Remembering Genny Nelson
Genevieve 'Genny' Nelson March 1, 1952 - Aug. 19, 2020
Genevieve "Genny" Nelson was born in 1952 in Lewiston, Idaho, and studied at St. Mary's Academy and then Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. In the 1970s, Nelson and her friend Sandy Gooch ran a women's center named Boxcar Bertha's in Portland. When the federal grant that funded Boxcar Bertha's ran out, Nelson and Gooch, established an alternative to the soup kitchens and missions that they felt to be paternalistic and impersonal. They opened Sisters of the Road in 1979 where the cafe provided a meal for $1.25 and a drink for $.25 to unhoused people - a price that did not change with inflation.
In 1987, Nelson successfully lobbied the U.S. Congress to pass a law allowing unhoused people to use food stamps to pay for prepared meals in nonprofit dining facilities. For decades she served many roles; from community organizer, to cook, to Executive Director. Genny always led with a gentle, yet formidable presence, centering Sisters’ work on the core principles of gentle personalism, nonviolence, and the practice of dining with dignity. Genny retired from Sisters of the Road in 2009.
Genny Nelson embodied community-led organizing through every aspect of her activism–reminding us always, to not do for others what they can do for themselves.
Here is a message from Betsy Glickman, former Associate Director:
“Love is the strongest word that I had ever heard as a child, and I never understood the full meaning of until I became an adult. Love, to me, is something that is tangible. It is a feeling that can be so hard and also deeply rewarding. Genny Nelson loved deeply, truly, and without judgment. Genny could walk into a room and you could feel her love anywhere in that room, and after she left, it lingered. It was tangible. Her legacy is rooted in love. One of the beliefs that Sisters started with is that love is free and should be given out as such. That all people deserve to feel loved. Food is a love language that resonates across race, class, language, gender, sexuality, religious views, and trauma. Access to nourishing food, prepared with love, served with love, in a space that is loving, is a gift that Genny gave to an uncountable number of people. People who typically don’t feel as though they count. The loss of Genny is something that I personally will feel for the rest of my life, but the legacy that has been left inspires my passion to continue to help lead in an organization that is rooted in love. Genny embarrassed me in one of our last in-person meetings and told me, a phrase that she had said to me so many times over the years of knowing her: “Always risk loving someone. They are worth it, and so are you.
