Jessie Cocks
The seed of a tree is planted in the earth, and the seed is watered, and the seed begins to grow.
The moment she was born, there was a seed planted in Jessie Cocks’ soul and that seed has been nurtured and nourished and, my, how it has grown. While her life has taken many twists along winding paths (with the occasional turn down a darkened alley) she has never encountered a roadblock or a detour. Her path is her path, it belongs to her. Every moment has built upon the next, all leading perfectly to the current moment, where she exists, quite comfortably, thank you.
“I have based my life on non-violence. It’s approaching things from a point of love instead of fear. For me, the truth of the matter is love. It’s unconditional love.” Jessie is a birthright Quaker, a direct descendent of Hicksites--who were Quietist, meaning that they believed in waiting for revelation from God more than finding it in the Bible or from rational thought. They traveled for peace. Founder Elias Hicks was a freethinker, an early abolitionist, a preacher who taught that the leading of the inner light was more authoritative than the text of the Bible.
From an early age, Jessie was tuned in to her heritage.
“I was clearly a Quaker. That resonated for me very early on,” she explains.
Jessie’s father was born in Westbury, Long Island, and his father was William Willets Cocks, who worked in agriculture before becoming a U.S. Congressman from New York.
William was a close friend of President Theodore Roosevelt.
So politics was in Jessie’s blood, too—but more on that later.
By the time Jessie came along, the family had settled in Chester County.
Some of Jessie’s rugged gentleness may originate with a childhood spent handling horses.
“I was born and raised to ride horses,” she explains. “I was riding horses before I was walking. I had a Pinto Pony named Bambi and she was really my nanny. I spent so much time with her. My friends and I would have picnics on that horse. It was like riding a table,” she chuckles.
Jessie suffered a fractured skull and several concussions, but that didn’t deter her from bonding with horses. From the age of about eleven, she was riding race horses. If she happened to get thrown off, her father would encourage her to “get back up there and show it who is boss.” She was also the de facto boss of the farm when she was still very young. She helped train some of the farm workers and assumed responsibilities that most children wouldn’t be able to handle.
She remembers, “It was a very cavalier upbringing.” She recalls that living on the farm was like “living in a fish bowl of race and class.” There was the boardinghouse, where the farm workers who weren’t good enough to work with the horses lived.
Then there was her home, with her Republican working-class parents and three other siblings. On the same social level were the young men who were being taught by her father to work the farm. Then, at the top, were the farm’s owners, who would stop by to watch in on horses.
Jessie bounced between the social classes. On one end of the spectrum, she gained a certain level of worldliness attending the cocktail parties that her parents hosted. On the other end, she rolled up her sleeves and worked side-by-side with farmhands--many of them black, all of them poor. This is where Jessie felt most comfortable.
A trip to a cousin’s ranch in Wyoming had a profound effect on her.
“I was home,” she says simply of being out west, with the breathtaking, wide open spaces. “The west is where it’s at for me.” It helped her tap into another part of her being also.
“I have had a lot of Native American friends and I’ve always felt like I was Native American,” she explains.
As Jessie looks back on it now, her upbringing made for a wonderful education. “The more I learn, the more aware I am that I had a juicy upbringing.” Jessie’s formal education began at the Upland Country Day School in Kennett Square, where she attended school from 1954 to 1960. Then it was on to the Westtown School, a Quaker school that provided more nourishment for her peaceful roots.
It was sometime during grade school when she became fascinated by the teachings of Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Alfred Schweitzer, theological scholar, musician, and doctor.
With the award money from his Nobel Prize, he opened a leprosarium at Lambaréné, his adopted home.
“He spoke to my essence,” she says. “I learned from him that it’s right to live a life of service.” Where Dr. Schweitzer left off, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Picked up.
“Dr. Martin Luther King changed my world,” says Jessie.
“Being a Quaker, his message of peace just resonates. It’s about having respect and love for everyone, even if you disagree with a position. That was my living. I was living my beliefs.” She helped rally fellow students as they participated in the Poor People’s Campaign and the March on Washington. It was a turbulent time.
