Audio interview with Naomi Jaffe, 2019 Jan 9
Scope and Contents
Naomi Jaffe was interviewed by Anna Robinson-Sweet at Jaffe’s home in Troy, New York on January 9, 2019. Jaffe is an alumna of The New School and a lifelong activist. The interview begins with a discussion of Jaffe’s early life. She describes being raised in a community of leftist Jewish chicken farmers in Sullivan County, New York, during the 1940s and 1950s. Jaffe goes on to recount her time as an undergraduate at Brandeis University in the early 1960s, where she studied politics. She speaks about her disappointment with the faculty at the university, who she describes as being “pro-Vietnam liberals.” The exception was Herbert Marcuse, under whom Jaffe studied. She recounts some moments of activism during her time at Brandeis, such as a trip to Washington, D.C. to protest the United States’ involvement in Cuba. After graduating from Brandeis, Jaffe worked for a year doing community organizing in Syracuse, New York, while applying to PhD programs in sociology. She speaks briefly about this experience. The majority of the interview is dedicated to a discussion of Jaffe’s involvement in student activism during the years she was a graduate student in sociology at The New School. Jaffe describes her involvement with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH), and the role she played in creating Granpa, a leftist student newspaper, at The New School. She speaks about some of the major protests organized by SDS and WITCH in the late 1960s, including the WITCH protest at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. Jaffe explains how her involvement in these organizations led her to join the Weather Underground Organization (WUO), a revolutionary offshoot of SDS, in 1969. Jaffe explains how she was one of the few activists at the time who was involved in both the radical anti-war movement and the women’s liberation movement. She describes the network of groups that included the SDS chapters at The New School, Columbia University, and the greater New York City group, and speaks about some of the other revolutionaries who were involved in these groups, including fellow New School students David Gilbert and Robert Gottlieb. Jaffe discusses the impact of living underground for eight years as part of the WUO, and the decision to “come up from the underground” in 1978. Jaffe closes the interview with a discussion of her ongoing activism around anti-incarceration and criminal justice reform.
Dates
- 2019 Jan 9
Extent
0.85 Gigabytes (1 digital audio file; 1:24:14 duration; includes PDF transcript)
Participant Biography
- Naomi Jaffe
- Naomi Jaffe (b. 1943) is an Albany-based anti-incarceration activist. Jaffe was raised in Sullivan County, New York in a community of leftist Jewish chicken farmers. Her father was a farmer and her mother was an elementary school teacher. Her brother left the United States in 1967 to avoid being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. He went on to lead the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme. Jaffe attended Monticello High School and then Brandeis University, in Waltham, Massachusetts, graduating in 1965 with a degree in sociology. After a year of community organizing in Syracuse, New York, Jaffe moved to New York City in the fall of 1966 to pursue a PhD in sociology at The New School. In New York, Jaffe became involved in the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), participating in major anti-war protests such as the occupation at Columbia University and the Ms. America Pageant protest in Atlantic City, both in 1968. In 1969, Jaffe joined a revolutionary offshoot of the SDS, the Weather Underground Organization (WUO). In 1970, following the premature detonation of a bomb by the WUO at a Greenwich Village townhouse in which three people were killed, Jaffe “went underground.” She lived in hiding and continued to be active in WUO, which planted bombs in locations they saw as symbols of American violence. In 1978 Jaffe became one of the last members of the WUO to come up from the underground. Since resurfacing she has continued her activism, particularly around issues concerning anti-incarceration and criminal justice reform. She is the former executive director of Holding Our Own, a social justice organization based in Albany, New York that advances feminist social and economic change.