“Do you know about Carolyn Reed?” she asked me.
I had never heard of Carolyn Reed or Dorothy Bolden. None of my women’s history classes had taught me about these two Black women who helped pave the way before me. But Gloria knew Ms. Reed well; she frequently enlisted Gloria in domestic workers’ efforts to gain respect and recognition as professionals.
This is who Gloria was. She recognized value and power where others didn’t. She corrected the omissions that kept us from finding one another.
“Dear Ai-jen,
Love, Gloria.”
This was the beginning of a long friendship and mentorship. But Gloria’s specific form of mentorship included listening and sharing what she learned from other women, curated by her strategic mind and communicated with her unparalleled way with words. She did not give advice; she shared stories. She never saw herself as a mentor, as much as she felt mentored by others, always learning from the women she met, especially younger women.
Like any good organizer, Gloria appreciated the chance to roll up her sleeves: she wrote letters to governors to help us get across the finish line in our legislative campaigns and called mayors to ensure that domestic workers would not be excluded from paid sick days legislation. If she was invited to speak at a press conference related to labor legislation, she would check with me to see how the bill impacted domestic workers.
More recently, I spent much of my time with Gloria through an intergenerational, multi-racial circle of women who affectionately call ourselves the “G Squad”—composed of a writer, two artists, a pro-democracy organizer, me, and Gloria. We gathered over the years to celebrate Gloria’s birthday, to strategize big moments in the women’s movement, or vet a new love interest in the mix. We learned about Gloria’s life and adventures from one another, and we learned about other women through Gloria.
“I can't tell you how happy it makes me to know that your understanding and way of organizing will be there—you who don't hold a finger to the wind, but become the wind,” Gloria wrote. “It also makes me feel a little better about the way too early loss of Wilma.”
Gloria changed the context for women like me, our choices and our understanding of them. It was as if she lived on a different time and space continuum, one composed of circles of women throughout history, all “linked, not ranked.”
We are part of a proud and vast legacy of women, seen and unseen, that continues to change the world. And that is exactly what Gloria would have wanted.
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