Social movements, activism & change; Social justice, environmental and peace issues

In the 1990s Dr. Finley’s research centered around community health and development issues. Her work with a small village north of Mumbai prompted an ongoing interest in these and related topics, which developed over recent years to include her efforts on issues of social justice, with a special emphasis on poverty and women's and children's issues. In related undertakings, Dr. Finley has co-founded two programs serving homeless women in downtown Seattle, and, in collaboration with the local YWCA, co-founded one of the first battered women’s shelters in her state.

Prior to this, in the 1970s Finley was active in the anti-nuclear power movement, with its focus on clean, renewable energy technologies, a field that at the time was unfamiliar to most Americans. An organizer for the Keystone Anti-Nuclear Alliance in Philadelphia from 1977 to 1979, in the 1980s she joined the Seattle Light Brigade in an effort to stop nuclear power plant construction in the northwestern US state of Washington. Finley shares, "The Keystone Alliance, with others such as New England's Clamshell Alliance, developed nonviolent action campaigns opposing nuclear power plant construction. (Bill Moyer trained a group of 30 organizers in the Philadelphia Life Center nonviolent training community in Philadelphia in 1977-79 as the core group organizing the Keystone Alliance.)"

In the late 1960s, Dr. Finley worked with the grassroots organization Appalachian Volunteers, which was just beginning to attract public attention to the predominance and devastation of black lung disease among the impoverished mining communities of southwestern West Virginia. However, Dr. Finley’s interest in activism on social justice, environmental, and peace issues can best be traced to the mid-1960s, when she was deeply involved in the Chicago Freedom Movement. Finley met Bill Moyer while working closely with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the landmark campaign that rocked the nation, questioning and challenging the injustice of the social structures of the day. Finley shares a portion of her memoir written about this time:

It was a cold January day in 1966, the day Martin Luther King was moving into his small third floor walk-up apartment in a slum building in North Lawndale, an impoverished neighborhood on Chicago's West Side. A bevy of women staff and volunteers had been readying the apartment for Dr. King and his family, shortening too-long drapes for the living room, finding a spot for the faded, but elegant second hand gold couch, and hauling in an array of wooden crates from the local grocery store to serve as end tables for the time being. The landlord's new linoleum, installed in the living room when he found that it was indeed Martin Luther King who was moving into his building, was shiny and clean. The Sears and Roebuck delivery truck brought new beds.

Dr. King had arrived in Chicago from his home in Atlanta, Georgia that day, and he and Rev. Andrew Young, Executive Director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, were planning to stay in the Hamlin Avenue apartment that first night.

That afternoon I called Andy Young from the SCLC office at the Warren Avenue Church in East Garfield Park, where I worked as the secretary to the director of SCLC's Chicago Project. I told him I was worried there were not enough blankets for the cold Chicago night, and asked if I should deliver more. (My childhood was spent helping my parents run a rural motel, and I was accustomed to concerning myself with such things.) He replied that yes, they might need some more blankets, and furthermore, could I stop somewhere to get some good Chicago barbequed ribs and bring them over for dinner. "Bring some for yourself and Bill, too," he added. American Friends Service Committee staffer Bill Moyer, who had a car, had agreed to help with this venture.

A short while later, Bill and I found ourselves sitting on the new linoleum floor, with our paper plates of ribs on the orange crates serving as end tables, laughing over dinner with Dr. King and Andy Young.

The doorbell rang. In came a young man from the neighborhood, accompanied by the Chicago policeman sitting guard outside Dr. King's new Chicago home. "Are you really Martin Luther King?" he asked.

Dr. King laughed a deep, rich laugh. "Yes, I certainly am," he replied.

"I couldn't believe you were moving into my neighborhood!" the young man answered.

The warm, teasing conversation continued for a bit, as Dr. King was welcomed to his new community.

A half hour later, the doorbell rang again. The same young man returned, this time accompanied by a half-dozen others. "I went back and told my buddies that Dr. King had moved in here, but nobody believed me," he said. "They all wanted to come see for themselves."

Dr. King welcomed them all into the cramped living room, clearly delighted, and after everyone had been introduced to him, talked with them of poor housing and neighborhoods and young people and the movement. "We hope you will all join us in this movement in Chicago," he called to them, as they began to leave, trooping down the long dark staircase to the bleak street outside.

(Adapted from "Welcome", published in Injustice/Injustica: A Literary Journal. Produced on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary Commemoration of the Chicago Freedom Movement. Chicago: CFM40, July, 2006)

Finley has since applied Bill Moyer’s Movement Action Plan (MAP) model to the Chicago campaign. (For an example of how this model is applied, see: Finley, Mary Lou (2006) Success and the Chicago Freedom Movement. In: Poverty and Race, Poverty and Race Research Action Council Newsletter, May-June 2006.)

Co-author of Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements with the late Bill Moyer, JoAnn McAllister and Steven Soifer (2001, Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/3694), Dr. Finley has worked extensively with the MAP model, which will be one of the lenses applied to the global environmental movement in the upcoming April e-conference. We are certain the wealth and depth of her experience and work will provide an invaluable contribution to the April discussion. Always one step ahead, Finley’s most recent work has been in applying the MAP model to the global warming/climate change movement in the US. Her findings, "Shaping the Movement", will be published in Ignition; What You Can Do to Fight Global Warming and Spark a Movement (Jon Isham and Sissel Waage, eds., Washington DC: Island Press, available June/July 2007, http://www.islandpress.com/books/detail.html/SKU/1-59726-156-4).

EcoRes Forum is proud to welcome Dr. Mary Lou Finley to the April dialogue. Her long-standing dedication and commitment to addressing social ills sets an outstanding example for all concerned citizens.