Heather Booth (born December 15, 1945) is an American civil rights activist, feminist, and political strategist who has been involved in activism for progressive causes. During her student years, she was active in both the
civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
and
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
causes. Since then she has had a career involving feminism,
community organization, and
progressive politics
Progressivism holds that it is possible to improve human societies through political action. As a political movement, progressivism seeks to advance the human condition through social reform based on purported advancements in science, techn ...
.
Early life and family
Booth was born in a military hospital in
Brookhaven, Mississippi
Brookhaven is a small city in Lincoln County, Mississippi, United States, south of the state capital of Jackson. The population was 12,520 at the 2010 U.S. Census. It is the county seat of Lincoln County. It was named after the town of Brookhaven ...
, on December 15, 1945, during a period in which her father was serving as an Army doctor.
Soon after her birth, her family moved to
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
Bensonhurst is a residential neighborhood in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bordered on the northwest by 14th Avenue, on the northeast by 60th Street, on the southeast by Avenue P and 22nd ...
, where she received her elementary education in P.S. 200 in the
Bath Beach neighborhood. Later, she attended high school in
Long Island's North Shore after her family had moved to that upscale area.
She has two brothers, David and Jonathan.
Booth said that she grew up in a warm, loving, and supportive family, and that her parents taught her the importance of recognizing injustice and acting to correct it.
They were observant Jews, belonging to a
liberal
Liberal or liberalism may refer to:
Politics
* a supporter of liberalism
** Liberalism by country
* an adherent of a Liberal Party
* Liberalism (international relations)
* Sexually liberal feminism
* Social liberalism
Arts, entertainment and m ...
synagogue, who showed by example the importance of treating others with decency and respect.
From her Jewish upbringing, Booth learned to take on responsibility for building a society that reflected these goals.
After her family had moved to Long Island, Booth's mother, using
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan ( February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006) was an American feminist writer and activist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book ''The Feminine Mystique'' is often credited with sparking the se ...
's 1963 book ''
The Feminine Mystique
''The Feminine Mystique'' is a book by Betty Friedan, widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the United States. First published by W. W. Norton on February 19, 1963, ''The Feminine Mystique'' became a bestseller, initially selling ...
'', made her aware of the growing discontent of prosperous suburban housewives with the conventionally narrow lives they led.
In high school, Booth joined a sorority and the cheerleading team but left both of them when she came to believe that their members were discriminating against students who did not lead their privileged lives.
She began leafleting against the death penalty. In 1960, she joined CORE in a protest against the segregationist policies of the
Woolworth's chain.
Upon graduating from high school in 1963, she spent the summer traveling in Israel and that fall enrolled as a freshman at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
.
She chose that school in part because it had no sororities and deemphasized sports.
In college, she quickly immersed herself in political activism.
In 1967, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in social sciences, then in 1970, a Master of Arts degree in educational psychology, both from the University of Chicago.
She and
Paul Booth married in July 1967, shortly after she graduated from college.
They had met at a sit-in protesting the University of Chicago's cooperation with the policies of the U.S.
Selective Service System
The Selective Service System (SSS) is an Independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States government that maintains information on U.S. Citizenship of the Unite ...
whose local boards were then drafting men to serve in the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
.
Later that year, she was arrested during a protest at the U.S. Army induction center in Chicago.
The couple had two sons, Eugene Victor Booth (born in 1968) and Daniel Garrison Booth (born in 1969).
One of the founders of
Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s, and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships ...
(SDS), Paul Booth was national secretary of the organization when they met.
He helped organize the 1965 March on Washington for Peace in Vietnam,
subsequently became president of the Citizen Action Program in Chicago (a group formed in 1969 by members of Alinsky's
Industrial Areas Foundation
The Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) is a national community organizing network established in 1940 by Saul Alinsky, Roman Catholic Bishop Bernard James Sheil and businessman and founder of the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' Marshall Field III. The IAF p ...
), and was later a director of the Midwest Academy.
Beginning in the 1980s, he held a series of positions within the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is the largest trade union of public employees in the United States. It represents 1.3 million public sector employees and retirees, including health care workers, correcti ...
union.
In 2017, by then executive assistant to the union's president, he retired, continuing his political engagement by supporting Heather Booth in her work.
