Ann Medlock - Works - Speeches

Ann Medlock’s Plenary Speech
to the NW International Women’s Conference
February 5, 1995 - 1400 women present

Thank you for inviting me to take part in our Northwest prelude to the great event this summer in Beijing. I’m delighted that my part is to talk about the heroic leaders and peacemakers we call Giraffes.

I’m not going into detail about the Project—there’s information and a button by your plate and there are free newsletters outside. Briefly, the Giraffe Project’s mission is to inspire people to stick their necks out for the common good, by telling the stories of heroes, in the media, in schools, and on podiums.

In carrying out that mission, we certainly find ourselves inspired. Every day, we work with true heroes, alive and kicking, in a time when the world tells you that there are none. No giants. No one to look up to.

But there are heroes among us. You’ve assembled many of them this weekend. I know you’ve been inspired by your speakers and panelists—and by each other. Over a thousand people dedicated to global leadership, to peace-making—it is an honor to be in your midst.

I am particularly thrilled that you are women.

When the Giraffe Project was gestating, one of my advisors cautioned that it would be important to keep a balance of genders in the stories the Project told. This, he advised, would require a special effort to find women’s stories—because courage is a male trait.

I didn’t ask him for much advice after that.

There are now over 800 offically commended Giraffes, in all parts of this country, and in 14 other nations. With no special effort on anyone’s part, 62% of them are women.

I suspect this room is filled with Giraffes whose stories we just don’t have yet. But we do know about two of you.

Dr. Juliette Engle is a Giraffe on your Board, commended by the Project for putting everything she had—and perhaps ever will have—on the line to improve health care for women and children in the former Soviet Union. Dr. Engle?

And your board member Hazel Wolf was commended as a Giraffe for a lifetime of sticking her neck out—for civil rights, for the trade union move-ment, for women’s rights, for health and housing, for better foreign policies, and for the environment. Hazel, take a bow.

I have to tell you that Hazel’s career as a change agent has been marked by a literally dis-arming sense of humor—a great tool for peacemakers. It began in 1912, when she asked her school principal in Victoria, British Columbia, why there was basketball for boys but not for girls. When he said he doubted there were enough interested girls to play the game, Hazel got him to agree that if there were, he would certainly give them equipment, uniforms, and court time. She then opened his office door and showed him the ten girls she had waiting in the hall. She’s been cajoling obstreperous folks into doing the right thing ever since.

Ms. Wolf is not the oldest Giraffe. That distinction went to Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, the writer credited with preventing the total disappearance of Florida’s everglades. She was commended 4 years ago, when she was 101.

And let me tell you about one of the youngest, a peacemaker of the first order. Kaneesha Johnson’s fifth grade class in Hawthorne, Californa, on the edge of LA, was mostly African-American kids like Kaneesha. And then there were the Latino kids, and the Vietnamese. Kaneesha’s friends didn’t speak to them. And the tougher kids in the class went a lot further, bullying and tormenting them. This one small girl stepped out of line—and we all know how strong peer pressure is on kids—and befriended the “outsiders.” When she was tormented by the bullies, she cried, at home, where they couldn’t see her. But she kept right on, helping kids with their English, bringing them into play-ground games, getting her friends to see them as real kids, not just “foreigners.”

I would now like to tell you about a nomination that was considered by the Giraffe Project’s most recent jury. The nominee was a woman who had a fine education and lived, twenty years ago, in a solid middle-class neighbor-hood, raising a family, going to work every day at a well-paying, secure job. Then the community began to change. “Bad elements” moved in; people like this nominee moved out. But she decided to stay. To stay, and to raise her family there. To stay and to give up her good safe job to work with the new people, who were poor, who were—everyone told her—not worth her time, who were—”they” said—beyond anyone’s help. Who were dangerous—and some of them have been. She’s been harassed by drug dealers and gang members who don’t want her mentoring young people, helping them move up and out, telling them they can make it even though life isn’t fair, has never been fair, and won’t be fair in the future. As people of color and without privilege, they will always, she tells them, have to work harder and longer than others to make it in the world. And she helps them make that extra effort, believe that strongly in their own abilities, no matter how hard their current circumstances, or the odds against them, are. She’s led the neighborhood in crusading for good housing, for health care, for better schools. She’s stood her ground, even in this era of drive-by shootings, even on the street where she lives, which one of her nominators called the most dangerous block in the city.

The jury decided that this was indeed a Giraffe. She does not know this. Weeks of plotting and skullduggery have gone into getting her into this room today. All of it was shot down this morning when one of her children sprouted chicken pox. Working mothers, can we relate to that?

I would like to read you the commendation the jury voted for her which we’ll now have to send to her in Tacoma, where she’s trying to keep that child from scratching those pox.

Whereas: sticking one’s neck out for the common good is an inspiration to all
Whereas: such risk-taking is vital to a compassionate, peaceful and just world;
Whereas: The Giraffe Project is commissioned to seek out such risk-takers and to honor them for their deeds;

The Giraffe Project herewith declares

Alberta Canada

to be a Giraffe

whose courageous actions illumine all our lives,
making manifest the truth that people who believe in themselves and care for others
can meet any challenge life presents.

As you go back to your work, take with you Juliet, Hazel, Marjorie, Kaneesha—and Alberta Canada—as you work for change, work for peace, work for social justice—as you look for the way that you as a woman will lead.

When the woods are dark, when you feel alone, and you see no path ahead, remember that, in spirit, you are walking in the most excellent company of heroes, holy fools, and Giraffes.