United States Interviews

Rabab Abdulhadi, born in 1955 in Palestine, is an activist and scholar contributing to the struggle for Palestinian self-determination and the well-being of Palestinian women. She was the Director of Political and International Relations at the Middle East Research Center in New York. She helped found the Union of Palestinian Women's Associations in North America during the first Intifada, or Palestinian uprising. At last contact, she was conducting research for the Gender and Sexuality Studies Center, in the Global South Project.
Keywords: reproductive rights, rural women and land reform
Media: Transcript (English), Video, Bibliography, YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015) was an activist and writer. A daughter of Chinese immigrants, she moved to Detroit and worked in grassroots projects together with her partner, James Boggs. They founded Detroit Summer, an intergenerational multicultural youth movement, and wrote in the Michigan Citizen newspaper. She published her autobiography, Living for Change, and among others, received the distinguished Alumna Award from Barnard College, the Chinese American Pioneers Award from the Organization of Chinese Americans, and a lifetime achievement award from the Anti-Defamation League. A plaque in her honor is at the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, NY. The GFP staff were saddened by Grace's death in 2015. Read the NYT obituary to learn more about her remarkable life, spanning a full century, as a human rights activist.
Keywords: gender and health, community activism, education, intersectionality, politics and the law
Media: Transcript (English), Video, Bibliography, YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

JD Davids, born in 1967, is a US-based health justice and communications strategist working with national networks of disabled and chronically ill people. He co-founded Strategies for High Impact and its Network for Long COVID Justice in 2021. Davids has been an external expert advisor to the NIH, CDC, and local health departments, and has served as a strategist and organizer with many pivotal groups, including ACT UP Philadelphia, AVAC, the Coalition for a National HIV/AIDS Strategy, Health GAP, the Health Not Prisons Collective, the HIV Prevention Justice Alliance, Positive Women’s Network – USA and the U.S. Caucus of People Living with HIV. As a queer and trans person living with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS), Long COVID and other complex chronic conditions, he writes and hosts conversations for The Cranky Queer Guide to Chronic Illness (@TheCrankyQueer), sits on the board of #MEAction and is a contributing member of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative, which released the first comprehensive study on Long COVID. 

Keywords: activism during the COVID-19 pandemic, community activism, disability rights, gender and health, international rights

Media: Transcript (English), YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

Marian Kramer (interviewed with Maureen Taylor) at last contact was the co-chair of the National Welfare Rights Union. 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. She has received many community service awards and mentors college students fighting poverty.  Taylor and Kramer spoke at a rally in Detroit, Michigan in June 2020, and a video of their speech recorded by the group Detroit Will Breathe can be found here.
Keywords: gender and health, media, community activism, politics and the law
Media: Transcript (English), Video, Bibliography, YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

Lisa McCorkell, MPP, born in 1992, is the co-founder of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative (PLRC), a group of people with Long COVID who conduct research on Long COVID. She has presented PLRC's work to Congress, NIH, CDC, the President's COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, and more, and has co-authored several research papers and chapters on Long COVID. She is a policy expert, with a background in social safety net, public health, labor policy, advocacy, writing, and research. She has a Masters of Public Policy from UC Berkeley and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from UCLA.

Keywords: activism during the COVID-19 pandemic, gender and health

Media: Transcript (English), YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

Dona Murphey, born in 1979, is a neurologist, neuroscientist, historian of science, and community organizer. She has navigated local, state, federal, and international partnerships across academia, government, and health tech sectors in rapid response and strategic mobilizations at the intersections of race, poverty, and immigration. Her belief in the foundational democratic rights to health, migration, public education, and voting have informed her extensive grassroots activism and nonprofit advocacy and a run for her local school board in Texas. Her current project is a public benefit start-up that marries her scientific and clinical expertise with a community organizing ethos to develop a digital diagnostic tied to culturally and language specific content and community health worker access to help eliminate racialized health disparities in dementia.

Keywords: activism during the COVID-19 pandemic, community activism, disability rights, intersectionality

Media: Transcript (English), YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

Loretta Ross, born in 1953, is an activist and was one of the first African American women to direct a rape crisis center. She has served as director of the Women of Color Programs for the National Organization for Women, as national co-director of the March for Women's Lives in DC, and as National Program Research Director for the Center for Democratic Renewal. She founded the National Center for Human Rights Education and co-authored "Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice". She is a founding member and most currently a national coordinator of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective. The New York Times published an article about Loretta Ross on November 19th, 2020, which can be found here. Congratulations to United States GFP interviewee Loretta Ross on being named a 2022 MacArthur Fellow!
Keywords: gender and health, feminist conferences, gender-based violence, intersectionality, reproductive rights
Media: Transcript (English), Video, Bibliography, YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

Suffering with the debilitating effects and symptoms of Covid-19 for nearly a year, Chimére L. Smith, born in 1982, has had to learn the hard knocks of advocacy in healthcare. While seeking treatment and care, she experienced racism, sexism, and dismissal by several medical professionals. Chimére boldly took matters into her own hands by challenging Baltimore hospitals for better, comprehensive treatment for herself and other Black Long Covid patients in urban communities. She is an author, speaker, highly-requested panelist, and thought leader who unapologetically shares her Long Covid journey — including balancing the effects of her disability emotionally, physically, and financially. Chimére Smith has been featured on CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, and in The Washington Post, and The New York Times. She has written for Huffington Post, Medium, The Long Covid Survival Guide, and She Knows.

Keywords: activism during the COVID-19 pandemic, disability rights, gender and health, media

Media: Transcript (English), YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio