Vivian & Nina Donehue

Vivian and Nina Donehue are a mother-daughter duo who joined POWER in the summer of 2007 and rapidly became solid leaders in the Bayview Organizing Project.

VD: I am a mother of eight, grandmother of twenty-two, and great grandmother of seven. I've been dedicated to activism since 1999, when I started fighting for the cleanup of the Hunters Point Shipyard. I'm fighting because someone has to do it! I had a daughter-in-law die of cancer at age twenty-eight; she lived up here in Bayview for years.

ND: Our family has lived in Bayview since the early 80's, but we came to the Bay Area in '68 from Kansas City, Kansas. I work with the Children's Council. I'm the mother of three daughters and I have a two-year-old grandson. I first got involved with POWER when Chrissy Leuma came and knocked on my door last summer. At that point, I had no idea what was going on in my neighborhood. What I knew was that all summer I was coughing, my eyes were running and burning. Chrissy let me know that the dust flying around from Lennar's construction at the Shipyard could be causing my problems. I wanted to find out more about what was really going on in our community. I started going to the Town Hall meetings and to City Hall with POWER, and heard people give testimonies about their symptoms since the construction project started. Hearing other peoples' stories, I realized I wasn't by myself.

VD: When POWER came along, they helped bring about more awareness in me: POWER has shown us how to organize, encouraging us to get together with other communities and fight with more power.

ND: My mother and I took part in POWER University last fall. Now, I'm doing the Member Organizing Internship and my role in POWER is to be out on the forefront, doing something to help create positive change in our community. I'm involved in a more political way because of the initiative for affordable housing that we're trying to get on the June ballot. Last year, one success was getting the Unified School District to unanimously vote for our children to have a medical assessment; it gives us more power to push against Lennar's project in the Hunters Point Shipyard.

VD: We've had two other victories: the one where we got the Youth Commission to pass a resolution calling on the City to test the community for toxic exposure and the one with the Air Quality Board. The air monitoring machine didn't work for 300 days and Lennar just ignored it. The City is now fining Lennar $250,000 a day for over 300 days of violations.

ND: At the Bayview Post Office, they call a certain section "Cancer Alley" because there are over 15 people that have cancer there. That's a whole lot of people in one area! And then there's asthma, bronchitis, too. The general opinion about the redevelopment happening here in the Bayview is negative. That land was bought by Lennar, this big corporation, that has no concern for the people and their health. For years, the government didn't want to touch this land, but now all of a sudden they want to clean it up and put a band-aid on it.

VD: It's hard, but we have to keep the struggle going, passing out our flyers, knocking on doors, trying to make everyone aware.

ND: I keep working for justice because I'm concerned about the families in my neighborhood. POWER is for the people. They're saying, "Hey, wake up-this is
what's going on in our community! Are you going to just let it happen or are you going to get involved and voice your opinion? What you gonna do?"