost all of us in elected office, she was who she was,” Messinger said in a recording. “She said what she believed in any instance, often with some fierceness and sometimes some swear words.”
Assembly Member Dinowitz remembered campaigning for Abzug when she ran for the U.S. Senate in 1976, after three terms in the House of Representatives and again in 1977 when she took on Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo in the race for the Mayor of New York City.
He campaigned for Abzug in the Bronx throughout the infamous 25 hour blackout and subsequent looting in July of 1977 and a summer of unprecedented fear as the serial killer David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, terrorized the Bronx and the rest of NYC.
“ That was quite an interesting year for a campaign,” Dinowitz said.
But he told the Bronx Times that he was committed to Abzug’s candidacy. Like so many of the voices in “Bella’s Battles,” he truly believed in her.
“ I’m telling you, she was amazing,” Dinowitz said.
“I have all the campaign buttons, I still have some of the campaign literature because I save things.”
Dinowitz told the Bronx Times that he was excited that Abzug’s legacy was making its way back into books, documentaries and podcasts. He wants the Bronx to remember her.
“ I think we from the Bronx should be very proud of her,” Dinowitz said.
“I think people today should know who she is. The fact that so many younger people don’t— that’s unfortunate.”
“Bella’s Battles” recalls the power and determination inherent to women of the Bronx and brings Abzug’s legacy into the present conversation. Through archival audio, firsthand accounts and political reflection, the podcast chronicles Abzug’s historic fights while celebrating their lasting relevance in the lives of everyday Americans.
Reach Sadie Brown at sbrown@schnepsmedia.com or (214) 994-6723. For more coverage, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!
