Reader

“One way to deal with that fear is to share stories, and know that it’s okay to be afraid, frightened.” This quotation from poultry plant worker-turned-activist Donna Bazemore perfectly describes the courage she displays in her interview with Southern Exposure magazine in 1989. Her story is one of poverty, injustice, conflict, and a newfound sense of self in service for the common good.

‘I feel what women feel’
By Southern Exposure

Donna Bazemore, a former poultry slaughterhouse worker and an organizer with the Center for Women’s Economic Alternatives in North Carolina, talks on the phone in the offices of the CWEA. (Photo from the Southern Exposure archives)

 In meetings, Donna Bazemore is usually silent — until someone asks her to explain what life is like for a worker in a poultry processing plant. Softly, steadily, and with growing intensity, she tells why people take the jobs, what happens to them inside, and what they can do to get out.

Bazemore should know. She is the first person ever to win a workers’ compensation claim against Perdue for carpal tunnel syndrome, the crippling hand disease. She got a little over $1200 — not much for a single mother of three children. But in the process, she learned a lot about herself, about fear and freedom, stress and self-esteem, and “serving the cause of low-income women.”

Donna Bazemore is now an organizer with the Center for Women’s Economic Alternatives, based in Ahoskie, North Carolina, not far from her home where this interview was conducted.

* * *

Read more