He died January 17, 2018, from complications of chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
Career
Civil rights
Booth's opposition to racial discrimination began when she was still in elementary school. She defended an African-American fellow student who was being attacked for allegedly stealing another student's lunch money. It was soon discovered that the girl who made the accusation had put the money in her shoe and forgotten it. In a 1985 interview, Booth said "I remember having the feeling that you don't do this to people."
While in high school, she joined the
Congress of Racial Equality
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African Americans, African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the civil rights movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission ...
(CORE) to help protest Woolworth's lunch counter discrimination in the South. In 1963, soon after enrolling in college, she became head of a group, called Friends of SNCC, that was organized on campus to support the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segrega ...
.
She also became student liaison to the Chicago Council of Community Organizations (CCCO), which was then protesting school segregation in the city.
As CCCO liaison, she helped coordinate
Freedom Schools Freedom Schools were temporary, alternative, and free schools for African Americans mostly in the South. They were originally part of a nationwide effort during the Civil Rights Movement to organize African Americans to achieve social, political and ...
in the Chicago's
South Side.
In 1964, Booth joined the
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer, also known as the Freedom Summer Project or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a volunteer campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi. ...
project in which volunteers from Northern and Western colleges and universities worked to register black voters and set up freedom schools and libraries in Mississippi.
She was arrested for the first time while she was carrying a sign saying "Freedom Now!" during a peaceful demonstration in
Shaw, Mississippi
Shaw is a city in Bolivar and Sunflower counties, Mississippi, United States, located in the Mississippi Delta region. The name was derived from an old Indian tribe northeast of this region. The population was 1,952 at the 2010 census.
History ...
.
In an interview conducted in 1989, she said that the experience reinforced her commitment to the
civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
. Confronted by the violent resistance of white Mississippians, she feared for her own life, but also realized that she could leave whenever she wished and was awed by the extraordinary heroism of the black residents with whom she worked. "They had a quiet heroism," she said, "not just by standing up to bullets, but by day to day being willing to go and talk to their neighbors, have meetings in their churches, take people into their homes." She said the work was full of tiring and frustrating tasks but recognized that it is the mundane everyday work that brings meaningful change.
In 1965, Booth was arrested while demonstrating at banks that were providing financial support for the
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
regime in South Africa.
Shortly afterward, she helped form a number of local groups that sought to learn about urban problems and find ways to overcome them.
She left SNCC in 1967 when its leaders no longer welcomed Whites as members.
She then devoted more of her time to issues related to feminism and the anti-war movement.
Feminism
Soon after she arrived on campus, Booth ran up against the university's bias in favor of its male students. In 1965, she began to set up
consciousness raising
Consciousness raising (also called awareness raising) is a form of activism popularized by United States feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group on some cause or ...
groups to deal with the problem.
These small groups of women met regularly to speak about incidents, both minor and more serious, that seemed to be unique but often proved to be shared. In a pamphlet published in April 1968, Booth and two co-writers noted a tendency for women to "see their problems as personal ones and thus blame themselves."
In discovering how many ostensibly unique concerns were actually common ones, members gained a sense of the collective influence they might exert toward changing the unfair practices and dismissive attitudes they had previously accepted as cultural norms.
She also helped to organize a course on women's studies, began to coach women who were uneasy about speaking up in class, and conducted a study on the disparity of treatment between male and female students in the classroom.
Noticing a similar unequal treatment among student activists, she founded a campus group, the Women's Radical Action Program, to document and counter the ways in which women were relegated to subordinate roles in national organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society and SNCC.
In 1967, Booth joined with other activists to form the Chicago West Side Group, which was reported to have been "the first women’s liberation group in the country, with the primary goal of raising the consciousness of its members."
In 1965, a fellow student asked whether Booth could help his sister who was so greatly distraught about an unwanted pregnancy as to consider killing herself.
By contacting the medical arm of the civil rights movement, she was able to refer the woman to a reputable doctor who was willing to perform an abortion.
As word quietly spread throughout the university community she was asked to make more referrals to the same doctor. In complying, she made sure that he would not only treat them, but also make sure the patients made a successful recovery.
The
Jane Collective
The Jane Collective or Jane, officially known as the Abortion Counseling Service of Women's Liberation, was an underground service in Chicago, Illinois affiliated with the Chicago Women's Liberation Union that operated from 1969 to 1973, a time ...
, or simply Jane, emerged from this early start. Booth formed it by involving like-minded students in a clandestine organization for evaluating doctors, counseling women who contacted them, performing referrals, and conducting follow-up discussions by phone.
