The Camel and the Scorpion is a book inspired by true events. It is the story of #StrongWomen - Caroline, Lydia, Anna - who spoke out for a good world despite the personal and professional risks to themselves in doing so.
This post is the 10th in my Strong Women Series. The series honors women and girls of courage.
Lois Marie Gibbs is my 10th #StrongWoman.
Courage is doing something even when we are afraid, yes?
This anecdote from Ms. Gibbs' 1978 beginnings as an environmental activist awes me:
"The woman who helped free an entire community from a toxic dump, literally rewriting environmental laws in the process, was so shy at the start of the struggle she tried to hide behind a tree when neighbors called on her."
Ms. Gibbs was "
just a housewife." Even after blooming into a nationally-known community activist, this dismissive label stuck at times, including from her own mother, noted
in this story:
"In 1981, now a single parent, with two children and $10,000, Lois left Niagara Falls for the Washington, DC area to establish a national organization to help families living near other Love Canal-like sites. Many doubted her ambitious goal to guild a movement – even her mother told her as she drove away 'you’re forgetting you’re just a house wife with a high school education'."
So what did Lois Gibbs do?
In short, Ms. Gibbs brought the world's attention to a giant toxic dump, otherwise known as a "model planned community" called Love Canal, in which families were born, slept, ate, played, went to school, made love, and got sick and died.
To do this, Ms. Gibbs had to power through her shyness and self-doubts; overcome the disdain of local, regional, state, and national experts, officials, and business folk; learn by trial and error about community organizing; make mistakes; and take risks. From
The Center for Public Integrity:
"... one day in 1978, the Niagara Falls Gazette published a story about toxic dump sites cluttering the region. Love Canal was one, and the news screamed from the page: 21,000 tons of toxic waste had been buried next to the school property, underneath the playground. The now-defunct Hooker Chemical Co. had sold the site to the school board 25 years earlier, for $1. 'Oh, my God!' Gibbs thought, reading the Gazette. 'Every single day I took my children to the playground to play.'
"Pressing to move her son to another school, Gibbs won an audience with the school board superintendent. The school chief settled into an over-sized leather chair behind a broad, shiny wood desk. He seated Gibbs in a school desk normally used by kids. Sunken in her seat, she slid two doctors’ notes across the desk saying her son’s sickness could be tied to the dump, she said.
"The superintendent glanced at the notes, then slid them back. ‘We’re not going to do that because of one hysterical housewife with a sick kid,’ he said, as Gibbs recalled it. ‘Well, if your kid is so sick, why don’t you go home and take care of him? Why are you running around to City Hall and the school board?’
"Tears streamed down Gibbs’ face. 'All of a sudden, I became the bad guy.'”
In the beginning of the Love Canal odyssey,
Ms. Gibbs thought a leader would emerge - someone she could support and follow to protect her children. She came to realize it was she who would have to step up.
Women of courage like Lois Gibbs? They are who kept me writing The Camel and the Scorpion for 20 years, so I could share the stories of women like The Camel and the Scorpion protagonists, Caroline, Lydia, and Anna.
Honorable, imperfect, brave, vulnerable champions, all of them. Risking their personal and professional lives to stand up for their ideals.
