Not for Women Only

AFSCME activists speak about the women who have inspired them.

To give us courage in hard times, to remind us that we are not alone, to nurture and encourage us: We all need heroes. Each of the three AFSCME women featured here has many heroes, though each chose to speak about just one. These heroes come from their lives and from history, from the Labor movement and from other great fights for social justice. All three count their mothers as heroes. All three admire those who show courage in the face of difficulty. And all three are women who, in their own right, may serve as heroes for the rest of us.

Tina Turner-Morfitt on Myrlie Evers-Williams

"She is a beacon," says Tina Turner-Morfitt. The 41-year-old corrections counselor heard former NAACP Chairman Myrlie Evers-Williams speak at AFSCME’s 1996 Convention in Chicago and was inspired by the civil rights leader’s history.

The widow of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers, Myrlie Evers-Williams overcame this tragedy and continued to work tirelessly for the movement. She was elected chair of the NAACP in 1995 and restored the organization to stability before stepping down earlier this year.

"She believed she could make a difference even with all the odds against her," says Turner-Morfitt, who serves as first vice president of Oregon Council 75. "She didn’t give up the fight."

Seeing Evers-Williams speak also reminded Turner-Morfitt of her own childhood in San Francisco, during the height of the civil rights movement. "My parents didn’t talk about the civil rights movement much," she says. "The one instance I saw [Evers-Williams], it really impressed upon me the importance of sharing history with my children because history wasn’t shared with me. So now when I see things happening that I believe my children need to know about, I sit down and talk to them about it, try to make the connection."

In January, she sat her 11-year-old daughter down in front of the television for President Clinton’s State of the Union address. "It’s an event in my children’s life," she explains. "He’s going through great personal turmoil and they’re talking about impeachment, about going to war, about balancing the budget. I don’t want the moment to slip away without her noticing it."

Kathy Wente on Jan Worke

Kathy Wente and Jan Worke organized their workplace some 20 years ago.

"We motivated and inspired each other," says Wente, 53, a special education program assistant at a residential school for the deaf where she’s worked for the past 31 years.

The two women, both married with young families, became fast friends. They swapped stories about their husbands and children, took their families camping together, and talked about their jobs and issues of seniority and representation.

"We realized that the union was the place to go for guidance in a lot of areas," says Wente, who is also president of Minnesota Council 6. So they did. Soon afterwards, they and their co-workers voted to become members of AFSCME Local 607.

"I admired her strong belief in what we were doing," says Wente, recalling the first time her friend filed a grievance. "She didn’t hesitate because she knew it was the right thing to do."

In the years that followed, Worke would lose two husbands — the first to a car accident, the second to cancer a year after they were married. Through all this, she raised two children and went back to school to become an LPN. "She’s a strong person," says Wente.

The two women lost touch after Worke moved away. They reunited for a Public Employee photograph. "It was just like old times," says Wente.

The meeting rekindled their friendship. "Jan was — and is — high-energy," says Wente. "The influence she had on me keeps me involved with the union to this day. I can’t imagine my life without the union."

Gloria Plowell on Sysly Williams

As a girl growing up in English-speaking Guyana, in South America, Gloria Plowell was surrounded by a community of active women.

"I think the women in my country were feminists before it was called feminism," says Plowell, 49, who shares her New Hampshire home with her 73-year-old mother, Sysly Williams. Both women chose careers in nursing.

Plowell remembers Williams rushing home from the picket line to feed her and her siblings lunch. The teachers were on strike and Williams was picketing in solidarity. "She was a caregiver," says Plowell, president of Local 3715 (Council 93). "She liked to make sure that nobody had their rights violated."

So when Plowell heard there was a union at the nursing home where she worked, she signed up. "A union is the one place where workers can depend on others to support their interests," she says. Last year, Plowell led the local in an extended informational picket to protest working without a contract for three years. Their perseverance paid off. On Dec. 31, the local signed a satisfac-tory contract.

Plowell has raised two daughters — one a social worker, the other a lawyer — and she says they’re just like her and her mother. "We all have the determination that if we’re going to do something, we’re going to do it right. We have this passion for people and helping people and making sure people’s rights are not violated. We get that from my mother."

By Alison S. Lebwohl