Dance Like Everyone is Watching

August 12, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Content note: Transphobia

She shook her body to the Latin music played by the band on stage, wearing a tight floral dress cut up to the middle of her thighs. At the end of each song, she’d cross her legs and do a little curtsy or hand wave to the audience. She rejected the idea of dancing as if no one was watching – she knew everyone was watching and wanted it, invited it, reveled in it. But she was no typical beauty. Her arms and legs were highly muscled, her face lean and sharp, her chest flat, her hips not curvy at all. It seemed like either she was a trans woman or just had very masculine features. But while her body didn’t meet society’s standards of feminine, she didn’t seem to care – she was incredibly proud of it anyway.

Seeing her at my town’s weekly music night last Friday, I had conflicted feelings. Much to my surprise and disappointment, I felt disgust first. Not over her body, but over the fact that she was showing it off so flagrantly. People who purposely draw attention to themselves in public places, especially by dancing, rankle me. Their overwhelming confidence and feeling of entitlement to everyone’s attention is everything I don’t have, but wish I did. (Penny B, a character from the comic series Phonogram is the epitome of this phenomena.)

Watching this woman, what felt particularly, illogically, galling was that she acted that way even though society has decided people like her aren’t worthy of adoration. I kept thinking, “Doesn’t she know no one came here to see her?” Until I realized: “Of course she does. But she’s going to make them watch anyway.” She had decided to be a self-styled rock star regardless of what anyone thought.

And that insight made me see that she wasn’t delusional or desperate for attention – she was staggeringly brave. Brave for not only being herself in a highly public place, but being it loudly and as prominently as absolutely possible. Brave in a way I can’t imagine, as someone far more privileged than her. Her performance was a huge middle finger in the face of anyone who was prejudiced against her.

Including me, in a way. It’s so easy to be an ally on social media, where everyone is at a remove. To reblog or retweet something about LGTB rights or body image acceptance that sounds awesome, but you haven’t really emotionally processed. Stuff about acceptance that maybe you don’t even believe about yourself. It’s another thing entirely when an actual person is there in the flesh, throwing ideas of what you should and shouldn’t do, what is appropriate and not, back in your face. And I flinched, at least internally. I didn’t know how to process a person who challenged so many deeply engrained assumptions, so I fell back on rejection. I knew it was the wrong reaction and yet it was hard to overcome.

While it was tough for me to personally face, this is especially why I was glad this woman was out there, dancing in as public a way as possible. Not to teach my privileged ass a lesson, but to be a real life role model for the people surrounding her in a way I can’t be. In particular, most of the other people dancing were children. As I mentioned in my post about white privilege, it’s great if Sprout is exposed to media that has diverse casts, but it’s far more powerful to know diverse people in real life. Maybe her dancing gave hope to a trans kid who is trying to figure things out, encouraged a kid struggling with body image issues, or normalized people outside of traditional gender appearances for other kids just a little bit more. Seeing the crowd’s reaction was also beautiful in how it exemplified how much has changed in a short period of time, even though there’s still a long way to go. Unlike in the recent past or even other locations, no one took their children away or appeared to see her as a threat to them. No one shamed her for what she was doing, although there were some awkward glances. I hope that minimum of tolerance from the parents blooms in their children to full acceptance.

The joy of her performance was eventually infectious. While I didn’t boogie down – Sprout was content to stand on the side and watch – I was glad to be part of her audience in the end.

The Type of Neighbor I Want to Be

July 21, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Last week, I found out that my neighbor across the street, Wilma, had died. I hadn’t seen her around in a while, but it was still very much a surprise. She was one of those people you always assume will be there. She was the definition of a neighborhood institution. While we were friendly, I wish I had been as good of a neighbor to her as she was to the whole neighborhood.

