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Interview with Maureen Taylor & Marian Kramer
Global Feminisms Project
Global Feminisms Project
2004-03-05
Abstract: Maureen Taylor is a social worker and dedicated community activist who fights for food, clothing, shelter, light, heat and water for those in need. She has served as chair of the Michigan Welfare Rights organization since 1993, and was elected treasurer of the National Welfare Rights Union in 1994. Taylor defends recipients of public aid at the Michigan Family Independence Agency in case disputes, and serves as the program director for the Detroit NFI Community Self Sufficiency Center, a program that works to assist chronically unemployed persons in the Detroit Central Empowerment Zone. Graduating first in her class, Taylor received her Bachelors Degree in Social Work from Marygrove College in 1983. In 1994, she earned her Masters Degree in Social Work from Wayne State University. Taylor has received many awards for her community organizing and leadership, including the National Community Leader Award from the National Black Caucus in Washington, DC.
Marian Kramer has been in the front lines of the Welfare and Civil Rights Movement since the 1960s. She has retained her commitment to end poverty in America by empowering the poor, especially women, as leaders. She has fought government programs, such as Workfare, defended poor women against unjust persecution for welfare fraud and led campaigns to elect the victims of poverty to political office. She has organized poor people’s movements, housing takeovers by people without homes, and led efforts to unionize in the South. Kramer is the recipient of numerous awards for community service, and is known as a mentor to college students fighting poverty. In 2004, she was awarded an Alston/Bannerman Fellowship, a fellowship for long-time community activists of color. Currently, she is Co-chair of the National Welfare Rights Union.
Series/Report no.:Global Feminisms U. S. Site Interview
Subject(s):Global, Feminism, Feminists, Intersectionality, Cross-cultural, United States, American Feminists, U.S. Feminists
Description: The Global Feminisms Project (http://www.umich.edu/~glblfem/en/index.html) is a collaborative international oral history project that examines the history of feminist activism, women's movements, and academic women's studies in sites around the world. The current archive includes interviews with women's movement activists and women's studies scholars in China, India, Nicaragua, Poland, and the United States. We are currently working on adding interviews from Brazil and Russia. The Project is based in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) at UM, which is also the home for the U.S. site research team. Our international collaborators include:
- Laboratório de História Oral e Imagem - UFF (the Laboratory of Oral History and Images at the Federal Fluminense University in Rio de Janeiro) and Núcleo de História, Memória e Documento - NUMEM (the Center for History, Memory, and Documentation at the Federal State University in Rio de Janeiro), BRAZIL
- China Women's University in Beijing, CHINA
- SPARROW, Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women in Mumbai, INDIA
- Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres de Nicaragua (Autonomous Women's Movement), NICARAGUA
- Fundacja Kobiet eFKa (Women's Foundation eFKa) in Krakow, POLAND