BY LIN-Z

It’s 8:30 pm on Thursday the 21st of July. I’ve just eaten a terrific meal of roasted chicken and peas, cooked by International Socialist Review‘s Editor Sherry Wolf. Although this piece is titled “Interview with the Big Bad Wolf,” Sherry Wolf is anything but villainy. On the contrary, she is an amazing feminist and socialist writer. We sit together in the cozy dinning room of her Chicago apartment. She is wearing a plain white tank top, a pair of old navy cargo shorts, and brown sandals. We sit comfortably at the table. Although I am nervous she makes me feel at home, and we begin the interview.

Lin-Z: How do you define feminism?
SW: I would define feminism as being a worldview that starts from an understanding for a need for women's equality with men. It's a limited world view in some regards because I think that where it is often attacked by the right wing as being very radical to some people, feminism is very limited in that it sees all women generally, regardless of class and race, as having a common interest. I think that's not always true. Hillary Clinton does not have the same worldview as someone making minimum wage. Nonetheless, in general, colloquially speaking, feminism is about women's equality.

Lin-Z: How long have you been writing for the International Socialist Review magazine?
SW: I've been on the editorial board and writing for the ISR for about five years. It's the widest read socialist magazine in the U.S.

Lin-Z: How long have you been a socialist and why did you become one?
SW: I became a socialist when I was 18 years old and decided it wasn't enough to just fight for individual reforms around race or women's rights or for this or that war. But when I came to understand that inequalities and injustices of the world were all connected to the profit system of capitalism I became a socialist.

Lin-Z: As the dictionary so boldly put it, for those who don't know, socialism is one of the various economic and political theories that advocates collective governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods. Do you disagree?
SW: Socialism for Marxists like myself is very simple. It's about workers' power. It means the people that produce all the wealth in society are to control all the wealth in society. That means no billionaires and no poor people. It's about everybody having access to health care, to education, to housing, good food, and to all the possibilities life has to offer which living under capitalism denies you.

Lin-Z: Well that's socialism …from a socialist. What is it like to work on a magazine being a woman who is 40?
SW: Because the goal of the magazine is to advance women's rights, the rights of all oppressed people, of black people, of brown people around the world and to challenge the idea of imperialism and exploitation and oppression, it's actually a wonderful life because I'm in collaboration on a daily basis with co-thinkers who are trying to change the world. So the goal of the magazine is not just an academic exercise, it's trying to create a spark to get people to take action to change the world as well as read about ideas and history and theory.

Lin-Z: So you would call yourself an activist if I'm not mistaken. What kind of activist are you?
SW: I'm a revolutionary socialist. I think we need to fight for concrete changes in the world right now. I think we need to fight to expand the rights of women and blacks and gays. We need to fight against this murderous war. But I also believe that reforms are not enough because until we have fundamental change, we're going to continue to have exploitation and oppression of every kind and we're going to continue to have a world system based on competition, domination, and profit. That's why I'm a revolutionary socialist.

Lin-Z: I was reading one of your co-worker's articles about Bush and she was talking about grassroots activism. What exactly is grassroots activism for those who don't know?
SW: It's activism from below as opposed to looking to politicians or people at the top of society, to people who are wealthy or in positions of power, to change things. What I advocate, and what people who I organize alongside of advocate, is for ordinary men, women and young people to fight for themselves because that's how we believe genuine justice is going to come about.

Lin-Z: You organized a very huge protest on gay marriage at the Chicago City Hall. What other kinds of protests have you organized?
SW: I'm 40 now, which means I've spent most of the last 22 years organizing protests against police brutality, against wars, against apartheid in South Africa in the 1980's, against bigots who want to get rid of abortion rights. I fought for AIDS drugs; I fought homophobia of every sort. I've organized protests against gay bashings. I've helped organize protests to stop this war. I continue to do that. And I try to find allies and co-thinkers wherever I can who will organize the widest number of people so we can have an impact on policy in this country.

Lin-Z: Okay, so you've been doing this for over 20 years and you don't look a day over 21! But anyway, since you spoke about abortion, what is your opinion on abortion?
SW: I think that women, including girls, should be the only people to control their bodies. That the Church and the state should have no say whatsoever on what women can do with their own bodies. I believe we have suffered huge retreats in this country. The fact is that in 21 states there are parental consent laws -- teenagers cannot get an abortion without parental consent -- and in 24 states there are 24-hour waiting periods before you can get an abortion, which I think is really infantilizing to women. It basically is saying to women that they're not mature enough to make decisions with their own lives. That's disgusting and sexist. I believe that we should be fighting for and mobilizing in the streets for abortion without apology, for full funding by the state for abortions. It's a health care procedure and nothing more.