Wilma grew up down the block from her current house, around the corner from her grandparents. My neighborhood is a historically black community and her family was a fundamental part of its foundation. She told me stories about when she was a kid and everyone had apple trees and chickens that ran amuck on the sidewalk. After men came back from fishing, multiple families would come together and share a big fry up. The city didn’t provide many services – there are still some houses with wood-fired stoves because it took so long to get gas service – but they preferred being ignored to being harassed or worse.

As Wilma grew older, the neighborhood began to develop problems, namely crime and drugs. While it had always been poor due to systemic racism, it had previously been safe. But in the 80s, It was one of the main gateways for drugs into D.C. There was at least one murder (and probably others). It had enough of a reputation that even when we moved here in 2010, the landlords from our former apartment warned us against it.

But Wilma wasn’t going to let that stand for long. As the unofficial mayor of the neighborhood, she ran the neighborhood’s advisory board. The board represented community needs to the city government, ranging from concerns about large trucks on the streets to over-development. She was the Commissioner of the local Housing Authority and advocated for better, more affordable housing. By finding private funding for the project, she was a big part of the movement to replace the run-down subsidized apartments nearby with new integrated, multi-income townhouses. Since then, our county has largely moved towards integrated subsidized housing because it’s more respectful towards low-income folks and prevents a lot of the problems caused by ghettoizing people. Her efforts largely contributed to the fact that my neighborhood is safe enough that I feel comfortable and happy raising my son here.

Needless to say, that was all before we moved in. I wouldn’t have known about any of it if Wilma didn’t make an effort to be as welcoming and friendly as possible towards us from the very beginning. As Chris and I are a young, upper-middle-class white couple – the epitome of gentrifiers – she had every right to be skeptical. But she never was. She opened us with open arms, frequently saying hello to us from her porch. Although she didn’t think it would be successful – at first – she loved the fact that I was growing vegetables in my garden. And when Sprout came along, she absolutely adored him. She was always asking after him and what new milestones he was passing. By making us part of the essential fabric of our neighborhood, she made us comfortable enough that we wanted that for ourselves too.

When I found out she died, I was struck by a deep loss. Regret that I hadn’t checked in on her and helped her when she was sick. Regret that I had never expressed my appreciation for her. Sadness that Sprout wouldn’t be able to grow up with this wonderful older black woman as one of many diverse role-models. Sadness that we lost such an important person to our neighborhood.

Wilma was truly a good neighbor to everyone around her. With her absence, it will be up to the rest of us to reach our hands out to help each other in honor of her memory.

What neighbors have you had that affected you?

Guest Post on Urban Planning and Parenting

July 9, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

I have a guest post up at local urban planning and smart growth blog Greater Greater Washington (welcome folks from over there!): If you want a place to welcome kids, make it urban.

Drawing on my experience growing up in a suburban environment and raising a kid in a semi-urban environment, I consider some of the best parts of urbanism that can make places better for kids and parents.

Here’s the first couple of paragraphs:

A child’s surroundings can make all the difference in what and how they learn, and urban places can offer what kids need for healthy development. Here are some ways we can make places kid-friendly.

While zoning meetings aren’t exactly a hot topic on parenting blogs, perhaps they should be. Our neighborhoods’ physical structure strongly influences how residents can raise children. Within the cultural conversation around the Meitiv’s, the Montgomery County couple who Child Protective Services investigated for allowing their children walk home from a park, little of it has been on how communities could make themselves better places for children.

Read the rest at Greater Greater Washington!

Baltimore, White Privilege and Who I’m Really Worried For

April 28, 2015October 17, 2022 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 10 Comments

Trigger warning: Racism, police violence, children in harmful situations

With the conflict coming to a head in Baltimore, a few people that know we live in Maryland have asked if we’re all right. Fortunately, we live nearly an hour away from the affected area. But all of the recent protests, stories of injustice, and tragedies have inspired a lot of thought in my mind, especially because we live in a historically African-American neighborhood. These stories have brought into relief both how much I don’t experience due to white privilege and my concerns for families other than my own.

