Cry for Justice Has a Voice, Even in Death

I am old and I have seen much of the world and I know that nonviolent solutions are the only lasting way to achieve immortality. History will look down on violence, no matter how tempting it may be to dictators to make use of it. I think our whole civilization will be condemned to history for its terrible violence.

Sylvia Easton, letter to friends May 27, 1989

Sylvia Easton is dead now, in one sense, which is to say that she was cremated two years ago at the age of 76.

This is the sense, too, that still prevents her husband, David Easton, distinguished professor of political science at UC Irvine, from sorting through her writings.

There are volumes of essays and speeches, letters, stories written for their two grandchildren, an unfinished autobiography and all sorts of musings about this and that. Injustice is a constant theme.

“I still have considerable difficulty getting that close to her,” David says, with a halting catch in his voice. They were married nearly 50 years.

But were Sylvia here to pick up “A Cry for Justice,” her husband knows that she would be “very touched and moved.” The book, excerpts of her writings, was published by the Four Friends Press earlier this year. David is talking about it as a gesture by its editors of love and commitment, in a personal sense.

“But she would quickly interpret it in a socially meaningful way,” he goes on. “She would see this as very helpful in sensitizing the community to the needs of the homeless and the oppressed.”

Sylvia, always, looked beyond herself, guided by a brilliant mind.

Born in Canada, she was a citizen of the world. Her mother named her after a British suffragette, Sylvia Pankhurst, and like her namesake, she was always speaking out--especially to those who would rather not hear.

Four Friends Press is how Doris Margolis, 69, Joyce Keath and Ruth Fassett, both 58, and Silla Kim, 22, decided to describe themselves when they published “A Cry for Justice” themselves. Each friend loved Sylvia in her own way.

And they, too, were roped into her causes. That was Sylvia’s way.

She was a genteel troublemaker with fire in her heart, an unpaid public advocate who, had she been born in another era, would have loved a political career. She took an impish delight in pricking the conscious of the privileged and perfecting a habit that has been known to annoy.

That is, she was forever suggesting solutions to social problems while others were relaxing with the assumption that none were to be found.

Always she’d be asking, “And what are you doing about this, dear?”

The vast fortunes that have been and are being made in building and real estate throughout the country have created a sort of never-never land where even minimal social justice has become a bleeding heart term. Well, Marie Antoinette thought so too, and look what happened to her. It is truly time for reality testing, the Fairy Tale is over.

Presentation to Irvine City Council June 29, 1989

If any profit comes from this slim volume, which is illustrated with drawings and photographs from archeological and anthropological sources, it will go to Irvine Temporary Housing Inc., on whose board Sylvia served for many years.

Profit, however, is not the point.

“It gives a perspective, a new way of looking at things, a sense of how outrageous and unjust society is,” says Ruth, who knew Sylvia from their work on behalf of the homeless.

Sylvia organized the Irvine Task Force on the Homeless in 1984. The Orange County Human Relations Commission gave her its humanitarian award in 1989.

“Sometimes, you just have to keep saying the same things again and again,” says Joyce, who worked for Sylvia’s husband at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. “You have to keep letting people know that they are people out there who need help.”

“And we decided that we really didn’t want to let go of her,” says Doris, who met Sylvia in 1949 at a faculty party at the University of Chicago, where their husbands taught. They became fast and lifelong friends.

“This was our grieving process,” Joyce says.

“It would have been such a waste not to put some of her writings together,” says Silla, a law school student.

“I felt privileged to do this,” adds Ruth.

Because, they and others believe, Sylvia did so much more.

When you strike a child you teach the child that violence is the solution to a problem, whether it be getting the child to go to bed, eat a meal, or stop some undesirable behavior. Your ancestors felt no such need and could we learn even that much from them, it could profoundly alter our whole civilization, for the ramifications of violent child-rearing go very deep into our whole society.

Letter to American Indian prison inmate April 1981

This will give you an idea about Sylvia Easton. The year was 1951 and her son, Steve, was 3. “Little Black Sambo” was one of the children’s stories she had brought home to read to him, but within moments of opening the book, she was aghast.

She had no idea that the popular tale, published in 1898, was so full of racial stereotypes. So she simply rewrote it, pasting over offending passages with her own words.

I didn’t know Sylvia when she was alive, but now I know her legacy. It lives in her words.

This is an urgent appeal for the condemned. True, they have never been legally sentenced in our courts but the unspoken sentence seems to be accepted by the majority of us in our comfortable homes, with our warm beds, nourishing food and safe neighborhoods. Why else, in a land of plenty, are the homeless men, women and little children left on our cold and often dangerous streets, in the rain or shine, to suffer flu and pneumonia and other ailments of the body and spirit that are inevitably linked to homelessness?

Letter to California Gov. George Deukmejian Jan. 7, 1989