ROZALES: Hi. Okay, we're going to get started. What is your name, place of birth
and date of birth?GODOY: My name is Mary Godoy. I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My birthday is
August 15th, 1956.ROZALES: And what are your parents' names?
GODOY: My mother's name was Guadalupe Perumen and my father's name, Francisco
Godoy. ROZALES: And what occupations did they hold?GODOY: Well, my mother had a lot of occupations besides being a housewife, my
mother has done a lot of community work. She's done English as a Second Language. She's some AODA before you needed a degree for AODA. She's worked in SDC as a community worker. She's done a lot of things for welfare people. She's 00:01:00helped people apply for welfare and apply forsocial security. She's worked job development for Esperanza Unida. So, my mom's
had quite a few jobs. My father was a laborer. I think here in Wisconsin he worked for, what do they call that, the Matarsas. They kill cows and animals and stuff. I know he worked for the railroad. Last that I know he was raising pigs out in Nevada, so he's a rancher.ROZALES: Do you have any siblings?
GODOY: I do, I have, with my mom, I have five brothers, two sisters. On my dad's
00:02:00side I have two brothers and a sister.ROZALES: And what are their names?
GODOY: Oh wow, Santos, this is my mom's side: Santos, Ricky, Edward, Frankie,
Richard, Linda, and Lisa. On my father's side I have: Adolfo, Bert, and Maria. [laughter] Sorry.ROZALES: Have you always lived in Wisconsin?
GODOY: When I was a child, I lived a year in Texas with my grandma and I lived
about two years in Puerto Rico.ROZALES: Did you have any Latina models growing up that helped shape your view?
GODOY: My mom was probably a big one. My mom, like I said, my mom did a lot of
00:03:00community work, and so actually. . . When I came home from school, I actually applied for a jobwith Centro Nuestro. As they described the job, I told them I didn't think I
could do the job but I knew someone who could, and I recommended my mom for the job. Berta, Berta Zamudio, I've known Berta since I was probably fourteen. Bertha Zamudio used to be a teacher over at the bilingual program. I'm trying to what the name of that school was. . . Bilingual Bicultural Program. She used to work for the bilingual program which was like an after-school program. She 00:04:00worked at Esperanza Unida. So, through my growing up, through my life, Berta's always been a great encouragement and role model for me. Just a great friend.ROZALES: How would you define community activist?
GODOY: That one's going to be a hard one cause I kind of stopped right there
when I said, "what would I say?" Community activist. . . I think a lot of community activists aren't just people who are running a program. I think it's people who vote, who go and vote and who stand up for people's rights. I mean, even like right now with what we had with immigration, people who go out there and demonstrate and state their views, vote, and get an education, work for the 00:05:00community, make sure not just their own people but that everybody has a fair shake with whatever. Even with like right now you see all this stuff with police killing blacks, you know, when I grew up, I remember lists and lists of blacks being killed just here in Milwaukee. Those people who get involved are community activists.ROZALES: How would you identify yourself, a Chicana, a Latina, Hispania?
GODOY: When I was in school, the big thing was "Chicano" but I always identified
00:06:00as Mexican-American.ROZALES: Why?
GODOY: Because I was born here, I'm an American. But if I were in that time and
they would go to Mexico, you know, we really didn't fit. We really weren't 'Mexicans' as, you know, Mexicans. My mom was a first generation, she was born in Texas and I'm a second generation, and I always identified as Mexican. Mexican American.ROZALES: And what built your desire to be involved with the community?
GODOY: I think just knowing people. A lot of the jobs that I held in the
community, I really didn't apply for them. It came to me. People would call me and say "Hey, we want you to work for here, we want you to work for there". 00:07:00That's basically how I got involved in a lot of the community work. People would call me and tell me they had a job available for me.ROZALES: And what issues did you take part in, and have a special regard for?
GODOY: I should have read my questions, hey? [laughter] You know, I think a lot
of things I grew up more with single parents, welfare. When I worked for WIC, I think that was the. . . When you work in the community for a program like the WIC program, you meet everybody. You know, it's not just one, this gang member over here, and that Mexican over there and that Puerto Rican over there but 00:08:00Asians and Blacks, and you've met everybody. And everybody has needs. And,you know, whatever the need was at that time, you know, you just did what you
could. If it was clothes. . . I was always like, in my jobs, I'm always like the resource person. I always know where you can go get this, or who can help you with that. When I worked in WIC, I had a big advantage, my mom worked at SDC South. So anytime people came and said, "Mary, this person needs help". I would be like, "Well, what do they need?" I would go have a conversation with them and say, "Hey, you know what, I want you to go over to SDC South and I want to you see Lupe Cuevas, and she can help you". And I would give my mom a call and we 00:09:00would send people on their way over there, but you did. You just kind of network, you know. You just network.ROZALES: And who was your support network as an activist?
GODOY: Probably my mom, Bertha Zamudio, people I worked with. I worked in WIC.
Most of the gals that worked at the front desk were all Hispanic- either Puerto Rican, Mexican, we had some Asians. But I think my number one was always Bertha.ROZALES: In what ways did they support you?
GODOY: They always encouraged me. You know, Bertha, at one time, I needed a
place to live and I lived with Bertha for a couple months. She was always 00:10:00encouraging. She was always like my mom in some ways. She always had nice nicknames for me. She always called me, always had these cute nicknames for me. She always, you know, whenever I'd be down, she'd tell me, she'd encourage me, and tell me not to get discouraged, "Hang in there, you're doing great", she says, "You're a great mom," she would always tell me things like that. I think Berta, and even now, I have friends, too that. . . I have a big network of friends, if I were to start naming them, you'd be like, "Oh my gosh, this girl's got friends." I know a lot of people.ROZALES: And what role, if any, did ethnic discrimination play in your motivation to become
an activist?GODOY: Say that again?
ROZALES: What role, if any, did ethnic discrimination play in you becoming an activist?
00:11:00GODOY: I think it has always been there. When I was grew up, we had. . . I went
to Kosciuszko, and I remember one of the years that I was at Kosciuszko, that's kind of like when Hispanics really started coming and bilingual programming was starting to come in. We were always aware, that we were always kind of like secondhand citizens. The white students were always being encouraged to take the harder classes and you always kind of knew they were going to be going to college. But you kind of like, "whatever, we're just going to be there". We had the walk outs, at that time, for the bilingual program. We would walk out of 00:12:00school. At that time, I remember, there was a phone number you could call. And it was about. . . I'm serious, it was about the Hispanics in the school, about how they were taking over. And it was kind of like a white supremacist "hotline". So, I was always aware of discrimination but at the same time there were always good teachers that didn't see me as Hispanic. When I was in junior high, I got my first "A" in a classroom. I wasn't even trying; it was just that the teacher was very interesting. She brought in a student teacher that was 00:13:00interested in teaching. When she came down to telling everybody their grades, I was like. . . She said, "Mary, you got an 'A'". I was like, "I did what?". And she looked at me and she says, she just said to me, she says, "Mary, you worked hard for this". And I didn't even think I was working, it was just that the classroom was so interesting. So, discrimination, it's always been there, and it continues even now. Different groups of people don't like each other.ROZALES: Did gender discrimination play any role in you becoming an activist?
GODOY: I really should have read the questions. [laughter] I think so. I think
so. You know, when you grow up being Mexican, a lot of times there's this 00:14:00pressure on you to always be. . . To get married, have children, raise a family. And I always grew up, you know, I lived through two divorces. My mother was divorced twice, and I never wanted to get married. So being a single mom and never having been married has always been a big. . . When people would find out that I was never married. In the '60s, in the '70s-- In the '70s, not being married was still a real big taboo. You were like not the nicest gal around the block if you weren't married. And then, when I went to school, when I went to 00:15:00Madison in the '70s, I think it really hit hard because I started in this community, I joined this Hispanic group, and at the time we had a female who used to work for the UWM system, and she had left, and we got a male. In that time period, the gals were pretty much doing a lot of work. We would do fundraisers and things like that. We were pretty much the ones out there. We were helping with the fundraisers and stuff. We had a community room, and you know, we were always taking care of that. We had this new guy come in. And apparently, he felt like we were too "uppity". So, we found out from some of the 00:16:00other guys that he had assigned guys to lay us, I guess that's. . . I'm trying to think of the nicest word I can say without. . .And we were pretty upset because we weren't going what we were doing because we felt "uppity" or. . . We were trying to do something for our community, for our group. We were insulted. I think then I really got a big rude awakening about being female and being Hispanic. Apparently, we were "out of our role". So, the person that was involved, that was the leader at that time, that came and worked for UWM worked 00:17:00for La Raza Unida. We were pretty upset. We went out there and we incorporated the names so that, you know, because it was always about the politics, the politics, the politics. We were like, we didn't want to be part of La Raza Unida, and we didn't want them in Wisconsin so we went and incorporated the name. We kept our name on it for at least twenty years, and a couple of variations because we felt insulted. We felt like what we were doing was not a contributing factor.ROZALES: Can you tell me more about your time at UW-Madison?
GODOY: UW-Madison, I was seventeen. I had just turned seventeen in August, and I
00:18:00came to UWM. I lived at Witte Hall. There I saw quite a few Hispanics come and go. I struggled a lot cause I actually. . . The reason I went to UWM was because when I was in eleventh grade, which would have been in the '70s, '71, the school had changed from units to credits. And when I had looked at what I had, I needed one more class to come back for my last year. I kind of stormed into the counselor's office, and I said, "I want my last class. I don't want to come back 00:19:00next year". He says, "Mary, I'll give you your class, but you're under eighteen, you have to go to school until you're eighteen". So, my counselor changed my whole schedule. I ended up with two math classes; I ended up with my U.S. History class. I ended up with all these classes because I needed the credits for college. He told me, basically, I was going to college. And that was kind of like, how I ended up going to school. So, when I started looking at schools, I wanted to go as far away from home as I could but yet still be able to get home. UWM Madison, UWM Milwaukee, I think Parkside, who else? I think Marquette 00:20:00accepted me. And another school out, a little further out, and I chose Madison. So, when I came, my brother, my mother basically they brought me to Madison. And after that I was on my own. I got involved in a lot of different things. We got the Hispanic group. Almost every march that happened out there, we were in them. I think one of the big ones at the time was Hortonville. Hortonville, the teachers went on strike and we were up there. Iwas pretty close to almost the end of my school year. That's kind of when
00:21:00everybody realized that I was still under 18. So, I was going to all these different places, and nobody realized how old I was. You know, you live in Madison, you go everywhere. The bars didn't card me at the time. So I would go in the bars, thank god I didn't drink, but. . . I don't know. In classes, I struggled. I struggled a lot with classes because I was really not prepared to go to school. I even stayed there the summer. If you're in Madison, the best time to be in Madison is summer. But, you know, I struggled. My writing skills weren't there. I never grew up with people encouraging me to learn how to write. 00:22:00I didn't even learn to read 'till I was in fourth grade, to be honest with you. So I struggled. It was real hard. I took a Spanish class and the teacher kept making me read. We had all these kids who've had Spanish classes, and he'd make me read because I was the only one who had a good accent. It was a struggle, the work, I didn't know how to do it. And being as young as I was, I didn't want to admit that I didn't know how to do it because I was embarrassed that I didn't know how to write just a simple paper. That was my biggest struggle there. But Madison, I loved. I loved being away from home for a whole year. [laughter] I 00:23:00loved running around in the marches. I loved all the people that I met. You get your people there that just don't like you because you're foreign. You bump into people, I mean I've had issues where I got attacked in Madison because we were foreign, because we weren't "white". Guys came in and were driving through, and we got hit. Some guy got out of his car and ran up and got me across the shoulder and we had to call the police. The police came in and Madison's got the biggest police you ever seen. They drove us everywhere because they were real 00:24:00upset because I got hit. I had this big bruise across my back. But it was a struggle for school. I never liked school but I was told I had to go to school 'till I was eighteen, which I did.ROZALES: How did gender and racial discrimination follow you to UW campus?
GODOY: Wow, okay. When I was at UWM I got involved in a Hispanic group and there
was an employee from UWM, she was a female from Colorado, I believe. She was great. She encouraged us to participate in marches and anything that was coming around. We would meet almost. . . I think we met at least once a week as a 00:25:00group. We did fundraisers for our group. We had a little room that the Catholic church had given us for our group and so we would always hang out there. We had a little library, and we would do things with our fundraisers. We would buy things for our library. And she left. She left. She went back to Colorado. And we had a male from Texas, a member of La Raza Unida. He took over our group, and also got hired at UWM. He started encouraging the guys to be more active and be more. . . be leaders. The women kind of, , , he kind of ignored us. Then we 00:26:00started kind of noticing the guys would get dressed better. You know, come in and kind of have this attitude about them. We didn't know what was going on. And then a couple of the guys, the good guys, the guys who were real respectful to us, basically came and they told us, they said, "Hey, this guy from Texas, he thinks you guys are too uppity. That you guys have too much control and he's assigned guys in the group to sleep with you because he feels like you guys are 00:27:00just too uppity, you're too involved, you're too in control of everything". We got really upset and we felt hurt. I think that was probably my real first discrimination from my own people. Here I am, I'm coming to school and I'm thinking this is a good thing and you're in this group. And all of a sudden you find out that somebody's been assigned to you, to sleep with you, to subdue you. I don't know why this had happened but, we got really upset. He was from La Raza 00:28:00Unida. There was a lot of political talk about La Raza Unida party coming to Wisconsin. One of the girls came up with the idea of incorporating the name so that they couldn't come to Wisconsin. Eventually, we stoppedcoming in the group, and we were on our own. I would say there was at least
myself, and at least three or four other girls that were a part of this group. I think that was my first one. And some of the girls I hung out with, years later, I often wonder what their sexual orientation was. 00:29:00Because, for me, they were my friends, my roommates, my friends. They used to
like to go to gay bars, and I didn't like it. I'm not a. . . it's not my thing. They were always giving me literature to read. And I always would tell them, "I. . ." And they would hang out with lesbian groups, and it wasn't my thing. I would always tell them, "I don't have a problem with my sexual orientation, I know what I like." I never thought about itthen. And when I look back now, I'm wondering if that was the real issue with
them assigning the guys to sleep with us. 00:30:00ROZALES: And what about the Madison community at large? I know you said you were
attacked, could you describe that event a little more?GODOY: Well, in the summer my roommate and I, we rented an apartment for the
summer. I went to summer school. My friend was from Chicago. A little Hispanic girl, she had gotten through college in two years. So, she was there on a--she got a grant to go for her masters. And she was in the social work, and she hated it. She hated it. So that summer, she actually lost her scholarship because she decided she didn't want to be a social worker. So, during the summer we rented 00:31:00an apartment. Summer in Madison is just the greatest. There's always something going on. You go down the plaza, there's something down at the university plaza, there's something at the union. There always was something over at the capital, wherever. We were walking home one night. My friend, she was a little tiny thing, even shorter than I was. I don't even thing she weighed hundred pounds. She always liked to dress up, and I was happy with my blue jeans and my tie dye t-shirt and my tennies. She'd have stack shoes; she was always dressed up. So here we are, walking home one night, and a car pulls up. It's a car full of 00:32:00guys, and they're saying things to us. I'm like, "Just be quiet, just keep quiet, just keep walking". My roommate stops, she turns around, she looks at them, and she goes, "Leave us alone, we're lesbians". I'm like, "What?" And then I heard one of the guys in the car slam his hand down, and he just swore. I said to my roommate, "Run." I shoved her, I said, "Run!", 'cause I knew she had the stack shoes, I had my tennies. I said, "And scream as loud as you can". And basically I gave her a head start and we both started running, and we both started screaming and the guys got out of the car. One of them got out, I saw, I don't know if it was a bat, I don't know what it was. But they got me across the 00:33:00shoulder but we did get away. And we got into the building, and they were gone. At that time, you didn't have cell phones. We didn't even have a phone in our apartment. We had to knock, and we had a gal, real tall, black woman. And we said, "Hey, can we use your phone, we need to call the police, I got attacked." And this big black woman, she is like, breaking down because she lives in this neighborhood, just like us. We called the police, the Madison police came in. Madison police are the biggest police I've ever seen. They're big, tall men. And they got more upset. They were like, "Can we see your shoulder?" And when I 00:34:00showed them my shoulder, I had this big black and blue mark down my back. And they were really upset. They said, "Come on, we are going to drive around to see if we can find these guys". We drove around all of Madison, and we never found the guys. But, you know, you think you're safe in Madison, and you're not.ROZALES: Switching gears a little bit, could you tell us about your work with
Esperanza Unida?GODOY: Well, with Esperanza Unida, my first job there was working job developer.
Basically, I was trying to find jobs for people in the community. A lot of times I'd have to go and translate.Be their translators, go help them apply, go help them fill out the application,
00:35:00translate for them, make phone calls. I did a lot of fundraisers. My friend Bertha Zamudio worked there too. We did a lot of fundraisers over there, cooking. . . Whatever we could do. I was in the board. I would sit in the board meetings a lot, take notes. I put a newspaper for Esperanza Unida together; I did the layout. The articles, we would go to La Guardia because they had a type set. I would go and type everything out at La Guardia, come back and I would lay out the newspaper and we would do the mailing. Those are some of the things I would do there.ROZALES: And I've noticed you were really involved with a lot of community
00:36:00organizations like WIC, the Sixteenth Street health community. Why did you choose to get involved with those organizations?GODOY: They were working with the community. They were working with people in
the community. WIC, I think, was my favorite. You meet a lot of people. Because I was always good with my Spanish, I didn't always speak my Spanish very well because I grew up with a Puerto Rican father. My father was Mexican but, I had a stepfather that was Puerto Rican. So I never had an issue with different groups of people. My first WIC job, we didn't have a bilingual 00:37:00nutritionist. And for a WIC program, you need bilingual nutritionists. And at
the time, there weren't even any bilingual nutritionists in Wisconsin. So, I ended up being the nutrition aid. I ended up seeing every pregnant woman, and every woman that had a baby. That was the big thing that I did. You sit there and you meet people, you counsel them on nutrition. It got to the point where you realize nutrition wasn't the real issue with people. People have a lot of issues; people have a lot of problems. I loved my job, I loved WIC. Every day, 00:38:00we would have. . . I was not supposed to be doing high risk women but because they were Spanish speaking, they were always giving me the high risk women. I had a knack for making them cry because I would always tell them, "We know you're not gaining weight; we know this isn't going well". And I would always ask them, "So, how do you feel about this pregnancy?" It was just. . . They would start crying, they would start getting upset, and they would start telling me what they been going through. 'My boyfriend left me', 'my husband doesn't 00:39:00want this baby', 'I wasn't expecting to get pregnant'. We would finish and two weeks later, they would come back, and they'd be gaining weight, and they'd be looking better. The nutritionist, she didn't speak enough Spanish but she did learn eventually. And then, I ended up at another WIC program where I wasn't a nutrition aid, so.GODOY: So how has your faith, or your political beliefs, or even just core
values that you have, affected your community activism?ROZALES: You know, I think my faith is one of the things that has affected me
the most. I've always believed in God. Even when I lived a year with my grandma, 00:40:00I had an experience. I had a faith experience, and God always knew where I was at. I was sent to Texas because of something that had happened between me and my stepfather. I was taken out of one situation and sent to Texas. I ended up in another situation. I ended up in a verbally and abusive situation in Texas. I had an experience as a young child that I never forgot. About 25 years ago, I guess what you would call, God saved. I always believed in God. I always knew that I would end up in church. My kids' father left again, nothing new. I got 00:41:00up, got dressed, and I used to go outto some of these really dive places here in the south side of Milwaukee. I'm
sitting in this bar, ordering a drink, and I hear this voice say, "Where are you going to be in five years?" I see this vision, and I see myself with a series of men. I see myself losing my kids, and I saw myself dying in five years. And I basically, I put down my drink, and I said, "I don't want that." And I left the bar, I went home, and I had the most peaceful sleep that I had had in a longtime. That was a Friday, and on Sunday I was in Church. And I haven't 00:42:00stopped. I got baptized in Jesus name, filled with the Holy Ghost. I did a lot of Sunday school. I was out in the Church in Oak Creek. I did a lot of Sunday school, I did groups. When you're in church, you meet a lot of people. We would do outside community groups, talk with people and meet. I think that is like. . . I don't know what would have happened to me had I not changed my life at that point. A couple years after that, about five years after that, I had cancer. And 00:43:00I thank God that I wasn't out there because had I been out there still drinking, I think those things, that that vision I had seen would have happened and I might not be here today. So, for me, that has been the biggest thing that has ever affected my life.ROZALES: Can you talk about the most radical activism work that you had been
involved in?GODOY: You know, I don't know in particular of just one issue or two. But I
think every day there is always something to deal with. I can say, when I worked at Sixteenth Street clinic, there were always issues with the clients and with 00:44:00the workers. I was never afraid to stand up for somebody that, you know, sometimes workers amongst workers would single out other workers for different reasons. I was always. . . I would always put my two cents. I kind of always knew who worked and who didn't work. Who was involved in gangs and who wasn't involved in gangs. Unfortunately, there were times where your own employees were involved in gang activity. They would use that to harass other people in the job. I was never afraid to say something about it or point something out. There 00:45:00were some employees, some people that didn't get hired because I spoke up. I would go in and I'd say, "Hey, you really don't want to hire this person because you have this problem already going on, you don't need this to get worse". I've had conflicts in my job. Every day was different. I was always pulled out to always. . . When people couldn't deal with stuff, I was always pulled out to deal with something. People were uncomfortable with somebody who was going through a sex change. They were uncomfortable talking to them. They would pull me out, I'd come out there and it would turn out to be somebody I already knew. 00:46:00A lot of times, it would be people I knew because I worked so much in the community. You just knew people. The people I worked for were always like, shocked because I would go, "Don't I know you from somewhere?" And they would be, "Yeah." I'd say, "Weren't you a man before?" It would just be crazy. You just do what you have to do every day. People had different problems, you just got out there and you dealt with it. You do what you had to do for people.ROZALES: I know in the beginning of the interview, you said your mom was a big
influence on your life growing up but, now as an adult, are you able to reflect back and see how your mother influenced you, knowingly or unknowingly? 00:47:00GODOY: As I look back at my mom, my mom was always a hard worker. My mom as far
as I can remember, living in Milwaukee, my mom always had a job. My mom did a lot of things in the community. She did English as a second language. She worked for an AODA program before you had to have a degree to be AODA counselor. She was always helping somebody, 'go applyfor welfare', 'go apply for social security', 'go apply for unemployment'. My
mom was a big influence for me. When I see the things that she did, like I said she always worked. She worked for the post office, she worked-- she did so many 00:48:00things. I remember my mom telling me one time that, "Anything smarter than the Devil was a woman". I never forgot her saying that. She was just really. . . She was a real strong woman. She did anything. She always worked. She worked in Acapulco, Acapulco Restaurant. When I came home from Madison and started applying for jobs in the community, I got interviewed by Centro Nuestro. I think Gloria, I just remember Gloria, I don't remember Gloria's last name. Gloria interviewed me, and it was a community worker job. It was a person that they 00:49:00needed to go knocking on doors and talking with people. I told her, "You know what," I says, "I don't know if I can do this job." I says, "But I know somebody who can". I recommended my mom. My mother at the time was working at Acapulco Restaurant. Unannounced to me at the time, the day before, Gloria had gone to eat at Acapulco. They kind of got into a little bit of an altercation. [laughter] Then the next day, Gloria goes to Acapulco, and she asks my mom to apply for this job, and she hired my mom. And my mom, the job, as jobs do, you end up Centro Nuestro, went to ICDP, then ICDP became SDC. My mother worked 00:50:00like, for, my gosh, I'd say more than twenty years doing community work, working for the energy program. Helping people apply for the energy program, doing taxes every year, helping them apply for Social Security, doing appealing decisions that the welfare department would make. My mom did anything. You'd come in, I'd say, "Go see my mom". Especially when I worked in WIC, we'd always, "Mary, this person needs help". I'd talk to them for a few minutes, and I'd go, "You know what, you need to go to SDC. Talk to Guadalupe Cuevas and she can help you with 00:51:00this". So, I was always referring people to my mom. She's probably the greatest influence in me. In my jobs, I'm always told I have lot of good skills. I can problem solve. I'm always problem solving. I learned a lot of that from my mom.ROZALES: Do you have any words of advice for the upcoming generation of activists?
GODOY: Go to school. Stay in school. Build your faith. Stay away from the drugs,
the alcohol. Think about what you're doing, think about how it's going to affect you, how it's going to affect your children, and your children's children. 00:52:00