| Summer 2000 A Letter from the President of MN NOW Wal-Mart rolling back women's rights Speaker: Japan must admit WWII crimes against humanity MN NOW 2000 Legislative Wrap-up HousingMinnesota launches outreach campaign MN NOW names Mary Ann Bailey Gaspar Feminist of the Year Chrysalis and Amazon Bookstore Cooperative move to South Mpls. MN NOW has open volunteer opportunities
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MN NOW names Mary Ann Bailey Gaspar Feminist of the Year
By Lyn Crosby You probably know Mary Ann Bailey Gaspar best as Minnesota NOW's Office Coordinator for the last 2+ years. But it was not merely her position as Office Coordinator that led the officers of MN NOW to choose Mary Ann Bailey Gaspar as the Feminist of the Year for 2000. Yes, Mary Ann does do her job extremely well. She is organized, thorough, even-tempered and professional. She gets an extremely high amount of work done in this part-time position, but the lines between her job and her feminist activism blur (as well as the work hours and the volunteer hours!). Sheri McPherson-Higdon and Lee Janisch (President and Co-President) noted at the presentation of the award, that Mary Ann has gone out of her way to make things work even to the point of bringing things home with her to make it easier for those from the South Metro to pick things up. When asked for her opinion, Mary Ann will give it clearly, calmly and concisely. If it were not for her knowledge and skills this past year, Sheri and Lee would not have been able to serve in their capacities. She works as a catalyst to make the whole much more than the sum of the individual parts. Rachel Callanan, MN NOW Legislative Coordinator this last year, says that Mary Ann has been instrumental in getting our e-mail activist list up and running. She not only organized and managed the whole thing singlehandedly, she also prompted and initiated many of the action alerts we mail to the list. Mary Ann enabled MN NOW to use e-mail as a new and important lobbying tool for the first time this last year. Along with this, she also put our Action Alerts on the Web site, even providing some valuable editing assistance. Especially with the departure of Susal Stebbins (our full-time Lobbyist), without Mary Ann's hard work on legislative issues this last year, MN NOW would have been greatly limited in the number of people we could reach with our message. And, much of this has been done on her personal time. The Web site itself is also largely the result of Mary Ann's computer prowess and attention to detail. As with most things, if she doesn't know how to do something, she spends her personal time playing around with the software, searching the web, looking for options, learning. Mary Ann has gone well "above and beyond" in this area, as well as all of her many other roles at MN NOW. Several officers serving in 1999-2000 remarked that Mary Ann has been extremely supportive and knowledgeable. Patrice Prettyman-Atkinson says Mary Ann always has time to answer questions, and knows where to find information (amazing, given the condition of our records!). Lyn Crosby, MN NOW Secretary, Fundraising Chair, and long-time activist, noted that Mary Ann gets more done than any Office Coordinator we'd ever had, PLUS she's taken on many of the tasks Lyn had done for years. Mary Ann does most of the prep work for upcoming fundraisers, runs the computer files, provides input on the scripts, and does all the data entry that several volunteers used to do. She always sees more than just the task at hand in front of her - she sees the big picture, she questions what's there, she sees what's missing. She understands the numbers and can spot things that do not look right. As Mary Ann said at the Conference accepting her award, she knew she was a feminist before she started this job—but now feminism has become a part of who she is, and how she thinks. She is invaluable to Minnesota NOW, and we are PROUD to have her as our Office Coordinator and a sister feminist activist. |