WWW JUSTOUT.COM
DECEMBER 18 2009
) PEOPLE
The Legacy of BONNIE TINKER
When local equal rights and peace activist
Bonnie Tinker died on July 2 at age 61, she
seemed only halfway through her boundless
journey.
On that fateful day this summer, a‘70s
Mack truck turned directly in front of her as
she biked back from a national Quaker meet
ing in Blacksburg, Va., according to state police
reports. She had been delivering a presenta
tion titled “Opening Hearts and Minds” for a
workshop devoted to nonviolent change.
Soon after graduating from Grinnell Col
lege in 1969, she and several other women
moved here and started feminist collective Red
Emma, which provided Portland with a half
way house and women’s health clinic for more
than 20 years. She also founded the Brad
ley-Angle House, and in 1978 expanded her
service to battered women across the country,
becoming the first chair of the National Coali
tion Against Domestic Violence.
"Bradley Angle renamed its shelter building
the Bonnie Tinker House this month, not only
for the memory of her family and community,
but for the people within the organization.
Many of the original founders met with cur
rent shelter staff at the ceremony to share
stories.
“It’s that connection between domestic vio
lence and oppression that the founders really
taught us,” said Mary Dzieweczynski, execu
tive director of Bradley Angle.
Although Bradley Angle has long been
considered a “radical” social service agency for
its commitment to GLBT and minority issues,
Tinker’s death served its staff a wake-up call to
keep pushing the envelope. For Dzieweczynski,
enacting a memorial inspired a self-assessment
of potential areas for strengthening.
“Every time we walk through the door and
see her plaque, it reminds us that we’ve got to
stick to our radical roots,” she said. “As people
grow older, everyone knows that they tend to
slide to the right, but Bonnie wasn’t one of
those people that that ever happened to.”
Dzieweczynski saw the prickly side in
Tinker’s personality as a major prerequisite
for social progress. “When people have that
rough-around-the-edges personality, it’s about
where their hearts are,” she explained. “If Bon
nie’s saying things that are controversial, that’s
probably a good and necessary thing, because
so many people are tempered by this pressure
of political correctness.”
In 1992, Tinker produced the documen
Reverend Cecil Prescod said that the organi
zation’s initiative to visit diverse locations like
the state fair comes from Tinker’s belief that
“meaningful social change doesn’t take place
with 50 percent plus one, but rather when
communities are transformed.” A close friend
and associate, Prescod noted Tinker didn’t
consider working for social justice a 9-to-5
job so much as a lifelong vocation, akin to a
Graham, were eventually arrested last year,
not for “radical, women-controlled shelters,”
as the report put it, but for their direct action
against the Iraq War as part of a group they
helped found called the Seriously Pissed Off
Grannies. The rabble-rousing pair married
in 2004 under the short-lived Multnomah
County policy, and had finally secured their
domestic partnership this year under the new
PHOTOS BY MARTY DAVIS
BY RAYMOND RENDLEMAN
(left) Bonnie Tinker with Cecil Charles Prescod at Love Makes a Family, and with her partner of 30 years. Sara Graham
tary Love Makes a Family, about gay and
lesbian marriage among Quakers. She created
a secular organization of the same name to
support GLBT families coming to terms with
nontraditional gender identities. As part of
this compassion effort, she developed the now
internationally recognized LARA Method of
nonviolent speech—’’Listen, Affirm, Respond,
Add information.”
Organizers associated with Love Makes
a Family hope to continue making spaces
where people of different viewpoints can talk
with one another to have transformational
conversation. The death of Tinker, the group’s
executive director, has forced the organization
to reevaluate its priorities, and no replacement
has been named as of this writing. Love Makes
a Family is continuing on with Tinker’s “Open
Hearts and Minds” workshop and has already
returned to the Oregon State Fair—as is the
group’s tradition—with two booths, one for
marriage equality and one for nonviolence.
Love Makes a Family board member
modern-day biblical prophet.
“Part of the role of a prophet is to irritate
people because of [a prophet’s] wider vision of
what the world can be like,” he said. “Some
thing she advocated for many years, and some
thing many people didn’t want to hear, was a
drive to include people who didn’t share her
viewpoint, with the emphasis that there is a
seamless connection for social justice.”
Tinker’s activism had always been in the
forefront. At age 15, she participated in Mar
tin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington,
and she made a widely circulated calendar in
1993 from pictures she took of the March
on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
A 1978 Portland Police intelligence report
labeled her a danger because she harbored
women in safe houses, and because she and
her sister had been to Cuba. “The Tinker girls
are true revolutionaries and they will use any
thing in their power to aid the revolution,” the
report read.
Tinker and her partner of 30 years, Sara
Oregon law.
Recalling that Tinker “had enough energy
for both of us,” Graham, 69, never thought
she’d die second, because Tinker was always
practicing yoga and in excellent physical health.
Yet Graham is keeping up Tinker’s fights. She
even convinced a funeral department director
in Virginia, which provides no partnership
rights to gay couples, to list them as spouses
on the death certificate.
When Mayor Sam Adams gave Tinker the
only posthumous Spirit of Portland Award
last month, Graham hoped the publicity
would prompt even more people to consider
what they can do for social justice. She also
expressed her pleasure at what’s happening at
Bradley Angle. After receiving hundreds of
sympathy cards celebrating Tinker’s relent
less drive, Graham said, “She really impacted
people’s lives, but I don’t think she ever knew
how much she meant to people. We’ve lost
a great force, but she inspired a lot of other
people to carry on.”
“O' WITHAM
A'p & DICKEY
We’ve
got
your
back.
There are two tens in a
twenty, two sides to every
story, and two beautiful
buns on a burger. Two lefts
make a u-turn—and there
are two sides to every tee.
So why let setup charges
and running charges keep
you from printing two sides
of your next set of custom
apparel? For Just Out
readers, Blue Ink will print
the second side, with one
color, free of charge.
a witham & dickey affiliated company.
L1A
• w
<
E
f
www.bluepdx.com
(503) 232-8578
IDEAS IN ]
IMPRINTING ,
I
u---------- - -
»