Pat Taub
While most of us struggled to stay afloat during 2020, there were women who didn’t take a back seat, who stayed focused on making a contribution for a better world. They were the light that pierced the darkness.
Nurses on the Covid Frontlines
Nurses treating Covid patients worked under impossible conditions: risking exposure for themselves and their families; a shortage of safe masks and gowns; the emotional toll of seeing so many deaths pile up, and frequently the only one present when a Covid patient died. Nurses are the underappreciated backbones of our communities right now.
Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett
Dr. Corbett, a research fellow at the National Institute of Health, led the team that discovered the Moderna vaccine. At the ripe old age of 34, Dr. Corbett has landed in our history books.
Dr. Corbett at the Vaccine Research Institute
Cori Bush
Bush is the first elected Black Congresswoman from Missouri to the House of Representatives. In winning she defied the odds, beating 10 term incumbent, Lacy Clay. Bush emerged as a community leader during the Ferguson protests against the police murder of Michael Brown. Bush’s firebrand style promises to add momentum to the Squad.
Cori Bush’s victory speech after beating Lacy Clay
Deb Haaland
Rep. Haaland (D-N.M.) has been appointed by Biden to head the Interior Department, making her the first Native American in this role. After her appointment was announced, Haaland tweeted “I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land. . . “
Deb Haaland
Varshini Prakash
Prakask is the cofounder and executive director of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-oriented movement battling climate change. Sunrise made a deliberate decision to be female led, focusing on green jobs that will advance the well being of women and families.
Varshini Prakash preparing a group of activists for an action
Sadiya Hartman
Hartman wrote the award winning book, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, the story of young Black women who migrated from the South to big cities like New York and Philadelphia during the great migration at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hartman pored over archival records to bring life to these rebellious women who defied convention by flaunting police curfews, and practicing free love with both men and women. Their spirit jumps off the page.
Dr. Hartman in her office at Columbia University, NYC
Martha Hennessy
Martha, 65, a lifelong peace activist, is the great granddaughter of Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Workers. In 2018 Hennessy and six other pacifists known as the “Kings Bay Plowshares 7” staged an anti-war protest at a Georgia naval base where they spliced a padlock and security fence, spilling blood and spray-painting anti-war slogans. In 2020 Hennessy was sentenced to a 10-month jail term for her participation.
Martha Hennessy, third from left with fellow Kings Bay Plowshares 7
Krystal Ball
Ball, along with Saagar Enjeti, co-hosts the TV podcast, ”Rising,” a refreshing exception to mainstream media’s tendency to report the news in sound bites and with a biased outlook. “Rising,” offers balanced, well-researched segments with dynamic guests, enhanced by Ball’s razor sharp intellect.
Nancy Harrow
Harrow, a jazz singer and composer, performing since 1960, turns 90 this year and is still on stage with a new album coming out in January. I added Harrow to give a shout-out to older women whose creativity continued to light a fire in 2020.
Grassroots Women-Led Efforts
Under the radar women across the country, many of them retired, mobilized to raise clothes and supplies for migrants stranded at the border; to work for a clean environment in their hometowns; and to protest police brutality.
Arundhati Roy
Roy, the celebrated Indian writer, prophesied about Covid in words that have been widely circulated:
This terrible despair offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. . . . Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred . . . Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.
