ORGANIZATION     ISSUES     MONEY/POLITICS     NEWS     INDEX

  

electric competition pollution prevention pesticides

Laura Yeomans resigns from Citizen Action after twenty years

Laura Yeomans with English language students in New Philadelphia. Laura and her daughter Jennie visit in Guatemala with relatives of students in the English class. July 18, 2001 NEW PHILADELPHIA -- Laura Yeomans will leave Ohio Citizen Action on August 1 after twenty years with the organization. She will become an organizer for the Immigrant Workers Project of the Ohio Catholic Rural Life Conference. In announcing her departure, Yeomans said, "For the past five years I have volunteered as the coordinator of English classes for Guatemalan immigrants in Tuscarawas County. I have organized and trained a team of 25 tutors working with 45 or more immigrants. Tutors not only teach English, but provide food, clothing, and help with problems with the police, medical care and social services. "With the Immigrant Workers Project, my volunteer work will become part of my job and I will help other communities start similar programs. I will also be working to reduce racial profiling in police departments, improve immigrant access to medical care, and work to change some Ohio laws that could allow immigrants to more easily obtain drivers' licenses legally. I'm conversant in Spanish, but will soon be fluent, I hope! I also expect to be traveling in Mexico and Guatemala to visit communities where local immigrants come from." Executive Director Sandy Buchanan praised Yeomans, saying, "Laura's deep commitment to social and economic justice, her high standards for research, and her leadership on major issues have been an integral part of building Ohio Citizen Action for the past twenty years. We will miss her, and wish her well in her new work to protect the rights of Hispanic immigrants." In 1978, Yeomans earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. She then moved to the Bronx and worked against bank redlining as a VISTA volunteer. In 1981, she became the director of Transitions, Inc., a shelter for battered women in Zanesville, Ohio. The next year, Yeomans was named director of the Appalachian Ohio Public Interest Campaign (AOPIC), then affiliated with the statewide OPIC group, later renamed 'Ohio Citizen Action.' In 1986, she became Citizen Action's Research Director. In addition to studies and reports, she launched and led Citizen Action's money and politics project, and wrote the weekly Consumer Watch column for two dozen small and medium sized Ohio newspapers. Buchanan said the money and politics project will continue under the leadership of Catherine Turcer, Campaign Finance Reform Director of the statewide group.