The Zeskind Fortnight No. 8
A Twentieth Anniversary
By Leonard Zeskind
It was July, twenty years ago. David Duke was in the middle of a Populist Party campaign for president that would spill over into his election to the Louisiana state legislature. A black family living in a mostly white neighborhood of West Deptford, New Jersey suffered a cross burning on their front yard. A synagogue in Atlanta was defaced with a swastika daubing. Skinheads in Milwaukee were arrested in a racially-motivated shooting. Aryan Nations had just finished their latest “congress” in Idaho. A Klan march in St. Petersburg, Florida ended in mayhem. Police stopped a demonstration in support of South African apartheid by the Southern White Knights at the Democratic Party’s convention in Atlanta, after large numbers of anti-Klan protestors occupied the streets. And Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, having won his party’s nomination after a long primary fight with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, formally embarked on his disastrous run for president, giving the Republican Party a third quasi-Reaganite term in the person of George Herbert Walker Bush.
Not everybody was standing idly by as the malevolent and
the greedy grabbed ever larger chunks of our society. All across the country, without fanfare and often without much notice, individuals and organizations were helping others. In one noticeable instance, friends and family of Petra Tolle Shattuck centered in Massachusetts, New York and Washington, D.C. decided to memorialize her life and work after losing her the previous March. To that end they created the Petra Foundation. Petra Tolle had been born in Germany during World War Two, and had developed an active appreciation for free expression and an acute opposition to racism. As a university professor in New York and as a lawyer, she had maintained a special interest in the rights and sovereignty of Native American Indians. (After Petra’s death, her colleague Jill Norgren finished a book they had worked on together, which was published in 1991 as Partial Justice: Federal Indian Law in a Constitutional Republic.) And each year following 1988, the foundation has chosen to honor individuals they call “unsung heroes” fighting for human rights, with a special emphasis on those areas of endeavor where Petra had focused her own energies. During a weekend of events, now usually in November or December, the new fellows are recognized and called forward to tell a piece of their story. They join the ranks of fellows past, many of whom have traveled long distances to join the celebration and re-connect with others doing important work in difficult places.
At this point there are almost eighty of these Petra Foundation Fellows. They are active in thirty states, providing social services and building the kind of political movement that our country most desperately needs. They work to expand the rights of Native American Indians that have been usurped by governments and individuals since before the founding of this republic. They are protecting the environment, particularly in those poor and oppressed communities that have suffered from toxic pollution. They are finding homes for the homeless, educating children that others would simply forget, protecting the lives and worth of women, working to end the death penalty and for the rights of prisoners and their families. They are fighting against racism and for the rights of immigrants and working people everywhere. They are giving voice to the voiceless. It is impossible to catalogue here all of these individual efforts, but I urge you to read about them on the Petra Foundation website at www.petrafoundation.org/fellows.html
This writer became a fellow in 1992, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I can honestly attest to the importance in my own life's work of the foundation’s recognition.
During the sixteen years I have been associated with the Petra Foundation I have watched a powerful transformation, facilitated by the founders, from a small almost family-like gathering to a place where the fellows learn from each from the other, and manage to find ways to work together and help one another. The fact that so many fellows return each year tells us that they are all looking for something unique that they find in this company of fellows and friends.
The Petra Foundation’s twentieth anniversary is now upon us. On November 22 in Washington, D.C. a special event will once again honor new fellows and bring them together with those fellows from the past. And this year the attendees will celebrate the contribution that the foundation has made towards a better more hopeful world. I would urge any and all that have a chance to read these words to learn more about and make a financial contribution to the foundation. And follow events to come at the website, www.petrafoundation.org
There are still the greedy and the malevolent trying to tear up our world. Here is one place that you can help repair it.
TZF