A farewell to Kitty Tucker
All of us at Beyond Nuclear were shocked and saddened to learn of the death on March 30th of Kitty Tucker.
Kitty was well known to those of us in the anti-nuclear movement through her tireless work as a lawyer on behalf of nuclear whistleblower Karen Silkwood and her family. In our mutual hometown of Takoma Park, Kitty was most recently a member of the Takoma Park Nuclear-Free Committee which is tasked to ensure that the City abides by its nuclear-free ordinance. The committee is currently engaged in trying to persuade the city to divest its pensions and other funds from Sun Trust bank, one of the (too many) banks with investments in the nuclear weapons complex.
Kitty was a central part of that campaign.
We will run a more in-depth article about Kitty soon, but in the meantime, here is the moving tribute her husband, Bob Alvarez, wrote today on his Facebook page:
"Kitty passed on the evening of March 30th. In 1963, at the age of 19, she was diagnosed with Hodgkins Disease and given a few months to live. But,oh, what a life she went on to live as a mother, loving wife, and warrior for justice. By 1965, she was jailed in Alabama for trying to register African-American voters. She helped found a medical clinic for the poor that's still open, fought for women's rights, became an attorney and helped organize a successful lawsuit on behalf of the parents of Karen Silkwood, a nuclear worker, that won in the Supreme Court. The list goes on. Most importantly, she raised her children with unconditional love and opened the door to a life of meaning for me."
And read Howard Kohn's January 13, 1977 Rolling Stone article about Kitty Tucker's work on the Silkwood case. An excerpt: "Tucker, then the legislative coordinator for the Washington D.C. chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW), became a walking encyclopedia on Silkwood and began to empathize with her posthumous plight. She came to view Silkwood as a heroine of women’s liberation, the labor movement and the antinuclear struggle. And, beyond the symbolism, she also saw an unsolved murder."
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