By 1969 this group, calling itself the Abortion Counseling Service of Women's Liberation, began to advertise in student and underground newspapers, advising pregnant women who needed help to "Call Jane."
The Jane Collective disbanded following the ''
Roe v. Wade
''Roe v. Wade'', 410 U.S. 113 (1973),. was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States conferred the right to have an abortion. The decision struck down many federal and s ...
'' decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on January 22, 1973, which effectively legalized abortion throughout the country.
In 1969, recognizing the need to counter a strong tendency among feminists to see all organizational structures as oppressive, Booth joined with five other women to found the
Chicago Women's Liberation Union
The Chicago Women's Liberation Union (CWLU) was an American feminist organization founded in 1969 at a conference in Palatine, Illinois.
The main goal of the organization was to end gender inequality and sexism, which the CWLU defined as "the sy ...
(CWLU).
They believed that organization was essential for the movement be able to reach out to women who were not already radicalized and for it to develop strategies for winning reforms that would demonstrably improve women's lives. They said a structured approach was needed, including careful planning, the setting of specific goals, and developing strategies achieve these goals. Overall, they were committed to helping women to gain a sense of their collective power.
The CWLU organized local chapters, published newspapers, engaged in direct action, and ran a liberation school founded by CWLU's first staff member,
Vivian Rothstein Vivian Leburg Rothstein (born 1946) is a labor rights activist, feminist, and community organizer. She was instrumental in the civil rights movement and the peace movement. She also cofounded the Chicago Women's Liberation Union.
Early life
Vivi ...
.
After her marriage and the birth of her sons, Booth began to experience family-related issues that most feminist activists had considered to have little or no importance.
Finding no local child care centers in the Hyde Park community where she lived, she joined with two friends in an effort to set one up. The bureaucratic obstruction that they encountered led the three to set up a new citywide organization in Chicago called the Action Committee for Decent Childcare (ACDC).
Based on the rationale given for setting up the CWLU, to which it was related, ACDC created an organizational structure having specific and achievable goals. A position paper written anonymously in 1972 stated these goals as building a power base of women who work together to accomplish specific reforms in childcare policy, with the expectation that each victory will provide an opportunity to expand the power base and bring further goals within reach. The committee did not set up childcare services but worked to overcome legal barriers to the substantial expansion of these services throughout the city. Within a few years it had forced the liberalization of licensing procedures and won a million dollar city investment in childcare centers.
In 1972,
Socialist Feminism: A Strategy for the Women's Movement, which is believed to be the first publication to use the term "
socialist feminism
Socialist feminism rose in the 1960s and 1970s as an offshoot of the feminist movement and New Left that focuses upon the interconnectivity of the patriarchy and capitalism. However, the ways in which women's private, domestic, and public roles ...
", was published by the Hyde Park Chapter of the CWLU which included Booth, Day Creamer, Susan Davis, Deb Dobbin, Robin Kaufman, and Tobey Klass.
Community organizing
After earning her master's degree in 1970, Booth took on part-time editorial work to help support her family.
Outraged at her employer's treatment of its clerical staff, she encouraged them to organize. When they confronted him, the boss agreed to meet their demands but insisted on firing Booth. She sued and in 1972 won her case before the
National Labor Relations Board
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is an independent agency of the federal government of the United States with responsibilities for enforcing U.S. labor law in relation to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices. Under the Natio ...
. The next year, using money she was awarded in the suit, she founded the Midwest Academy, a training organization that taught
grassroots
A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to effect change at t ...
community organizing
Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other or share some common problem come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest.
Unlike those who promote more-consensual community bui ...
methods
based on earlier work done by
Saul Alinsky
Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 – June 12, 1972) was an American community activist and political theorist. His work through the Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation helping poor communities organize to press demands upon landlords ...
.
Booth and the other leaders of the academy created a highly regarded tool for the use of the community organizers who came to them for training. Using the tool, academy instructors taught the importance of establishing organizations to set specific goals for using pressure-group tactics in a formally-structured campaign.
This tool, the "Midwest Academy Strategy Chart," instructed students in the actions that must be taken following the articulation of a problem and the methods that must be used for determining the success of the resulting campaign. The steps include setting concrete near- and long-term objectives, identifying individuals or groups that are either committed to solving the problem or likely to become supportive allies, and they include measuring the strength and likely tactics of those who will oppose the change. The chart directs attention to targets—the specific individuals who hold decision-making power and are able to affect the campaign—and it asks how these people can be influenced. It focuses on the resources that the campaign can call upon: its budget, its staff, and facilities available to it. And it asks how the campaign can be used to strengthen the coordinating group, what experience its leaders will gain as they conduct it, and whether it offers a good chance to expand into new constituencies and raise additional money.