The Vietnam War frightened her. “Oh, I was totally against it. It was a waste of time, money, and most importantly, lives. I don’t believe in war. Any war is a waste.” Jessie continued to train and ride thoroughbred horses until 1978, but she felt a calling to do more to help improve the world around her.
In 1977, Jessie was a co-founder and the director of the Women’s Resource Center for battered women and children, which is now the Domestic Violence Center.
“It started as a hotline. We had some closet space in a YMCA,” she recalls, “but we quickly became experts on battered women.” She remembers going out to educate people about domestic violence. She would speak in general terms about domestic violence and describe certain warning signs and behaviors.
People would come up afterward and say that Jessie had just Described their own lives.
It was an eye-opening experience for her. Even in bucolic Chester County, there was a serious domestic abuse problem, and not always in families that you think.
“It really cuts across all socio-economic lines. We saw a lot of examples of upper class, white people who were being abused. Leaders in communities are sometimes the worst abusers.
Everybody knows someone who’s being abused. There’s so much domestic abuse in our culture.” Why?
“A dysfunction you’re raised in will always be within you,” she says. “Alcohol and drugs play an important role. It’s passing dysfunction from one generation to the next.” Sadly, the children are the ones who are affected the most.
“Children are like sponges. They absorb all the energy in the room. They know Courtesy photo Jessie Cocks protests nuclear proliferation and nuclear arms testing in the 1980s.
Pictured here is the VW bus with a replica of a cruise missile on top. Jessie co-founded the Chester County Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze, and was the chairperson for Pennsylvania’s campaign as well. Just one cruise missile could have wiped out Chester County.
What’s going on and they feel a responsibility for it.” When those children grow up, they seek partners who are either submissive or abusive and the cycle of dysfunction continues to another generation.
“It’s hard to break the patterns. It takes lots of therapy—good therapy.
It’s important to survive, but it’s also true that that there’s more to life than being a survivor.” Jessie left the Women’s Resource Center in 1980. The United States was a fragile Super Power entering the new decade, with painful memories of the Iran Hostage Crisis still fresh. The United States and the Soviet Union became locked in a nuclear chess match that threatened all of mankind.
Living in United States in the Reagan-era was living in a dangerous place in a dangerous time, especially for those who value peace. There was a challenge to be met.
“I became a workaholic, working for change,” she recalls.
“That seemed to be noble to me at the time.” While Jessie is a pacifist who abhors war, she was a true warrior when it came to fighting for peace. Going back to the teachings of Martin Luther King, she embraced nonviolent action to help the underprivileged and protect the world from nuclear disaster.
An unlikely prisoner, Jessie found herself behind bars when she participated in “Blockade the Bombers” with the Quakers for Peace Affinity Group.
She explains, “Nonviolence is open and honest. If I’m going to protest, I’m going to say that I’m going to do it. You know that you’re going to get arrested if you trespass, and you have to be ready for that.” She co-founded the Chester County Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze and was later the chairperson for the entire Pennsylvania effort. Conferences, fundraising, public speaking, and lobbying for the cause became a part of her life.
Soon, she was cruising around in VW bus that had a lifesize cruise missile replica atop it. The reason? The real cruise missile could have wiped out all of Chester County and then some and President Reagan seemed determined to collect more of them than the Soviet Union.
“One of the greatest challenges for me is to say that I love Ronald Reagan. I may detest his policies as President, but I love him.”
The moment she was born, there was a seed planted in Jessie Cocks’ soul and that seed has been nurtured and nourished and, my, how it has grown. While her life has taken many twists along winding paths (with the occasional turn down a darkened alley) she has never encountered a roadblock or a detour. Her path is her path, it belongs to her. Every moment has built upon the next, all leading perfectly to the current moment, where she exists, quite comfortably, thank you.