Until the last few years, I wouldn’t have said I had white privilege. Class privilege, certainly – I knew I had loads of unearned advantages by being born into an educated, upper-middle class family. But racial privilege? Nah – I had black friends who seemed just as well off as I was. That was all solved with the Civil Rights movement, right?

Then I started reading, a dangerous action if you want to keep your misperceptions of the world. I read about how Lavar Burton – the host of Reading Rainbow! – had to teach his son to be submissive to the police. How a young man couldn’t bring a TV to his friend’s house in Dupont Circle for fear of being mistaken for a thief. How black women (and men) regularly have people touch their hair and bodies without asking. How the African-American community was barred for decades from purchasing houses by federal law. And of course, reading recently about the police brutality and exploitation against people of color in so many communities. In short, I started learning about how systems of oppression work, that class and race discrimination work both independently and hand-in-hand.

But it never quite got personal until I moved to my current neighborhood nearly five years ago. Early on – perhaps the first week I was here – I was walking to the Metro to a friend’s party in DC. I was bringing a six-pack of semi-expensive beer and forgot to grab a reusable bag. A few blocks in, one of my new neighbors spotted me and waved me over. They explained that I really needed to put the beer in a bag, as the police had a heavy presence in the neighborhood and would surely notice it. They kindly gave me a plastic bag to hide it. While I knew carrying a six-pack right in public was kind of gauche, I was pretty sure it wasn’t illegal and would have never considered getting police attention for it. The very idea that the police could reprimand – or worse, arrest me – for something tacky but legal, was both horrifying and incomprehensible.

Similarly, I was walking through my backyard in the early evening a few months later, when a cop yelled at me from his cruiser in the street. As I was just looking at the flower box on our shed, I was completely caught off guard. At first, I didn’t even acknowledge him, as I had no idea he was addressing me. He angrily demanded to know what I was doing there, while I struggled to explain that I was at my own house, still baffled as to what potential crime he was accusing me of. Apparently, he thought I was scoping out our shed to steal something, when I was just observing the sorry state of our flowers.

In both cases, I realized my shock was a huge sign of white privilege. Black people are uncomfortably used to having these interactions, driven by suspicion, on a regular basis. So many things I assumed – that I could peacefully walk down the street or in my own backyard – are assumptions people of color never have the luxury to make.

In the context of those experiences and the stories of so many, I don’t worry about my son and my family. I worry for the children in Baltimore who are missing their free lunches because school is closed and are instead watching their neighborhoods being taken over by martial law. I worry for the kids in hundreds of D.C. homeless families and the many risks they face, the potential of being lost forever to their parents like Relisha Rudd. I worry for the black and Hispanic kids in my neighborhood who go to the park alone, not worrying because their parents are neglectful (they aren’t), but because police have been calling Child Protective Services inappropriately in our county and they’re even less forgiving of people of color. I worry for the black kids in my church whose mom has to yell at them for running between the pews (after church) because she understandably wants them to respect places of authority. I worry that the submission to authority will become all too needed in their everyday lives.

So while I appreciate people’s concern, I ask for that concern to be turned elsewhere. If you want to help, the Baltimore Sun has a list of opportunities both for local volunteers and giving money to important community organizations. While education and books can’t stop systematic racism, libraries can offer vital community services and refuges for kids. The Ferguson, MO library accepts donations through their website. And of course, the NAACP has been working for racial equality and justice for decades.

One of Martin Luther King Jr’s less well-known quotes is: “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” If we care about justice, about equality, about vulnerable children, we too must demand that freedom for all.

An Open Letter to Kids Who are Bullied: How to Fight Back

April 24, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 5 Comments

I believe in being positive, especially as a parent, but sometimes I get frustrated. I get angry when people are being oppressed, when someone is reinforcing prejudicial societal patterns, or when people are putting others in unnecessary pain. These Open Letters are either to the people making me mad or those suffering.

