Politics/Community Involvement

I lived with my mom and you know how that goes once you're grown and you have two kids. So they let me move in with my sister when my mom was like, “You gotta go.” And I got back on my feet in that space. My kids went to school. Single mom, I'm still a single mom. And Abby's gave me the courage and the strength to be able to walk on my own.  Through my time here at 77 I actually got a Section 8 certificate and found an apartment moved on, blah blah blah and all that good stuff. And Abby's asked me to come back and be on the board of directors. So I did that for a while, they always have a representative from the women who serve on the board and that was my job. And I’m honored and humbled and then I did that and Tess Sneesby said, “We have an opening for shelter advocates, you should come and do that.” And I was like, “Tess, I'm a secretary. I don't know anything about that.” And she said, “Well, you'll be fine. Just come on and do it.” And they offered me a couple more dollars than I was getting at Head Start so I took that role on and here I still am.  So guess I'm supposed to be here.

MWOC [Massachusetts Women of Color Coalition] and Mosaic would be two organizations that I would love to do  full time, if it is in God's will to do that, because of finally being in an environment of like-minded women who are in these institutions and looking at the different generations of women coming together and being able to create a paradigm shift that will make change for women of color.  And that's power to me.

I started hearing about peacemaking instead of peacekeeping.  And Jesus was a peacemaker not a peacekeeper.  He didn't not talk about it, you didn't, "Shhh, shhh, shhh," which is what "good Christians" do, but you grab this one and you grab that one and you come together and we make peace.  And it’s the hardest work you will ever do, but that’s what Jesus did.

If I am not helping people I am figuring out a way to help people. If people tell me they need help I am helping them find resources.  That has been in my social justice work, my theater work, kind of a running theme in my life. I mean my grandma has a saying, “If you are not sleeping you are working, if you are not working you are sleeping,” that’s pretty much me, first one in, last one to leave. I am always working on something to enrich people’s lives and make the quality of their lives better which kind of leads me to my social justice/mission statement which is, “To be enriched by other people I interact with and hopefully to interact with them as well and continually make people’s lives better.”

The first thing I did was join a group called Jericho Road, which is now called ONE Worcester, and ONE stands for organization for non-profit excellence and so what we do is, we match up non-profits with skill based volunteers.  So we have somebody who is really good at fundraising and this group is having a really hard time fundraising, we match them up together. I've been on that board for three years.  Another one of the first things I did was go back to the LGBT Asylum Task Force because I had been involved with them while I was at Clark because one of my students was connected with them. I walked back in that door and thought, "I'm home, this is where I need to be, this is the work, I need to be doing.” So I rejoined that group and now I chair the Steering Committee which is the group that oversees it and it is maybe the best thing I've ever done in my life. I've gotten really, really close to the asylum seekers, they are the bravest, most resilient people I've ever met in my life, their stories are so compelling, and they’re just so strong. 

What I do here dovetails perfectly with my life work. I am going to be one of those people, ninety years old volunteering somewhere, fighting for what is just, for what is equity. I will continue to do that.  And I look at it this way, whatever knowledge I have acquired in this life—and I have been very blessed—I have a torch and I refuse to pass that torch on, I really do. Because I want you to light from it and then someone lights from you and they keep lighting and lighting. Eventually what is going to happen, you are going to see all this light, all this light that is going to be fighting against oppression and inequities and injustice. So, I love what I do here, I love what I do in my life.

Don’t be defined by your gender, and don’t think about what you can’t do, ask for what you want to do. Because you’ll be surprised, I think, at times, to find that if you just ask, you’ll get what you want. Just be yourself and ask for what you need and make sure that you get paid what you’re worth.

I think it’s an amazing time right now because I think that the playing field has really never been more level than it is right now.  I think there is just amazing opportunities that I don’t think were necessarily there 30, 40, 50 years ago for women to be just as successful as men traditionally have been in business. I think you are going to see more and more female COO’s, more and more female CFO’s, and more and more female CEO’s of companies, more and more women on the board of directors.  I think it’s a really exciting time.

I know women in Worcester who have achieved amazing things. So, I have always felt like things are possible here in Worcester.”

I had  learned to live in a setting that was completely foreign, completely different to what I had grown up with. In the Peace Corps I was living in a mountain village with no electricity, no running water.  Went to bed with the sun, woke up with the sun, farmers all around me, learned to plant rice, walked to the school right down the rice paddy path to teach, hiked to the next school to teach.  So I knew the pace of life and I knew a little bit about the priorities, the things that are important to people who are living in that sort of setting in terms of getting food, making sure your children have food–not necessarily some of the things we would worry about in the Western world although people do worry about getting food definitely here, but in a different context.  So the skills of being able to sort of step outside of yourself and really be open to observing and to listening and to following what others around you are doing regardless of whether it is something you think is funny or awkward or different or just doing as they do. I think that's a life lesson that I think everybody could use [laughs] and it's hard to get that life lesson though unless you're thrown in a setting where people are different around you.  You don't get that and I think that's part of where some of the myopic views that we see in America come from, not just America, the Western world in general, the modern world, people who are around people like them all day long or they're avoiding the people that are around them that are different, actively avoiding them.  They don't ever have that understanding of the other and what the other is.