Women Who Change the World

Lynn Lewis (editor) is an oral historian, educator, and community organizer. She is the author of Love and Collective Resistance: Lessons from the Picture the Homeless Oral History Project and is the former executive director and past civil rights organizer at Picture the Homeless. Lewis is the recipient of many honors and awards, including a 2022/2023 National Endowment for the Humanities Oral History Fellowship. She lives in New York City. 

Malkia Devich-Cyril (interviewee) is the founding director of the Media Justice, and co-founder of the Media Action Grassroots Network. Raised in New York City, Devich-Cyril now lives in Oakland, California. 

Priscilla Gonzalez (interviewee) currently serves as the Program Director at the Center for Empowered Politics, a practitioner-led movement capacity organizations that trains and develops new leaders of color. Gonzalez now lives in West Texas. 

Terese Howard (interviewee) is the founder of the former Denver Homeless Out Loud (DHOL), which was formed to defend the rights of people without housing targeted by the police. She is also the founder of Housekeys Action Network Denver focused on housing as a human right, and lives in Denver. 

Hilary Moore (interviewee) was an environmental justice organizer with Rising Tide and Mobilization for Climate Justice West. She now works for Showing Up for Racial Justice, and lives in Louisville, Kentucky. 

Vanessa Nosie (interviewee) is a member of Apache Stronghold, a partner of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. 

Roz Pelles (interviewee) is currently the Strategic Advisor to the Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Pelles currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland. 

Loretta Ross (interviewee) has co-founded several groundbreaking organizations, coalitions, and formations with a Black feminist lens to ensure the inclusion of a radical Black women’s perspective in feminist discourse. She teaches at Smith College in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender and curates the Feminist Oral History Project. Ross’s latest book is Calling in the Calling Out Culture, and she resides in Holyoke, Massachusetts. 

Yomara Velez (interviewee) currently works with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, supporting the development of local organizing chapters across the U.S. Yomara was born in Massachusetts and grew up in Miami, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and the Bronx where she spent many years organizing. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Betty Yu (interviewee) is a co-founder of Chinatown Art Brigade, a cultural collective using art to advance anti-gentrification organizing, and teaches video, social practice, art and activism at Pratt Institute, Hunter College, and The New School. Betty was born and raised in New York City, and grew up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where she lives today.

Hilary Moore is an organizer, educator and author who works within an anti-racist framework that links movements to abolish the police and the military with environmental justice, racial justice, and anti-imperialist struggles in the U.S. and internationally. She draws connections between eco-fascism, white supremacy, policing, the military, and surveillance that forecasts many of the dynamics we see today. In the following interview, she reflects on the process of her own political development and explores the meaning of belonging, creating community and connection. She describes the importance of mentorship and the role of storytelling as a way to build connection, leadership, and movement. Born in Sacramento, California, and raised in rural northern California, Hilary now lives in Louisville, Kentucky. 

Roz Pelles is an organizer, strategist, movement builder, and attorney. Joining the civil justice movement as a young teenager, Roz has organized around issues of civil rights, workers’ rights, police brutality, and anti-racism – connecting these issues to broader issues of social justice and liberation. Organizing within an anti-capitalist and anti-racist framework during a period of white supremacist resurgence across the U.S., she is a survivor of the Greensboro massacre in 1979 and is now the Strategic Advisor to the Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Roz shares her political trajectory and analysis of the need for a multi-racial, multi-issue movement developed from the bottom-up and reflects on her organizing philosophy of leading from behind. She describes what it means to balance parenting and family life within the context of organizing – accompanied by government repression and political assassination. Roz was born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and today resides in Maryland. 

