August 13th, 2013
Dear ROPnetters:
Before there was a Rural Organizing Project, there was Marcy Westerling driving around trying to build solidarity and support between progressive small town Oregonians. There were so many of them that they formed community-by-community human dignity groups and the ROP was born in the early nineties. Marcy functioned as lead organizer/director for the first 18 years and then a cancer diagnosis redirected her primary focus to survival starting in 2010.
Marcy shows how survival and activism stay integrated, as they should. Please read a recent piece she wrote below. Marcy stays a ROP volunteer as well as a patient advocate between her ongoing cancer treatments that now require commuting to Philadelphia where she is patient number 27 in an exciting immunotherapy trial. She invites all of us to follow her via her blog Livingly Dying (just click the follow button on the upper right hand corner) and to spread the word, especially to others ready to build a better comfort with mortality and those who want to explore the link between activism and survival.
Warmly, Cara
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Today I posted on facebook a link that came across my inbox. I editorialized before the post,
“I am a proud voter and a proud beneficiary of social security disability. Both keep me alive to some extent. And now this… I hope they add MARCY WESTERLING to the list – come get me.”
Flyer Targets People with Disabilities
August 2013