In 1978, Booth proposed and helped to found an alliance of citizen-activist and labor organizations called the Citizen Labor Energy Coalition, often referred to as CLEC. The group chose her as its executive director at its first meeting and began work toward overcoming the mutual distaste that was seen to exist between the major elements of the
New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, g ...
and the leadership of the
AFL–CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) is the largest federation of unions in the United States. It is made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 12 million ac ...
. In the words of labor historian Andrew Battista, CLEC addressed "a crucial issue of American public life: the relationship between the decline of organized labor and the decay of liberal and progressive politics." CLEC's lasting contribution is seen to be the establishment of new citizen-labor activist groups at the state level.
The experience she gained as president of the Midwest Academy and the many contacts she made with people who attended its training programs enabled her to set up
Citizen Action, a nationwide coalition of local activist groups.
Set up in 1980, Citizen Action gradually absorbed the statewide groups set up by CLEC and, eventually, CLEC itself.
By 1989 the new coalition had a membership of two million people with 24 state affiliates.
The issues it took on included plant closings, affordable health care, high energy costs, toxic waste sites, and similar problems, most of them having a degree of bipartisan support.
Largely influenced by the negative fallout following the 1980 election of
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
, Citizen Action began to move away from the nonpartisan activism of the other organizations that Booth had founded. Departing from her previous practice, she began to take first steps toward entering mainstream politics by helping to defeat Republican candidates for office.
Progressive politics
In 1981, Booth was arrested while supporting miners during the
Pittston Coal strike
The Pittston Coal strike was a United States strike action led by the United Mine Workers Union (UMWA) against the Pittston Coal Company, nationally headquartered in Pittston, Pennsylvania. The strike, which lasted from April 5, 1989 to Febr ...
. A news report said she brought about 50 people to support the strike, about 20 of whom were arrested for blocking a courthouse entrance.
She was an adviser to
Harold Washington
Harold Lee Washington (April 15, 1922 – November 25, 1987) was an American lawyer and politician who was the 51st Mayor of Chicago. Washington became the first African American to be elected as the city's mayor in April 1983. He served as ma ...
's 1983 and 1987 mayor campaigns in Chicago
and subsequently served as field director for
Carol Moseley-Braun
Carol Elizabeth Moseley Braun, also sometimes Moseley-Braun (born August 16, 1947), is a former U.S. Senator, an American diplomat, politician, and lawyer who represented Illinois in the United States Senate from 1993 to 1999. Prior to her Senate ...
's successful campaign for the Senate in 1992.
Because the headquarters of Citizen Action was in Washington, D.C., her position as its president caused her to make frequent trips there from her home in Chicago.
In Washington she was able to make a growing number of connections with the national leadership of the
AFL–CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) is the largest federation of unions in the United States. It is made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 12 million ac ...
and the
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to:
*Democratic Party (United States)
Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to:
Active parties Africa
*Botswana Democratic Party
*Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea
*Gabonese Democratic Party
*Demo ...
. In 1993, she became an outreach coordinator for the
Democratic National Committee
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is the governing body of the United States Democratic Party. The committee coordinates strategy to support Democratic Party candidates throughout the country for local, state, and national office, as well a ...
(DNC) for women, labor, and related concerns and subsequently was named coordinator of the committee's National Health Care Campaign.
The DNC made her its training director in 1996. Four years later,
Julian Bond
Horace Julian Bond (January 14, 1940 – August 15, 2015) was an American social activist, leader of the civil rights movement, politician, professor, and writer. While he was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, during the e ...
asked her to lead the newly-established National Voter Fund of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. ...
. Organized as a charitible organization. the fund aimed, in its words, "to engage in issue advocacy, educate voters on candidates' stands on civil rights, and increase voter turnout in the African-American community through voter education and non-partisan registration and get-out-the-vote efforts."
Its work helped to produce the unusually large African-American turnout in the
presidential election of 2000.
Late in 1999, Booth helped found a federation of progressive community organizing groups called
USAction.
