April, 2006

In Memory of Mary Ford, Warrior for Justice

BY THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE FLINT, MICH. CORRESPONDENT

FLINT, Mich. -- Mary Ford, who died February 27, was a community warrior for many years. She always stood on the side of social and economic justice. No Justice, No Peace summed up Mary's essence.

You may have met Mary years ago on the City Hall lawn at the "Sleep-In for Open Housing" here in Flint. Maybe you ran into her in the courtroom of the DeWaters uprising defendants. Were you a member of one of several tenant unions that she organized? Or perhaps you were with Mary during her days with the Welfare Rights Organization championing the cause of poor women and children, challenging county and state welfare policies. Perhaps you met Mary when she was co-chair of the Madeline Fletcher Defense Committee. Maybe you saw her at the Flint Board of Education meetings or the Flint City Council meetings where at one time she was referred to as the tenth councilperson.

This is just a small part of her activism. Over the years, Mary gained a broader understanding of the struggles she was fighting in. She learned that the root cause of social and economic injustice in our society stems from the system in which we live. She saw the need to not only fight the good fight but to raise awareness in the process that society as a whole needs to change. She continued to affiliate with Welfare Rights, but also worked with the Equal Rights Committee and other groups that challenged the core of a failed society. Recently, she was an organizer of the newly founded "Flint Poverty Roundtable" whose motto (in Martin Luther King's words) is: "It's not enough to pitch a coin to a beggar, we must restructure the society that created them."

She was an avid supporter of Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Mich. She looked forward to the Anniversary Reunion of the Housing Sleep-In of 1967.