New Bella Abzug Play a Timely Antidote to Trump’s Toxic Masculinity Bella Bella describes the political vision of a trailblazer who was a pioneering crusader for racial justice, women, lesbian and gay rights, and an end to the Vietnam war

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Bella Bellathe new off-Broadway play about the indomitable 1970’s congressional titan Bella Abzug, feels timely and significant in this, the season of Donald Trump’s impeachment.

In early 1972, Bella made history because, as Hillary Clinton wrote in a Facebook post that coincided with the play’s opening on October 22, “In the midst of a crisis in our democracy with eerie parallels to our current moment, Bella Abzug was the first member of the U.S. House of Representatives to speak out in favor of impeaching President Nixon.”

“At the time, Clinton wrote,  “I never pictured myself running for office. Bella inspired me because she was one of the few women who was in the thick of political and policy decisions.”

Bella Bella, a savvy one-person play, written and starring a simply dressed Harvey Fierstein as the powerhouse New York Congresswoman, uses Bella’s speeches and writing to describe the political vision of a trailblazer who was a pioneering crusader for racial justice, women, lesbian and gay rights, and an end to the Vietnam war.

Nixon, Bella reflects in the play, “wastes billions of tax payer dollars dropping Napalm on innocent Vietnamese but child-care is fiscally irresponsible. And that brings us to that paragon of boys club corruption – Gerald Ford – and the glory of Watergate. Years of investigations, hearings, trials…Dragging the truth out of those traitors detail by detail… All to prove that no one, not even the President of the  United States, is above the law.”

As we approach the exciting possibility of Elizabeth Warren as our first woman President, the words of Bella Abzug illuminate the advantages of sending the “old boys club” government packing. Shortly before Trump was elected three years ago, I wrote a column for the Huffington Post titled, “Trump Manifests Everything Wrong with American Men and Shames Our Gender.” From my perspective as a post-feminist man, raised as a child of the sixties by a liberated artist mother in Bella’s district of downtown Manhattan, I called Trump “the living, fire-breathing, fear-evoking, hate-mongering, violence-threatening, sexist, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, avaricious, insecure, intolerant, egomaniacal, bombastic, braggadocios, greedy sexual harassing manifestation of everything that is wrong with American men.”

Bella, Bella gets right to the core of why our nation would benefit by replacing a Chief Executive who embodies toxic masculinity with one that engenders the caring, compassionate values of a matriarchy.  “No one’s looking to replace the male white elite with a female white elite,” Bella says in the play.

“The goal is to transform, not transfer. Women have to change the nature of  power and not let power change the nature of women.”

“Men see things as they are,” Fierstein’s Bella explains. “But women consider possibilities. We negotiate. We cross party lines looking for answers. Men  will tell you that there’s no peace without security while women understand there’s no security without  peace.”

It was my friend Liz Abzug, Bella’s daughter, who first approached Harvey Fierstein, the Tony Award winning writer of  Torch Song Trilogy and La Cage Aux Folles,  to create a play about her mother. The pair approached a number of well-known actresses, including Patti LuPone and Better Midler, to play Bella, but when they were too busy, Fierstein and Liz Abzug realized that Fierstein himself, without make-up or costume, could handle the part—and he does so convincingly and eloquently.

Liz, the founder of the Bella Abzug Leadership Institute, a 15-year old girls  and young women’s empowerment organization  (whose Board of Directors I serve on), believes that Fierstein and Bella share a strong sense of humor and witty charm. This humor makes the poignant politics of Bella Bella’s 85 minutes move quickly, with gems like this anecdote. “So I applied to Harvard (Law School). Hey, if I was going to be this mythical creature, a female Jewish lawyer, I’d better be flashing some fancy bona fides. So I wrote them a nice  letter.  And they wrote me a nice letter back,  ‘We don’t accept women.’ There’s a lot packed into that sentence.”

“If my mother was alive today,”  Liz Abzug says, “she would have been there right away calling for Trump’s impeachment. This year Elizabeth Warren called for impeachment early on. She has intelligence, guts and the strength to say, ‘this is what we need to do for honest government!’  Warren calls it as she sees it, with intelligence, guts and vision, just like Bella!”

Bella’s daughter Liz Abzug with Hillary & Bill Clinton at opening of Bella Bella

 

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Jonathan Greenberg

Jonathan Greenberg is the editor and publisher of the award winning Sonoma Independent, which he founded to serve the public interest with insight, solutions and advocacy. He is also founder and CEO of ProgressiveSource.com, a 17 year old public interest digital advocacy company that builds public awareness of solutions that serve the common good. Progressive Source owns the Sonoma Independent and the Maui Independent. Jonathan is the also the founder of the Climate Solutions Advocacy Institute (CSAI) and its parent educational nonprofit, Informing to Empower. He created the non-profit democratizing media Candidates Video Debate platform, as well as the InformYourVote.org system. Through CSAI, he co-authored and directed the creation of California's Renewable Energy Acceleration Law ballot initiative. Jonathan was a Web 1.0 pioneer. In 1996 he started Gist Communications, a disruptive new media company that competed successfully with News Corp’s TV Guide Online. In 1997, Gist was one of just 14 websites in the world to be named a winner of the First Annual Webby Awards in San Francisco. Following Gist and the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Jonathan served, in 2002 and 2003, as Policy Director for the New York City Council’s Select Committee on Lower Manhattan Redevelopment, where he directed media and public policy campaigns and was the city council’s lead analyst for federal relief programs. Simultaneous with his public interest work, Jonathan has been an investigative financial journalist with 40 years of experience with national publications, including Forbes, The Washington Post, The New York Times, New York, Town & Country. Mother Jones and The New Republic. During the past five years, Jonathan wrote four of the most widely-read exposes in the Washington Post about Donald Trump. Jonathan has known Trump longer than any journalist writing today. He was head of research for the first Forbes 400 when Trump conned him into putting him on the list. The notorious phone calls Trump taped pretending to be John Barron was the subject of monologues on Colbert, the Daily Show and Seth Meyers. Jonathan has appeared live on a dozen major news shows, including on CNN with Chris Cuomo, Erin Burnett and Don Lemon, on MSNBC with Ari Berber and Ali Velshi, and NPR's On the Media. He is a graduate of Yale Law School's Masters Degree in Law fellowship program. A fuller bio and links to Jonathan's work can be found at JonathanGreenberg.com.

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  1. Excellent article, Jonathan. This is exactly the time we need Bella Abzug the most! Are there plans for Bella Bella to play on the west coast! Will the performance be filmed? I sincerely hope so on both counts!

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