Heather Booth

Heather Booth

Heather Booth is a Chicago based activist, who has been organizing for "social justice for more than 40 years".

Activism

"In 1963, at Yad Vashem in Israel, she made a commitment that in the face of injustice, she would work for justice/tikkun olam". Booth was active in the women's movement, founding the first campus women's movement organization in 1965 and beginning JANE, one of the country's first abortion counseling services. She has organized for childcare, health care, and women's rights in many arenas. In 1989, she directed the national March for Women's Lives. She was a founder, Co-Director, and former President of Citizen Action, and is now a Vice President of USAction.

She has been a consultant to a variety of 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.

Civil Rights activism

When Heather Tobis was in high school, on hearing about the lynchings in the South, she joined CORE in New York City. Much of the activity focused on protests against Woolworth's refusal to seat blacks at the counters in their southern stores.

In 1963, she started college at the University of Chicago and became the head of the local chapter of Friends of SNCC. the group supported the struggle in the South and in Chicago. Tobis organized a part of the Freedom Schools during a city wide school boycott to protest the policies of Superintendent Ben Willis "who went out of his way to create and preserve segregated and inferior school in the African American community. We supported rent strikes and tenant organizing and other kinds of community organization for civil rights". Tobis was the liaison to the CCCO (Coordinating Council of Community Organizations--the Chicago Civil Rights Coalition).

In 1964, at the end of her first semester of college, Heather Booth went to Mississippi for the civil rights movement and the Freedom Summer Project. "I'd been very active in SNCC already, and I was also active in the emerging anti-war movement on campus".

After the summer Tobis returned to Chicago and "continued with the struggle", also doing national traveling, speaking and fundraising.

University activism/meeting Paul Booth

Back in Chicago, Booth became the chair of the Student Political Action Committee , the University of Chicago’s leftist political group, worked with members of Students for a Democratic Society , and then founded the campus organization Women’s Radical Action Program , one of the first women’s consciousness-raising groups in the country.

As the chair of SPAC, Booth worked with other students to organize a sit-in protesting the University’s participation in Vietnam War-related policies in May of 1966. The sit-in was the earliest student sit-in against the Vietnam War. There she met Paul Booth, a full-time SDS employee. On the third day of the sit-in, he asked her to marry him. Two days later she agreed, and they married in 1967. The couple had their first child in 1968 and their second in 1969.

JANE-an abortion service

JANE can trace its roots to 1965 and a young Heather Booth. While a University of Chicago student "A friend of mine at the time was raped at knifepoint and went to the university health care center, where she was told there were no gynecological services. And she was given a lecture on promiscuity," Booth said.

Situations such as this sparked Booth to help out a friend in need. This friend who came to her with a problem: her sister was pregnant and didn't want to be. The woman was suicidal over the matter because there was no place for her to go for an abortion. Booth's friend was not rich, so Booth took it upon herself to find an abortionist for the young woman. She located a doctor with a good reputation and recommended him to her friend. Word that Booth knew where to locate abortionists grew, and she was soon flooded with requests for doctors. She used the pseudonym "JANE" because of its anonymous quality. She kept lists of abortionists and their qualifications at hand. Soon, the operation became too big for Booth to handle herself. She recruited other women to help with the project and they became the group JANE.

The women of JANE learned to perform illegal abortions themselves. Eventually, the underground collective performed over 12,000 safe, affordable abortions. Word of the illegal alternative was spread through word-of-mouth, cryptic advertisements, and even by members of Chicago's police, clergy, and medical establishment.

Citizens Action

Former Students for a Democratic Society members Heather and Paul Booth and Steve Max, were all leading activists in Citizens Action.

Harold Washington supporter

Booth was been involved with many political campaigns including with Mayor Harold Washington in Chicago.

Democratic Agenda

More than 1,200 people attended the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee initiated Democratic Agenda Conference held November 16-18, 1979, at the International Inn and Metropolitan AM Church in Washington 1 DC. The conference focused on "corporate power'; as the key barrier to "economic and political democracy," concepts many Democratic Agenda participants defined as "socialism.'

The Democratic Agenda meetings attempted to develop anti-corporate alternatives" through influencing the direction of the Democratic Party during the period leading to the July 1980 Democratic National Convention in New York.

Workshops included "Energy Agendas for the 80s': Theirs and Ours" - Jack Clark, moderator; Heather Booth, Joel Jacobsen, Ed Rothschild

Institute for Policy Studies connections

Heather Booth, Director Midwest Academy, Chicago was listedamong those participating in the Institute for Policy Studies affiliated Conference on Alternative State and Local Policies {CASLP} Bryn Mawr August 3-5 1979.

Alinsky fan

Heather Booth has stated, "Alinsky is to community-organizing as Freud is to psychoanalysis."

