Good day and welcome to DKos Asheville. This is the weekly DKos Asheville open thread for Valentines Day, Saturday, February 14th. We try to get together every weekend to share with everyone what we're all up to in Western North Carolina and beyond. We hope this group serves to invigorate us locally and regionally here on Daily Kos, building on the sense of community that's grown through our online engagement. DKos Asheville can give us all a better sense of connection, a better understanding of who we stand with, work with, and share with. We hope this community can help leverage our orange passion for progressive politics to elect more and better Democrats.
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For our next meet up on April 25-26 we will be returning to the theme of our first meet up on 4/20/2013: Meeting, spending time focusing on community and networking and less time with an agenda driven schedule. And this time we will be taking the meet up on the road to Roanoke Virginia in April! Please sign up by dropping me a kosmail. For more information, please drop over to this DKos Asheville diary from a couple of weeks ago.
But what can I do? I'm just one person!
Minnie Jones, Asheville's lifelong activist for civil rights, public housing and health care has died at the age of 81. Please read about and honor this amazing woman, a true pioneer for all that is good about America and proof that one voice can and does make a difference.
Asheville Citizen Times 2/11/15
Friends remembered an outspoken champion who worked tirelessly for better housing, better health care and civil rights for all people. When AIDS patients couldn't receive care at many local practices in the 1990s, Jones helped launch a clinic to care for them.
"She was a giant in our community. She was in the middle of everything that helped the working person. Every time I saw her, she asked me the same question, 'What are you doing for the common person?' That was her guiding star," said David Gantt, chairman of the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners.
"She was a fierce advocate for the underprivileged. She really felt passionately about injustice. It didn't matter who it was," recalled Carlos Gomez. In 1992, Jones partnered with Gomez and Polly Ross to form the nonprofit that became the Western North Carolina Community Health Services.
"When many people were running away from AIDS, she was saying this could happen to anyone. She wasn't about just one cause. She was concerned about justice for all," Gomez said.
A few highlights of this remarkable woman's impact
Volunteered to be the first black person to move into Pisgah View apartments, integrating the Asheville Housing Authority.
A staunch Democrat, active in her West Asheville precinct and in party circles.
Instrumental in the early years of Pisgah Legal Services, which provides free legal aid for working poor among other community services.
Co-founded
Western North Carolina Community Health Services which evolved into The Minnie Jones Health Center. Last year, the clinic saw 14,456 patients, including 733 that are HIV positive.
Asheville Citizen Times 6/16/14
Asheville's Minnie Jones' lifetime of civil rights work
A native of Spartanburg, S.C., she marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965. "For me, it all started because of racism and prejudice," she said last year. "I knew we could not drink water out of the same fountains as white people or eat in the same restaurants and had to ride in the back of the bus. Dr. King was telling us this kind of stuff wasn't right, and that we should have the same rights as everyone else."
Moving to Asheville in the 1960s where she had relatives, Jones continued to fight for civil rights. Minnie Jones can recall a lifetime of activism to help people overcome racism and poverty and find good health care — including opening what’s now the Minnie Jones Health Center, celebrating its 20th anniversary.
Jones’ life as an activist began in the 1960s when she started working with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala.
In the story linked at the top, Chairman Gantt's praise of her ends with a warm and genuine tribute. After reading it a few times though it became troubling for me.
"She was a beloved lady who cared about the common people. We're not going to see another Minnie Jones. She was one in a million."
I am hoping and praying that he is wrong and that Minnie's legacy and passion will not be lost but indeed amplified by new generations of activists for fairness and justice and peace. Thank you Minnie, may you rest in peace, may your family find smiles in remembering and may you be a guiding light for us all.