A Litany of Greats

Say what you will about the New York Times, but their obituary section is surpassed by none and while they sometimes miss someone important, they remind us of a lot of really great people who have died and are otherwise largely unknown or forgotten. There’s been a huge number of people felled in the last week or two that the Times has covered. None of them probably require a post of their own, but let’s remember them collectively:

Dickson Despommier was a great pioneer of vertical farming and if this nation or world ever took its environmental problems seriously, he’d be someone much more well known.

Gil Won-Ok did so much work on justice for Korean comfort women enslaved by the Japanese. My God, what a horrible experience and what fortitude it must have taken to dedicate her life to justice.

Paquita la del Barrio provided a critical feminist voice in Mexican music, not exactly the most feminist space to be honest.

Zakia Jafri spent the last two decades of her life fighting the Indian government for its role in the anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002, something the Hindus in India very much do not want to talk about.

Nelson Johnson was an American leader in the freedom struggle in Greensboro who was shot in the 1979 Greensboro Massacre. He’s a reminder of why I get so frustrated by liberals constantly referring back to Nazis when talking about Trump instead of their own history, which is the basis for most of what is happening right now.

Finally, there’s Maria Teresa Horta, the pioneering Portuguese feminist who took on her nation’s fascist regime in the 1970s.