Author
Katherine O'Donnell has been involved in community activism on human rights, reproductive freedom, children's and teen's rights, rural poverty, and social justice work for twenty-five years. Her 1990's ethnographic and activist work with rural, poor, dairy farm worker families in upstate, New York, shaped a participatory action research project with Planned Parenthood on rural teen empowerment and teen pregnancy prevention, and informs her current work on North-South solidarity, human rights, and Mayan women's organizing for political and economic autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico. At Hartwick College, where she has taught since 1980, she established the Women's Center, the Teaching Learning Community (TLC), and co-founded the Women's Studies Program and several community organizations including Oneonta Community Alliance for Youth (OCAY) and Delaware Otsego Counties National Organization for Women. Presently, she is Professor and former Chair, Sociology, and a faculty member in Women's Studies and Latin American Studies. Since 1997, Professor O’Donnell has been working in Chiapas, Mexico and in 1998 began working with two civil society organizations based in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas- K’inal Antzetik, human rights and social justice organization, and Jolom Mayaetik, Mayan women’s weaving co-operative with 250 members. Together, they have worked on grants for a health clinic in northern Chiapas and one for a Global Partners Program with Jolom, K’inal and Planned Parenthood International and on the development of a transnational economic solidarity program of marketing the co-operatives hand-woven textiles through solidarity networks, conferences, and popular education programs in museums, universities, churches, and schools across the U.S. She writes about women's resistance to neoliberalism in Chiapas, Mexico, indigenous women’s rights, transnational solidarity, Fair Trade, farm worker rights, Community Based Research, teaching, and learning, and rural teen empowerment.

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