Sonia Goldstein is a lifelong activist for the rights of workers and civil rights causes. She was raised by activists, and has continued this by raising new generations of activists. She previously spoke at the 2017 Clara Lemlich Award ceremony at the Museum of the City of New York about a relative who was almost involved in the 1912 Triangle Fire disaster. 

Interviewed by Annika Fagerstrom

My parents were both very committed to making a better life for themselves. They lived in the co-ops, which were built by the garment workers association. They couldn’t have planning on getting old, because they didn’t have the money. The garment workers built two houses because they believed workers deserved light, cross ventilation, and all that. A large number of them were Jewish, so they had a school for the children in the basement. And an auditorium, and so forth. They really all believed in making things better, and then workers deserved these basics.

My husband was a GI, and didn’t make much, so I went to work as well. I remember once coming home from work. This woman comes up to me, points at me, and says, “You’re Morty’s?” I said, “Yeah.” She said, “Good.” I don’t know her name, never knew who she was. And that was what living there was like. Everyone looked out for everyone else and everyone cared for everyone else. At that time May Day was the workers’ holiday, everyone got the day off. Everyone, the students got the day off from school, and all the workers did as well. There was a real appreciation for a better life. You know, they worked crazy hours, made very little money, and they focus on a better life for their kids. And for themselves. They had lectures, they had book clubs, they had all kinds of things that made them feel better about themselves.

My parents came into Washington DC, they met there. They never would have met in New York. My mother was the poorest person I know, in terms of her background. She was one of five sisters. My mom’s oldest sister, my mom’s the next oldest, was in the 1905 revolution in Russia and had to hide out. ‘Cause the Cossacks would get her, also they were Jewish, which was a double whammy. She died of typhus because she couldn’t leave hiding to seek medical help because then they would have gotten her. My mother was arrested at the age of nine for stealing a loaf of bread. And I asked her, ‘Why did you steal a loaf a bread.” And she said, “I couldn’t stand my sister’s crying anymore.” So, she was the oldest of the other three. And she told me a lot of story that she probably shouldn’t have but she had a breakdown when I was 10, and I took care of her, and she talked a lot then.

She wanted desperately to learn to read. She told me, “When you walk in the park with a book under your arm, everyone knows you can read.” This was the highest honor for her; her face was alight when she told me this. So, she, when my grandmother sent money for passage to New York, and when my grandmother went to the next town to get her from school, she didn’t want to go.  And I have it on tape, she said to me, “So I gave up my life and went.” She came to this country. And she told her sisters, “everything is paid for so eat everything you can.” But then she was seasick the entire time. Life isn’t fair, sometimes.

When I was born, we lived in Baltimore with my grandmother. We moved to Washington from Baltimore when I was little, I only spoke Yiddish. My whole life was speaking Yiddish, I didn’t know any English. In Washington, no one spoke Yiddish and I was the only person in school who did. I was passed on condition from kindergarten to first grade. But, the first-grade teacher if you gave her the wrong answer you were rapped on the knuckles, so I knew better than to talk. So, they sent me back to kindergarten. All through school I thought I was dumb, all through school. Only later I found out, I had the goods.

I got married in 1947. We were involved in desegregating Washington. Washington prided itself on being separate. So, we had a housewarming party, which involved all colors because that’s who we were. And there was a spy in our group. And the vice squad came to our house, banging on the door, saying someone heard a gunshot. And they went to our closet and pulled out a rifle, which they had brought with them to plant. No one in our house had guns, no one could even afford them. So, they separated the men and the women, and took us down to the station. And I thought after, why did we answer. But there were no Miranda rights back then.

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Joanna Herman is a retired professor and education activist who has worked and volunteered in a variety of Civil Rights campaigns.

 Interviewed by Erin McNally

I was born in Waterbury Connecticut in the late 1940s to a working-class Italian family. Hard-working and loving parents as they were, my family was the sign of times, racist and close minded. It was not until high school until I got a close glimpse of just how racist my community was.

My sister started working at a summer camp in the ghetto. I listened to her stories of the fun at the camp and all of the activities there. There was one story that changed the course of my life forever: There was a group of African American girls that participated in a dance competition. She told me of their ability and rhythm that was unmatched by the other groups. Solemnly, my sister ended the story that she knew that the group would never win, because of the color of their skin. As it brought tears to my eyes, I knew that I had to do something about this in my life. I made the decision then and there that I had to do something more.

