Testifiers Bios for IACHR Right to Water Hearing
Edith Hood, the Red Water Pond Road Community, NM; Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment
(MASE) and New Mexico Environmental Law Center.
Edith Hood is a mother of four and grandmother of six granddaughters and three grandsons. Ms. Hood
worked as a school administrative assistant for years, and then went back to school and earned a BS in
Elementary Education with a TESOL endorsement. She has been retired for a year after a brief second
career as a classroom teacher. Ms. Hood is most proud of her achievements as a Navajo language and
culture teacher.
Ms. Hood was born and has lived her whole life in the Red Water Pond Road community, located in the
Coyote Canyon Chapter of the Navajo Nation. In the 1960s uranium mining and milling began in her
community and more than 50 years later, her community is still being contaminated by radioactive and
toxic pollution from three Superfund sites within 1/2 mile of her home. Ms. Hood spends much of her
time now advocating for cleanup of her community.
Horacio Amezquita, General Manager, San Jerardo Cooperative, CA
In 1974, Horacio Amezquita immigrated to the United States, from Mexico, with his parents, six brothers
and two sisters. Mr. Amezquita has worked in different aspects of the agriculture industry through –out
his adolescent and adulthood. Mr. Amezquita has experience growing, harvesting and marketing a
variety of fruits and vegetables. From 1980-1985, Mr. Amezquita managed a farming cooperative of
mostly strawberries and vegetables. In 1986, he worked with his parents and brothers/sisters to
produce and manage 100 acres of strawberries. In 1994, Mr. Amezquita became the assistant manager
for a marketing Cooperative where he market and sold strawberries and raspberries.
For the past ten years, Mr. Amezquita has been the general manager for the San Jerardo Cooperative.
The San Jerardo housing community is located seven miles southeast of Salinas. In the mid 1970’s, farm
workers, their families, local Salinas Valley volunteers, high school and community college students
helped built and construct San Jerardo. It was completed in 1979 and was occupied by its members. The
Amezquita family was one of the 60 original families that help built the San Jerardo housing community.
Mr. Amezquita is in charge of sixty-four family units, a childcare center and community hall.
Over the last 25 years, San Jerardo has been dealing with water contamination issues that have had
negative health effects on its residents. In 2001, all of San Jerardo three drinking water wells had been
contaminated. The community of San has encountered severe and grave water contamination issues
since the last water well was contaminated. Mr. Amezquita has been involve and concerned with these
issues prior he became the general manager for the San Jerardo Cooperative.
Mr. Amezquita is a graduate of Salinas High School and holds two degrees and a certificate from Hartnell
College. He received a Bachelor’s Degree in Agriculture Business Management from California State
University of Monterey Bay.
Maureen D. Taylor is a lifelong soldier in the war against the poor. She has served as State Chair of the
Michigan Welfare Rights Organization since 1993, and was elected Treasurer of the National Welfare
Rights Union in 1994.
Since 1993, Maureen D. Taylor has served as Chair of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, a union
of public assistance recipients, low-income workers and the unemployed that organizes members to
fight for their rights and to eliminate poverty in this country. Over the past several years, Maureen
spearheaded several MWRO campaigns to protect low-income Detroiters against electricity, gas and
water shut-offs. She participated in negotiations for the Water Affordability Plan for the Detroit Water
and Sewerage Department; and she was a key consultant on two award-winning documentaries, “The
Water Front,” about water rights and water affordability in Highland Park, Michigan; and the film, “A
World Without Water” on the crises of international water affordability and access which featured a
segment on Detroit. Additionally, Maureen has a MSW in Social Work and is a Detroit school counselor
who is improving student and teacher success rates.
