Jean Grossholtz is Professor of Women's Studies and Politics at Mount Holyoke College. She's what I'd call a justice activist.

Grossholtz understands the environment to be "the earth, and everything on it…the trees, the plants, the bugs, the animals, and the people…the whole package…we couldn't live without the trees, the trees couldn't live without us…it's an interdependent unit." In terms of environmental justice, she is "concerned not only about preserving biodiversity in the plant world, but also in the animal world, and certainly in the human world."
Grossholtz is one of the founding members of Diverse Women for Diversity. According to her, this group believes its job is "to protect the diversity of the earth." These women are active on the international level, working on the Biodiversity Convention and the Kyoto Treaty. They are at the "forefront of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) trying to put pressure on the government. So, they've always worked at those levels and I've always worked at the grassroots level." Grossholtz has dedicated her efforts to educating the public about issues of water contamination and privatization, nuclear weapons and energy, European Union and World Trade Organization proposals, and genetically modified organisms and food.

Grossholtz asserts with frustration that "every institution and every structure that [she looks] at, starting with the state, has been so corrupted by this corporate economy and these financial institutions, that it is impossible to [utilize them]." So, she offers an alternative approach to making changes in the world. "All over the world, there are places, there are spaces that people have created where they can sit together and talk…and create their own voice…[and] learn how to think about the world and their place in it in a different way…To me, right now, finding those spaces, getting more people to be a part of them, is where I think change might take place."
I naively asked her how she decides which issue to make a priority in her activism. She responded, "Every issue is worth fighting for. My thing is always to do what no one else will do; to go where no one else will go. It's my life. And I love my life."

She encourages everyone to ask themselves the following questions: "How do you know what you know? Where did it come from? Who benefits from you knowing that and not something else? Once you get that in your head, then you are in control. Who you are is what's important. And that's important in all these issues. Because if you're not who you are, then you're part of the problem, you're going along with something that's not yours."

Jean Grossholtz, Professor Emeritus
Politics and Women's Studies
MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE
412 Williston Library
South Hadley, MA 01075
(413) 538-2442