| Friday, April 20, 2007 |
| Community Action or Involvement or Activism |
Besides giving back to the community through teaching and writing, Laurel Richardson also informed me that she is heavily involved in activism. Her word-for-word response was:
"In college (the University of Chicago) I was part of the "team" that integrated the stools at the drug store (yeah, even up north in the big city, we had segregated stores) and I was part of the team that "tested" whether whites were given preferential treatment for rentals over non-whites. In California, I was secretary of the newly founded CORE (Congress of Racial Equality.) In Columbus (where I live now), I have been active in feminist causes (early member of NOW and faculty advisor for a fledgling Women's Liberation.) I do a lot of travel and gi ve lectures and workshops on feminist issues---and they are work--and use my honorarium for various causes. I am most proud of having won OSU"s first award for Affirmative Action and for having won the first state of Ohio's award for the same....I write and teach....these are community services, too."
I personally felt strongly about what she had to say about stopping segregation when she lived in Chicago--her work to stop racism continuing in California. I feel like activism should be ACTED upon, not merely a group that meets once a week to donate pennies and talk about suffering. Laurel Richardson is a woman of action, not merely of theory. It reminds me of the women of the first wave of feminism, forming places like the Hull House and going out into the streets of the city to perform research.
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE http://www.core-online.org/) was founded in 1942 and is able to boast of The Montgomery Bus Boycott (http://www.core-online.org/History/montgomery%20boycott.htm) and many other affirmative actions in the field of stopping racism in America. I was surprised to learn how this organization was involved in so many protests and famous gatherings of activists in the past--I was impressed by Laurel Richardson's involvement in this group where she was a secretary.
Finally, Laurel Richardson's activism included a wide range of feminist organizations like NOW (http://www.now.org/) --the website of which was so interesting that I was caught up in reading and almost did not finish this piece! (see this article about offensive magazine advertising: http://loveyourbody.nowfoundation.org/offensiveads.html)
In conclusion, Laurel Richardson's activist causes really stood out to me personally, maybe the most out of her numerous other accomplishments: because the woman took ACTION! |
posted by J Mancini @ 3:48 PM  |
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