Marian Kramer, MWRO, Highland Park
Marian Kramer has been in the front lines of the welfare rights and
civil rights movement from its origins in the 1960s. She is Co-chair of
the National Welfare Rights Union (NWRU) an organization of, by, and
for the poor in the U.S. Marian's actively involved with the Michigan
Welfare Rights Organization and the Highland Park Human Rights
Coalition where she is engaged in local, regional and national
campaigns on water rights violations due to shutoffs, property tax
liens, unaffordable rates, water cleanliness, and emergency manager
impacts. She is a revolutionary leader who speaks out on the crisis of
capitalism and the poverty and misery created worldwide by this
system. Ms. Kramer is a mother, grandmother and wife of the late,
great, labor leader, General G. Baker, Jr. of the Dodge Revolutionary
Union Movement.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH of Catherine Coleman Flowers, Alabama, ACRE & EJI
Catherine Coleman Flowers is the founder of the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise Community
Development Corporation (ACRE) which seeks to address the root causes of poverty by seeking
sustainable solutions. She also serves as the Rural Development Manager for the Equal Justice Initiative
and a Senior Fellow of the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary. Her goal is to expose
to America to the Third World conditions that exist in rural communities in the South which she has
characterized as “America’s Dirty Secret.”
Serving the citizens of Lowndes County, one of the 10 poorest counties in Alabama’s Black Belt, Ms.
Flowers has been able to bring significant resources to the County to address its many infrastructure and
social problems. In the first six months of her tenure, Ms. Flowers was able to help secure a federal
grant for over half a million dollars through a federal appropriation sponsored by Senator Richard
Shelby, to address countywide sewer problems. In 2002 she helped to negotiate an agreement with the
local electric cooperative to help poor residents plagued with power bills which were among the highest
in the nation. She also assisted families by negotiating an end to a policy where poor families faced
arrest or eviction from their homes because they could not afford a septic system. After pursuing the
release of the 2002 appropriation for eight years, Ms. Flowers helped to produce a master plan for
addressing the raw sewage issue in Lowndes County.
Additionally, Ms. Flowers served as the economic development coordinator for Lowndes County. In this
capacity, Ms. Flowers worked to develop strategies and programs to spur economic growth. She wrote
the grant that funded the creation of the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy for the
county. Working with Cliff Henry of Hamer, Siler and George, nationally recognized economic
development consultants, she facilitated the local involvement in the development of the CEDS plan.
Funded by the Economic Development Administration of the United States Department of Commerce,
the CEDS was essential in securing $4.2 million for infrastructure development within two industrial
parks. The industrial parks, located in Fort Deposit, Alabama, the county’s largest city, and the Tyson
plant, near Hayneville, house two tier one suppliers to Hyundai. From 2004 to 2007, she administered
the ACRE Community Resource Center in White Hall, which provided numerous services to residents
including job information, medical treatment, financial literacy training, homeownership training and
career development. In 2004 she was appointed by Governor Bob Riley to serve on Alabama’s Women’s
Commission, and in 2005 she partnered with the Canterbury School to educate students that were in
limbo due to Alabama’s High School exit exam. Ms. Flowers has been instrumental in eight poor families
living in dilapidated housing receiving donated homes.
A long time civil rights and community activist, Ms. Flowers has been a powerful voice for the less
fortunate since her childhood. Influenced by the history of Lowndes County, at the age of ten she began
to write poetry and songs about social change. A local television reporter became aware of her writings
when he accompanied a team from the British Broadcasting Company to her parents’ home in 1973 to
interview her mother who had been a victim of sterilization. At the age of sixteen, she became a regular
guest on the weekly television show Focus, speaking publicly on issues of the day, with quality education
and student rights becoming her forte.
During her junior year in high school, she organized The Concerned Parents and Students for Quality
Education in Lowndes County, because of the type of instruction offered at a school which showed an
“R” rated movie during the school day to youths from grades seven through twelve. Largely through her
efforts, the principal and superintendent resigned, leading to major change in the county. As a member
of the Alabama Students for Civil Rights, Catherine was selected as a Youth Fellow of the Robert
Kennedy Memorial Foundation where nationwide she advocated for quality education for all children.
