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  • Voices of Feminism: Linda Burnham
  • Loretta Ross and Linda Burnham

Linda Burnham, activist, writer, and organizational consultant is presently Senior Advisor to the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA). The Alliance, which works to ameliorate labor conditions and create protections for domestic workers, has 53 affiliate organizations and includes 20,000 nannies, housekeepers and caregivers for the elderly in 36 cities and 17 states.

Ms. Burnham grew up in Brooklyn, New York, the child of parents active in the Young Communist League in the 1930s and 1940s. A 1968 graduate of Reed College, she co-founded the Women of Color Resource Center in Oakland, California, in 1989 and was its executive director for 18 years. A journalist and political activist, Burnham has been involved with the Venceremos Brigades, the Third World Women’s Alliance, the Alliance Against Women’s Oppression, and the Angela Davis Defense Committee. She edited the anthology Changing the Race: Racial Politics and the Election of Barack Obama (2009) and co-authored Home Economics: The Invisible and Unregulated World of Domestic Work (2010). Her recent writings focus on African American women, African American politics, and low-wage work.

Linda Burnham was interviewed in 2005 for the Voices of Feminism Project, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College. She was interviewed by Loretta Ross, a reproductive rights activist who assumed leadership of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective in 2005, which became the largest multiracial women’s network in the country. Ross is the co-author of Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice. Her oral interview is also featured in the Voices Project. [End Page 189]

LORETTA ROSS (LR):

Tell me, Linda, how did you become a political activist?

LINDA BURNHAM (LB):

I grew up in a very political family, a family that was opinionated about what was going on in this country and what was going on in the world. In terms of women’s rights issues, I remember an argument that I had early on with my grandmother, and it was very interesting because when I look back on it, I can’t quite figure out where it came from on my part. I was young. I couldn’t have been more than 13 or 14, and we had an argument about abortion. She was against abortion, you know, she was a deep Christian, and abortion was not anywhere on her map. And I don’t even remember how we got into the conversation. She was a little bit appalled, number one—and what’s interesting to me about it is, I was also, you know, a sexual innocent, so I’m not even sure that I completely understood, you know (laughs), the mechanics of sex or any of the rest of it. But I had a firm opinion about a woman’s right to choose very early on, and was prepared to argue that opinion with my grandmother. I don’t remember where that argument ended up. But in terms of my political activism, I was, in my high school years, active around both peace issues—at that time, it was sort of antinuclear issues—and civil rights, antidiscrimination issues. And I became a member of Student CORE. The Congress of Racial Equality had a student chapter, and I was a part of that. One of our main activities was picketing a neighborhood bakery called Ebinger’s, which had some African Americans in the back, baking and doing whatever, but no counter people. So we did a picketed that bakery. I also remember going to a lot of the peace marches down in Union Square [New York City] in the early ’60s.

LR:

During the Vietnam War.

LB:

During the Vietnam War. I was in junior high school when the first time the issue of the Vietnam War came up. There was a young man who was talking about the fact that we were at war. I would go to a student meeting here or there. I was certainly not near any of the leadership, but I was an active participant.

Later I did voter-registration work in Greensboro, North Carolina and then in the early ’70s, I hooked up with this group...

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