Carmen vazquez biography

Poised before a crowd one evening in May, 2016, Carmen Vázquez looked over the women who represented her legacy. She stood as the keynote speaker for the 45th anniversary of the Women’s Building, where, on its mural-covered walls, her name is memorialized in golden script, alongside tens of other women activists.

Everyone listening that evening knew that the nonprofit they were celebrating would not exist without her.

Carmen vazquez biography wikipedia

“None of us, except maybe Roma [Guy], had a clear understanding of the political impact of what we were undertaking,” Vázquez said that night in 2016, recounting the origin story of the Women’s Building decades before. 

She might have been talking about herself, for, in 1980, the then 31-year-old Vázquez had achieved only a fraction of what she ultimately helped achieve.

During her lifetime, she became a leader, advisor or participant in more than half a dozen organizations that fought for migrant, queer and gender rights on both coasts.

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