WCC Member Featured in Local Paper: “They Occupied Before Occupy” December 1st, 2011

Like many WCC members, Kitty Williston has a long history of activism and participation in protests for equality.  Her story is featured in the December 1 issue of The West Side Spirit as one of the “West Side’s Grannies”  fueling the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

Nancy Brandon, left, WCC member Kitty Williston and Batya Lewton. Photo by Isaac Rosenthal via westsidespirit.com

To Kitty, an active member of the WCC’s Poverty Issues Committee, and the other two women profiled in the article, Nancy Brandon and Batya Lewton, “the OWS movement is only the latest incarnation of a series of protests for equality that they’ve waged during their lives.”  Although Kitty has participated in various activities of the Occupy Movement – the Occupy Lincoln Center protest, the November 7 march, and marches at Zuccotti Park – this is far from the first time Kitty has “raise(d) hell” for change.

According to the article, Williston was attending North Carolina Central University when she participated in her first picket line:  she picketed to integrate theaters in her community.  As The West Side Spirit reports,

“They called me names and spit on me,” Williston said about the whites trying to stop the integration.
She was later arrested with 500 other students for picketing the local Howard Johnson, the last major hotel chain to become integrated.
“We spent all night crowded into a jail cell and the black community stood outside the windows and sang ‘We Shall Overcome.’ It was extremely moving,” she said.
She later protested for higher wages for social workers and against the Vietnam War.

Williston also protested during the Iraq War, and has “been involved in numerous other protests over the years.”  Today, she continues to agitate for change both as a member of the self-designated “Grannie Parade” and the WCC.

To read the full article at The West Side Spirit, please click here.