Celebrating Jeanne Córdova

Google Dooles 06.06.2024 04:31  Date: June 6, 2024 In honor of Pride Month, today’s Doodle celebrates Chicana activist, feminist, and author Jeanne Córdova, a leader of the LGBTQ+ rights movement. On this day in 2012, Córdova won the prestigious Lambda Literary award for her memoir, When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love and Revolution. Córdova was born on July 18, 1948, in Bremerhaven, Germany. During her time in college, she began to advocate for lesbian rights. While earning her master's degree in social work from UCLA, she became president of the Los Angeles chapter of the lesbian rights organization Daughters of Bilitis and was a key organizer for the first West Coast Lesbian Conference in 1971. The DOB newsletter she edited evolved into The Lesbian Tide, a national record for the lesbian feminist generation. She brought passion and inclusion to each of the publications she founded. In 1981, Córdova started the Community Yellow Pages, which became the largest LGBTQ+ directory in the U.S. She also co-founded Square Peg Magazine which was devoted to queer culture and literature. Córdova devoted much of her time to activism and community organizing, participating in the 1978 National Lesbian Feminist Organization Conference and the campaign to defeat the 1986 California Proposition 64, which would force HIV-positive people into quarantine. She also served on the board of several organizations including the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Press Association. In 1999, Córdova and her partner Lynn Harris Ballen moved to Todos Santos, BCS Mexico. In her new home, Córdova worked on When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love and Revolution. She and Ballen also co-founded the first non-profit organization in their town which was dedicated to children’s education and literacy. Córdova returned to her first loves - journalism and writing - when she moved back to Los Angeles. And, with her partner, created The Lesbian Exploratorium which was dedicated to queer art and history projects. Thank you to Jeanne Córdova for her fearless commitment to freedom and dignity for the LGBTQ+ community — the difference she made is felt. Happy Pride to all! Special thanks to Jeanne Córdova's life partner, Lynn Harris Ballen for her collaboration on this project. Below, she share her thoughts on Jeanne Córdova's legacy: Jeanne wrote “It’s the job of the young to push the societal envelope” and she started doing that early and never stopped. Everyone who was touched by Jeanne's life and work knew her as a charismatic activist, and there was no aspect of her life, be it social work, business or journalism that wasn’t defined by what she could do for other lesbians, other Chicanas, other people pushed to society’s margins. And she brought that charisma to everything she did, with a smile and a swagger. Before she passed away she wrote a Letter About Dying to her community and said: "It is wonderful to have had a life’s cause: freedom and dignity for lesbians. I believe that’s what lesbian feminism is really about, sharing. We built a movement by telling each other our lives and thoughts about the way life should be. We cut against the grain and re-thought almost everything. With just enough left undone for our daughters to re-invent themselves." That legacy has continued to inspire young LGBTQ+ activists, and I'm proud to be the executor of her trust which supports scholarships for writers and journalists, as well as lesbian/queer human rights activism in Mexico/Latin America and Southern Africa. Jeanne cherished her families - both family of birth and family of choice - and got great joy from bringing people together around our dining room table, wherever we lived. Whether it was to celebrate holidays or to organize political actions! We were partners in life, love and work, and she ended her final letter to community saying "Least you be too sad, know that I have this kind of love not only with my family ... but with a straight arrow spouse with whom I have journeyed these last twenty-seven years." Location: , , , , , , , Tags: