Loretta Ross, Hilary Moore, Roz Pelles

Women Who Change the World

Stories from the Fight for Social Justice
Herausgeber: Lewis, Lynn

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

"Award-winning oral historian Lynn Lewis brings together the stories of nine exceptional women, from their earliest formative experiences to their current strategies as movement leaders, organizers, and cultural workers. Each chapter is dedicated to one activist-Malkia Devich-Cyril, Priscilla Gonzalez, Terese Howard, Hilary Moore, Vanessa Nosie, Roz Pelles, Loretta Ross, Yomara Velez, and Betty Yu. Reflecting upon the path their lives have taken, they talk about their struggles and aspirations, insights and victories, and what keeps them in the fight for a better world. The life stories of these inspiring women reveal the many ways the experience of injustice can catalyze resistance and a commitment to making change. They demonstrate how the relationships and bonds of collective struggle for the common good not only win justice, but create hope, love, and joy"--

Produktdetails

• City Lights Open Media
• Verlag: City Lights Books
• Seitenzahl: 360
• Erscheinungstermin: 12. Oktober 2023
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 153mm x 228mm x 22mm
• Gewicht: 344g
• ISBN-13: 9780872868748
• ISBN-10: 0872868745
• Artikelnr.: 64524249

Autorenporträt

Lynn Lewis (editor) is an oral historian, educator, and community organizer. She is the author of Love and Collective Resistance: Lessons from the Picture the Homeless Oral History Project and is the former executive director and past civil rights organizer at Picture the Homeless. Lewis is the recipient of many honors and awards, including a 2022/2023 National Endowment for the Humanities Oral History Fellowship. She lives in New York City.  Malkia Devich-Cyril (interviewee) is the founding director of the Media Justice, and co-founder of the Media Action Grassroots Network. Raised in New York City, Devich-Cyril now lives in Oakland, California.  Priscilla Gonzalez (interviewee) currently serves as the Program Director at the Center for Empowered Politics, a practitioner-led movement capacity organizations that trains and develops new leaders of color. Gonzalez now lives in West Texas.  Terese Howard (interviewee) is the founder of the former Denver Homeless Out Loud (DHOL), which was formed to defend the rights of people without housing targeted by the police. She is also the founder of Housekeys Action Network Denver focused on housing as a human right, and lives in Denver.  Hilary Moore (interviewee) was an environmental justice organizer with Rising Tide and Mobilization for Climate Justice West. She now works for Showing Up for Racial Justice, and lives in Louisville, Kentucky.  Vanessa Nosie (interviewee) is a member of Apache Stronghold, a partner of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.  Roz Pelles (interviewee) is currently the Strategic Advisor to the Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Pelles currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland.  Loretta Ross (interviewee) has co-founded several groundbreaking organizations, coalitions, and formations with a Black feminist lens to ensure the inclusion of a radical Black women’s perspective in feminist discourse. She teaches at Smith College in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender and curates the Feminist Oral History Project. Ross’s latest book is Calling in the Calling Out Culture, and she resides in Holyoke, Massachusetts.  Yomara Velez (interviewee) currently works with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, supporting the development of local organizing chapters across the U.S. Yomara was born in Massachusetts and grew up in Miami, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and the Bronx where she spent many years organizing. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.  Betty Yu (interviewee) is a co-founder of Chinatown Art Brigade, a cultural collective using art to advance anti-gentrification organizing, and teaches video, social practice, art and activism at Pratt Institute, Hunter College, and The New School. Betty was born and raised in New York City, and grew up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where she lives today.

Inhaltsangabe

ANNOTATED TABLE OF CONTENTS 
Introduction 
The women interviewed for this book have played critical roles in
contemporary organizing struggles and in that process, have participated in
making history. In the following oral history interviews, they generously
share some of the personal and political choices that moved them to
dedicate their lives to constructing justice. Oral History is an act of
resistance for oppressed peoples because it is a way to ensure that a more
complete history is told, recorded, documented, and made accessible. Beyond
knowing what happened when, oral history reveals the meaning of historic
events, from the perspective of those who have shaped them. 
Loretta Ross 
Loretta Ross is an organizer, movement builder, educator, author, and
innovator from the local to the global stage, as a Black feminist working
on issues of ending violence against women, reproductive justice, and
anti-racism. She reflects on the relationships between race and gender in
this interview and traces the emergence of her own consciousness around
gender equality, racism, and self-determination. She details her work to
build collective power with women of color, including her own choice to
stay in the movement after her close friend and political comrade was
assassinated in Washington, D.C. and the organizations she worked in were
faced with COINTELPRO surveillance and repression. Loretta shares her
analysis about the need for social justice movements to welcome folks in,
and to educate in order to build relationships, movement, and solidarity.
Loretta was born in Temple, Texas and now resides in Holyoke,
Massachusetts. 
Roz Pelles 
Roz Pelles is an organizer, strategist, movement builder, and attorney.
Joining the civil justice movement as a young teenager, Roz has organized
around issues of civil rights, workers’ rights, police brutality, and
anti-racism – connecting these issues to broader issues of social justice
and liberation. Organizing within an anti-capitalist and anti-racist
framework during a period of white supremacist resurgence across the U.S.,
she is a survivor of the Greensboro massacre in 1979 and is now the
Strategic Advisor to the Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral
Revival. Roz shares her political trajectory and analysis of the need for a
multi-racial, multi-issue movement developed from the bottom-up and
reflects on her organizing philosophy of leading from behind. She describes
what it means to balance parenting and family life within the context of
organizing – accompanied by government repression and political
assassination. Roz was born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and
today resides in Maryland. 
Vanessa Nosie 
Vanessa Nosie is an organizer and spokesperson for Apache Stronghold and
works as an archaeology aide with the San Carlos Apache Tribe Historic
Preservation office and Archeology Department. She is Chiricahua Apache,
enrolled into the San Carlos Apache tribe and resides on the San Carlos
Reservation, which was created as a concentration camp for several Apache
tribes, where they were forcibly relocated as prisoners of war. Vanessa
links her work to that history of colonization and genocide, which doesn’t
remain in the past but continues today. In the following interview, she
connects the themes of motherhood and lineage to the history of
colonization and racism in the U.S. and the need for an understanding of
that history in order to heal and identify solutions. Her organizing work
is a struggle for the very survival of the Apache people and Mother Earth
and calls for unity among all people to confront the forces of greed and
power that threaten us all. Vanessa was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and
raised on the San Carlos Reservation, where she resides today. 
Betty Yu 
Betty Yu is a cultural worker whose work has focused on issues including
workers’ rights, immigration, gentrification, police violence, class, race,
and media justice. Her work links anti-Asian violence and racism with the
racism experienced by Black and Indigenous communities and creates
opportunities for education and solidarity. In the following interview, she
reflects on her own process of understanding that the issues impacting her
family and community existed within the context of broader struggles for
social justice, describes how she initially engaged with community
organizing as a teenager, reflects on the meaning of belonging and
accountability, explores the role of the arts in social justice work to
educate and to create space for the changing of hearts and minds, the
importance of collaboration with community, and the power of storytelling
in popular education to shift narratives as part of an organizing strategy.
The daughter of immigrants, Betty was born and raised in New York City, and
grew up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where she lives today. 
Hilary Moore 
Hilary Moore is an organizer, educator and author who works within an
anti-racist framework that links movements to abolish the police and the
military with environmental justice, racial justice, and anti-imperialist
struggles in the U.S. and internationally. She draws connections between
eco-fascism, white supremacy, policing, the military, and surveillance that
forecasts many of the dynamics we see today. In the following interview,
she reflects on the process of her own political development and explores
the meaning of belonging, creating community and connection. She describes
the importance of mentorship and the role of storytelling as a way to build
connection, leadership, and movement. Born in Sacramento, California, and
raised in rural northern California, Hilary now lives in Louisville,
Kentucky. 
Malkia Devich-Cyril 
Malkia Devich-Cyril is an organizer, activist, movement builder, writer,
poet, educator, public speaker, and social justice leader in the areas of
Black liberation and digital rights in expansive and profound ways that
connect racialized capitalism to the digital economy. Malkia reflects on
the responsibility of lineage, conferred by her mother, a leader of the
Harlem Chapter of the Black Panther Party. Related to this is the theme of
belonging: to family, community, and movement and the importance of
narrative struggle to make meaning and build power to change material
conditions. At the time of this interview, Malkia was formulating an
analysis around the relationship between grief, grievance, and governance
as a critical strategy to win freedom. Malkia, who also goes by Mac, was
born and raised in New York City and lives in Oakland, California. 
Priscilla Gonzalez 
The daughter of immigrants, Priscilla Gonzalez is an organizer and
certified professional coach who has been instrumental in groundbreaking
campaign victories and developing movement building infrastructure in New
York City, New York State, and nationally around issues of immigration
reform, domestic worker’s rights and ending police violence. Priscilla
reflects on the importance of centering relationships in an organizing
process as well as the power of storytelling as an organizing strategy to
build community, shift narratives and to educate. The importance of
lineages, and where we and the movements we work within fit into those
lineages, is also explored. Finally, she reflects on the value of learning
how to sustain ourselves in movement work, including the importance of
creativity and fun. Born and raised in New York City, Priscilla now lives
in West Texas. 
Terese Howard
Terese Howard is an organizer and educator who has been organizing with
houseless people for civil and human rights since 2011. She became involved
at the onset of Occupy Denver and is a founder of Denver Homeless Out Loud
(DHOL) which was formed to defend the rights of people without housing who
are criminalized and targeted by the police for basic human activities. In
2022, she founded a new organization, Housekeys Action Network Denver, that
is focused on the organizing with houseless folks to guarantee housing is
human right for all. Terese describes the anarchist values that inform her
approach to her organizing practice and her life, including mutual aid and
the sharing of resources, the need to create horizontal and accountable
structures within movement and recognizing that we are in relationship with
one another and the planet. She reflects on the significance of
relationships, particularly within the context of organizing with unhoused
folks, and the need to build solidarity and skills across organizations and
movements. Terese was born and raised in Spokane, Washington, and rural
Colorado. She now lives in Denver, Colorado. 
Yomara Velez 
Yomara Velez is an organizer and daughter of immigrants from Puerto Rico
and Venezuela. As a single mother attending the U. of Massachusetts, she
organized students on welfare to demand access to higher education and
better living conditions. She has organized around housing and
environmental justice issues in the South Bronx and founded Sistas on the
Rise, a collective of young mothers of color. Their work was grounded in
transformative practices based on grassroots leadership and uplifted
motherhood as an important part of organizing work. After moving to
Atlanta, she worked on immigration and economic justice issues, including
ten years with the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Yomara describes the
importance of relationships, of belonging to community and the significance
of women mentors in her life. She reflects upon the need for political
education and the leadership of community members in organizing and shares
her own process of creating alternatives to oppressive structures –
including hierarchical structures in movement organizations – and her own
journey home schooling her children as a strategy to build alternatives in
our personal lives that reflect the world we want to live in. Yomara was
born in Massachusetts and currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.