WITCH was more of an idea-in-action than an organization. Founded in 1968 by a group of radical women in New York City who wanted to do guerilla theater, covens rose and fell around the country as opportunities to do zap actions presented themselves.

The first action was a hex of Wall Street on Halloween, the annual religious festival of the druidic witches. Spooked, the stock market promptly dropped. The day after Valentine's Day in 1969 WITCH swooped down on Bridal Fairs held simultaneously in New York City and San Francisco. "Confront the Whoremakers" they told prospective brides and their mothers. WITCH leaflets said "marriage is a dehumanizing institution--legal whoredom for women... A woman is taught from infancy that her only real goal in life is to fulfill the role of wife and mother of male heirs. She is allowed an identity only as an appendage to a man.... The wedding ceremony is the symbolic ritual of our legal transference from father's property to husband's property." At the shows WITCHes chanted "Here come the slaves. Off to their graves." White mice were released at the New York show.

Because WITCH actions could be done with a small group and were both fun and political, they quickly spread around the country. Boston women hexed bars. DC women hexed the Presidential inauguration. Chicago women zapped everything.

On January 16, 1969, eight undergraduate women at the University of Chicago hexed the chairman of the Sociology Department, which had recently fired a popular woman professor. Dressed in black with their faces painted white, they told him to "beware of the curse, the witch's curse."

Another coven soon hexed the Chicago Transit Authority at its headquarters in the Merchandise Mart to protest a fare hike. They danced around a caldron while chanting:

Witches round the circle go
to hex the causes of our woe,
We the witches now conspire
To burn CTA in freedoms' fire.

Bankers gall, politicians guile,
Daley's jowl, lackey's smile,
Trustee's toe, bondholder's liar
These we cast into our fire.

Meetings held, messages sealed
When the fare hike is revealed
We, the people, are the prey
Of the demon, CTA....

Then they were gone, before the police could drive them out.

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