Dear kids that are bullied,

I know how you feel. It was many years ago, but I still carry the mental scars – of having gum stuck in my hair, being told that I “needed a facial,” having my poetry notebook stolen repeatedly, having a boy send another girl to tell me that he would rather cut off his dick than go out with me. These memories still sting, ring in my ears when I look in the mirror. But I survived. And more importantly, I learned some hard-earned truths. While my son is too young to be bullied – and I hope he never is – I’ll share them with him if necessary. In the meantime, I hope can help some bullied kids – and maybe adults – today.

1) Know that you aren’t alone.
Bullying is a huge problem – more than 20% of kids report being bullied. Even if you don’t know it, the same people who are bullying you are probably bullying others too. Unfortunately, no one wants to admit to being bullied; society sees it as shameful. So we blame ourselves, even though we’re the victims. And even though adults don’t want to admit it, bullying is a problem way beyond schools. Bullying is an abuse of social power, plain and simple, and there’s way too much of it in our society. From police brutality to victim-blaming rape culture to institutional classism, we have a culture that condones and even promotes bullying. Knowing how to fight back against bullying is an invaluable life skill.

2) Ignore the well-meaning advice to “ignore bullies.”
This is bullshit. If bullies don’t get a reaction, they will not stop – they’ll just scale up their abuse until they do get a reaction. Instead of diffusing the situation, this tactic actually ends up escalating it. Plus, as anyone who has ever tried to ignore a bully knows, it’s incredibly hard to actually do so. Inevitably, you’ll give even the smallest reaction away, providing a foothold for them to dig into.

3) Find your people.
Many people say to go to an authority figure if you’re being bullied. This is not entirely bad advice, but it’s highly flawed. In many cases, the authority figure is on the side of the bully, either because the authority figure is a bully themselves or the bully has a high social status. In other cases, the authority figure wants to help, but can’t do much about it, especially if it’s psychological, not physical abuse.

Instead, I suggest making friends with everyone who will be friends with you – no matter what their social status. In school, it’s exceptionally tempting to make fun of the kids below you on the social ladder, in hopes that you’ll be seen as “cool” by kids higher up. This is utterly false. Bullies, of every type and age, want to divide and conquer; they want you isolated. Even if you could earn their respect, you shouldn’t want to. They are terrible people; you deserve better friends. One of the best things I did in junior high was befriend a couple of people who were even more outcast than I was. While I did it at first out of pity, it turned out that I needed their friendship as much as they needed mine. Unless you’re at a really small school, you can probably find at least a couple of other “weird kids” to hang out with. Don’t forget that you can be “just friends” with people of the opposite gender. Most of my high school friends were guys and I wish I had gotten to know them earlier. I’m actually still friends with most of them.

If there are a few adults you trust, you can bring them into that circle of support. It’s up to you to them about the bullying or not, but knowing there is someone you can talk to openly is incredibly valuable.

If you’re on the absolute bottom of the social ladder, try to find your tribe elsewhere. See if you can meet people in a club, like a gaming group, church youth group or non-school sport. If you’re geographically isolated or truly can’t find other outlets, the Internet has a massive number of online communities where people do truly offer support to each other, such as the commenters on Ana Mardoll’s blog. While these can be essential, it’s still the best in my opinion to have in-person friends. It’s terribly difficult to offer a real hug through the Interwebs.

4) Find your purpose outside of popularity or mass social acceptance.
While finding your purpose is something adults struggle with for years, it doesn’t need to be that complicated. It’s just a matter of finding something you truly love and can spend time doing. This could be playing an instrument, reading a certain type of book, or being into gaming. Having a hobby or fandom can connect you with groups of like-minded people (see step 3) and give you something you can truly enjoy even when people are being terrible to you. If you’re a nerd, it’s extremely likely you already have something like this and it’s something bullies make fun of.

