“I live in the United States,” said I, “but I do not know exactly where. My address is wherever there is a fight against oppression. Sometimes I am in Washington, then in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Texas, Minnesota, Colorado. My address is like my shoes: it travels with me.”
“No abiding place?” said the chairman.
“I abide where there is a fight against wrong.”
“Were you in Douglas, Arizona, at the time of the arrest and kidnapping of Manuel Sarabia?”
“There was a strike going on the Phelps Dodge copper mines, and so I was there.”
“I suggest,” said congressman Wilson, “that you sit down, Mother, you will be more comfortable.”
“I am accustomed to stand when talking and am uncomfortable when sitting down. It is too easy.”
That brought a laugh from the committee.
“I was holding a street meeting in Douglas one Sunday night for the smelter workers. A great crowd turned out, the whole town. After the meeting a worker came running up to me and said, ‘Oh Mother, there has been something horrible going on at the jail. While you were speaking, a man was taken there in an auto. He kept screaming about his liberty being taken from him but the cops choked him off.’