Activists Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

Debra White Plume was a Lakota activist who was one of the leaders of the protests at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).White Plume was a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, and her home at the Pine Ridge reservation was where Native American activists occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1973 and demanded that the U.S. government honor its treaties with their tribes.

Rabbi Israel Dresner was a civil rights activist who protested segregation alongside his friend, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968).Dresner began his life of activism young, well before he became a rabbi, as World War II raged overseas.

Clyde Bellecourt was a Native American civil rights activist who co-founded the American Indian Movement (AIM).Raised on an Ojibwe reservation in northern Minnesota, Bellecourt co-founded AIM in 1968, after serving prison time for burglary and robbery. It was there that he met co-founders Eddie Benton-Banai (1931–2020) and Dennis Banks (1937–2017) and talked to them about the challenges Native Americans faced, including police brutality. They agreed to start a program to help Native Americans living in cities, which grew into AIM.

Phil Saviano was a survivor of childhood clergy abuse whose work to help other survivors and uncover predatory behavior in the church was featured in the Oscar-winning 2015 film “Spotlight.”Saviano was sexually abused by a priest at St. Denis Catholic Church in Douglas.

Sister Megan Rice was a Catholic nun and a well-known activist against nuclear weapons.Rice joined the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus when she was 18 years old. She taught elementary school for several years before beginning a long-term mission to Nigeria and Ghana, where she taught for decades.

Marilyn Golden was a disability activist who fought for the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).Golden became paralyzed below her mid-back after a fall while she was in college in 1976. After experiencing the challenges of navigating the world in a wheelchair, she began fighting for better access to transportation and public buildings for people with disabilities.

Vivian Milligan was a clean water activist who prominently fought for the cleanup of a New Jersey Superfund site.Milligan was a member of the Turtle Clan of the Ramapough Lenape tribe, some of whom live in Ringwood, New Jersey. In the 1970s, the Ford Motor Company dumped toxic waste, including lead-based paint sludge, in a Ringwood landfill, which was later declared a Superfund site by the EPA.

Bob Moses was a civil rights activist known for his work in the South registering Black voters in the 1960s.Moses was working as a high school teacher in New York City in 1960 when he was inspired to relocate to Mississippi to help register Black voters. He became known for his calm determination even in the face of violence – he once continued registering voters even after he was hit in the head with a knife handle, later seeking medical attention and getting nine stitches.

Martha White was a housekeeper whose refusal to leave the whites-only section of a bus was the catalyst for a 1953 bus boycott in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.White was on her way home from work on June 15, 1953, when she boarded a city bus and saw just one open seat – in the front row, just behind the driver. Though the seat was in the section reserved for white passengers, White sat, eager to rest after a long day.

Linda Thurston was an activist who served as the director of Amnesty International’s Program to Abolish the Death Penalty.Thurston worked toward creating a more peaceful world as she tried to bring an end to war and the death penalty as well as advocating criminal justice reform and prison abolition.

Kay Lahusen was an activist and photojournalist who chronicled some of the earliest U.S. protests for LGBTQ rights.Lahusen and her partner, Barbara Gittings, were key members of the early movement to secure equal rights for the LGBTQ community.

LaDonna Brave Bull Allard was the founder of the first camp for the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).Allard opposed DAPL from the beginning, because it ran past her son’s grave. Like other protesters, she was concerned that a spill would contaminate water sources as well as land that’s sacred to native peoples.

pic.twitter.com/EHVdJTRAZnCloris Leachman has passed. The Oscar and Emmy-winning funny lady stole her way into our hearts and always left us smiling.

Pat Quinn was an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) activist who co-founded the viral Ice Bucket Challenge fundraiser.Quinn was diagnosed with ALS – also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease – shortly after his 30th birthday in 2013. After his diagnosis, he pulled together a group of friends and supporters to help raise awareness and funds, dubbing them “Quinn for the Win.” In 2014.

Rev. Robert Graetz was a Lutheran minister and civil rights activist who was among the residents of Montgomery, Alabama who organized a historic bus boycott.Graetz was a young minister, relatively new to Montgomery, when Rosa Parks (1913 – 2005) was arrested in 1955 for refusing to yield her seat on a bus to a white passenger.

Jeanette Carlson was an anti-apartheid activist who was a leader of the South African civil rights organization the Black Sash.A native of South Africa, Carlson first became involved in anti-apartheid activism as a young teacher, assigned to teach a classroom of Black students. As she became aware of the injustices her students faced, she began fighting for the rights of all Black people in South Africa.

Stacy Park Milbern was an activist for disability justice who stressed the importance of listening to LGBTQ+ and BIPOC voices in the disability community.Milbern, who had muscular dystrophy, spent her adult life working to spread understanding of the issues faced by people with disabilities, and fighting for their equality. In North Carolina, she worked to have high schools add information on disability history added to their curriculum.