[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 130 (Monday, October 11, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1962-E1963]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         IN HONOR OF MIM KELBER

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. CAROLYN B. MALONEY

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Saturday, October 9, 2004

  Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to Mim Kelber once 
again. When Mim passed away this summer, we lost a woman whose clear 
vision and verbal acumen helped change the world. A brilliant writer, 
Mim used her facility with words to inspire supporters of the feminist, 
labor and environmental movements, among others.
  Mim became friends with Bella Abzug when they were still in high 
school, and they attended Hunter College together. At Hunter, Mim 
became editor of the Hunter Bulletin while Bella was elected president 
of the student body. From 1943 to 1955, Mim was national news editor 
and Washington Bureau Chief of Federated Press, a national syndicated 
labor news service. She covered the founding meeting of the United 
Nations in San Francisco, and the labor movement, as well as Congress 
and the White House. She was an editor/writer for Science and Medicine 
from 1958 to 1970, leaving that position after Bella was elected to 
Congress (1971-78).
  Mim served as Bella's executive assistant and chief speechwriter, co-
edited Bella's Congressional newsletter and was her policy adviser on 
women, foreign policy, urban affairs and civil liberties. Family life 
was always of paramount importance to Mim, and she insisted on working 
out of Bella's New York office, so she could remain in her Brooklyn 
apartment with her husband, Harry Kelber, a labor journalist and 
educator, and their two daughters.
  In 1974, Mim chaired the Media Committee of the National Women's 
Political Caucus and directed a national media campaign, Win With 
Women, a major effort to elect more women to Congress. She was a policy 
consultant/writer for President Carter's National Advisory Committee 
for Women (1978-79) and co-authored the official report of the 
committee's Houston conference. She also co-authored Gender Gap: Bella 
Abzug's Guide to Political Power for American Women (1984); Women and 
Government: New Ways to Political Power (1994), and Women's Foreign 
Policy Directory (1988). In 1990 she co-founded Women's Environment and 
Development Organization with Bella, and remained involved with WEDO 
until her death. Mim leaves her beloved husband, Harry, two daughters, 
Karli and Laura, and five grandchildren.
  Many people spoke movingly at a memorial service held for Mim on 
August 17, 2004, and I have already included some of their tributes in 
the Record. To honor Mim's memory, I am pleased to offer some 
additional statements given that day:
  Robin Morgan: ``I wrote down a few thoughts, because I could almost 
hear Mim saying, ``Don't wing it,'' and adding, ``Quote me every chance 
you get.''
  When Harry kindly asked me to say a few words today, the first thing 
I thought of was Mim's lifelong love affair with words. Others have 
noted--as history will--the many details of her early, continued, 
consistently principled life, starting with political engagement even 
as a young girl and intensifying across the decades: the social-justice 
and labor and civil rights and peace and feminist and environmental 
organizations she founded, cofounded, and participated in with never-
lessening commitment--and always more than slightly ahead of the curve.
  Of course, just as it was difficult to speak of Bella Abzug without 
speaking of Mim, so the reverse is true. They met in the 1930s: young 
girls in high school. As Mim herself wrote: ``Bella was class president 
and already a fearless leader, and I was shy and hung out in the 
library. She was an active young religious Zionist--I was an atheist 
marching in radical May Day parades.'' Later, they were both in the 
first class to enter tuition-free Hunter College's new Park Ave. 
building where--Mim's words again: ``Bella majored in political science 
and was president of the Student Council--I was a journalism major, 
news editor of the Hunter Bulletin--and still shy.'' Over their 
lifetimes, Mimi and Bella loomed as giants in virtually every 
progressive movement of the time and--with all due respect to their 
beloved husbands (Harry; and the late Martin)-- they were like a 20th-
century version of a ``Boston marriage'': joined in political 
creativity and dedication, their relationship illuminated by laughter, 
trust, incredibly hard work, dauntingly long hours, the familiarity and 
ability to finish each others' sentences, HUGE fights, and makings-up. 
In sum, a lasting political and personal dynamic duo, an historic--and 
certainly odd--couple. It's no exaggeration to say that they were the 
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony of our time. Personally, I 
never fully realized, just how challenging it had been for Mimi to 
write speeches or statements for Bella--for years--until I tried it for 
the first time myself. I just about killed myself, draft after draft, 
revision after revision. Finally, Bella approved the text. ``It's OK,'' 
she shrugged, ``but it sure ain't Mimi.''

