Heather Booth: Changing the World

Heather Booth: Changing the World

October 19th at the Flicks Theater in Boise

Throughout her life, she has been an incredible force for change, and now we have a chance to bring her to Idaho to meet with her and allow her to see first hand the work she has helped to champion.  

A new film explores many of the most pivotal moments in progressive movements that altered our history over the last fifty years.  

Her personal connection to leaders from Julian Bond to Senator Elizabeth Warren forms a thread that allows a unique window into the world of the organizer and how crucial that role has been in bringing about change for the better.  

We would like to offer a showing of this Film - and raise funds to bring Heather to Boise for a special this event.  

Trailer Link: http://heatherbooththefilm.com

About Heather Booth

As a young woman, in 1963, at Yad Vashem in Israel, she made a commitment that in the face of injustice, she would work for justice/tikkun olam".  

Today, Heather Booth, is one of the country’s most renowned organizers, who began her remarkable career at the height of the Civil Rights and Women's movements of the 1960s. A student at the University of Chicago, she joined the Mississippi Freedom Project leading city wide school boycotts to protest policies that created and preserved segregated and inferior schools in the African American communities. She became chair of the Student Political Action Committee, the University’s leftist political group, founded Students for a Democratic Society, and the Women’s Radical Action Program, one of the first women’s consciousness-raising groups in the country. In 1966, Booth working with other students organized a sit-in protest of the University’s Vietnam War-related policies, marking the earliest student sit-in against the Vietnam War.

As founder of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, she created JANE (an underground abortion service) which also provided childcare, becoming the first campus women’s liberation organization in the country.  

When Dr. King said the way to civil rights was through union rights, she became a labor organizer.  

In 1973, she founded, directed, and now serves as President, of the Midwest Academy, training thousands of social change organizers across the country to this day.  

Throughout her career she has founded, supported, and led numerous organizations including the 2000 NAACP National Voter Fund, which helped to increase African American turnout by nearly 2 million votes, The State and Local Leadership Project to support "progressive leadership" in running for political office, Citizen Action, a national organization of 2.5 million members in thirty-two states, and USAction, now People’s Action the recent merger of five prominent progressive organizations, with affiliates in 32 states, including Idaho.  

She has worked on a vast number of national campaigns, including the Health Care Campaign of the AFL-CIO, the Alliance for Citizenship (the leading coalition for immigration reform) a number of other prominent organizations.  

She served and serves on numerous boards some of which include: the Center for Community Change, Wellstone Action and the Editorial Advisory Group of the magazine Social Policy, which includes Noam Chomsky, Janice Fine, S. M. Miller, Peter Olney, Frances Fox Piven,Peter Dreier, Maya Wiley, Robert Fisher, Ashutosh Saxena, Ken Grossinger.  

She is a regular consultant for social change groups including the Center for Community Change (advising on the development of the Community Voting Project), MoveOn.org, the Campaign for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, Campaign for America's Future and NOW.  

“It is difficult to encapsulate all of Heather’s experience and drive in a listing of some of her works. I continue to work alongside Heather and she is a guiding force, a mentor and one of the most powerful voice of our time stretched across generations and divides,” said Adrienne Evans, Executive Director of United Vision for Idaho.  

Why It's Important To Us 

For many, many years Heather has celebrated and helped champion the work happening here in Idaho, understanding very well the obstacles and limitations. For that reason and in spite of a new film launch that has her spanning the country, and because of her unyielding dedication to justice and our collaborative work here, she has agreed to come to Idaho to see first hand the remarkable people doing remarkable work in this part of the country.

Why We Need Help

We know the type of work, community organizing and action that Heather Booth is capable of helping a community or cause generate. And we are lucky that she has offered her skills to us here in the Boise community, but we need to cover the cost of the venue to screen the powerful documentary that features the work she has done and to pay for her expenses to travel to our area. 

This is the time for citizen activists across the country to rise up, and we want people in even the reddest of states to take part in community organizing, to engage with their government leaders, and to do so effectively to achieve change.For that, we need training and motivation, which is why we believe this event is so important.