5) Show your strength in your own unique way.
This is basically the point at which you give bullies the middle finger. This is a completely voluntary step, especially if the bullies are especially strong or you’re a special target of theirs. But bullies hate nothing more than feeling like someone is apathetic about their opinion or actively working against them. They want passive people who grovel or at least dare not speak. Unfortunately, this is not as simple as telling them that you don’t care what they have to say. Mainly because you probably do care a little and apathy is extremely difficult to fake.

Thankfully, you don’t have to be completely apathetic – just enough to show that their bullying can’t change your behavior or who you are. It’s saying that, “I oppose what you are and your actions, but I refuse to stoop to your level.” While it’s obviously much more serious than most things anyone will face in high school, I draw the most inspiration from the Civil Rights movement. Those protests and sit-ins weren’t just to raise awareness – they were a direct challenge to those racist institutions. Those protestors were reclaiming their dignity, saying, “No matter how much you push us down, we will stand back up and look you right in the eye.”

Probably one of the most obvious ways of doing this is to be an unabashed fan of something that the bullies have teased you about, whether that’s video games, being in band, musical theater, books, music or whatever. Instead allowing them to shame you, be proud of it. Wear t-shirts, carry books proudly, start a club. At first, it will be incredibly hard because it may draw more attention. But if you show that you will love it despite their opinion, I think they’ll eventually stop. Instead of lack of emotion towards them, it’s an active embracing of a topic despite their social pressure. This is different from ignoring bullies because instead of a lack of emotion towards them, it’s an abundance of enthusiasm in the opposite direction.

There are other ways to subvert the social order as well. I never did it myself, but I think greeting bullies with a giant, enthusiastic greeting every time you see them would be a total mindscrew. This requires an obscene level of self-control and acting skill, but a theater kid might be able to pull it off. Anything that upends their social control will reduce their power and minimize the hurt they can cause others.

I hope that this helps a few people. Any advice that you have for kids or anyone else being bullied?

Women’s History Month Role Models: Historical and Modern Advocates for Justice

March 21, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Reading all of the wonderful stories of women being shared for Women’s History Month inspired me to think about the women who have influenced me. I realized that they fell into three categories: women I personally know, women (and girls) in pop culture, and historical and modern women in advocacy. This week, I’m going highlight my female role-models and hope you find someone to be inspired by!

Today, I’m focusing on real-life women in history or the larger culture who are advocates for social justice. In particular, I’m focusing both on women who inspired me personally and who may not be quite as well-known. This list tends to be focused on my areas of interest – poverty, environmental issues, food systems – and this is just but the shortest of lists, so there are a lot of issues missed. Nonetheless, I hope to raise awareness about some of these women who aren’t always (although sometimes) mentioned in the history books.

Vandana Shiva: Shiva is one of the most compelling and unique advocates in the sustainable food movement. While much of the sustainable food movement is white, upper to middle-class Americans concerned about their personal exposure to bioengineering, Shiva is Indian and focuses her work on how corporate control of the food system affects farmers in non-Western countries. She’s spoken out against corporations and governments patenting plant species that farmers have been cultivating for centuries. She’s also done a lot of work in seed saving, helping farmers access to alternatives to “terminator seeds” that only produce sterile seeds. Her organization, Navdanya, has set up more than 100 community seed banks throughout India and is working with the government of Bhutan to convert 100% of their agriculture to organic. Plus, her PhD thesis was on “Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory,” which is inherently hardcore.

Sister Dorothy Stang: If Sister Lucy is the most badass nun I’ve ever met, Sister Dorothy Stang is probably the most badass one I haven’t. (At least in modern times – some of those saints had some very interesting backstories.) As a young woman, she traveled to Brazil to educate farmers in the Amazon jungle about land tenure and avoiding deforestation. However, her work quickly became political as she learned more about the farmers’ situation. As loggers, ranchers, and real estate speculators moved into the rainforest, they threatened the livelihoods and lives of the people she was trying to serve. She collaborated with the local people to fight against the profiteers trying to kick them off their land. She lobbied the local government and sat in vigil to blockade logging trucks trying to get into the forest. Because of her advocacy, she was put on a “death list” and later murdered by the local crime group. As they approached her, she pulled a Bible from her bag and began to read from the Beatitudes. In college, I read about her story in Outside Magazine and hung their obituary on my door. Both her story and my experience with H.O.M.E. strongly influenced my passion for social justice, especially in tandem with environmental justice.

