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Brigid Bergin: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, in for Alison Stewart. In New York City, we're used to larger-than-life personalities. On the stage, on the streets and representing us at all levels of government. A new docuseries chronicles the life of one of those leaders unafraid to speak to her mind and chart her own course. I'm talking, of course, about New York's own, Bella Abzug. She was in 1920. The daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. She went on to become a lawyer, a wife and mother, an activist who fought for women's rights, civil rights and against the war in Vietnam and nuclear proliferation and always in her signature hats.

She was also a politician who shook up Congress. Never afraid to challenge power, particularly men in power. This clip from the WNYC archives.

Bella Abzug: We have got to put our organizing ability and energy to work, to thrust women into political power. Push them in there, if necessary, at all levels of government.

Brigid Bergin: The new docuseries features archive of footage and recordings from Abzug's audio diary, along with interviews of people inspired by her voice and her work. We're talking some boldface names, Barbra Streisand, Lily Tomlin, Shirley MacLaine, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and more. The film is called, Bella!. It won the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize. It ran in theaters in New York and Los Angeles earlier this month and will be coming to PBS stations this fall, making its debut next week. Joining me now are the film's writer and director, Jeff Lieberman and producer, Jamila Fairley. Welcome, both of you, to All Of It.

Jeff Lieberman: Thank you, Brigid.

Jamila Fairley: Good to see you. Thank you, and hear you.

[laughter]

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, do you have a Bella Abzug story? Did she represent you in Congress? Did you meet her on the campaign trail? What did her leadership show you about what women could do here in New York City and Washington DC and beyond? I want to hear your stories and memories about Bella Abzug. The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can also text to that number or reach us on social media, @allofitwnyc. Maybe you have a question for my guests, filmmakers Jeffery Lieberman, and producer, Jamila Fairley. When I am not filling in here in the host seat, I am a politics reporter here at WNYC, in the Gothamist Newsroom.

I have long admired Bella Abzug as a political force, but so interesting is this film tells the story of her life before and after politics. Bella was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. What would you say were some of the earliest experiences that helped and formed her as a leader?

Jeff Lieberman: I think it started from the very beginning when she was a kid collecting money on the subway for Israel. A concept that wasn't even a state yet. She was really emboldened by the youth group that she was a part of, the Hashomer Hatzair, and her parents, and her family, and her community, growing up in the Bronx. I think she saw activism as a part of challenging the system that was in place. Her father's death at a young age really emboldened her, too. She talks about wanting to say the Mourner's Kaddish prayer for her father in the family synagogue. The elders in the community looking, as she said, the scans at her for being a girl and saying the prayer in the synagogue. She really saw injustice at an early age and sought to fight it.

Brigid Bergin: In that identity, how does that come into play as she decides to run for office?

Jamila Fairley: Bella also noted, just with your last question, in her audio diary says, "My parents had the foresight to have me in the year that women got the vote."

Brigid Bergin: I love that.

Jamila Fairley: It's that, she's always got that kernel of looking forward. While she has a political bit with this Israel concept, she also suddenly has some tension there because even in that Jewish relationships, she is seen as having to take a second seat or seat behind the curtain. She really believes that women should be 50-50. While she doesn't enter Congress as a feminist, she certainly does become a feminist when she realizes that there is an entire demographic that's not being represented and not leading their own contingencies.

Brigid Bergin: The film's style moves forwards and backwards in time. You tell parts of Bella's life up to a point and then you rewind that and add more context. Can you talk a little bit about how you decided on this structure and how it helped you tell the story of a very full life?

Jeff Lieberman: We really wanted to get Bella running for Congress as early in the film as possible. Her heyday, her major years were the 1970s. Then 1970 is the year that she decided that, hey, she could do this better than all the men that she was supporting and endorsing and working for, and she decided to run for office. We really wanted to get to that moment quickly, to get that momentum going. Then we found a few opportunities to really look back on her childhood, on her 20s when she was at Columbia Law School. Then in the 40s and 50s when she went to down to Mississippi to fight for Willie McGee, a Black man who was accused of rape and facing the electric chair.

Those three significant chapters of her life, we wanted to not necessarily tell in chronological order, but put it into the context of how she was so bold, how she was able to confront this all-male political system, and really have this campaign from the streets of New York, shaking hands in subways and these catchy slogans and the shopping bags and the buttons and really getting a lot of attention and excitement to the City of New York in 1970.

