'Honor Her Memory... by Fighting Like Hell'
JULIA CONLEY
For Common Dreams
Her
death was announced on Twitter by her son, Ben Ehrenreich, and daughter, Rosa
Brooks.
"She
was never much for thoughts and prayers, but you can honor her memory by loving
one another, and by fighting like hell," Ben Ehrenreich wrote.
Ehrenreich wrote on
her personal website that she went through a "political, as well as a
personal, transformation" in 1970 when she gave birth to her first child
in a public health clinic in New York where she was "the only white
patient at the clinic" and learned how many poor women are treated when
seeking healthcare.
"They
induced my labor because it was late in the evening and the doctor wanted to go
home," she later said. "I was enraged. The experience made me a
feminist."
She
wrote columns for Ms. and Mother Jones and
published several books about the healthcare industry, feminism, and the
economy before writing one of her best-known works, Nickel and Dimed,
an examination of the working poor in the United States.
Ehrenreich
took low-wage jobs at a restaurant, a cleaning service, and Walmart between
1998 and 2000 and experienced firsthand the struggles faced by millions of
Americans attempting to afford housing, groceries, and other necessities while
earning minimum wage at corporations headed by wealthy executives.
"The
'working poor,' as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major
philanthropists of our society," Ehrenreich wrote in
the book.
In
a review of the book, The New York Times said Nickel
and Dimed helped solidify Ehrenreich as "our premier reporter of
the underside of capitalism."
"We
have Barbara Ehrenreich to thank for bringing us the news of America's working
poor so clearly and directly, and conveying with it a deep moral outrage and a
finely textured sense of lives as lived," Dorothy Gallagher wrote for the Times.
In
some of her other books Ehrenreich delved into the shrinking of the U.S. middle
class, the history of communal celebrations, and Americans' "obsession
with wellness" and the prolonging of life.
"We've
lost a gifted writer and a relentless fighter for the working
class," said progressive
organizer Aaron Huertas.
Ehrenreich
also established the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, which supports
independent journalists editorially and financially.
"I
have never seen a conflict between journalism and activism," she wrote at
her personal website. "As a journalist, I search for the truth. But as a
moral person, I am also obliged to do something about it."
