Getting Personal

This is the first in a series of interviews with LAANE staff and board members, whose eclectic backgrounds and experiences reflect the incredible diversity of Los Angeles. In this edition, we introduce you to Amy Elaine Wakeland, Co-Chair of LAANE’s Honorary Board.

What activist most inspired you growing up?

When I was growing up, most of my heroines were historical figures who had been involved in the abolitionist and women's rights movements in the 19th century, including women like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

On a contemporary basis, most of the women whose lives in which I was interested were sports figures. I was a Title IX girl who ran track and field, played volleyball and dabbled in other sports. Like most girls my age who attended public schools, I benefited greatly from this legislation, which prohibited sex discrimination in sports opportunities where schools received federal funding. But I also witnessed occasions when the law was not adequately enforced—when, for instance, the girls lost their practice space if the boys needed it, but never vice versa, and when the girls had to share a single weight machine and wait in line to use it while the boys had a weight room at their disposal.

What woman activist is most inspiring to you today?

The women who inspire my work—both academic and activist—are those low-wage workers who are employed full-time, manage their households and care for their children without much help from anyone else, like my mother, for instance! We hear an awful lot about professional women's double burden, which is a real and serious issue that leaves a lot of women I know chronically exhausted. But we don’t hear nearly as much about working-class women who must manage this double burden without any kind of workplace flexibility, without access to reliable and affordable child care services and without much ability to afford conveniences, like occasionally taking their families out for dinner.

Do you have a favorite politician?

Of course! My partner, L.A. City Council President Eric Garcetti, who is a big supporter of LAANE's work. I also am a big fan of progressive Congressmembers like Diane Watson, Xavier Becerra, Lucille Roybal-Allard and Hilda Solis, among others. They all have great voting records and very difficult jobs, particularly given their party's minority status and the consequent difficulties of moving progressive legislation through Congress.

What can you tell us about your background that people might not know?

I grew up in Indiana, home of the best sweet corn, muskmelons and tomatoes in the world! Both my grandfathers had small family farms, although one sold his farm mid-life and began working at the local John Deere factory. Both of my grandmothers were bookkeepers at the car dealerships in the small towns in which they lived and maintained huge gardens from which they froze and canned vegetables each year. My mother worked hard all of her life at several jobs at a time—as a waitress, grocery clerk, cashier, and bookkeeper, for instance—providing almost exclusively for five kids when my step-father had difficulties finding and maintaining employment in the years following the 1981 recession, which hit the industrial Midwest hard.

What brought you to Los Angeles?

I came to Los Angeles on a temporary basis because my partner wanted to return to his home after college and graduate school, and he had traveled with me while I was doing my graduate field work in the Midwest. I was convinced I would not like L.A., but fell in love with the city immediately, especially after moving to Silverlake and then Echo Park.  I love the city's diversity and its optimism, in spite of the serious social problems it faces.  I also love the fact that goats, roosters and horses live in the same canyon in which I live, and that I can climb to the top of the hill behind my house for a full view of downtown's skyline one way and the Hollywood Sign the other.

What are you working on now?

I just finished my dissertation in politics about ten days ago and am looking forward to some practical and activist applications of my research, which is focused on the social problems that prohibit working-class families, particularly those headed by women, from escaping poverty in spite of the hard work of the adults in those families.