Brigid Bergin: I want to spend a moment talking a little bit more about her work on that case, defending Willie McGee. Can you put it a little in some more context? We're talking Mississippi, 1950, he's facing execution and she is encouraged to go and to work as a defender and faces some personal risk of her own. Talk about what that experience did to inform her views and solidify, I think, a certain sturdiness about when she made a decision, sticking with something, even when at one point it sounded as though she was considering walking away from it for a moment.

Jamila Fairley: I'm not sure that she was going to walk away. She certainly felt that there were obstacles. In our research, it seemed that she was fierce in the face of a lot of opposition and in a new community. It's one thing to be strong in a place where you're comfortable because it's your home court, but now, she's in Mississippi. The rules were different there then. She was strong. We learned that she lost a lot personally in that time and challenged the establishment even there. She was outside of her pond, but she still made an impact. That wasn't a one-off situation. That was the story that we felt best encapsulated that work in that era. It was her position to be a fighter for people.

That was how she came to this project and continued to stay with it even when she won Phase 1, and then they made her-- She was encouraged to actually show up in Mississippi and do her best to defend Willie McGee.

Brigid Bergin: I want to go to the phones. Let's go to Carolina in Astoria. Carolina, thanks so much for calling WNYC.

Carolina: Hi. Thanks for having me. I'm really calling to say, thank you so much to the producers of this because as I was telling the screener, I'm 42, I consider myself very much so a feminist. My biggest introduction to Bella Abzug was Mrs. America, the series that was about Phyllis Schlafly and her fight against the ERA. When I watched it, I was like, "Who, what, how do I not know who this woman is? Why has she not been a big part of just cultural and public education as far as women's rights and the women's rights movement? We all know so much about Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, but I didn't really know much about her. I'm honestly a little bit embarrassed about that and I'm so glad that there's more attention to her because she was phenomenal. Obviously, you know that but I'm just sharing.

I think there might be a lot of women in the younger generation that weren't even familiar with her in everything that she did.

Brigid Bergin: Carolina, thank you so much for that call. Thoughts on Carolina's call?

Jeff Liberman: We're hearing that sentiment a lot from a lot of people who are coming to the film and feeling energized and activated, but also this feeling of embarrassment or sadness that they hadn't heard of Bella Abzug till today or till Mrs. America. Mrs. America does a great job in bringing Bella to life through Margo Martindale's portrayal. They really only touch a little bit of Bella's life. This film really dives into so much more about her. Bella was a great strategist, so oftentimes, she took a backseat for the bigger cause while Gloria Steinem was more at the forefront of being the public face of the women's movement. That's part of it.

Reviewing all the newspaper articles from the era, Bella was portrayed in a one-dimensional way, the lady in the hat or the loudmouth or the annoyance and really not shown for all the amazing legislation she passed, credit cards for women, the first gay rights bill, getting "Ms" into government documents as a form of address. A lot of really, really important things. Just the path that she trailblazed as one of the first women to run for mayor of New York, one of the first women to run for Senate from New York, she really did a tremendous, tremendous amount. I think that a sexist press at that time did not give her a due, so she didn't end up in history books. Many people know her but many people don't and that's really what we wanted to change with this film.

Brigid Bergin: I want to rewind a little bit to before she ran for Congress, she had been an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. When John Lindsay was running for mayor, she developed that ad campaign that said New York spends more money on the war than on New York, which helped him get elected. Then he offers her a role in City Hall or maybe a judgeship, she says, no. I'm wondering what you think that says about her relationship to power at the time and how she wanted to use her own.

Jamila Fairley: It's interesting. A judgeship sounds like such a gem of a role to play in society. I think she knew that her energy would be better suited and her talents would be better suited for public office. If it meant being a loudmouth, if it meant rubbing up against the establishment, she was willing to make that sacrifice in a way that perhaps a judgeship couldn't, some other bureaucratic position wouldn't allow. She might be able to make advances, but her role in society, I think she was clear, was to be the person who spoke up for those who couldn't. She did that through action. She did that through strategy. She did that through her statements and her-- just feeling the responsibility to represent a constituency.

Brigid Bergin: It's not long after that that she does decide to run for Congress. The film takes you through what is this really dynamic campaign. Star-studded certainly is a nice way to put it. Barbra Streisand was a big Bella! booster. Can you talk about how she helped support the congressional campaign?

