We’re at Day 94 in our countdown to September 4 (Primary Day) and there’s no time like the present to introduce you to my aunt, Joan Shanley. I owe both my name and my commitment to justice and peace to Aunt Joan.
Joan was a public school social worker and educator for five decades.
Named after Saint Joan of Arc, and known for her enormous heart and generous spirit, Joan was the kind of person who took stairs two at a time. She lived life “out loud,” as I liked to say. To its fullest.
In 1952, Joan joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood, N.Y. She remained in the order for 27 years. Over time, Joan was active in the Catholic Worker movement with Dorothy Day, and was tireless in her protest of war, racial profiling, unbridled gentrification, nuclear weapons, unfair labor laws, and so much more. This is my very favorite photo of Joan. She said she thought she looked like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music in this photo. It made me smile.
I used to say: “You just don’t mess with the nuns.” And I was right. The Sisters of St. Joseph were and remain fierce defenders of our communities.
My sister Lori and I used to spend weekends at Aunt Joan’s convent on Jay Street in Brooklyn. It was there that I learned about the power of grassroots organizing. About faith-led work. About service. About courage in the face of adversity.
Joan was a social worker. And there, too, I followed in her footsteps. But while Joan worked in the schools, I’ve worked more in community-based settings.
Here’s a defining story about my relationship with Joan. After graduating from college in 1985, I went to live with Joan in New York.
Joan met me at the door of her apartment with a huge hug and told me to pack a bag. Told me that we were going on a trip.
That was the beginning of days of volunteering in the New York City public shelter system.
You see, when Joan wasn’t with her students, she was active as a volunteer in public shelters across the city and with Providence House, a New York-based after incarceration support network for formerly incarcerated women and their children.
I’ll never forget Joan telling me that my fancy college degree and awards were all well and good but that I needed to open my eyes and see the world as it really was. See and understand struggles around: poverty, mental illness, incarceration, racism, and violence against women and children. Really live in my community. Deeply and without holding anything back.
Urged on by Joan, I soon began volunteering in the shelters, eventually forming Grace Project, a theatre company by and for folks who were homeless. I ran a women’s homeless shelter as a volunteer. I led a national campaign focused on women prisoners and their children. And I worked to break the choke hold of mandatory minimum sentences which disproportionately affect poor people and people of color. And Joan urged me forward every step of the way.
Joan passed away Saturday, April 12, 2014, her last days spent with the good folks of the Calvin Coolidge Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Northampton.
And every day I’m grateful that she lit the way forward for me, my sister, cousins, and so many others.
So grateful.