Moseley Braun official

In 1992, Heather Booth and Janice Bell were the two key leaders of Carol Moseley Braun for Senate.

Heather Booth was Field Director for Sen. Carol Moseley Braun's successful Senate race.

Midwest Academy

Heather Booth founded Midwest Academy, which has trained thousands of social change organizers since 1973.

The 2009 Midwest Academy board of directors consisted of;

• Heather Booth President

• Nancy Shier Treasurer

• Alicia Ybarra SEIU

• Cathy Hurwit (Rep. Jan Schakowsky)

• Paul Booth AFSCME

• Jacky Grimshaw, Center for Neighborhood Technology

• Jackie Kendall Executive Director Midwest Academy

Booth claims to have started Midwest on "funds I won from a labor back pay suit".

Midwest Academy, has helped to build the field operations and/or strategic plans for such organizations as Sierra Club, NARAL, United States Student Organization, Children's Defense Fund and many other groups.

DNC

Starting in 1993 Heather Booth worked on electoral campaigns and with the Democratic National Committee and was the training director for the Committee during the Clinton administration.

NAACP voting project

Heather Booth was the founding director of the NAACP National Voter Fund in 2000, which helped to increase African American turnout by nearly 2 million votes.

DSA connections

In the early 1990s Heather Booth's husband Paul Booth was a confirmed member of Democratic Socialists of America.

Debs dinner award

Chicago Democratic Socialists of America's 29th Annual Norman Thomas - Eugene V. Debs Dinner was held on May 9, 1987, at the Congress Hotel in Chicago. The Master of Ceremonies was Leon Despres. Mayor Harold Washington was to present the awards to Jackie Grimshaw and Heather Booth, but he was unable to attend because of a meeting that ran over long. In his absence, Leon Despres did the honors. United Steelworkers of America President Lynn Williams gave the Thomas - Debs Address.

You have dedicated yourself to enabling people to develop a sense of their own power and alter the relations of power in order to build a more just and humane society.

Through the Midwest Academy, you have inspired and trained thousands of new activists in the Citizen Action movement, the peace movement, and the women's movement.

You have reached across the generations to connect with and maintain the best traditions of the old radical movement while reaching out to upcoming student activists with a new vision and strategy for a better future.

By work and by deed your energy and commitment inspire us all.

For this, the Norman Thomas - Eugene V. Debs Award is hereby presented to you on this 9th day of May, 1987.

Campaign for America's Future

In 1996 Heather Booth, Founder Midwest Academy was one of the original 130 founders of Campaign for America's Future.

Chicago Area Friends of SNCC

In 2005 Chicago Area Friends of SNCC organized the "Tell the Story: The Chicago SNCC History Project, 1960-1965" Chicago Area Friends of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Chicago Civil Rights Movement, c. 1960-1965. The event was held October 21-22, 2005 Roosevelt University, Chicago, Illinois.

Members of the advisory committee included Heather Booth.

Wellstone Action

In 2009 Heather Booth was listed as a member of the Advisory Board of Wellstone Action, a Minnesota based organization based on the political legacy of that state’s late ‘progressive” Senator Paul Wellstone.

Wellstone Action and Wellstone Action Fund combine to form a national center for training and leadership development for the progressive movement. Founded in January 2003, Wellstone Action's mission is to honor the legacy of Paul and Sheila Wellstone by continuing their work through training, educating, mobilizing and organizing a vast network of progressive individuals and organizations.

Center for Community Change board

In 2009 Heather Booth, Director of Health Care Reform Campaign AFL-CIO Washington, DC served on the board of Center for Community Change.

Social Policy

The Editorial Advisory Group of the magazine Social Policy includes;

Noam Chomsky, Janice Fine, S. M. Miller, Peter Olney, Frances Fox Piven, Heather Booth, Peter Dreier, Maya Wiley, Robert Fisher, Ashutosh Saxena, Ken Grossinger

Americans for Financial Reform

On January 28, 2010 Booth wrote in the Huffington Post;

Last night in his State of the Union address, President Obama reinforced his ambitious agenda to fix the economy and enact financial reform, including measures to hold Big Banks accountable for their reckless actions that led to our financial crisis and the loss of millions of jobs:

The House has passed financial reform...And the lobbyists are already trying to kill it. Well, we cannot let them win this fight. And if the bill that ends up on my desk does not meet the test of real reform, I will send it back.

At Americans for Financial Reform, we are fighting to make this possible. Financial reform will protect working families and small businesses by reining in the greedy, reckless behavior of big banks on Wall Street and will crack down on the abuses committed by credit card companies and the mortgage lending industry. These reforms will hold Wall Street accountable and prevent another financial crisis.

Jeff Blum

Jeff Blum is a colleague and longtime friend of Heather Booth, who also attended the University of Chicago, “She has always been very good at being at the intersection of powerful agendas and organization.” says Blum.