FIGHTING WORDS

By ELIZABETH GLEICK

WERE IT NOT FOR THE O.J. SIMPSON trial, Tammy Bruce might have remained a very local hero in the fight for women's rights--an outspoken head of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women who is host of a popular weekend show on KFI-AM, a top-rated talk-radio station. But when hundreds of journalists from around the world pitched camp in Bruce's backyard, the 33-year-old former publicist lost no opportunity to share her views about Simpson's guilt and the issue of domestic violence. Soon she was being featured on the evening news, Nightline and Larry King Live. On the day of the verdict, Bruce turned out 1,500 supporters for a candlelight vigil in Westwood; three days later, she led a protest march of 5,000 through Simpson's Brentwood neighborhood.

Bruce claims that in the two months since the Simpson verdict, membership in the L.A. chapter, NOW's largest, has jumped 10%, to 3,300, though no comparable figures are available for the national organization. But Bruce's aggressive stand on domestic violence, to the exclusion of any other issues in the trial, has also offended many both in and out of NOW. Bruce told the Los Angeles Times, for instance, that her message about spousal abuse offered "a needed break from all that talk of racism." During a protest outside NBC studios in Burbank, just before Simpson canceled his interview with Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric, she said of Simpson: "You are not welcome here; you are not welcome in our country; you are not welcome in our culture"--a statement that some listeners interpreted as "Go back to Africa."

Last month, during an emotional executive meeting held by NOW's national board at which Bruce was not present, the members voted almost unanimously to censure Bruce for what president Patricia Ireland called "racially insensitive comments." This week, in a move NOW veterans say is unprecedented in the organization's 30-year history, a hearing will be held by a grievance committee of California NOW in Fresno to strip Bruce of her NOW membership. "We've worked very hard to overcome the stereotype that we are a white, middle-class organization," says NOW executive vice president Kim Gandy, speaking for Ireland, who was traveling in Thailand last week. "When you're speaking on behalf of a large organization, you have to be careful what you say."

Like many others around the country, NOW members did some serious soul searching after the Simpson trial. "I personally thought that domestic violence was more of an issue in the Simpson trial," says Kathy Conroy, an Oregon board member who voted in favor of censuring Bruce. "But then I listened to African-American people being interviewed after the verdict, and I realized that we had overlooked injustice to people of color." NOW's national resolution decrees that "NOW commits itself to intense internal examination of its own residual racism.'' But it is a controversial plank. "This is just some black leaders in NOW intimidating the white leaders,'' says Michigan NOW member Tracy Ann Martin. "I'm not afraid of being called a racist. My credentials go back too far.'' Asks Toni Carabillo, national vice president of the Feminist Majority, who has been active in NOW since 1967: "Is women's rights the priority issue for the N.A.A.C.P.? No, nor should it be. NOW is losing its focus as the pre-eminent organization for women."

It seems to be losing ground as well. Since Ireland became president in 1992, the number of NOW chapters has dropped from 800 to 600, as inactive groups were shut down. In California alone, membership has fallen from 39,758 in 1990 to 31,168 in mid-1995, which leads Bruce, for one, to question the 270,000 membership figure touted by the national office. "The organization has turned inward, and there is no new vision," says Marie Jose Ragab, president of Dulles NOW in Virginia.

Her ouster, Bruce believes, will be "a personal affront to all those people who joined NOW since the Simpson verdict'' and serve to hasten its decline. NOW leaders "are practicing the politics of the left as opposed to the theories of feminism," she says. "People don't join NOW to work on a host of social-injustice issues. They join to work on women's issues." Just what those issues are, however, remains open to debate.

--Reported by Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles

With reporting by Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles