In the Feminist Fast Lane A Profile of Loretta Ross
Washington, Laura S.
By Laura S. Washington Illustration by Martha Rich In the Feminist Fast Lane A Profile of Loretta Ross If Loretta Ross did not exist, the Left would have to invent her. Fortunately, she is not...
...Her Jamaican-born father was a U.S...
...I'm sending Barack my money and giving Hillary my vote...
...At fifty-four, Ross calls her decades in the trenches a "therapeutic privilege...
...Like most Army brats, she moved around...
...The group consists of almost eighty grassroots groups representing women of color who are demanding total control of their bodies...
...confab drew more than 1,000 women and girls for an unprecedented pow-wow on topics like sexual violence, HIV/AIDS, and abortion...
...Gripped with shock, guilt, and fear, she hid the incident from her parents with the help of her older sister...
...history...
...I don't know anybody who is exempt from the effects of male and white supremacy...
...Richie, who has known Ross for more than twenty-five years, adds: "She travels in the fast lane of feminist politics...
...It cost Ross a ticket to Radcliffe College...
...There's something mind-boggling about telling a girl she's old enough to be pregnant," she says, "but not old enough to use birth control...
...Despite her movement orientation, she does take an interest in mainstream Presidential politics...
...He took me into the woods and raped me," she says...
...Ross was born in 1953 in Temple, Texas, the sixth of eight children in a church-going family...
...Why is battling racism and sexism therapeutic...
...This plus-sized woman warrior, who favors flowing African boubous, insists that females of color, from their teens to twilight years, get three things: the right to have a child, the right not to have a child, and the right to parent children—all on their terms...
...I catch up with her at a budget hotel room in suburban Chicago...
...Ross's latest step is to act as national coordinator of the Atlanta-based SisterSong, an influential women's collective that crusades for reproductive rights...
...While an organizer at SisterSong, she served as national co-director of the April 2004 March for Women's Lives in Washington, D.C., perhaps the largest women's rights march in U.S...
...Then came her first sexual encounter, at age eleven...
...From there, she went to the National Black Women's Health Project, and then on to the Center for Democratic Renewal, where she took on the Klan, neo-Nazis, and anti-abortion groups...
...Ross excelled at the books, skipping two years in grade school...
...Ross laughs heartily, her long, abundant dreadlocks swaying down her back...
...But back in '64, he was not concerned about leaving a witness...
...Her mother, a domestic, hailed from a "hog-raising farm family" in central Texas...
...He dropped me off on the street where I lived...
...Ross was in Chi-Town in May to honcho Sister-Song's tenth anniversary celebration and a national conference entitled "Let's Talk About Sex...
...She decided to keep the baby...
...With a wicked grin, she adds, "But, long ago, I accepted that no one as radical as me was ever going to be found dead in an electoral office...
...She eventually moved with her son to Washington, D.C., and enrolled at Howard University, where her activism took off...
...She is well loved, feared, and a truth teller," says Beth Richie, a feminist activist and professor in African American Studies and associate dean at the University of Illinois at Chicago...
...Fortunately, she is not a figment of the progressive imagination...
...Even girls at the tender ages of eleven, twelve, thirteen...
...The Laura S. Washington is a senior editor ofIn These Times, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, and a professor at DePaul University...
...Her early life was no laughing matter...
...Ross is running at warp speed to promote what she calls a "pro-sex agenda...
...Army weapons specialist and drill sergeant...
...In the early 1970s, she joined up with an early mentor, Nkenge Toure, a Black Panther and executive director of the D.C...
...It was a tribute to Ross's organizing skill...
...Social Forum this June in Atlanta...
...This unapologetic black feminist and civil rights activist keeps on stepping on, despite adversity, and accomplishes the extraordinary...
...She also played a prominent role in helping to organize the U.S...
...Ross was separated from her Girl Scout troop during an outing to a San Antonio amusement park...
...After that, she did a stint directing Women of Color Programs for the National Organization for Women...
...Because everybody has to deal with it," she explains...
...Meaning, yes, young people have the right to use birth control without parental consent, abortion without parental consent...
...I'll tell you the most contradictory thing a girl can do," she says...
...She got pregnant and gave birth to her only child, Howard Michael Ross...
...Young people have a human right to have a positive sexuality," she says...
...She puts a distance on the event...
...I considered myself lucky, because, nowadays, if that had happened, there'd be a body on CSI in the woods...
...The school withdrew its scholarship offer, she says...
...At fourteen, she was abused again by her mother's adult cousin...
...Rape Crisis Center, the first of its kind in the United States...
...Then with one of her trademark husky chuckles, she adds: "But a few of us actually get paid to do something about it...
...She remembers accepting a ride from a soldier who was stationed at a nearby Army base...
...Ross began work at the center, and later took the helm in 1979...
...In the '60s, being pregnant was a lesser sin than keeping proof of the pregnancy," she says...
...The Clinton power base is a centrist power base that fundamentally doesn't appeal to my radical roots," she acknowledges...
...She didn't realize she should be afraid, she recalled, "until he was hitting me in my face...
Vol. 71 • October 2007 • No. 10
