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The Making of an Activist

In the summer of 1963 between high school and college I badly needed a job.  A friend from my class at Hollywood High School, who thought of himself as a free thinker and was headed to Reed College, told me his dad had a position open for a secretary and, with his help, I could get hired.

Quality Collection Company was located in a grungy office building in downtown L.A. and was run by my friend’s father and uncle who pretended they were lawyers.

The company purchased contracts for items sold door to door in mostly black and Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles and attempted to collect what was owed on those contracts.  Families may have signed up for a deep freezer, not realizing that expensive monthly purchases of meat were part of the deal; or found they had committed to purchasing aluminum siding they didn’t need and couldn’t afford.

the frying panMy job was to send out the increasingly shrill collection notices on these contracts that included more and more bold black or red lettering and exclamation marks threatening to garnish their wages or repossess their belongings if they didn’t pay up.  Sometimes a family would show up at the office to either make a payment or ask to see the boss to get out of the contract they hadn’t realized they had signed.

While the “lawyers” lunched at their desks on take-out Chinese meals, I had to tell the families that the boss was not available.  Sometimes grown men would break down in tears about the predicament they found themselves in.  I was mortified to be playing a role in this charade.

vivian rothsteinI couldn’t quit the job because I desperately needed the money for college, but before I left that August, in my first act of civil disobedience, I mixed up all the index card files of clients and contracts so no one could figure out who had received which threatening letter, effectively destroying the company’s system of harassment.

And when I went off to Berkeley the first thing I did was join the civil rights movement on campus.

Vivan Rothstein
The Frying Pan 

Photos: Robin Doyno

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By Vivian Rothstein posted on February 4, 2012

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed here are those of the individual contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the LA Progressive, its publisher, editor or any of its other contributors.

About Vivian Rothstein

Vivian Rothstein has been employed at LAANE since January 2003 after many years of working with LAANE as an ally. She has a long history as a community organizer, beginning with her work in the Mississippi Freedom Summer project of 1965. Her experience includes organizing in low-income communities around welfare and housing rights, involving citizens in issues related to U.S. foreign policy, and reproductive rights campaigns. Vivian founded one of the first independent women’s liberation organizations in the 1970s. For ten years she served as executive director of the Ocean Park Community Center, one of the largest Southern California nonprofits serving homeless adults and families and battered women and their children. She directed the union/community-led Respect at LAX project (in which LAANE was a lead partner), aimed at raising wages for service workers at the airport. Vivian later directed Santa Monicans for Responsible Tourism, the LAANE project that worked to lift wages in the booming Santa Monica tourism industry. In addition to her role as deputy director she oversees LAANE’s development team and Century Blvd and Long Beach Hospitality Projects and works closely with LAANE’s interfaith partner, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Development (CLUE). Vivian attended UC Berkeley and holds a master’s degree in administration from Antioch University.

Comments

  1. Sharon Toji says

    February 11, 2012 at 3:23 pm

    Well, Vivien, I graduated from Reed in 1958, and it sounds as if I would have liked to have you as a roommate! I wonder if your friend, headed to Reed, took after his family or maybe left with a different set of values! Of course, Reed and Berkeley traded students back and forth with some regularity — just that we were a lot smaller.

    Great story!

    Reply
  2. Eugene Hernandez says

    February 11, 2012 at 11:17 am

    What a good human being!

    Reply

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