As a college student she was one of the five original plaintiffs in Knight v. Alabama along with Dr. Alma
Freeman, Dr. John Gipson, Randy Anderson, and John Knight. She organized the Student Action
Committee at Alabama State University in 1981 which coordinated a statewide march on the Capitol to
protest Governor Fob James’ plan to merge Alabama State University under the proposed University of
Montgomery. That action led to an alliance with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the
university lifting its ban of SCLC activities on ASU’s campus which was instituted in the 1960s. In 1981
SCLC held its national Board meeting at ASU and the Student Action Committee received its charter as a
chapter of SCLC. Later Ms Flowers became the first director of the National Voting Rights Museum in
Selma, Alabama.
Using her leadership abilities, Ms. Flowers decided to enter the education arena as a history teacher to
inspire youth, spending more than thirteen years in the classroom advocating social responsibility and
community service. In 1990 she brought a group of her students from Washington, DC and they
marched the historic route from Selma to Montgomery. The participation of the students was hailed by
the Washington Post. While teaching in North Carolina, she became the first teacher in the history of
the U.S. Department of Education to file a discrimination complaint on behalf of African American and
Native American students. The resolution led to blacks and Native Americans being elevated to positions
of authority within that school system that reflected the makeup of the population, and the elimination
of discriminatory policies. As a result she was approached by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to become
a lead plaintiff in a case they were considering to attack tracking in public schools. Upon moving to
Detroit to teach, she developed a reputation for innovative and effective teaching methods, as well as a
deep commitment to and genuine concern for her students. After a year at Phoenix Academy she was
recruited to teach at the prestigious Renaissance High School. In 2000, Flowers and her students joined
the reenactment of the march from Selma to Montgomery. During this march she met the Pulitzer prizewinning historian Taylor Branch. She assisted him with research and interviews for his book, At Canaan’s
Edge, which chronicles the Civil Rights Movement. Her knowledge of civil rights history led historian
Hasan Jeffries to ask for help with his book, Bloody Lowndes. He noted her work in the area of civil
rights in the book’s epilogue. In 2010 during the 45th commemoration of the Selma to Montgomery
march she worked quietly with community leaders to ensure that the march would continue once it
began despite the issues within the leadership of SCLC. Coordinating food, lodging, community
participation and mass meetings, Ms. Flowers was credited by SCLC staff for enabling the completion of
the march.
Her awards and recognitions include recipient of the Interreligious and International Peace Council’s
Crown of Peace Award for Exemplary Leadership in Reconciliation and Peacemaking in 2004; The
Dorothy L. Height Award for Social Work from Delta Sigma Theta, Inc. Montgomery Alumnae Chapter in
2011; inducted in the Pi Sigma Alpha National Political Science Honor Society, Alpha Gamma Chapter in
2013; and 2014 she became a member of Delta Sigma Theta, Inc.
Ms. Flowers still considers herself a teacher by profession but an activist at heart. Throughout her life,
she has always been at the forefront of social justice. She feels that she has been called to champion
social and personal responsibility, and to model solutions to poverty by strengthening families and
communities, as well as give voice to the needs of the less fortunate. The death of her father, a wellrespected community leader and strong advocate for the poor, led her to return home to Alabama to
rededicate her life to addressing the needs of the people in her native Lowndes County. She believes
that the work of the ACRE, will serve as a model providing solutions for rural poverty that could be
applied throughout the United States. Her testimony before an independent expert of the United
Nations on the raw sewage issue in Lowndes County was part of the Report of the Special Rapporteur
on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, Catarina de Albuquerque to the United
Nations Council on Human Rights in August of 2011.
The accomplishments of Ms. Flowers have been chronicled in publications such as The Washington Post,
The Detroit Free Press, The New York Times, The New Republic and the Montgomery Advertiser.
Televangelist Creflo Dollar won a regional Emmy Award for a television he did highlighting her work.
Currently she is writing a book about her life and commitment to serving the poor, as well as a children’s
book about Lowndes County’s fight for voting rights. She is a candidate for a Masters of Art in History at
the University of Nebraska at Kearney.