AURORA PRIZE

 

 

The San Francisco Bay Area is famous for the Golden Gate Bridge, Silicon Valley and its indelible role in California’s short history. It is also a place with a rich Armenian presence through which the likes of famed Armenian-American author William Saroyan passed. So, it may not be a surprise that a district in the Bay Area, which includes San Francisco, is represented in Congress by Armenian-American Jackie Speier.

 

Speier is a United States congresswoman who belongs to the Democratic Party and is a strong supporter of environmental causes and issues of social justice. She has made a name for herself by being an outspoken proponent of women’s rights, especially on the issue of a woman’s right to choose.

 

 

Speier narrowly escaped death when she traveled to Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978 on a fact-finding mission because a cult of Americans calling themselves the “People’s Temple” had moved there to live in the jungle. On their way to the plane, she and her colleagues were ambushed by the cult’s members. Speier was shot five times and waited almost 24 hours for help. The members of “People’s Temple” all committed suicide later that day.