Can you honor Pamela Anndagha as she has died?

Pamela Anndagha passed from her body on Wednesday morning 03/03/2022 in her sleep & at her home in Camden, South Carolina. 

From Andrea DC: Due to the generosity & care from her landlord, Pam was able to receive final hospice in her own home, which was her most fervent wish. If you are reading this for the very first time (only), it turns out there are still cremation costs of about $400 above the original goal we set. When we figure out the technicalities of how to raise the number, we will. Till then, ANY donation, no matter the size is still welcome. Thanks. 

05 March 2022 - THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH FOR EVERYONE's KIND & GENEROUS SUPPORT in real funds, cards, and prayers. For more background:  PeACe EnCamPMeNt HERstOry PrOjEcT.

On the last night, Deb was able to offer words of love and encouragement as caregiver Rachael C. held up the phone on speaker. We feel peace knowing that her suffering is over, and that we were able to remind her of all the good she had created in the world, the beautiful daughter and grand-daughter to whom we committed to, the love that surrounded her in Camden and beyond, and even the power of the journey that created such a reconnection & re-weaving between women who had not spoken in 20, even 30 years.

 

03/01/2022 UPDATE:  Andrea got back last night from 5 days with Pamela in South Carolina, whose condition has been deteriorating greatly in the last 24 hours. Now we've met the actual caregivers and seen the care she's getting in her own home after leaving the hospital's emergency treatment for stage 4 breast cancer (not being forced into an institution was her great wish  & the reason this fundraiser was started - along with travel costs to get her daughter to her), we hope to raise enough money to give $200 to each of the 4 caregivers who are not funded by Hospice. They deserve to have their way too low wages supplemented as partial thanks for their loving & greatly needed attention to Pamela. There are also still cremation & funeral costs,

 

Thanks IN FULL to donations from this Go Fund Me, daughter Rachel was able to visit in mid-February while Pam  was still strong and lucid enough to give cooking directions for their favorite meals from childhood, among other. Please contact us directly for more information.

So it’s clear: Gratefully, I was able to fund my own trip to Camden. Costs were low because I had magically found Delta Skymiles for the flight, was picked up and delivered by Pam's friends, who fed me while I was there. Actually Debra Zeleznik also sent the most amazing box of DELICIOUS ready-made Quinoa bowls, brown rice, and INCREDIBLE Indian food, among other stuff.

THE ORIGINAL  January 2022  FUNDING APPEAL: Our dear friend Pamela Anndagha is now in her final weeks of life, and we are raising funds and emotional support. Our goal has been to support her transition in the way she can best maintain her voice, dignity and as much independence as possible. It has been of greatest importance to Pam on her journey. As a lesbian-feminist activist, trail blazing community organizer, and the first successful parent litigant to win FULL CUSTODY as an OUT lesbian in New York State (a case which also sadly took its toll on her financial and mental health), Pam has been a fierce & longtime advocate for underrepresented and underserved folks, especially for women in crisis, and now aspires to that for herself

 

2/23/22 UPDATE: Thx to 1st round of generous donations, the visit with daughter Rachel was able to happen as soon as possible (Feb. 12th) and was “so beautiful” Pam said. She expressed amazement and deep gratitude that it could happen. 

 

Pam is now being given morphine by the hospice caregivers when the pain gets too intense & she is increasingly inconsistent mentally. Sometimes clear. Sometimes confused.

 

TOMORROW, Feb. 24, I fly to her in South Carolina (on Delta miles) to be there myself. Linda & Pat are donating their hours to do what they can, and we're still raising funds for food, utilities and the necessary caregiver hours not funded by hospice. If you have ANY amount to give, or energy to quickly send a card - ALL OF IT is a deep kindness for a person who has been struggling on multiple levels. Every gesture & intention MATTERS … Cards & letters (even from anyone who reads this) are also greatly needed &  break the solitude that surrounds her most of her day: 1201A Mill St. - Apt. A - Camden, SC 29020

 

 

Pams 2008 Interview on the PeaceCampHerstory website  

 

Pam unfortunately needs more than hospice can provide to keep her safely at home, where she desperately wants to be. Her needs are minimal, though critical. She needs 24/7 care, money for food, phone (her only connection to the “outside”), rent and some other basic needs. We are so grateful for the donated spiritual and physical care and coordination by her friends in Camden, Pat & Linda.

 

Pam is a living legacy. She is the embodiment of her chosen name “Anndagha”, Keeper of the Flame,  cherished by her neighbors, co workers and friends. She had become a registered nurse in  upstate NY, but most recently, was a supervisor at her neighborhood Piggly Wiggly in Camden, SC, being forced to resign in December as paralysis from her metastasized cancer began to set in.

Pam is also the mother of Rachel Flanigan, a brilliant doctoral candidate living with a teenage daughter on a subsistence honorarium in her last years as a graduate student. Pam and Rachel want to be with each other while Pam is still alive. Part of the funds raised will facilitate Rachel’s visit.  If additional funds are raised, the money will also be spent on the healing support of a "life and death" counselor who has deep experience and wisdom.