USAction absorbed some of the member organizations of Citizen Action and, like Citizen Action, it was a progressive advocacy organization intended to stimulate and coordinate community pressure groups.
Booth also began working as a political consultant. Having previously worked with the
National Organization for Women
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is an American feminist organization. Founded in 1966, it is legally a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and in Washington, D.C. It ...
(NOW) during efforts to obtain passage of the
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. Proponents assert it would end legal distinctions between men and ...
, she directed field outreach for the
pro-choice
Abortion-rights movements, also referred to as pro-choice movements, advocate for the right to have legal access to induced abortion services including elective abortion. They seek to represent and support women who wish to terminate their pre ...
rallies that were connected to the 2004 March for Women's Lives that NOW helped organize.
In 2018, Booth was arrested at a
Capitol Hill
Capitol Hill, in addition to being a metonym for the United States Congress, is the largest historic residential neighborhood in Washington, D.C., stretching easterly in front of the United States Capitol along wide avenues. It is one of the ...
protest in support of the
DACA
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, colloquially referred to as DACA, is a United States immigration policy that allows some individuals with unlawful presence in the United States after being brought to the country as children to receive a ...
program and in 2003, she was lead consultant to the
Campaign for Comprehensive Immigration Reform and subsequently to the
Voter Participation Center.
She was also the senior advisor to the
One Nation Working Together rally held in October 2010
and consultant to the
National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare a year later.
Since 2011, she has been a member of an organization of political consultants called Democracy Partners.
In 2004, Booth was Get-Out-the-Vote (GOTV) coordinator for the New Mexico
Kerry/Edwards presidential campaign.
In 2008, she was director of the AFL–CIO Health Care Campaign.
In 2009, she directed the campaign to promote congressional passage of
President Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...
's first budget.
Booth worked to achieve financial reform and establish the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is an agency of the United States government responsible for consumer protection in the financial sector. CFPB's jurisdiction includes banks, credit unions, securities firms, payday lenders, mortg ...
. In 2010, she was hired to direct
Americans for Financial Reform
Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) is a progressive nonprofit organization which advocates for financial reform in the United States, including stricter regulation of Wall Street. AFR is a coalition of approximately 200 consumer, labor and sp ...
(AFR),
a coalition of about 200 consumer, labor, and special interest groups established in the wake of the
financial crisis of 2007–2008
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fi ...
and the subsequent
Great Recession
The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...
.
AFR played a key role in achieving passage of the
Dodd-Frank Act later that year.
As
Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth Ann Warren ( née Herring; born June 22, 1949) is an American politician and former law professor who is the senior United States senator from Massachusetts, serving since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party and regarded as a ...
later explained:
AFR managed to scrape together some money, and they used it to hire a handful of employees, including Heather Booth as executive director and Lisa Donner as her deputy. Creating a small team to organize the overall campaign for reform was a brilliant move. Instead of each nonprofit putting a little time into fighting for this or that provision, AFR coordinated the efforts of dozens of groups, magnifying the work of each one by helping them speak with a single voice. Heather and Lisa and the rest of their crew put out press releases, coordinated briefings on Capitol Hill, and organized groups of volunteers. The staffers and lobbyist and lawyers for the megabanks outnumbered them by a zillion to one, but the AFR people were there—day in and day out—hammering on the need for financial reform. They worked their hearts out.
Regarding passage of the Dodd–Frank Act, Booth was jubilant but did not see the achievement as an end in itself. She wrote:
The big lesson is that if we organize, we can win. The progress we made was because people raised our voices, took the message to the public, to the streets, and to the Halls of Congress, where we were joined in our efforts by some committed elected representatives. ... e legislation headed to the President’s desk is a better start than almost anyone predicted was possible in the face of the powerful opposition and entrenched power of the status quo. We won. Now let's get back to work.
Calling her "one of the nation's most influential organizers for progressive causes,"
a profile published in 2017 by journalist
David Wood said:
Inside almost every liberal drive over the past five decades—for fair pay, equal justice, abortion rights, workers' rights, voter rights, civil rights, immigration rights, child care—you will find Booth. But you may have to look hard. Because she's not always at the head of the protest march. More often, she's at a let's-get-organized meeting in a suburban church basement or a late-night strategy session in a crumbling neighborhood's community center. She's helping people already roused to action figure out practical ways to move their cause forward. And always she's advancing the credo she learned as a child: that you must not only treat people with dignity and respect, but you must shoulder your own responsibility to help build a society that reflects those values.
