Mary Bonauto

The awesome woman for today is Mary Bonauto, born 1961, J.D. Northeastern University School of Law 1987. She was the lead counsel for GLAD in the Goodridge case, in which the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts determined that gay couples have an equal protection right to be married. She's a brilliant lawyer and one of my heroes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Bonauto

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Irshad Manji

 
Today’s WOD is Irshad Manji born 1968) she is a Canadian author, journalist and an advocate of "reform and progressive" interpretation of Islam. Manji is director of the Moral Courage Project at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, which aims to teach young leaders to "challenge political correctness, intellectual conformity and self-censorship." She is also founder and president of Project Ijtihad, a charitable organization promoting a "tradition of critical thinking, debate and dissent" in Islam, among a "network of reform-minded Muslims and non-Muslim allies."

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Henrietta Lacks

AWU WOD: Henrietta Lacks (August 18, 1920 – October 4, 1951) She was a black tobacco farmer from southern Virginia who got cervical cancer when she was 30. A doctor at Johns Hopkins took a piece of her tumor without telling her and sent it down the hall to scientists there who had been trying to grow tissues in culture for decades without success. The cells from her cancerous tumor, called HeLa cells, were cultured to create an immortal cell line for medical research. No one knows why, but her cells never died.

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Somali Mam

Today's Awesome Woman is Somaly Mam (1970 - ) Cambodian anti-sex trafficking campaigner and founder of AFESIP, rescuing women from brothels and supporting their recovery.
http://www.somaly.org/whoweare

About SMF | SMF

www.somaly.org

Somaly Mam Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting the $12 billion per year sex-trafficking industry.

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Gloria Richardson-Dandridge

Gloria Richardson-Dandridge was born in 1922 and raised in a prominent wealthy black family in Cambridge, MD. Her grandfather owned a grocer, butcher shop and a funeral parlor and did very well. He was the only black member of city counsel at the time. Gloria attended Howard U. at 16, graduating at 20 w/ a degree in sociology. Despite her grandfather's connections, the MD Dpt. of Soc. Svcs. was not hiring blacks as social workers in those days so Gloria married and raised a family.

When the Freedom Riders came to town in 1962, Gloria's teenaged daughter, Donna, became involved in civil rights movement. Gloria joined other parents and created the 1st and only adult led SNCC affiliate in civil rights history, Cambridge Non-violent Action Committee (CNAC). They enlarged the scope of black American grievances to include housing and employment discrimination and inadequate health care. Gloria was asked to lead CNAC and agreed, feeling that this was a way she could give back to the black community who had given so much to her family by patronizing her family's businesses.

Gloria had been raised to stand up for herself and fight for what she believed in. As she became more radicalized about the civil rights movement she went to hear Malcolm X speak. She met with him and began collaborating with him and Lawrence Landry to build a new coalition to counteract the "paralyzing" effects some more passive black organizations were having on the Black liberation movement. Led by her, CNAC refused to commit to non-violence and their protests and counter-protests became ever more confrontational and they fought back. This eventually led the Governor of MD to send in the MD National Guard. CNAC didn't let up and the town was effectively under martial law for about a year.

When the black community was shot up during a drive-by, the community armed itself and when the white perpetrators returned a gun battle ensued. It turned out one of the whites was a National
Guardsman who was later court martialed. The famous photograph I posted shows Gloria, fearlessly, ferociously, pushing the barrel of a riffle away which had been pointed directly at her by a National Guardsman. The protests in Cambridge drew huge media attention. Attny General Robert Kennedy met with Gloria and tried unsuccessfully to broker a deal between black and white political leaders. Kennedy even offered her a job which she considered a bribe. Gloria wouldn't compromise. There was right, and then there was settling. Gloria wasn't one for settling. "I know I was one of the few women to lead a movement like that, but I don't think of it in terms of being a woman. I think of it in tems of being a person. And what we did wasn't liberal or conservative, it was just right. But I know they think a woman shouldn't be doing what I did. They also didn't like it because we were demanding and not asking. That wasn't ladylike."

After 2 exhaustive years of leading constant non-stop demonstrations, Gloria resigned her position, remarried and moved to New York for a more peaceful lifestyle. She continued to be involved with civil rights issues, but was shunned by the mainstream passive civil rights organizations. Currently, she works in the City's Department for the Aging. She is active as a labor union delegate.

From the book Generation on fire: voices of protest from the 1960s : an oral history By Jeff Kisseloff - the chapter about Gloria Richardson-Dandridge p 51-63 (a great read)

http://books.google.com/bo​oks?id=05uJSLy351MC&pg=PT6​3&lpg=PT63&dq=gloria+ric#v​=onepage&q&f=false

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Virginia Hamilton

Today's awesome woman is Virginia Hamilton, March 12, 1934 - February 19, 2002. She was an amazing author, who published 41 books during her lifetime. She described her works as "Liberation Literature," and she won every major award in youth literature. Her books are classics in every sense of the word, and her historical fiction is genius. http://www.virginiahamilton.com/biography/

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Alice Walker

Today’s AWU WOD is Alice Walker, born February 9, 1944 in Eaton Georgia. She wrote The Color Purple, the 1982 novel that won the Pulitzer Prize and Walker was a civil rights activist as a young woman in the American south, and an editor at Ms. magazine in the 1970s. She expresses the struggles of blacks, particularly women, and their lives in a racist, sexist, and violent society. Her writings also focus on the role of women of color in culture and history. Walker is a respected figure in the liberal political community for her support of unconventional and unpopular views as a matter of principle.

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Limor Fried

Today's AWOD is Limor Fried. She is an engineer, artist & hacker ("Ladyada"). She received her M.Eng in EECS from MIT where she developed and built subversive electronic devices, including a pair of glasses that darken whenever television is in view and a jamming device that disables people's annoying cell phone conversations at the press of a button. (see http://www.ladyada.net/portfolio/2004/index.html )

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Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Today’s Awesome Woman is Debbie Wasserman Schultz born September 27, 1966 in Long Island, New York. She was just named the Chairwoman, Democratic National Committee, Congrats to her!! She will become the third female DNC chief in history and the first in over 15 years. 

 

Debbie Wasserman Schultz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org

Debbie Wasserman Schultz (born September 27, 1966) is the U.S. Representative for Florida's 20th congressional district, serving since 2005. She is a member of the Democratic Party and the incoming Chair of the Democratic National Committee. She previously served in the Florida House of Representati

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Pamela Anderson

Todays Awesome Woman is Pamela Denise Anderson (born July 1, 1967) is a Canadian American actress, model, producer, author, activist, and former showgirl. Pamela Anderson spends much of her time working with organizations and charities to support the numerous causes she believes in. Since becoming a vegetarian in her early teens, she has become a powerful advocate for animal rights.

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