She was always more fired up than anybody else in the room and had more endurance for the work that needed to be done.' She really got how to move people and how to move things along. She was very smart about people, organizing and about lesbians. They made a part of the staff and then I wrote for them for years. 'I showed up one weekend afternoon and helped layout the paper. 'I was familiar with The Lesbian Tide and I called them up and volunteered to work for them,' Obejas told Windy City Times.

One of those voices belonged to current distinguished visiting writer at Mills College Achy Obejas, who met Cordova in Southern California in 1981. According to her biography it gave 'voice to the new generation of lesbian feminists.' It could well be argued that Cordova's founding of the national newsmagazine The Lesbian Tide was fundamental to the realization of that prediction. 'I wondered if we ever would or could become as big as this anti-war movement.' 'I realized that one day, the lesbian and gay struggle, as we called it then, had to grow into a mass movement,' Cordova told journalist contributor Sarah Toce in Gay Press, Gay Power. For the rest of ushow does one recognize a social movement when it comes calling at your door? And what greatness or despair might follow should you open the door and invite it into your life?'Ĭordova's life served as the quintessential answer to that questionone seeded from the moment she joined the Immaculate Heart of Mary order of nuns immediately out of high school and was inspired by the social justice work of the Sisters to become a community organizer and activist for the lesbian and gay communities.Īs others were protesting the war in Vietnam, Cordova was already thinking ahead to the next great civil rights frontier. 'Most ignore the calling of the unfathomable energies of our times. 'I have always been fascinated by how a noisy swelling called a social movement arrives on the doorstep of an individual's life and how she responds to it,' Cordova began in her 2011 memoir of love and revolution When We Were Outlaws. Her spouse Lynn Ballen and friends were at her side. 10 at the age of 67.Īccording to Frontiers Media, Cordova died peacefully at her Los Angeles home in the early hours of the morning. Pioneer feminist, activist, journalist, publisher and LGBT media figure Jeanne Cordova passed away Jan. This article shared 5639 times since Mon Jan 11, 2016

Kicking the Habit by Jeanne Cordova