Jeff Liberman: Yes. I think Barbra Streisand tells us that she was very firmly against the Vietnam War, was not seeing a lot of politicians come forward vocally opposing it, and Bella Abzug running for Congress was running on an anti-war platform. She had a lot of other concerns for New York citizens but she really saw that as the number one issue and that Nixon needed to be held responsible for his actions there. When the two of them met at a restaurant, Streisand and Abzug, Streisand said, "What can I do for you to help continue this fight or further this fight?" They formed a friendship and then a relationship that helped Bella get more attention to her campaign.

They talk about going down Broadway in a flatbed truck, the two of them through the Lower East Side, which caused a lot of attention. There was a big concert at Madison Square Garden called Broadway for Bella, which Barbra Streisand headlined. It really became a very exciting, very New York campaign, got a lot of people excited and showed people that politics does not have to be the old white man who is disconnected and you don't know. It could be someone that you could actually speak to and bring your issues to them and they'll represent you in Washington. Bella Abzug did that very effectively.

Brigid Bergin: She certainly was a force, and you speak with former Congressman Charlie Rangel who says, "When Bella arrived in Washington, she was a sledgehammer," which I thought was a great quote. In her times in Washington, one of her most notable achievements was, as you mentioned, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. That legislation allowed women to have their own credit. I'm going to play a little clip from the documentary describing that it starts with Bella's voice, but then there are several other recognizable voices.

Bella Abzug: We'll take the equal pay and the equal opportunity.

[applause]

Speaker 1: She herself often said that she didn't really come into her feminism, didn't really get it fully until she was in office. Then women began writing to her because she was clearly a fighter and assumed she was a fighter on this as well. The more she thought about it, the more she was.

Speaker 2: I remember talking to her about how I had to get my husband's signature for a credit card that I needed, and I wanted at Bloomingdale's. I had to get my husband's signature. Yes, I had a job. I was vice president of a publishing company.

Hillary Clinton: I got married in 1975, and I was actually making more money than my husband practicing law. He was the attorney general of Arkansas. I could not get a credit card in my own name.

Gloria Steinem: If you went to the bank to get a loan, you had to supply a baby letter saying that you were never going to have a baby during the period of the loan. In many cases, you had to have your husband's permission to start a business and he did not have to have his wife's permission to do the same.

Speaker 3: When my husband died, all my cards had been Mrs. Lawrence Eldridge, Bella actually was able to pass legislation that allowed women to have their own credit.

Brigid Bergin: A lot of voices in there starting with Bella Abzug. You heard Hillary Clinton. You heard Gloria Steinem. I'm not going to have the whole list in front of me, but it's another reason to see the film. That certainly was a highlight of her career in Washington, but her career in politics does run into a series of obstacles in her races for the US Senate, for New York City mayor, but she remains an active force even when she's outside of elected office, particularly around women's issues. Can you talk about what she did there?

Jamila Fairley: My dad, when I was little, used to always have me say this mantra, "I can do anything I make up my mind to do," and I feel like Bella did that also. Even though she ran and lost, and ran and lost, and ran and lost, she was committed to the charge. For her, it was, at a certain point, making sure that women had representation, not just in the halls of Congress, but in business and in global leadership. She does work for the Carter administration for a short amount of time, and then they have the Women's Conference, sorry, first. She continues to try to unite women around the issues that are important to them and moving forward into even global leadership when she is at the United Nations and also working there to try to unite women around issues that are of a concern to our communities because they're a concern to women.

Brigid Bergin: Just finally, Jeff, Jamila, it's been 50 years since Bella Abzug was elected to Congress. Just briefly, why did you decide the story needed to be told now?

Jeff Liberman: Originally, we thought if this is the film that would show people the path trailblaze for Hillary Clinton to become president. That was in 2018 when we first started the film. We morphed into, like, this is maybe an answer to Trumpism and the rise of that movement. Now we see it as an answer to all the things that are happening in this country around the Supreme Court. I think all our democracy, all the issues around our democracy are important to address with what Bella Abzug was seeking in that time.

Brigid Bergin: We're going to leave it there today. My guests have been Jamila Fairley and Jeff Liberman. Their new film, Bella! will be on PBS very soon. Thank you so much for joining me on All Of It on WNYC.

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