replacing it with their own word, "WITCH", in crayon. Rumors circulated at the protest that W.I.T.C.H. members had planned to pull the radical feminist speaker Shulamith Firestone down from the podium when she had been planned to speak; they disagreed with her vocal criticism of those men who were involved in the leftist movement. After the protest, W.I.T.C.H. members subsequently sent a letter to the Guardian repudiating Firestone's calls for women's liberation groups to divorce themselves from the wider left-leaning social movement in U.S. society. In this letter, it described women's liberation as "part of a general struggle; we are as essential to the movement as it is to us". It further reprimanded Firestone for her vocal attacks of men who were part of the movement, stating that "directing ourselves against men... only reinforces the oppressive pattern of women defining themselves through men". In February 1969, W.I.T.C.H. members held a protest at a bridal fair at Madison Square Garden. Wearing black veils, they chanted "here comes the slaves/off to their graves", and posted stickers around the area emblazoned with the statement, "confront the whoremakers", a pun on the common leftist slogan, "confront the warmongers". The protests also involved turning loose several white mice at the event, which fair attendees began scooping up off the ground. Radical feminists criticized W.I.T.C.H. members for reinforcing the sexist stereotype that the assembled women would be scared of mice. They also condemned what they understood as W.I.T.C.H.'s approach of promoting a message of "we're liberated and you're not" to other women, believing that in doing so they were distancing and alienating themselves from feminism's base constituency. Later historian Alice Echols expressed criticism over what she saw as W.I.T.C.H.'s "contempt" for those women who were not involved in leftist activism. The event resulted in negative media coverage for W.I.T.C.H., and some dissension among members over goals and tactics. After the incident, W.I.T.C.H. moved away from the shock tactics that they had previously employed and instead focused their attention on consciousness-raising. On August 10, 1969, a W.I.T.C.H. group, calling itself Women Incensed at Telephone Company Harassment, gathered at St. Paul's Churchyard in New York to protest working conditions at AT&T. Spin-off "covens" were founded in Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, D.C., and W.I.T.C.H. zaps continued until roughly the beginning of 1970. In 1969, a Chicago "coven" gathered in an action outside the Chicago Transit Authority headquarters to "hex"