activists

Activist, poet, mother, writer, Jewish woman, pacifist—it’s hard to pick what defined Grace Paley. Born in the Bronx in 1922, Paley went on to publish award winning works of poetry and fiction, to be an active member of both the anti-war and women’s movement, to teach writing at Sarah Lawrence, and used her poetry as a weapon well into her eighties. Here are just some reasons why Grace Paley was a badass...

The Welfare Rights movement of the sixties and seventies rarely receives the amount of historical attention it deserves, and as a grassroots movement that addressed class, race, gender, and consumption issues all at once. Although made up of thousands of women around the country, Johnnie Tillmon was one of the main activists, who rose from a reluctant welfare mother to Executive Director for the National Welfare Rights Organization.