Nellie Bly, Ida Tarbell and Ida B. Wells: When I aspired to be a high-flying journalist (ha) in high school, Nellie Bly was my gal. Perhaps most famous for faking severe mental illness to get admitted to an insane asylum, I admire how she put herself in serious danger to expose corrupt systems and inhumane treatment. She was in the asylum for 10 days, where the nurses fed them poorly, tied the “dangerous” patients up with ropes, didn’t clean up waste, forced the women to beat on hard wooden benches all day, and yelled at and beat the patients. The articles she published exposed the subhuman conditions that were common in the very broken mental health system, leading to reform. For bonus awesomeness, she also beat the world record for circumnavigating the globe. Similarly, besides both being named Ida, Ida Tarbell and Ida B. Wells also leveraged the power of the pen to sway people’s attitudes and actions. Ida Tarbell wrote a series of articles in McClure’s about the monopoly of Standard Oil and how it manipulated the economy. She pored over piles of public documents and interviewed people across the country. Her articles and the book that followed were the first examples of both investigative journalism and the corporate expose. Ida B. Wells was an early civil rights advocate. When forced to give up her seat in the first class cabin of a train because of her race, she refused, more than 70 years earlier than Rosa Parks did on a bus. She sued the railroad and at least initially, won her case. She was co-owner and editor of a black newspaper, where she wrote articles exposing the lies that white supremacists used to justify lynching, identifying as far more of a form of social control over the black community than anything related to punishment of individuals. All of these women show how fundamental communication is to social change and managed to do in a profession that has never been welcoming to females.

Ella Jo Baker: Baker was a key figure in the 1950s civil rights movement, but isn’t that well-known today. I actually hadn’t heard of her until recently. But she probably would have preferred it that way. Baker worked in the background of the movement, organizing people, mentoring new leaders, forging connections and building the foundation for the mass movement. She opposed the idea of charismatic leadership in advocacy and specifically rejected how the church was set up, with mostly male leadership over a female congregation. Instead, she embraced participatory democracy with a collective style of action rather than a hierarchical one. As someone who has only acted in an official leadership positions a few times, but dedicated many hours in the background, I highly appreciate this viewpoint. In addition, much of my learning curve of becoming a better ally and advocate has been about understanding how to listen, appreciate other people’s true needs and provide them the support they need. For me, leadership is much more about being a servant than having charisma. She’s such a great example of this philosophy.

There are so many more women around the world in the past and present who are making their communities stronger and the world a more just place. Oxfam America and ONE have been doing a number of profiles of women in non-Western countries that are both powerful and inspiring.

Who are your favorite female advocates for justice now or in the past?

Women’s History Month Role Models – My Friends and Family

March 16, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Reading all of the wonderful stories of women being shared for Women’s History Month inspired me to think about the women who have influenced me. I realized that they fell into three categories: women I personally know, women (and girls) in pop culture, and women who have been major leaders in advocacy movements. This week, I’m going highlight my female role-models and hope you find someone to be inspired by!

What do you say when someone asks who inspires you? For me, it’s often the people I have a personal relationship with. Our greatest role models can be right in front of us.