[[Page E1963]]

  Nor were speeches all Mim penned, with and for Bella--but also on her 
own. Books. Articles. Manifestos. Reports. Position papers. Drafts of 
legislation. Journalism and analysis and rousing rhetoric. Always 
intelligent, well-crafted, powerful. ``Power,'' Mim once wrote to me, 
``is a word for which women should never apologize.'' It was one of 
many words she loved, in a life passionately dedicated to ideas and the 
language for expressing them. My only regret is that the world's 
sufferings and her resolve to alleviate them left too little time for 
her to write all the novels that shy girl in the library had dreamed of 
writing.
  Because her passion was not confined to politics, Mim was one of two 
or three American political activists I have ever known to read serious 
literature--even poetry, even contemporary poetry--for pure pleasure. 
We sometimes snuck away for a quiet coffee at various conferences, and 
could be seen whispering secretly, almost guiltily, in corners. Were we 
discussing conference takeovers, purges, devious amendments? No. We 
were talking about Milton and Donne and Seamus Heaney; about Kafka, 
Mann, the Brontes, Mary Shelley, Aphra Behn, Hawthorne, Wolfe, Twain, 
Faulkner--and especially and always, Mim's greatest favorite, Jane 
Austen. That taste for understatement was reflected in Mim's own sharp 
wit--which was sometimes so dry it could pucker. She could get 
depressed, yes, and be bitter, too--at the state of the world, at 
stupidity, cruelty, cupidity, violence, hypocrisy, and at, as she 
growled once, ``A bit too much so-called pragmatic compromise.'' But 
her anger and even, at times, despair was rooted in a brilliant grasp 
of history, and a too-rare capacity for irony. This surfaced again 
during the one of the last conversations I had with her, when she was 
in the hospital. We were talking by phone about the framers of the 
Constitution, and I made a passing reference to the familiar quote of 
Abigail Adams to her husband John, to ``remember the ladies.'' Then, 
out of nowhere--or, rather, out of pain, fragility, and that fading 
memory we're all prone to--Mim sighed, ``Yeah, but,'' then suddenly 
snapped back with John Adams' far-too-little known response to 
Abigail's plea: ``Depend upon it we know better than to repeal our 
masculine systems.''
  In a culture cheapened by relentless commercial cheer and prone to 
instant, superficial fixes and fake spiritual grace, her acerbic 
intellect was bracing in its integrity. Even when discouraged, though, 
she never stopped pushing boundaries throughout her rich, full, 
consistently principled life. Perhaps because she had already been a 
fierce, uncompromising atheist when so young, she knew early on that 
there was no need to hope for any better heaven--and no need to fear 
any worse hells--than what life itself offers. So she deliberately 
faced into it and lived it utterly, in all its bleakness and all its 
glory. About this Mim was never shy.
  She leaves a trail of light behind her, for us to read by and see our 
way by, in her political legacy, and in her cherished, well crafted 
words.
  Our deep gratitude to Harry, their daughters, and the rest of her 
family, for having shared Mim Kelber with us--and with history.''
  Blanche Wissen Cook: ``Modest and too often anonymous, Mim Kelber had 
the best ideas, wrote the best speeches, the most searching essays, the 
most valuable political analyses.
  Mentor and guide, I learned something important from Mim every time 
we spoke on the phone, every time we were together. Brilliant and 
precise, she was a great journalist, a splendid organizer, a peerless 
leader, a caring, considerate teacher, a warm and generous friend.
  Perhaps best known publicly as Bella Abzug's partner during and after 
the congressional years, she was for most of us the person to consult 
with on the most difficult questions of political strategy on war and 
peace, women and policy.
  One depended on Mim, who never asked anything for herself. Wise, 
discerning, informed, Mim was above all a great writer and editor. She 
turned the most difficult issues into the clearest arguments, the most 
vivid paragraphs.
  She did not (so far as I know) finish her book, Women and War, but 
Harry, her devoted husband, beloved ally and champion, also our guide, 
gave us the gift of her publications, The Bella Abzug Reader, and also 
her novel, A Pride of Women.
  We will miss her every day, and have forever the legacy of her bold 
