The Gloucester Democratic City Committee will be holding a virtual meeting on Thursday, July 9th at 7:00pm. Members and friends may participate with video using Zoom on a computer or mobile device or may call in using a traditional phone.
This month’s main event will be a GDCC panel discussion on youth activism of the 1960s and today. Organized by GDCC Vice Chair Deanna Fay and DEI Committee Chair Lenore Maniaci, our panel includes local community members Activists of the 60s and today: Bill Fonvielle, Ruth Salinger, Paul Wasserman, Willa Lepionka Brosnihan, and Jillian Oliveira.
Read on below for more info on our panelists and check out the panel handout on ways to support Black and Brown communities in their call for justice, accountability, and the end of racism, inequality, and brutality.
To join the meeting using Zoom, click or tap here (https://bit.ly/GDCC-July-2020) when the meeting is scheduled to start. Alternatively, you can enter meeting ID 819-6038-4971 and password 328541 into Zoom to join. To join the meeting by phone, dial 1-929-436-2866, enter meeting ID 819-6038-4971, press pound (#) when asked for a participant ID, and enter password 328541.
Bill Fonvielle
(he/him)
Bill grew up in the forties and fifties before the era of civil rights. Entering college at 15 and a PhD program at 19, he immersed himself in social activism at an early age, participating in the march on Washington in 1963 and forming a civil rights organization, Northwestern Students for Civil Rights, a year later. Merging that organization with the North Suburban Chicago chapter of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) to tackle open housing legislation in Illinois.
Bill has been an elected local official (Gloucester Ward 5 City Councilor and Trustee of the Village of Carol Stream, IL, a Chicago suburb.) He has served on many civic, arts, educational, charitable, social service and governmental boards, commissions, and committees, including the GDCC.
He is an author, educator, entrepreneur, business owner, and an active consultant to international and Fortune 500 companies. Widely traveled, he has been to 65 or so countries and 49 states. He holds a MBA from Yale University and has lived in Gloucester for 28 years with his wife, business and civic leader Carole Sharoff, along with two of his three grown children and a granddaughter who is a rising senior at Essex Tech.
Ruth Salinger
(she/her)
After earning her B.S., in Education from Wheelock College in 1953, at the height of the Brown v Board of Education decision and Civil Rights movement, Ruth started a teaching job in Lakeland, GA. She was driven by the issues of the times, and challenged the traditional Southern curriculum and ultimately lost her job because she taught her students about racial inequality in America.
Ruth has established several solution oriented programs and organizations dedicated to promoting citizenship and equal justice. She cofounded the Concord-Carlisle Human Rights Council to confront differences, promote equality and settle refugees from Cambodia and Vietnam; the Greeley Foundation, a nonprofit to promote peaceful resolution of conflict, global environmental decision-making, women’s voices, and better US/RU relations; and The Salinger Group, Inc. in Gloucester, to introduce American companies wanting to do business in foreign countries including Russia. She also lectured on citizenship at Boston College, Wheelock College, Boston University, Alfred University, and co-founded the “Traveling Road Show on Prejudice.”
Ruth held elected office as a member and chairperson of the Concord and Concord-Carlisle School Committees (1973 to 1979). Later, she worked as a District Case Worker for the MA Senate Ways and Means Office, (1983-1984) and as the District Director for Congressman Chester G. Atkins, 5th Congressional District, MA, (1984- 1985). As longtime member of Concord and the Gloucester Democratic City Committees, she has volunteered for countless local, state and national elections as well as committees and events.
Ruth has traveled the globe on missions to help others, and has worked or volunteered with President Jimmy Carter, Vladimir Pozner, Coretta Scott King, Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s, Don Henley, Sen. Paul Tsongas, Gov. Mike Dukakis, and Sen. John Kerry.
Paul Wasserman
(he/him)
Paul has worked for racial equality and economic justice his entire adult life. As a 16 year old college student (in 1960) he was active in the Civil Rights movement, desegregating public facilities, organizing and leading boycotts, marches and sit-ins. The first year was under the leadership of Eleanor (Holmes) Norton, now the long time Congressional Representative for Washington DC.
Paul completed a Graduate Degree in Clinical Psychology in the early 70s. As a student and after, he was active in civil rights, including work with the Black Panthers to establish a freedom school, a health clinic and a food pantry. He also started and led an Antiwar Tax Resistance Movement and was active in demonstrations where he functioned as a Marshal and trainer of other Marshals.
Paul’s consulting experience includes an extensive range of projects in diversity, inclusion and cultural competency for an array of clients including Harvard and Boston Medical Center, and a multi year Cultural Competency Project for the Robert F. Kennedy Children’s Action Corps. He was an original member of the Boston Dialogues on Race and Ethnicity, co-leading sessions and developing a Strategic Plan. He also participated in a series of committees over the years in his Church (St. Paul in Lanesville) that focused on race relations and racial reconciliation.
Willa Lepionka Brosnihan
(she/her)
Willa is a 17 year old student living in Gloucester. She is a poet, artist, and organizer focused around social justice and class issues. She attended Gloucester High School and then finished her high school courses at Salem State University as a nondegree student. There, she studied political science, philosophy, and intersectional understandings of “Americanness” and American imperialism, through the lenses of both history and literature.
In her political considerations, she comes from a leftist, specifically anarchist perspective, viewing the structures of capitalism and the then resulting colonialism to be the most foundational origins of institutionalized racism. Coming from this political standpoint, Willa is a police and prison abolitionist and views liberation from capitalism as one of the essential steps towards liberation from white supremacy, male supremacy, and the suppression of queer people.
Jillian Rose Chávez-Oliveira
(she/they)
Jillian has lived in Gloucester for her whole life and currently is a student going into her senior year at Hampshire College. Her concentration consists of Critical Dance Studies and Indigenous Studies. While she is a dancer and choreographer, she also enjoys writing, painting, and fusing her creative mediums with her research.
Specific themes and objectives surfaced in her work include working to dismantle anti-black racism in Latin American culture and analyzing its history, Mexican-American identity, dismantling people of color’s suppression of voice, and centering indigenous ideology while utilizing Critical Race Theory (CRT) for developing her own decolonizing methodologies and practices incorporating movement. Jillian’s ultimate goal is to heal by centering Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) knowledge. She takes an approach that emphasizes the interconnection of mind, body, and soul for healing and decolonization starting from within.
