I first got involved with WPFW over 40 years ago when I had come to DC to work for an organization focused on occupational and environmental health. After learning about the dangers asbestos posed to workers and their families, I began hearing ads seeking workers to renovate public schools, including asbestos removal, I searched for ways to alert the community about the dangers, found WPFW; went on Dorothy Healey’s morning show, sharing the information. I became a listener, then member. A few years later, I partnered with public health activists Joni Eisenberg and Theresa Shivers, becoming the original host of To Heal DC, a show on ‘Health Care in the Nation’s Capitol’ that’s still airing weekly. After three years, I left the show (work conflicts), continuing to be a station supporter and now am on our Local Station Board.
In my life, I’ve always to be a passionate activist for social justice and a jazz supporter. I helped to organize to build our local, and helped craft the original union contract. I became the first shop steward for the FRAC (Food Research and Action Center) Employees Association, UAW Local 2320, learning first-hand about contract negotiations. To me it was exciting and an honor to finally be able to join a labor union (while working for a public interest organization!), understanding that we as workers make, craft, develop, produce, distribute and consume EVERYTHING! Yet the working class, our class, is always forced to beg and cajole the governing powers for a pittance of what should be our fair share!
I became a member of the DC Statehood Party, outraged when I learned that the revolution I’d believed was fought against ‘taxation without representation’ was a lie, a betrayal, when deciding to deny voting representation to citizens of this nation’s capitol, unlike citizens of all other democracies’ capital cities! I felt I’d relinquished my citizenship when I became a member of the Statehood Party, suddenly having all the responsibilities but none of the rights of citizenship. We remain colonists, denied even the one vote of our elected representative in the body that makes the laws we live under. I’ve worked hard to share that outrage with people all over the country, having been privileged to have had travelling jobs for almost 30 years, (47 states and Puerto Rico), where I found others to be as ignorant as I’d once been, and as outraged as I remain when they learned of this injustice. I met and married Rick, another fierce organizer, joining our names and lives, parenting 9 children, with 21 grandchildren. We worked hard to educate and encourage them to be part of the ‘fight for justice’, our family mantra, “working to make the world better than we found it”.
I proudly bring that same outrage at injustice, fierce determination to right wrongs, passion for fairness, and commitment to democracy to everything in my work and life, including Pacifica. I thank you for your consideration and support.