vision, her steadfast commitment to goodness, justice, environmental 
sanity, and complete respect and love for the people she loved, all the 
people of earth.
  June Zeitlin: ``I had the good fortune to work with Mim over a period 
of almost 30 years--first, as a young lawyer working in Bella's 
Congressional office in Washington. We would always send our statements 
up to New York for Mim to look at--I didn't know her well then but I 
knew the work better be up to her high standards!
  Inside the Carter Administration, I watched Bella and Mim and others 
transform the National Commission on the Observance of International 
Women's Year into a radical force for change. We still cherish its 
publications, which Mim not only wrote but infused with such far 
ranging ideas, we could go back to them today.
  Their active involvement in international women's year activities and 
the nascent global women's movement led Bella and Mim to focus more of 
their attention on both US foreign policy and global policy in general. 
Seeing that it was mostly men who were making foreign policy and the 
policies that even at that time weren't working so well (at least if 
you were female or happened to be poor), they formed the Women's 
Foreign Policy Council to show the news media and foreign policy 
community that there were many women with expertise to draw on as well.
  Mim and Bella saw the 1990s and particularly the Earth Summit at Rio 
as an opportunity to bring women--with their unique and diverse 
experiences, perspectives and voices to the critical issues of war and 
peace, environmental degradation, social and economic justice and of 
course women's rights. Together, they founded a new organization--the 
Women's Environment and Development Organization--WEDO and We Do!
  This is not an organization about the environment in the traditional 
sense. To Bella and Mim, it was the planet! And their goal was a 
peaceful and healthy planet and human rights for all. Joining with 
amazing women leaders from around the world--Wangari Mathai, Peggy 
Antrobus, Vandana Shiva, Chief Bisi Ogunleye, Thais Coral and many 
others, they brought 1500 women from 83 countries to Miami in 1991 for 
the World Women's Congress for a Healthy Planet. There, the 
participants formulated and adopted the Women's Action Agenda, a 
comprehensive global vision that articulated women's leadership and 
empowerment as catalysts for change.
  Women's Action Agenda was a direct challenge from the world's women 
to government officials, the UN, and the World Bank to shape the 
official Rio platform and subsequent global policy documents. To lobby 
for this comprehensive agenda, WEDO established the Women's Caucus, 
bringing together women from North and South, East and West, in a 
systematic and participatory mechanism for bringing women's experiences 
and voices into UN processes. The results were extraordinary--a whole 
chapter devoted to gender equality and, for the first time, formal 
recognition of women's central role in achieving sustainable 
development.
  By the time I joined WEDO in the fall of 1999, more than a year after 
Bella's death, the burden and responsibility for ensuring the ongoing 
work of the organization had fallen to a very committed core of the 
Board of Directors and the staff--all of whom were guided on a day to 
day basis by Mim. But Mim was already experiencing severe hearing loss 
and other physical ailments. And the world, too, had changed--despite 
her great and steadfast faith in the United Nations, she kept saying--
''We have so many words on paper--we don't need any more words--we need 
actions!'' But she herself was unable to join in the ``actions'' which 
left her deeply frustrated and sometimes discouraged.
  Yet Mim was a giant--we have all drawn inspiration from her lifetime 
commitment to activism and her prodigious work. We have lost several of 
our giants in recent years--Bella, Patsy Mink, earlier this year Millie 
Jeffries, and now Mim. As she wrote in her novel, ``Goddess help me!'' 
But these were women and Mim was a woman ``who would never give up and 
never give in.'' We at WEDO will continue their work and their fight--
and make it our fight--and we are committed to never give up and never 
give in until we have achieved a peaceful and healthy planet with human 
rights for all.''
  Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in celebrating the life 
of Mim Kelber, a remarkable woman whose words will continue to inspire 
future generations.

                          ____________________