RIP Felice Yeskel
Rest In Peace, Felice Yeskel, Co-Founder of Class Action
Felice Yeskel, a co-founder of Class Action and United for a Fair Economy, came from a working-class Jewish family from New York City’s Lower East Side. She was a founder of the UMass Stonewall Center: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Educational Resource Center and served as the director for 20 years. Felice was also a founder and co-director of DiversityWorks, Inc. an organization of social justice educators that provides training and consulting on issues of diversity and multiculturalism.
As an adjunct faculty member of the Social Justice Education Program at UMass Amherst she has taught both undergraduates and graduate students. She led hundreds of workshops across the country about economic inequality and about healing divisions among Americans of different class backgrounds, races, genders, and sexual orientations. She was the co-author, along with Chuck Collins, of Economic Apartheid in America, published by The New Press in fall 2000. The second edition was published in the fall of 2005. Felice had a doctorate in Organizational Development and Social Justice Education.
She rocked and will be missed.
Class Action just released the following via email:
Felice devoted her entire life to waking people up to oppression, and in particular to classism. After a long struggle with cancer, she passed away peacefully in the night last night. Her funeral is at 2 pm today at the Jewish Community of Amherst (742 Main St), with a reception afterwards at Pioneer Valley Cohousing (120 Pulpit Hill Rd, Amherst). Our hearts are with all of you whose lives were touched by this extraordinary woman.