Vanessa Nosie is an organizer and spokesperson for Apache Stronghold and works as an archaeology aide with the San Carlos Apache Tribe Historic Preservation office and Archeology Department. She is Chiricahua Apache, enrolled into the San Carlos Apache tribe and resides on the San Carlos Reservation, which was created as a concentration camp for several Apache tribes, where they were forcibly relocated as prisoners of war. Vanessa links her work to that history of colonization and genocide, which doesn’t remain in the past but continues today. In the following interview, she connects the themes of motherhood and lineage to the history of colonization and racism in the U.S. and the need for an understanding of that history in order to heal and identify solutions. Her organizing work is a struggle for the very survival of the Apache people and Mother Earth and calls for unity among all people to confront the forces of greed and power that threaten us all. Vanessa was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and raised on the San Carlos Reservation, where she resides today. 

Betty Yu is a cultural worker whose work has focused on issues including workers’ rights, immigration, gentrification, police violence, class, race, and media justice. Her work links anti-Asian violence and racism with the racism experienced by Black and Indigenous communities and creates opportunities for education and solidarity. In the following interview, she reflects on her own process of understanding that the issues impacting her family and community existed within the context of broader struggles for social justice, describes how she initially engaged with community organizing as a teenager, reflects on the meaning of belonging and accountability, explores the role of the arts in social justice work to educate and to create space for the changing of hearts and minds, the importance of collaboration with community, and the power of storytelling in popular education to shift narratives as part of an organizing strategy. The daughter of immigrants, Betty was born and raised in New York City, and grew up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where she lives today. 

Malkia Devich-Cyril is an award winning writer and public speaker on issues of digital rights, narrative power, Black liberation and collective grief; as well as a founder, former Executive Director, and current Senior Fellow at Media Justice, a national hub boldly advancing racial justice, rights and dignity in a digital age.

The daughter of immigrants, Priscilla Gonzalez is an organizer and certified professional coach who has been instrumental in groundbreaking campaign victories and developing movement building infrastructure in New York City, New York State, and nationally around issues of immigration reform, domestic worker’s rights and ending police violence. Priscilla reflects on the importance of centering relationships in an organizing process as well as the power of storytelling as an organizing strategy to build community, shift narratives and to educate. The importance of lineages, and where we and the movements we work within fit into those lineages, is also explored. Finally, she reflects on the value of learning how to sustain ourselves in movement work, including the importance of creativity and fun. Born and raised in New York City, Priscilla now lives in West Texas. 

Terese Howard is an organizer and educator who has been organizing with houseless people for civil and human rights since 2011. She became involved at the onset of Occupy Denver and is a founder of Denver Homeless Out Loud (DHOL) which was formed to defend the rights of people without housing who are criminalized and targeted by the police for basic human activities. In 2022, she founded a new organization, Housekeys Action Network Denver, that is focused on the organizing with houseless folks to guarantee housing is human right for all. Terese describes the anarchist values that inform her approach to her organizing practice and her life, including mutual aid and the sharing of resources, the need to create horizontal and accountable structures within movement and recognizing that we are in relationship with one another and the planet. She reflects on the significance of relationships, particularly within the context of organizing with unhoused folks, and the need to build solidarity and skills across organizations and movements. Terese was born and raised in Spokane, Washington, and rural Colorado. She now lives in Denver, Colorado. 

Yomara Velez is an organizer and daughter of immigrants from Puerto Rico and Venezuela. As a single mother attending the U. of Massachusetts, she organized students on welfare to demand access to higher education and better living conditions. She has organized around housing and environmental justice issues in the South Bronx and founded Sistas on the Rise, a collective of young mothers of color. Their work was grounded in transformative practices based on grassroots leadership and uplifted motherhood as an important part of organizing work. After moving to Atlanta, she worked on immigration and economic justice issues, including ten years with the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Yomara describes the importance of relationships, of belonging to community and the significance of women mentors in her life. She reflects upon the need for political education and the leadership of community members in organizing and shares her own process of creating alternatives to oppressive structures – including hierarchical structures in movement organizations – and her own journey home schooling her children as a strategy to build alternatives in our personal lives that reflect the world we want to live in. Yomara was born in Massachusetts and currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.