By Lucy Komisar

Susan Brownmiller, writer, feminist and my longtime friend since the 1960s has died. Here is a photo of us on a picket line in 1962 supporting the rights of workers to organize at Beth-El Hospital in Brooklyn. She is at the right, I am at the left. Behind her is Assemblyman Mark Lane. The other person is probably from the union.

A few years later, she would go to Mississippi for the 1964 Freedom Summer.

As the feminist movement began, she is the person who directed me to NOW, the National Organization for Women, because I wanted to work for women’s equal employment. I became a NOW national vice-president 1970-71.

She understood that liberation was indivisible, for workers, black people and women, all standing against the repressive forces now ruling our country. That includes Democrats as well as Republicans.