In 2019, Booth was arrested during a "Fire Drill Fridays" climate change rally on Capitol Hill.
During the
Biden/Harris presidential campaign of 2020, Booth served as director of senior and progressive engagement and on December 15 of that year was quoted as saying "President-elect Joe Biden’s team has always focused on older voters and their concerns will be top-of-mind in his upcoming term."
Political opponents and critics
As an activist on the national scene, Booth has drawn considerable criticism from political opponents. In 1978, Congressman Larry McDonald (R. Ga.) claimed that Booth and the Midwest Academy were associated with the
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...
.
A year later, he quoted an article claiming that: "The founder of the Midwest Academy, Heather Tobis Booth, and her husband, Paul Booth, were top leaders of Students for a Democratic Society in the mid-1960s who decided like many other S.D.S. activists that the way to create a socialist system in the United States was to organize a 'hate the rich' campaign under cover of a 'populist' movement for those who have incomes near or below the poverty line."
In a book published in 2010, conservative author
Stanley Kurtz called Booth "arguably the queen of socialist politics in Chicago,"
also saying she was determined "to drag modern American socialism, kicking and screaming, into the heart of America's mainstream institutions."
In 2013, Paul Sperry said she was a leading figure among the "socialist activists and their front groups
hoplayed a shockingly outsized role shaping and passing the monumental financial reform legislation that authorized the creation of President Obama's powerful consumer credit watchdog agency."
Sperry is a conservative journalist and author of anti-Muslim books, who has served as bureau chief in Washington, D.C. for the conspiratorial website
WorldNetDaily
''WND'' (formerly ''WorldNetDaily'') is an American far-right fake news website. It is known for promoting falsehoods and conspiracy theories, including the false claim that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
Th ...
and written opinion pieces for the
New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.
It was established ...
.
Honors and awards
* On May 9, 1987, Booth received the Thomas-Debs Award at a dinner in her honor held by the
Democratic Socialists of America
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a Left-wing politics, left-wing Democratic Socialists of America#Tendencies within the DSA, multi-tendency Socialism, socialist and Labour movement, labor-oriented political organization. Its roots ...
.
* On June 16, 2009, the Washington, D.C., office of AVODAH held a "Partner in Justice Event" honoring Booth.
* On July 6, 2013, during the national conference of the National Organization for Women, Booth accepted the Victoria J. Mastrobuono Women's Health Award on behalf of the Jane Collective.
* On September 23, 2015, the Chicago Abortion Fund honored Booth and the Jane Collective at its 25th anniversary celebration.
* On October 19, 2016, United Vision for Idaho gave a reception honoring Booth in conjunction with a showing of ''Heather Booth: Changing the World''.
This was one of quite a few receptions of similar nature that were held in conjunction with the showing of the documentary film.
* On October 21, 2020,
Jane Fonda
Jane Seymour Fonda (born December 21, 1937) is an American actress, activist, and former fashion model. Recognized as a film icon, Fonda is the recipient of various accolades including two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, sev ...
presented Booth with Personal PAC's Irving Harris Award at a virtual luncheon that was also attended by
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
.
Personal PAC is an Illinois-based political action committee that is dedicated to electing pro-choice candidates to state and local office.
* In March 2022, Booth received the
Raphael Lemkin
Raphael Lemkin ( pl, Rafał Lemkin; 24 June 1900 – 28 August 1959) was a Polish lawyer who is best known for coining the term ''genocide'' and initiating the Genocide Convention, an interest spurred on after learning about the Armenian genocid ...
Human Rights Award from
T'ruah, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. The T'ruah announcement says, in part, "Heather Booth has committed her life to bringing a Jewish lens to work for social justice."
Documentary films, television appearances, and podcasts
Writings
The following are Booth's contributions to books, pamphlets, and
blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
posts as sole author, joint author, or contributor.
Organizations
This is an incomplete chronological list of organizations that Booth has founded, directed, consulted for, and/or participated in.
Notes
References
External links
*
Records of the Veteran Feminists of America, 1993-2007: A Finding Aid.Schlesinger Library
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Booth, Heather
1945 births
Living people
University of Chicago alumni
Activists from Mississippi
Activists from New York (state)
Activists from Illinois
Activists from Washington, D.C.
American feminists
American community activists
American political activists
American civil rights activists
People from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
People from Brookhaven, Mississippi
People from Washington, D.C.
American political consultants
Women's health movement