Naomi Jaffe founded a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1967. In that year she also joined Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH). In the late 1960s, Jaffe joined the Weather Underground and went underground from 1970-1978. Jaffe's analysis of that period is that in the Weather Underground she faced sexism, and with white feminists she "missed an anti-imperialist, antiracist analysis" (Thompson, 2001, p.121). Later, Jaffe worked with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). She was involved in the struggle within CISPES to determine the connection between Central American and United States liberation movements. Jaffe believed that "a model that was accountable to Central American activists and to communities of color in the United States was the antiracist position" (Thompson, 2001, p. 258).

Jaffe feels that since the 1990s, feminism has been missing a willingness to adopt a power analysis, "to clearly state that there is an enemy, that there is a right and a wrong, that there are people who have power because they are part of institutions and structures that create and perpetuate it...What Naomi does have now, gained through multiracial feminism, is a community" (Thompson, 2001, p.217). She believes, "we are doing all this community building...I care about it. But it is not enough. We have to be a thorn in their side in some way and so far we aren't" (Thompson, 2001, p.219).

Today Naomi Jaffe is the director of Holding Our Own, a multiracial feminist organization in Albany, N.Y. She is also the coordinator of the local Free Mumia Committee (Thompson, 391-392).

References

Thompson, Becky. (2001). A Promise and a Way of Life: White Antiracist Activism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.