Kerry Family Values

By Lucy Komisar, AlterNet. Posted September 13, 2004.

John Kerry's sister Peggy Kerry has been a political and social activist for almost 40 years. From the anti-apartheid movement in England to the anti-Vietnam War movement in the U.S., she has been involved in cutting-edge foreign policy political movements. Peggy was involved in the United Farmworkers' grape boycott and later in promoting social welfare policies. She persuaded Convention Chair Bill Richardson, when he was Bill Clinton's ambassador to the UN, to invent a new job – liaison to the world's non-governmental organizations – a job that she still holds.

Both you and your brother John were social activists in your youths. We know about his activism in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. I'd like to talk about your social activism. First, what is it about your family background, your family's beliefs and values that led you and your brother to take an active part in political and social causes?

It's my mother. My mother was an incredible person dedicated to public service. She would have been a nurse if she had finished her nursing degree which she started to get in France before the war, but she would up evacuating. She actually escaped with her sister and brother in law and an English friend on bicycle from Paris (but that's a whole other story), so she didn't finish her nursing degree, but she was a hospital volunteer and a girl scouts leader, a cub scout leader, she was John's den mother. She was an incredible environmentalist, a recycler of newspapers long before it was ever fashionable to do so. People wondered why we had the Washington Post stacked up in our garage in Washington in the 50s. She was a silver-haired legislator in Massachusetts when she was older. Her whole life was one of public service.

What did she tell you and your brother and your other siblings about what your responsibilities were as citizens? How did that affect your values?

It's more do as I do rather than do as I say. She was an example for us.

Can you talk more specifically about the political and social activities you've been involved in through the years, beginning in the 60s, if that's when it began?

Actually, yes. I graduated from college in 1963. I taught English as a foreign language, first in Cambridge, England. I got involved in Cambridge University in the United Nations Association. I became the vice-chair of the Anti-Apartheid Committee, and after Nelson Mandela was jailed, in the late 60s, about a year after he was jailed, we held the first demonstration ever at Cambridge University – it was my first demonstration – to free Nelson Mandela.

When I came back to America in 1967, I got involved in the anti-war movement in Cambridge, Massachusetts and continued my anti-apartheid work. When I moved to New York, I decided to concentrate on working against the Vietnam War. I got involved in the Vietnam Moratorium. I then worked at the ACLU Roger Baldwin Foundation, and later at the New York Civil Liberties Union.

And I got involved in politics. I was a volunteer in the McCarthy campaign, and I learned there was something in New York City called "clubs," and I didn't have to go all the way up to the headquarters in Columbus Circle, where Harold Ickes and Sarah Kovner were, but I could actually volunteer in Sheridan Square at the Village Independent Democrats. [Ickes and Kovner were both at the convention.]

During this time, your job choices were reflective of your political interests. Can you say more specifically what you did in the jobs you just mentioned?

The Roger Baldwin Foundation gave grants to projects around the country. The one that I remember the most was funding the United Farmworkers, and I personally was involved with Gloria Steinem in New York with the United Farmworkers and the boycott of grapes in New York City. [Steinem was at the convention.] Of course it was a much wider boycott, but I was specifically involved with the one in New York City.

Lucy Komisar is a freelance journalist in New York.

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