Vivian Rothstein Biography by
Jennifer Palmer and Vivian Rothstein(1999)
Vivian
Rothstein was one of the founders of the CWLU and served as its
first staff person. She got her start as a student at U.C. Berkeley
and then with the southern civil rights movement and became a full
time community organizer with JOIN Community Union in Chicago in
1965. During a 1967 trip to North Vietnam as part of an American
peace delegation documenting the American bombing of civilian targets,
she met with representatives of the Vietnamese Womens Union.
It was
these contacts which planted the idea of organizing an independent
womens organization in the United States. After returning from Vietnam,
Vivian joined the womens liberation Westside Group where plans for
such an organization were formulated. Within CWLU Vivian helped
found and run the Liberation School for Women as well as organizing
efforts amongst working class white women on Chicago's northside.
After
leaving Chicago in 1974, Vivian worked with the American Friends
Service Committee on its Middle East Peace Education Program, with
Planned Parenthood on pro-choice efforts, and for 10 years ran a
nonprofit agency providing shelters and services to homeless adults
and families and battered women and their children in Santa Monica,
California.
Vivian
now works for the Hotel Workers International Union directing an
organizing effort in Los Angeles to bring liveable wages and health
benefits to low wage service workers in the tourism industry, a
majority of whom are women.
