How Betita Saved My Life

• Published in: Social justice (San Francisco, Calif.) Vol. 39; no. 2-3; pp. 113 - 116
• Main Author: Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01-01-2013
• Subjects: Cambodia; Females; Los Angeles, California; Mentors; New Mexico; New Orleans, Louisiana; New York; New York City, New York; San Francisco, California; Strikes; Students; United States of America
• ISSN: 1043-1578

The author met Betita Martinez in August 1969 in New Mexico, were Martinez had recently relocated from New York City to support and work with the Alianza Federal de Mercedes and had started the newspaper of the movement, El Grito del Norte. At the time the author met Martinez, she had helped start the Women's Liberation Movement, which first gripped national attention in August 1968 demonstrating at the Miss America pageant. Since then, the author claimed Martinez as a mentor, and for the next two years they corresponded by letters and phone calls. And the author visited her again in New Mexico, during the time of campus strikes all over the country protesting the US bombing of Cambodia. The author had moved to New Orleans early that year to organize in the South, and she was driving to speak at student rallies in Albuquerque, San Diego, Los Angeles, Fresno, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Adapted from the source document.