Meet Louise Oncley
Looking for inspiration? Look no further than our Member Spotlight Member, Louise Oncley!
Louis Oncley has been a DWBC member for more than a dozen years. Prior to retirement, she spent her career in civil rights enforcement in Pennsylvania. Right now, she’s deeply concerned because, “I’m seeing my life’s work torn apart.”
DWBC: Louise, looking back on a lifetime of work in civil rights protection, what are the things you hold dearest?
Louise: “I think this country has been until recently on a trajectory of improvement. When you work for improvement and you see it happening, it’s a great feeling. It’s sad to watch it being taken apart, and I do hope that the younger people coming in realize what it’s taken to get where we are and fight what’s been happening recently. But I think it’s tough when this administration is also removing any historical information from our schools, from our museums, from our public life, so then it becomes difficult to understand where we’ve been, how we got to where we are and where we need to be going.”
DWBC: What should we be doing differently, or more of, right now?
Louise: “Just being more involved. We can’t let this go on. We just can’t. I’ve been working with the Boulder Democratic Party platform team, and we’ve always kind of concentrated on what we’d like to see better, but we never thought that we’d have to include in the platform things like balance of powers, due process. We always sort of took those as a given, and they’re not a given any more.”
DWBC: If you were to look back to your younger self, or a young person sitting next to you, what advice would you give?
Louise: “To stay informed. And stay involved. I have young voting-age grandsons, and I worry about where they get their information. They don’t read a newspaper. They don’t watch mainstream news. They’re doing social media a lot, and it worries me where they get their information, so I try to get involved to some degree and definitely nag them to vote.”
“I hope I can see a turnaround in my lifetime, which is getting shorter and shorter. One of the things I’m happy about is my son. Since he’s retired, he is getting more involved in democratic issues, so I see him taking my place.”
DWBC: What has been the most important thing about being a member of DWBC?
Louise: “Democrats are so much fun to be with, and Democratic Women are great people. I believe in the causes, and there’s good information at the meetings.”
