[1] Her parents divorced shortly after her birth, and, in 1952, Rothstein's mother moved Vivan and her sister with her to Los Angeles, California.
She tutored students in Oakland, California which she has described as her “first real contact with the low-income Black community.”[2] It was at Berkeley that she first became involved with the Civil Rights movement.
[1] Rothstein went to Vietnam in 1967, at age 21, with a group of other activists attempting to monitor the truth of government claims about where bombings were occurring and what kinds of weaponry were being used.
Rothstein was the executive director of the Ocean Park Community Center, a nonprofit organization in Santa Monica, California, with services for homeless adults, families, and battered women with children.
[7][3] Rothstein was the CWLU's first staff member, organized its representative decision-making part, and aided the establishment of its Liberation School for Women.
[9] Rothstein described the goals of CWLU in a speech in 2014: "We wanted to build a pluralistic, inviting, non-sectarian organization where different approaches to liberating women could exist side-by side".
[10] The CWLU attracted many leading feminists in Chicago, including Heather Booth, Naomi Weisstein, Estelle Carol, and Diane Horowitz.