In Occupied Palestine, Loving the Children is the Easy Part

Barbara Lubin was 22 years old in 1967 when she walked into the Philadelphia military induction center along with 250 young men-and was told to strip. A dedicated and unusually daring draft counselor, Lubin had dressed in drag and hidden her hair in preparation for infiltrating an entry point into the U.S. military. As she peeled off her clothing, leaflets opposing the Vietnam War spilled from her undergarments. Her memories of that success are still vivid: "The sergeants were so enraged that they marched me out with bayonets and arrested me, but not before I was able to pass out hundreds of leaflets."

Children’s champion: On a visit to Gaza in January, Barbara Lubin of Berkeley’s Middle East Children’s Alliance poses with a family. (Photos by Sharon Wallace)

Over the subsequent 40 years-35 of them spent in Berkeley-Lubin's activism has spanned the globe: from the disability rights movement in Berkeley, to the anti-apartheid struggle centered at U.C. Berkeley, to the Bay Area Committee to Support the People of El Salvador. But since co-founding the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA) in 1988, she has focused her formidable energies on directing the work of this small Berkeley nonprofit dedicated to a better quality of life for Palestinian, Iraqi, and Lebanese families and children.

Read the rest of Micky Duxbury's profile of Barbara and MECA here.