Not the kind that dress up and try to fight crime. Just amazing, inspirational people who totally know how to stand up and kick ass. It doesn’t have to be modern people either, historical figures are equally invited to the party.
Born in Somalia and raised a Muslim, she became an atheist and champion of womens rights against radical Islam. She’s not afraid to speak out against the wrongs she perceives in her native culture, often facing death threats as a result.
She’s got lots of critics on both sides of the cultural boundary but essentially she’s taken steps towards the personal freedom of both herself and others that few people born into her situation are able to make.
Ps. If anyone tries to hijack this into a thread about Islam my head will explode.
Dorothea Dix is one of my many heroes. I consider her one of the earliest and most influential social workers in our nation’s history.
Circa about 1841 this lady ran into her first prison/asylum and the squalid conditions that the so-called dredges of society were forced into. She became particularly interested in the poorhouses and doing independent research she discovered a huge majority of poorhouse denizens were mentally ill. The conditions they lived in were abysmal. The popular belief at the time was that the mentally ill were just fine in substandard conditions and they were beyond treatment or hope anyway. Dorothea did not believe that mental illness was untreatable. She decided that the only decent thing to do would be to construct facilities that existed solely for the humane treatment of the mentally ill, so those who were able to recover would have the best possible chance.
So this 40 year old woman, in the 1840s and 1850s, conducted her own research all over the frickin’ country, summarized the results of said research in a journal she published herself, engaged in a major publicity campaign for the plight of the mentally ill, and petitioned the state legislatures for action. To me this is significant because she was like a one-woman grassroots organization, starting from the reality on the ground and working her way from the research stage to lobbying in a span of mere few years. Her biggest move was to petition the federal government for 500,000 acres of land to be set aside for the construction of humane mental health treatment facilities.
The request was approved by both House and Senate but vetoed by President Pierce in 1854, establishing a precedent against federal public assistance that would last through the 1930s.
After the defeat of her bill, she went to Europe and did some shit there. All of this she did while in ill health herself. She kept right on going 'til she died. She is responsible for the construction of countless hospitals for the mentally ill, including many still standing today. One could even argue that she singlehandedly turned the tide away from poorhouses and toward humane treatment facilities.
Dorthea Dix, lost in the annals of history, but forever my heroine.
FWIW, the consensus of history is that Pierce was pretty much one of our Worst Presidents Ever. As a New Hampshirite, I apologize on behalf of my state.
My favorite real life people are the husband-and-wife attorney/writer team Andrew and Alice Vachss. The work they have done in treating victims of childhood sexual abuse and putting the perpetrators behind bars is truly remarkable.
For me personally, it’s Baba Amte. He spent his entire life helping lepers, the lower castes and under-represented tribal people at a time when there was an extremely strong social stigma attached to even talking to people in these populations. Also a very famous Indian atheist, incidentally. I often think he’s relatively unknown outside of India. My opinion is that for the type of work he did and adding in when he did it, he should have won a Nobel peace prize for his work when he was alive.
My parents met his kids at a charity fundraiser and said that they think saintliness runs in the family-they all seem to possess some sort of really strong self-sacrificing gene.
I also tuned in when CNN was handing out its Heroes awards and I have to say that many of those people are really amazing.
