Local Heroes (Page 2)

NAN ORROCK--Georgia

Nan Orrock has been on a long march that she says began when she "stepped into the streets on August 28, 1963, to join the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom." The Virginia native organized campuses for the Southern Student Organizing Committee, helped organize textile workers in North Carolina, co-founded Atlanta's Great Speckled Bird underground newspaper and served as executive director of the Fund for Southern Communities. In 1987 she marched into the Georgia Statehouse, where she took a seat among legislators who in some cases had served since segregation days. The Atlanta Democrat worked her way into spots on some of the House's most powerful committees and, ultimately, to her current position as the House majority whip. Ever the organizer, Orrock has over the years pulled together coalitions to pass the Georgia Family Medical Leave Act and the Georgia Hate Crimes Act, among others. Last year she led the fight to make the state's unemployment insurance system fairer. Even as she builds coalitions, however, Orrock refuses to trim her progressive sails; while some Democratic legislators defended inclusion of the Confederate flag on the state banner, Orrock declared, "It's common knowledge the Confederate Stars and Bars have become a symbol of racism." When she isn't stirring things up in Georgia, Orrock is organizing legislators nationally, serving as a board member of the Center for Policy Alternatives and as president of the Women Legislators' Lobby, a network of women legislators that campaigns to cut excessive military spending.

APRIL FAIRFIELD--North Dakota

At the behest of US-based agribusiness corporations, the Bush Administration is demanding that the World Trade Organization force the European Union to lift restrictions on genetically modified foods. But resistance to the re-engineering of food supplies isn't just coming from Brussels, it's also coming from Bismarck. Since her 1996 election to the North Dakota Statehouse, Democrat April Fairfield has been at the center of the fight to make sure that farmers and consumers--not multinationals and the WTO--decide what is planted, sold and eaten. After Fairfield won House approval of a bill placing a two-year moratorium on the sale of GM wheat seeds, the chair of the state Senate Agriculture Committee prevented it from becoming law. Fairfield challenged him in the 2002 election and won. In a Republican-controlled legislature, Fairfield is continuing to wage an uphill battle for the moratorium, and she is expanding her activism beyond the Capitol. The woman who marched with farmers from around the world during the 1999 anti-WTO protest in Seattle has joined the Dakota Resource Council and farm activists in filing a legal petition calling on the US Secretary of Agriculture to deny biotech behemoth Monsanto's request for permission to start selling GM wheat seeds until the USDA has fully analyzed the environmental, social and economic impacts of such a decision. "April's so in touch with farmers on these issues and she's so determined," says the North Dakota Progressive Coalition's Don Morrison. "There are a lot of powerful interests pushing on these issues--right up to the White House--but my money's on April to win."

ADAM KLINE--Washington

Legislators are called "lawmakers," but sometimes the most important work they do involves the unmaking of laws. Washington State Senator Adam Kline reminded his constituents of that fact when, as part of a list of his accomplishments during the 2001-02 legislative session, the Democrat declared, "This past session, I used my power as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee to kill a particularly evil bill: HB 2416, which would have expanded the authority of police to wiretap phones during investigations of 'terrorist acts.' Coming in the wake of September 11, this bill would have altered much too drastically the fragile balance between police power and traditional American civil liberties." Retaining all the passion that drove him as a volunteer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Mississippi and as a lawyer for the ACLU, Kline still sees himself as an activist. He has stood up to the state's Democratic governor, as he did when he built a coalition of liberals and anti-big government conservatives to block the "terrorist acts" bill; and he has crafted groundbreaking legislation, such as a bill he co-wrote to shorten prison sentences for possession of drugs and create treatment programs for addicts arrested for drug crimes. As the representative of a progressive district, Kline says, he's expected to be "out there leading the charge."

ETHAN STRIMLING--Maine

As President Bush moved the United States closer and closer to war last winter, Congress was virtually silent. So the Maine State Senate stepped in, passing a resolution urging the Administration to "support the full pursuit of diplomatic resolutions and weapons inspections." The sponsor of the resolution was Ethan Strimling, a Portland Democrat who usually works on issues like keeping Casco Bay free of cruise-ship discharge and expanding healthcare coverage. Why did Strimling work to pull the Maine legislature--which also includes Green State Representative John Eder, another champion of antiwar legislation--into a debate about Iraq? Because, he argued, "this war's going to cost $200 billion, while the families up here are struggling to pay their bills. How is it that we find enough money to be able to bomb Iraq, but we don't have enough money to provide healthcare for Maine families and daycare for our children?" "I wish the Democratic leaders in Congress would have framed the issue as well as he did," said the Institute for Policy Studies' Karen Dolan, who coordinated the national Cities for Peace campaign.

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