"One of the things I'd say about Dorothy is that she has a great capacity to listen sympathetically and to be able to see the other person's point of view. She might have disagreed with ideas that people were articulating (not just these young Black people; it was true of many people that she would encounter), but she could see from the point of view of their culture and who they were personally why they were saying the things they were. At the same time she would be able to articulate alternative ways of thinking. That's a great gift. It's very helpful to people. It allows them to see things in a different way than if you come at people with your line and bash them over the head with your pickax and say, "You're wrong, you're counter-revolutionary, you're petit bourgeois." You do that with people and they say, "Bye.""
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Jews from the United StatesFeminists from the United StatesWomen activists from the United StatesCommunists from the United StatesPeople from Denver
Original Language: English
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Bettina Aptheker attributed p 172 in Dorothy Healey Remembers: A Life in the American Communist Party (1990)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dorothy_Ray_Healey
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Dorothy Ray Healey
Dorothy Ray Healey September 22, 1914 – August 6, 2006) was a long-time activist in the Communist Party USA, from the late 1920s to the 1970s, and later became a national vice-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. In the 1930s, she was one of the first union leaders to advocate for the rights of Chicanos and blacks as factory and field workers.
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