We have suffered a series of loss recently in Nevada. In the space of just a month, three women who were smart, brave and caring left us. Peggy Pierce, a tireless assemblywoman, Sierra Club and labor leader, died after years of struggle with breast cancer. Jo Anne Garrett, who helped stop federal government contractors from shoving the MX Missile down our throat and then formed the morale and ethical backbone in resistance to the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s $15 billion gamble to suck rural Nevada dry, died near her beautiful home just outside the Great Basin National Park, 180 miles north of here. And finally, Elyssa Rosen, who helped build the awareness of what the modern mining industry is doing to our state, died in a diving accident half way around the world.
It is perhaps just a tragic coincidence that all three of these committed people were women, and were conservationists, and had deep and lasting ties to Nevada. They could have been anyone. But the fact that these women stood up, stood strong, and spoke truth to powerful institutions dominated by men, suggests something fundamental about who we are. And why no one should be ignored because of their gender.