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at the 1977 UAW convention. She wrote an angry letter to Emil, accompanying it with the letters by Robert Travis and Roy Reuther, written in 1937, that lauded the work of the WEB in the 1937 events.59 She never heard back from him. Genora was so incensed that she also wrote a testy letter in October 1978 to current UAW president Douglas A. Fraser (with copies sent to the entire UAW Board) to complain about Mazey. He soothingly and condescendingly wrote back, “I do not believe the contributions the women made during the Flint sit-down can be denied nor ignored and the New York Times article, which you attached, testifies to the significant role they played.”60 She was mollified, to some extent, by Fraser’s words.

She could not dwell on such matters for long, because she meant to move on to other things. Her crusades were more important than any quarrel with Emil Mazey, or anyone else, for that matter. She kept finding new avenues to support the causes of feminism and “radical” politics. One of them was Dr. Barry Commoner’s new political organization, the Citizens Party. Its platform suited Genora’s philosophy and temperament: public control of energy industries, vigorous support for human rights at home and abroad, a sharp reversal in military spending (with the money instead going to domestic educational pursuits), a guaranteed job for everyone who wanted to work, conservation with an emphasis on solar power, and adequate food, housing, and medical care for all citizens. This party promised to open a dialogue on feminism and gay rights and to get laws passed that would forbid secret FBI investigations of individuals. Blaming the long involvement in Vietnam for spiraling inflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the party vowed to ease the nation’s economic woes. It also hoped to revive voter interest in politics: in the 1978 congressional elections, more than 100 million people stayed home. This apathy had to be reversed. And, as Commoner liked to remark, “It’s time we stopped worrying about how to take over the Middle East oil fields and started working to take over the Texas oil fields.”61

In April 1979, the Citizens Party held its nominating convention in Cleveland, Ohio. Genora (who now addressed her colleagues as “citizen” rather than “comrade”) and Sol were among the 290 delegates in attendance. One of them, Jeanne Morgan, wrote to Genora a while after the convention that she was “moved to meet you and Sol again, after so many years” and to find them still dedicated to the “humanist point of view” and to social justice.62 The party nominated Commoner to be president in the upcoming 1980 campaign and LaDonna Harris as his vice presidential candidate. The only difficulty Genora had with the Citizens Party campaign occurred when she thought Commoner was abandoning its populist characteristics and getting into narrowly defined areas of foreign policy when he was put on the program for a September 1979 conference on Palestinian human rights. Not, to be sure, that she opposed human rights; on the contrary, she had always been a firm supporter of them. The problem arose because there had been no party decision on this matter. “Are we building a populist party on principles or a sectarian party with a narrow appeal?” she rhetorically asked Commoner. If the party became involved in the Palestine-Israel conflict, there would be endless questions and debates that would keep it from addressing domestic issues.63 The Citizens Party was “running candidates for president and vice president in 1980 to do in 1980 what the abolitionists and the Republican [P]arty did in the 1850s and 60s,”64 and she hoped that “our new, young party won’t be splitting before we get going.” When she and others heard that Commoner would not, after all, appear at the Palestinian meeting, but only because he could not fit it into his time schedule, Genora angrily wrote to party official Peter Unterweger: “Does this mean if his schedule WOULD allow it he would be the featured speaker?” Such ramifications were dangerous to contemplate. She insisted,