On Imbolc/Candlemas this past Feb 1-3, we celebrated Ireland’s Goddess Brighid by holding a 49 hour “rolling ritual” of love and power to honor Pam’s spirit in our various locations around the world. We invited women to become virtual “Ingheau Anndagha," Daughters of the Flame (from whom Pam took her name in the 1990's). 

 

Inspired by  the traditional 9 "Daughters of the Flame," temple priestesses for Ireland’s Goddess Brighid ( ...of fertility, the hearth, of poetry and smithcraft ... and healing) we met in various groups of 2 to 9, over 49 hours, to share readings, and sing together, and light our candles in order to honor Pam as she comes to terms with what is happening  ... as well as the power of women as Keepers of the Fire in our ongoing fight for Equity and Justice, throughout the generations.  Pam is really struggling ... but it felt significant and full of meaning to find each other even on zoom and come together again in this way after more than 30 years.

 

Living in Geneva, NY, Pamela Anndagha was pivotal in helping to create the local Women's Resource Center, an organization in direct service to low-income women of that community,  and in 1984 she became the Media Coordinator at the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice, outside the former Seneca Army Depot in Romulus. There is a currently active Facebook page of the same name.   In the spirit of the Encampment's commitment to the agency and value of each woman holding their own Truth, and an awareness of how some in the surrounding towns referred to them, she often wore a T-shirt that read, "Not a spokesman for the girls at the Ladies Camp."

 

You can hear part of Pam's oral herstory, recorded in 2008, for the archive of interviews videotaped by the PeACe EnCamPMeNt HERstOry PrOjEcT . Visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZhMaf91Dr8.

 

 

During it’s first year in 1983, Pam was a Community Dialog Facilitator - (traditionally called "outreach"...a shift in construct that Pam developed). The “Peace Camp" was an ongoing presence dedicated to education & eco-feminist non-violent civil disobedience-based protest of our nation's intersectional paradigms of oppression that gave rise to and supported the proliferation of the nuclear arms race insanity. (See Ynestra King, Pam McCallister …)

 

In her own words, Pam describes her social and political justice work prior to 1983:

"I was a volunteer crisis interview counselor for Rape Crisis Service of the Finger Lakes. Later I became the paid coordinator of that service. When it ended, I wrote the original grant to fund the Rape Crisis Service of Ontario and Seneca Counties through Planned Parenthood. Created all aspects of its program; mission, training, recruitment, media, public awareness, and all grant reporting.

I volunteered as a crisis worker and founding member of the Domestic Violence Task Force of the Finger Lakes, providing emergency housing for womyn in danger; taking them into my home or transporting them to safe space before a shelter existed. I worked with local law enforcement to encourage them to contact volunteers from the task force when domestic violence calls came in. In earlier times, police had treated calls differently, and often charges were not filed. Womyn were often intimidated and afraid to call. I continued to respond to calls from local police agencies for years after a shelter was available. They had my name listed first, so i received calls 24 hours a day.

I worked with the local Human Rights Commission and NAACP to test housing and employment discrimination. As a white volunteer, I was paired with a Black volunteer, and we each applied for the same apartment or job, then reported obvious racial disparities. Worked with Martini Luther King Commission locally. Worked also as a volunteer case manager for AIDS Rochester, providing help with access to services, financial, medical and support.

I talked also with clients’ families and tried to connect them to services. Often, though, clients had been disowned by their families. They became part of mine. Rachel can remember Earl. He was at our house often, having Thanksgiving dinner with us, and at my parents’ home as well.

Also did some media work for AIDS Rochester. I remember particularly some TV appearances with a man who had been kicked out of his church, disowned and condemned by a congregation who were afraid of him and felt he endangered them because of his infection. We talked about it on TV, while sharing some McDonald’s fries. People noticed that we were eating out of the same container and that sparked discussion. Maybe that resonates with people who recall those times.

Many other people did all these things too. I don’t think we can rank experiences of oppression, or quantify quality of service . We each do what we can.

I am a very private person. I don’t really want to appeal to total strangers, but if people feel some personal connection to the stories I'm relating, then that makes sense to me. We all did what we could and many did, and some do much more than me. I would ask those who remember me to please remember my daughter Rachel. Please surround her with love and hold her in your arms for me. Please help me to keep her safe.” -Pam Anndagha 

 

Your donations of any amount are so deeply appreciated by Pamela and Rachel. Please help Pam stay safely at home and thank you that Rachel was able spend a wonderful and meaningful time with her mom before she passes.

 

There are incredibly few photos of Pamela, except as a media liaison in local newspapers, but we have found that many of those have not been digitized yet. Here is one where she is helping to put up the frame of the outhouses built toward the front of the land, outside the farmhouse in 1984, as the Encampment became more permanent after the first summer. As per the "fall-back decision" at the Albany Regional Meeting in October, 1983.