Katherine Turk is a historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her new book is The Women of NOW: How Feminists Built an Organization That Transformed America.
Karen Silkwood died in 1974 while trying to expose dangerous conditions in her workplace. Her death — and the smear campaign that followed — highlights how retaliation against whistleblowers deflects scrutiny from power by targeting the messenger.
Forget the stereotypes about the “individualism” of 1970s feminism. In fact, labor radicals played a crucial role in founding and organizing the struggles to topple gender hierarchies — and they should serve as an inspiration for labor feminists today.