Lin-Z: I take it since you are pro-abortion and not for the parental laws or the 24-hour waiting period, you're not in agreement with former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor?
SW: There's a mythology in the mainstream media right now that Sandra Day O'Connor was a great defender of abortion rights when in fact she ruled over a decade ago that parental consent laws and 24-hour waiting periods and other restrictions were not, in her words, "an undue burden." I disagree. I think if you're 15 years old and you're pregnant, to have to go to your parents for approval to take care of your own body is a burden. If you are a working person, to have to wait 24 hours, and have to miss a day of work, and have to often travel long distances -- since in 87 percent of counties there is no access to abortion -- this makes it a huge burden. I think that we're going to have to fight like hell under the Bush administration to stop another bigot from being put on the Supreme Court. Even if a bigot is placed on the Supreme Court, as I believe will probably happen with this fellow Roberts -- who is not only anti-abortion but also pro-torture -- I think that we're going to have to hit the street and mobilize the way we did in the 70's and 80's to fight for our rights and that's what's going to influence the Court more than anything else.

Lin-Z: So I take it that since you just mentioned him, you're not pro Bush. What are your opinions on him?
SW: Obviously, he's sort of the idiot son of an oilman, but it almost doesn't matter that he's a moron and that he's a warmonger. I think the Democratic Party, which is supposed to be the opposition party in this country, has been in complete collaboration with the Bush administration on the war, on the restrictions to abortion rights, on the torture at Guantanimo Bay, and in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq. I think the more important question in this country is not how stupid Bush is or what a bigot or racist or warmonger -- of course he's all of those things. But why we have no opposition party in this country that fights for the rights of ordinary people and that's what I am primarily concerned with and help to organize. That's why I'm a socialist. I believe we have to get rid of the two-party system if we're going to get women's rights, black rights and an end to this murderous war.

Lin-Z: In reference to what you said earlier, the new Supreme Court Justice might be pro torture. Are you for or against the death penalty?
SW: I oppose the death penalty with every fiber of my being. I am friends with a number of men who are exonerated death row inmates who were supposed to be killed by the state and were later found innocent and have been released from jail. They are collaborators of mine. I think that the argument that the death penalty and abortion are somehow connected is a false argument. A fetus is not a human being; it is parasitical tissue -- clinically speaking, that's what it is. If people have religious feelings otherwise, well, they should not have an abortion. But that is not the basis of how laws ought to be made in this country. The medical community and the scientific community do not agree that a fetus is a human life, it cannot exist as a human life outside of a woman's body. Really what this is a discussion about is women's rights. The death penalty is often about racism and the role of the state trying to take away the lives of often innocent people who really have been victims of a really screwed up system.

Lin-Z: I read a line in this article called "Post Feminism or Just Plain Old Sexism" written by one of your co-workers, Sharon Smith. Smith challenges the issue feminists of creating a consciousness of victimization among women. She also goes on to challenge the notion that our statistics on rape and sexual objectification are just exaggeration. What are your feelings on this topic? Do you think we are equal to men now or do you think that we are still unequal? And how so?
SW: Well let's look at the facts. The reality is that women today, 30 plus years since the explosion of the women's liberation movement, women are still making less than 75-cents to a mans dollar in the workplace. Women still don't have control over their bodies. Domestic violence rates are enormous. The degree of sexism throughout society is huge. If you look at the class action suits against companies like Wal-mart, which refuse to place women in positions of authority or pay them equally to men, then it's undeniable that women remain oppressed in society. The question is how do you fight that oppression and I believe that the response needs to be that we need organized fight back that involves both women and men. Sexism affects everyone around women and it diminishes our society as a whole, and it drags down the living standards of both women and men. So I believe the fight back should be by both men and women who have a common interest against wealthy people in this society who aim to perpetuate the status quo.

Lin-Z: Being a Jewish lesbian socialist in a biracial relationship, what are the struggles you go through and why do you keep doing what you do?
SW: Personally, I think I'm quite fortunate. The fact that I spent my life in major cosmopolitan areas, first in New York City and now in Chicago, that I’m around progressive and radical people has created the possibility for my girlfriend and me to live very good lives in many regards. But we're also aware that the ability for us to walk down the street arm in arm or live lives in which we can afford to pay rent, buy food and make car payments and the rest of that are the legacy of decades of struggle that came before us. And I think that my lover and I both feel a responsibility to continue that struggle because we know that what the former slave an abolitionist fighter Fredrick Douglass said was really true: If there is no struggle, there is no progress. And if we don't continue to struggle and continue to fight then the people with power and money in this society will dominate and attempt to continue to push our lives backwards. The fact is we don't have full equality in this society, but we have an option, we have choices and one of those choices is to fight and that's the way I choose to live my life and I can imagine a better life.

Lin-Z: What advice do you offer young women of today?
SW: Organize opposition to the people in position of power and money. Fight against corporate injustice. Fight like hell against war and racism and oppression of every kind. Build independently of the Democrat Party, which has always been a graveyard of social movements, and fight as if your lives depend on it because in many ways they do.