Fast forward years later, and at Boston University, a solution presented itself. It took the form of the Civil Rights Movement. It was the 1960s in one of the most urban places in the country. Being at BU during this time, the Civil Rights Movement was a piece of theater in our hands, having us be part of history because that’s just what you did. There was something in the air then and Boston brought me into the larger world. While attending university, I served as an au pair for a local family. The father was a minister at the local colleges, such as Harvard and MIT. He was also a huge Civil Rights activist and the family home served as a meeting place for activist leaders. They taught me what it meant to be American and how to make it out in the world. College served as the catalyst into my political activism and married both my work and activism into a single outlet.

I came to New York after college to pursue a career in teaching, with my own activist ambition in the back of my mind. I started at a Day Care center in the Bronx and library in Harlem, where I found a connection between activism and my work. After some time there, I started a job at a private elementary school in Manhattan where I furthered my ambition by taking classes out of the classroom, pursuing a policy of finding connections between coursework and real-life education.

I then started working at City College, which I called my home for over 40 years. There, I taught basic writing courses when a lot of my students were under-educated and from under-resourced communities. At City College, there was a large international population, where students had come from Pakistan, parts of Africa and so many other disenfranchised countries. These students were also most likely undocumented and marginal in American society. I found it my duty to service these kids as they had gone to such great lengths to not only come to America, but to further their education and become active members of society. One of the students literally stored himself in a checked suitcase, traveling from a country in Africa to come to the States. For these students, they came from more

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Ethel Paley is native New Yorker who in her early life worked as a part of WAVES, the women’s branch of the United States Naval Reserve during World War II, before studying at Barnard College and Columbia University where she received a Master’s degree in social work. She has spent most of her later life dedicated to FRIA, and organization that seeks to ensure seniors receive proper care, services, and treatment from nursing homes around New York City. Ms. Paley was the group’s first director and served as a steadfast and hard-working volunteer and board member until its closing in 2011. Her daughter was present for the interview.

Interview by Lara Cochran

Funnily enough, it was never my intention to begin work with FRIA.

I had received a degree in Economics and American History at Barnard when I was younger and eventually, after I realized I would not be able to do much work for people without the formality of a social work degree, I went back to Columbia for my Masters. That was when I began my job search.

It was the late 1960s and early ‘70s when I took a few jobs around the city after graduating with my second degree. I had, and still have, a great passion for people. All that I was really looking for was a job that allowed me to work with citizens in New York who needed help that they weren’t being given. At that time, though, there was a huge outbreak in the media reporting on nursing home mistreatment and abuse of residents. It was all especially bad in New York. There were fires and reports of disrespect, but the biggest thing was that these people were actually stealing from the residents. Jewelry and furniture even! It was preposterous how they were getting away with what they were.

Eventually it got to be so bad that the federal government could not ignore it for much longer. They decided to award a sum of money to a woman named Rose Dobrev, who had spoken out about the need for better eldercare and protection against mistreatment. You have to understand though, that this was just money. They did not offer a plan, they did not offer any other form of assistance. They handed her money and expected some sort of result. That was about the same time that I heard of FRIA.

Well, it wasn’t FRIA to begin with. It was an idea.

I did not meet Rose until years later but those that she had already met and worked with were trying to establish an organization that would act as an ally for families of nursing home residents. That was almost all I knew when I went for an interview at an organization that didn’t yet have a name, just a mission and a strong will to see it through. Eventually we settled on “Friends and Relatives of the Institutionalized Aged” – that social-worky enough for you? It was a long name which became so tiresome to say that we shortened it to FRIA and stuck with the nickname until its end.  I started with them in the mid-70s and worked as a paid staff, a volunteer, and a Board Member until their end in 2011.

Many people, when first hearing about FRIA and its objective, assume we were a group that infiltrated and investigated nursing home facilities, undercover. That we would quickly and single-handedly stop any mistreatment ourselves. I wish. However, that’s not the way institutions operate.

There are rules and regulations to be followed, laws to be abided by, and heads of power to appeal to. What FRIA focused on was information. We made sure that we had all of the updated information regarding nursing home residents’ rights, the nursing homes’ rights, whether or not a specific home had complaints against it, and more. We needed to have this information in order to be able to give it to the families who were worried about their relatives living in homes. Most of those that needed help simply didn’t have access to this knowledge or could not find it on their own. We were the messengers.

