Real People Empty Nesting

An Interview with Louise Robinson Doskow

Some people change careers at midlife—to do something more fulfilling, to make the world a better place. (See “The Encore Career,” elsewhere in this issue.) Some, however, advocate for change all their lives. Take Louise Robinson Doskow. Her career involves editing medical textbooks. By avocation, though, she has been called “an agent of social change” and has been recognized by various organizations for her volunteer work as an activist.

EN: Louise, tell us about your career.

LRD: My career path has been an interesting one. I’ve been everything from a biomedical researcher in New York to a chef in Philadelphia to a freelance medical proofreader and editor. I attended the Bronx High School of Science in New York, a magnet school for math and science, and graduated from Harpur College (near Binghamton, New York; now Binghamton University). With my bachelor’s degree in chemistry, I’ve held various jobs, including analytical and research chemist in the fields of leukemia and heart disease, but I’ve also been a chef, teacher, and antique salesperson in New York and Philadelphia. And, I still like to cook!

EN: When did you start your family?

LRD: I got married 12 years after college and then had my daughters Jade and Vivian 4 years apart. I moved to an old Pennsylvania farmhouse in a rural area outside Philadelphia and continued my freelance work on medical books. Today, I try to keep up with all my interests and of course enjoy spending time with my daughters, who both live in New York.

EN: When did you become an activist?

LRD: Actually, I’ve always been an advocate for one cause or another. While still in college, in 1962, I marched in a “Ban the Bomb” demonstration in Washington, DC. It was the first one of its kind, even before anti-Vietnam war marches. Soon after that, I walked the picket line at the University of Buffalo, when professors suspected of being Communists were blacklisted by House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Joe McCarthy’s group from the 1950s. In the 1980s, I worked on an AIDS quilt in memory of Harry Diaz. I guess you could say he was an activist too—he was one of the founders of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis Center in New York City and he helped organize the first AIDS benefit at Madison Square Garden in 1981.

In the early 1970s, I relocated to Philadelphia, met my (now ex) husband, moved out of the city, and got married. After I had my daughters, I continued my freelance work at home, where I was able to spend time with them. And, they grew up being familiar with my work. Once they started school, I volunteered in their classrooms and even presented a talk to their sixth-grade classes on what it meant to be a medical researcher.

Because of some goings-on in my school district (Boyertown, about an hour northwest of Philadelphia), I soon became a watchdog for public education. I realized that I could be an advocate not just for my kids, but for other people’s kids as well. When my older daughter was in eighth grade, and so would soon be in high school, I began to attend school board meetings. I was concerned about the condition of the high school and then became concerned about extremists at board meetings who seemed to want public education to fail. They also wanted to force everyone back to a time in the 1950s when women only stayed home and took care of their homes and husbands and kids.

In addition, it seemed that some people at school board meetings were showing a lack of tolerance for diversity. They were speaking loudly against the Green Circle Program, which promoted acceptance of those who were different. Ithad been started by Quakers and was given by volunteers at no charge to the school. The extremists at school board meetings also began to push for a “structured reading program” that would limit students’ exposure to literature that did not meet the board members’ very conservative religious views. It was October 1992, and I began to speak out. Surprisingly, people came up to me after the meetings to thank me for expressing my views in public. I then helped found a local public education advocacy group, FOCUS (Friends of Cooperation and Understanding in the Schools).

Overt racism and the presence of the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations in the Boyertown area pushed me even further in the direction of speaking out. To counter the hate and intolerance that the Klan promoted, my friends and I formed the Boyertown Area Unity Coalition(BAUC). In 1997, we started “Project Lemonade,” in which we took in pledges for every minute the KKK distributed literature on Boyertown street corners. More than 200 people and organizations from six counties made pledges. We raised more than $13,000 in 13 months and donated the money to groups that promote tolerance and diversity—the NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)—as well as the local community library to buy materials for this cause. For our first “Unity Walk,” held late in 2004 in response to an attempted cross burning in front of a black family’s house a month earlier, we had 200 people. At the last one, only 2 years later, we had more than 2,000 marchers.

The Klan didn’t show up again for several years and, when they did, we did it again. The KKK actually complained because we were raising money using their name! Project Lemonade was just a nonviolent, nonconfrontational way for people to express how they felt. The activity is now documented in the Pennsylvania Human Relation Commission’s training film Stopping the Hate with Harmony. It also appeared in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s pamphlet Ten Ways to Combat Hate, which is distributed to all mayors, school principals, and police chiefs in the country, as well as to interested religious leaders, civil rights groups, and citizens.

EN: How did life change for you when your daughters moved out?

LRD: My husband and I split up in the late 1990s, when Jade was in college and Vivian still in high school. At that point, I was able to devote more time to my volunteer work and to my work as a medical editor. I had become the Chair of the Freedom to Learn Network (FLN), a Pennsylvania nonprofit public education advocacy group. Similar organizations modeled on FLN were formed in Michigan, Ohio, and Idaho. I was asked to be a speaker at various events. I worked with groups such as the PSEA (the Pennsylvania State Education Association), Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and People for the American Way. I was involved in a project with WHYY (public radio and television in Philadelphia). I’ve spoken at national conferences in Washington and Texas about extremist threats to public education, and at the Intellectual Freedom Conference in Harrisburg, co-sponsored by the American Library Association. I was on the Board of the Pennsylvania Network of Unity Coalitions (PNUC) and the Pennsylvania Alliance for Democracy.

I’ve given many presentations in schools and churches on how to respond to hate groups. I also was mentioned in an Aryan Nations publication, the Jubilee, as “the leader of a local anti-Christian group,” which, of course, is not true. I’m nonsectarian, especially when it comes to denouncing hate groups.

EN: What about now? What important issues are you working on?

LRD: Today, I’m still doing what I’ve always done. I was on the Steering Committee for the Pennsylvania Public Education Celebration 2001. In September 2004, I was a speaker at the Rally for Social Justice at Valley Forge National Park, held when a neo-Nazi group was speaking in another part of the park. I’m now on the Board of the newly reorganized PNUC. I still run email lists and do networking for public education via FLN. And I’m still an active member of our local group, the BAUC.

Barry Morrison, Regional Director of the ADL in Philadelphia, first said this to me, but it will always be true: “The answer to hate speech is more free speech.” As I said before, there was an attempted cross burning just a couple of years ago, which is unbelievable in this day and age. We all must speak up to fight hate and promote equality. If we can make this world a better place for a minute, then we’ve done something.

Conclusion
In 2001, Louise received the Ethnic Harmony Award from the Montgomery County Advisory Council to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission for her work with the BAUC. In April 2002, she received the second annual Friend of Education Award from the PSEA Mid-east Region for her involvement with the FLN on behalf of public education. She continues her avocation as an agent of social change.

Credits: Photo of Louise speaking courtesy of © Jim McCarthy Photography—all rights reserved. Photo of Louise receiving Friend of Education Award courtesy of (c) Jade Doskow