ATDTDA (12): Mrs. Dragsaw, Vegetarian Anarchist & Restaurateur [337]

[Keith]

In 1912, Capetillo traveled to New York City where she organized  
Cuban and Puerto Rican tobacco workers. Later on, she went to Tampa,  
Florida where she also organized the workers. It is in Florida that  
she published the second edition of "Mi Opinion". She also traveled  
to Cuba and the Dominican Republic, where she joined the striking  
workers in their cause.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luisa_Capetillo

A veteran labor organizer in Puerto Rico and Florida, she used her  
position as a lectora (reader) to cultivate and reinforce the  
consciousness of cigar rollers on trade union issues, socialism,  
anarchism, and women's rights. In New York she ran a boardinghouse  
and adjoining restaurant dishing up revolution and vegetarian fare.  
In her feminist manifesto, published in 1911, Capetillo stressed a  
radical version of republican motherhood, emphasizing women's  
education for their own sake and for the sake of their children. In a  
manner reminiscent of nineteenth-century prescriptive literature,  
Capetillo offered homilies in praise of unconventional behavior,  
including free love and sex education. She also advocated service to  
the poor and woman suffrage, tenets more in line with mainstream U.S.  
Progressive Era reform. Envisioning a future of women emancipated in  
every respect, Capetillo declared, "women are capable of everything  
and anything."
   http://tinyurl.com/37onc5

The only woman to read in the cigar factories, union activist Luisa  
Capetillo, personifies the level of involvement found in this  
community of workers between the two World Wars. Capetillo, who ran a  
vegetarian restaurant and boarding house on Twenty-second Street and  
Eighth Avenue, was a staunch advocate for the rights of women as well  
as the working class. Her writings rank among the earliest feminist  
discourses in modern America.
   http://www.historynow.org/03_2005/historian4.html



---------------------------------------------

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWBxyPumeOQ