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Bv EUAN BEAR

esbian feminist activist and

low-income advocate

Virginia "Ginny" Winn died
on May 15. 2002 ofan apparent
heart attack following an incident
in which she attempted to prevent
the detention and arrest ofa
woman with two children for
retail theftfrom the South
Burlington Hannajbrd supermar-
ket. Ginny was 56.

According to friends

who pieced together an account
from a report filed by Hannaford

’ security guard Michael Clark and

from the police citation that was
released with her eflects from the
hospital, Ginny saw a woman in
the parking lot with two children
holding a grocery cart in which
none of the items had been '
bagged being detained by the
security guard. Ginny then
claimed the groceries were hers
and that she would be paying for
them. She pushed the cart back
into the store over the objections
of Clark. Clark or the store man-
ager called the police.

The South Burlington
police cited Ginny for retail theft,
as the younger woman and her
children had left the vicinity. The
value of the items in the basket
was given as $391.83.

At some point during the
fracas, Ginny began having trou-
ble breathing. An ambulance was

' called. The store was later noti-

fied that the woman they had
cited for retail theft had died on
the way to Fletcher Allen
Hospital.

“She was such a fiercely
protective woman for women and
kids and the poor, ” said longtime
friend Peggy Luhrs. Another
longtime friend, Janet Hicks,
said, “She died the way she lived,
trying to help a woman in

trouble.” I

 

BY BENNETT LAW

or five years, the Radical

Faeries have been crafting

plans for the development
of their Faerie Camp Destiny on
150 acres ofl Route 103 along the
Grafion—Chester town line. This
spring the Faeries applied for an
Act 250 permit to build a septic
system to accommodate up to 75
people, extend the driveway into
the property, expand the parking

e Died as

‘irneve

Ginny Winn had been a
director of Community Action, a
member of the Mayor ’s Council
on Women (which later became
the Burlington Women ’s
Council), and was largely respon-
siblefor the establishment of the
Women in Trades ordinance in
Burlington and women ’s trades
training programs. She helped
found the Food Shelf and the
Women ’s Consortium for the
Construction of Housing. She
strongly supported the establish-
ment and fitndingof the first bat-
tered women s shelter.

Ginny Winn ’s Susan B.
Anthony Award acceptance
speech was dedicated to “The
Women Who Aren ’_t Here”:
women too poor to pay and the
lesbian feminists who had found-
ed Women Against Rape.

Carol Magnus waited in
vain for Ginny to arrive for their
regular Thursday night dinner at
the house on Marble Ave. “If you
knew G'nn you kneggv that she.’s .

 

calling the hospitals,” Magnus
said.

Magnus said, “She is
such a mentor to a lot of the
younger women in town. There
was no classism with Ginny. I

- woujdn ’t have a house except for

her. She made me feel like I
could be something, like I wasn ’t
stupid ’f .

Jen Mathews worked
with Ginny at Community
Action, an advocacy and support
agency for low-income people in
Burlington. “Ginny was always
supportive of young lesbians.
Last year we went to an Ant
Defranco concert at Memorial
Auditorium, and she was so
inspired by the young women
there, she said, ‘This is so impor-
tant, do you see all these young
women, they ’re getting
political. ’ ”

lot, add a well, build a kitchen
building and meeting hall, and to
clear-cut five acres. Citing con-
cerns over what they called “pub-
lic decency,” the Grafton
Planning Commission challenged
the Faeries ’ permit request and
forced a public hearing.

At the April 23rd hear-
ing, Harold Igoe, Chairman of the
Grafton Planning Commission, -
raised objections to the proposed
project over public nudity, the

, . .  ’something was“,
‘ wrong, and that’s when I started

Ginny worked as a hous-
ing specialist at Community
Action from 1985 to 1990, then
as director from 1990 to 1996.

Mathews talked to the
Hannaford security guard,
Michael Clark. “I guess the main
thing to say is this guy was doing
his job. He could never have
imagined that a perfect stranger
would have decided to pay for
$400 worth of groceries for
someone else.” Mathews said
that Clark felt “awful” about how
things turned out.

According to Mathews,

“women ’s night” dinners, a proj-
ect in which Ginny Winn was
heavily involved, were held
weekly with a requested donation
of $2. "Diflerent women volun-

' I. . ..~

potential for violation of the “sce-
nic rural character” of Grafion,
noise from drumming events, and
the potential subsequent devalua-
tion of surrounding properties.

At the hearing, "Faerie
spokesperson Jim Jackson
declared that Camp Destiny is not
a nudist colony, rejecting Igoe ’s
characterization that the Camp is
“all about public nudity.”
According to testimony, the nudi-
ty charge stems from the use of

Lesbian feminist activist Ginny Winn in 200i.

 
 

teered to cook. Ginny always
wanted to keep the donation to $2
so anybody could come. Just
before Ginny died, we were try-
ing to find a new space for the
dinners. I ’d told Ginny that if she
cooked, I 'd help out. "

Guen Gifford, another
Community Action colleague of
Ginny ‘s, is trying to put the
women is night dinners together
again. “The dinners were another
way for Ginny to keep making
connections between diflerent
generations. _”

‘ Gifford said. that the
thing she would most remember
about Ginny was her skills as a
teacher, an advocate and a men-

> continued on page 8

Nuditv En-°sesFa°ries *°A°* 25°H°arin9s   

Hall Brook, which borders the
property, by Destiny campers for
bathing, with or without bathing
costumes. Gabriel Q, another
spokesperson for the Faeries
attending the hearing, outlined a
distinction between “public nudi-
ty” and “skinny dipping, ” a recre-
ation he suggested is common
around Vermont. “Are we all
about going down to the stream

> Continued on page 3

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