That’s why we started FRIA’s hotline. It was just one of our projects, but probably the most productive thing that we did. Individuals and families were able to call in and discuss an issue that they had, ask questions about what they could do to right a situation, or how they could get better care for their relatives. I answered calls over the entire three and a half decades I worked at FRIA and it always seemed to be the place where I felt most helpful. I felt I had a purpose and was able to accomplish FRIA’s goal in small ways with each call.

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Kathy Goldman is a New York native, born in the Bronx in the 1930s and currently residing in Manhattan, who has dedicated her life to community activism and issues of hunger, food, and poverty. Her advocacy has focused on reforming food programs in New York City schools, as well as promoting the passage of federal food welfare programs. She founded the Community Food Resource Center which now exists as a part of the Food Bank for New York City, of which she serves as a board member. In addition to all her work relating to hunger, Kathy has helped to begin and manage several senior programs and centers throughout her life. However, she describes her accomplishments as a member of the organization United Bronx Parents as her biggest and most influential.

Interviewed by Lara Cochran

It all started in the Bronx. So much starts in the Bronx – hell, I started in the Bronx! I am the daughter of Jewish immigrants. My father was a Polish carpenter and my mother a Hungarian writer and stay at home parent. We lived in the South Bronx in the 1930s and 40s, back when it was a hub and home for immigrants. It was a time when people lived in neighborhoods that they gave a damn about, with people that they gave a damn about. Both my mother and father were big influences and activists in our community. She started a Hungarian-American women’s magazine that many of her friends contributed to and read while he worked as the secretary treasurer in one of the carpenters’ unions that existed at the time. I know I didn’t think about it much then, but they each very much instilled in me a sense of loyalty to the groups I was and have become a part of. They taught me that compassion and hard work could make change happen.

I truly did not get involved in activism myself until much later in my life. It was the 1960s, around the time that I was living and working in the Bronx with a few of my own kids going to school in the area, when I began to get involved in the work that has defined a lot of my life since then. I was invited to join the United Bronx Parents when it was started in 1965 by Evelina Antonetty. She was a wonderful and smart woman who, one day, was told about a five-year-old that had been suspended from a school in the Bronx and was immediately outraged. She started UBP to reform and change the schools in the Bronx for the better of the children and community members. It was an amazing group that did amazing things for the quality and integration of schools in the Bronx. I believe it still exists today, but I doubt it’s the same.

Back then we did what no one else would even consider doing. At one point, we were actually able to get the test scores and the budgets for the nearby schools and we published them in any newspaper that would take them. People were furious. It was one of the first times that so many parents and students were able to see that they had done nothing wrong. They were victims of a system that hurt them. The differences in the results and costs of the mostly white schools versus those that were entirely Puerto Rican and black was huge. That was what started to get us recognized. They still print those scores today, in fact. It’s really true that when the people get mad, they bring the change.

A few years into UBP a group of about a dozen Puerto Rican women came to see Evelina and I. They wanted to talk about the lunches that their children were getting from school. I had never thought much about school food before I spoke to those mothers. In my house, my children would come home for lunch and eat whatever was left over or I’d give them a dollar to grab something for themselves. But these women and their families depended on the lunches served at the schools. They spoke to us about the food that was being given out. Unsafe, unhealthy, horrible food! And that is what we decided to focus on first. UBP wanted better food (and free food, at that) for the schools in the Bronx.

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Joan Levine was the chair of the Morningside Heights Community Relations Committee in 1994 when she partnered with Sara Martin, president of the Grant Resident Association at Grant Houses across the road. Together, they would form the Morningside Heights and West Harlem Sanitation Coalition and collaborate to develop a recycling education program for both apartment complexes to address rising garbage and inadequate trash collection. Joan had worked as an elementary school teacher and as an adjunct associate professor in the School of Education at City College for 13 years. She was a 2014 Clara Lemlich co-honoree in 2014 with Sarah Martin, pictured above, left.

By Julia Gagliardi

When I was eight years old in 1936, Detroit workers were organizing sit-down strikes against General Motors. I organize a strike against my third-grade teacher, Ms. Harris. It was the time of the big automobile strikes and they were organizing the workers in Michigan. The would sit down in the factor and thy wouldn’t do any work until their conditions were met.

So, I organized a sit-own strike against rest hour. Rest hour was one of the practices for the lower grades at my school – one of the new schools during the era of progressive education.