My mom: My number one female role model in my life has always been my mom. As bonkers as we make each other – in that special way only mothers and daughters can – we love each other deeply. As a teacher in an inner-city school district, my mom instilled in me a dual love of learning and service. She was unrelenting in her dedication to her students, buying thousands of dollars in classroom supplies and more than once seriously considering fostering or adopting a student. She taught me what the word “privileged” meant before I ever heard the term, emphasizing that I was lucky to be both physically and emotionally taken care of. Reminding me that many children had neither of those – often, children she worked with every day – she taught me be grateful for what I have and help those who don’t. In her retirement, she’s volunteering at the local nature center and food bank. She’s also the one who inspired my love of cycling. While my family had always gone on short bike trips, her decision to bike 500 miles across New York State during my junior year of college motivated me to sign up for the AIDS Ride for Life. It was the first time I had ever done a major ride and made me a convert to cycling advocacy. In my family, my dad’s mom was the another major influence, whom I’ve written about before.

My friend Nancy, at the first Carl Henn Memorial Ride.

Nancy Breen: On the bike front, Nancy Breen, the chair of the Rockville Bicycle Advisory Committee, is another real inspiration to me. I know she’ll probably raise an eyebrow at her name being on the list, but she totally deserves it. She’s been the chair of our all-volunteer committee for several years now and it’s a pretty thankless job. Besides motivating us to get into gear, she’s spent endless hours with our city’s Mayor and City Council, whose meetings regularly run to midnight. She’s spoke in front of local policymakers on topics varying from police training to bike lanes. And she does all this in the very male-dominated field of bicycle advocacy. In fact, I think Nancy is a big part of why women are well-represented on RBAC and our concerns are heard. I’m also putting a major shout-out to my friend Sophie Chan-Wood, who does a lot of our group’s marketing and is the Rockville Roll Model for the Washington Area Bicyclists’ Association’s Women and Bikes program.

Sister Lucy Poulin: Lucy is the toughest nun I have ever met. Admittedly, I haven’t met that many nuns, but she is a total badass. She founded Homeworkers Organized for More Employment in the 1970s in very rural Maine and still runs it. (She had co-run it with fellow awesome nun Sister Marie Ahern until two years ago, when Marie passed away.) What started as a simple co-op for crafters expanded to a substantial network of services including multiple homeless shelters, a food bank, a soup kitchen, a land-trust program that helps people build their own houses, an alternative high school, and much more. In addition to the main campus, she’s the matriarch of a rambling farm property. Chris and I volunteered at HOME for about a month and stayed in a plumbing-free house next to a lake at the farm. We ran the summer day camp, which at that time was down to 3 girls. Two of the girls were sisters and came from an incredibly tough background – they lived in one of the homeless shelters and their mom was a user and seller of illegal prescription drugs. Living and working there was super-hard and rewarding. But we had the luxury of it being temporary. Lucy deals with some radically difficult people, both those seeking services and volunteers, day in and day out. I saw her frustrated and even angry, but never impatient or mean. Most importantly, she created an atmosphere of fundamental equality. If you were more than a short-time volunteer, no one made the distinction between you and someone who needed paid work. It was never said but widely acknowledged that we all needed to be there, even if it was for different reasons.

Sylvia Robinson: Sylvia is another local activist that is the heart, soul, and backbone of an essential community organization. Leaving her steady job, she sunk her entire life savings into pursuing her dream of establishing a community center for her neighborhood. Housed in a impressive and historical but crumbly brick building in the DC neighborhood of Pleasant Plains, the Emergence Community Arts Collective hosts dance classes, children’s summer programs, poetry open mics, swap meets, and support groups. Through the organization, Sylvia has also led several projects delving into the history of the neighborhood, with a particular focus of highlighting the contributions of black women. I had the pleasure of knowing Sylvia when I volunteered for Ecolocity, a Transition Towns group that focused on sustainable food. She gave us free space for meetings and events as well as use of the building’s yard for a community garden and mini-food forest. Despite the fact that running your own non-profit is relentless, she was always willing to give our group time and energy as well. I’ll also offer a shout-out to my friend and fellow Ecolocity volunteer Gerri Williams, who now lives in Duluth, MN and co-hosts a radio show.

All of these women are dedicated to their greater community without losing sight of the individual relationships that truly make up that community.

Who are the female role models in your life who have inspired you the most?