One of the tenets of this new progressive education included an emphasis on children’s health. Every day for an hour, the students in the lower grades would lie down on mats and were not allowed to talk to one another. I realized just how boring it was. I hated lying on the ground. And if you have a strike, you have to have signs. At the time, the big automobile strikes, they had signs like Down with Henry Ford. So, I made a sign that said Down with Ms. Harris.

That was my life as a union organizer. But I was always a member of the union when I was a teacher.

Teaching seemed inevitable for me. I was a child of an educator and a social worker. Even as a kid, I became an educator. I loved going to school. We always studied about the local community and history as part of those progressive studies. When I was in the third grade, my teacher had gone out to the Southwest and lived with the Navajo Indians. That year, we built a pueblo in our classroom – houses that look like apartments. But the apartments were made out of adobe and mud and they had ladders. Sometimes they went up three or four floors. We built this pueblo in the classroom and we used to play in it. It was magnificent.

When I was in college I thought I was going to be an academic historian. When I was younger, before I wanted to be an historian. I wanted to be an archeologist. I wanted to dig at big sites and fine pharaohs. Then I was going to be a meteorologist. It was after college that I finally decided I didn’t want to be an academic historian, and I decided I wanted to teach elementary school children. I wanted to teach children about local history and their community. So, it was very natural for me to get my Masters. So, then I became an elementary school teacher. And then I was a trainer for teachers before becoming an adjunct associate professor at the School of Education at City College in 1991.

But all this time, I have always been interested in politics and local issues. My interest in my local community and local issues is what led me to form a Sanitation Coalition and to develop a recycling education program between Morningside Heights and Grant Houses. It was only a few years later that I met Sarah Martin. Continue reading →

Sarah Martin lived in Grant Houses, a public housing project in Morningside Heights for 57 years until 2014. Grant Houses served as the original site of Martin’s environmentalist and sanitation work. Martin formed the Morningside Heights and West Harlem Sanitation Coalition with Joan Levine in 1994 when she was president of the Grant Houses Resident Association to address the effects of poor trash management in the neighborhood. Martin and Levin developed a hands-on recycling education program that has since been adopted by city agencies like Grow NYC, and have influenced city officials to expand the approach. She was a 2014 Clara Lemlich co-honoree with Joan Levine, at right, above..

 Interview by Julia Gagliardi

I came to New York when I was 12 years old with my mother. My mother left me with my aunt in South Carolina when I was very little. We were very poor, but when I lived with my aunt and my cousins, I learned how to plant a garden. We planted tomatoes and string beans. We raised chickens and pigs.

It wasn’t easy but I learned how to garden and to take care of animals. During the day, my aunt worked for a white family. Every evening my cousins and I used to have to wait for my aunt to come home to bring the leftovers for dinner.

But I survived. During the day while my aunt worked, my cousins and I went to school. Well, some days I went to school if my older cousins didn’t go I didn’t go because I did not know how to get there. I couldn’t remember the roads or directions to get to school.

When I was 12, I got this little job babysitting for these white people. I was picking up change and I thought I was rich. And when I went to town, I spend every dime of it. Then when I moved to live with my mother, she tried to treat me like a kid. I wasn’t a kid. I was independent.

When I first came to New York, we lived in a rooming house on 115^thStreet. It was a really big room. We had a bed and I had a cot. I had to open every night to go to bed. Then I lived up on 131sst Street in a tenant bedroom. We used to call them railroad flats. If you laid down on the bed and looked towards the wall, you could see straight through to the bathroom and into the alley. So, I guess I’m not accustomed to having anything. So, the things I do have are valued. I don’t like to see things wasted. I like to see things taken care of.

That’s why I care about the Sanitation Coalition and the trash management in my neighborhood. I want the environment and my neighborhood take care of.

When the Morningside Heights and the West Harlem Sanitation Coalition was formed, we started by cleaning up parks and parking lots. We started recycling first in all the smaller buildings in the area, and worked with the superintendent.

Then we asked ourselves, “What is we tackle a housing development. What a difference that would make with the trash going out and in the environment.”  Right then we decided to tackle Gran House because I had become the president of the Grant Resident Association at Grant Houses. We started to attend the monthly meetings and talk about our reasons to bring recycling to Grant Houses and to the residents who live there.

Our recycling program was an education program. It was hands-on for the residents. We would go door to door, knocking on apartment doors and asking residents to come into the hallway. Continue reading →