“I have based my life on non-violence. It’s approaching things from a point of love instead of fear. For me, the truth of the matter is love. It’s unconditional love.” Jessie is a birthright Quaker, a direct descendent of Hicksites--who were Quietist, meaning that they believed in waiting for revelation from God more than finding it in the Bible or from rational thought. They traveled for peace. Founder Elias Hicks was a freethinker, an early abolitionist, a preacher who taught that the leading of the inner light was more authoritative than the text of the Bible.
From an early age, Jessie was tuned in to her heritage.
“I was clearly a Quaker. That resonated for me very early on,” she explains.
Jessie’s father was born in Westbury, Long Island, and his father was William Willets Cocks, who worked in agriculture before becoming a U.S. Congressman from New York.
William was a close friend of President Theodore Roosevelt.
So politics was in Jessie’s blood, too—but more on that later.
By the time Jessie came along, the family had settled in Chester County.
Some of Jessie’s rugged gentleness may originate with a childhood spent handling horses.
“I was born and raised to ride horses,” she explains. “I was riding horses before I was walking. I had a Pinto Pony named Bambi and she was really my nanny. I spent so much time with her. My friends and I would have picnics on that horse. It was like riding a table,” she chuckles.
Jessie suffered a fractured skull and several concussions, but that didn’t deter her from bonding with horses. From the age of about eleven, she was riding race horses. If she happened to get thrown off, her father would encourage her to “get back up there and show it who is boss.” She was also the de facto boss of the farm when she was still very young. She helped train some of the farm workers and assumed responsibilities that most children wouldn’t be able to handle.
She remembers, “It was a very cavalier upbringing.” She recalls that living on the farm was like “living in a fish bowl of race and class.” There was the boardinghouse, where the farm workers who weren’t good enough to work with the horses lived.
Then there was her home, with her Republican working-class parents and three other siblings. On the same social level were the young men who were being taught by her father to work the farm. Then, at the top, were the farm’s owners, who would stop by to watch in on horses.
Jessie bounced between the social classes. On one end of the spectrum, she gained a certain level of worldliness attending the cocktail parties that her parents hosted. On the other end, she rolled up her sleeves and worked side-by-side with farmhands--many of them black, all of them poor. This is where Jessie felt most comfortable.
A trip to a cousin’s ranch in Wyoming had a profound effect on her.
“I was home,” she says simply of being out west, with the breathtaking, wide open spaces. “The west is where it’s at for me.” It helped her tap into another part of her being also.
“I have had a lot of Native American friends and I’ve always felt like I was Native American,” she explains.
As Jessie looks back on it now, her upbringing made for a wonderful education. “The more I learn, the more aware I am that I had a juicy upbringing.” Jessie’s formal education began at the Upland Country Day School in Kennett Square, where she attended school from 1954 to 1960. Then it was on to the Westtown School, a Quaker school that provided more nourishment for her peaceful roots.
It was sometime during grade school when she became fascinated by the teachings of Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Alfred Schweitzer, theological scholar, musician, and doctor.
With the award money from his Nobel Prize, he opened a leprosarium at Lambaréné, his adopted home.
“He spoke to my essence,” she says. “I learned from him that it’s right to live a life of service.” Where Dr. Schweitzer left off, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Picked up.
“Dr. Martin Luther King changed my world,” says Jessie.
“Being a Quaker, his message of peace just resonates. It’s about having respect and love for everyone, even if you disagree with a position. That was my living. I was living my beliefs.” She helped rally fellow students as they participated in the Poor People’s Campaign and the March on Washington. It was a turbulent time.
The Vietnam War frightened her. “Oh, I was totally against it. It was a waste of time, money, and most importantly, lives. I don’t believe in war. Any war is a waste.” Jessie continued to train and ride thoroughbred horses until 1978, but she felt a calling to do more to help improve the world around her.
In 1977, Jessie was a co-founder and the director of the Women’s Resource Center for battered women and children, which is now the Domestic Violence Center.
“It started as a hotline. We had some closet space in a YMCA,” she recalls, “but we quickly became experts on battered women.” She remembers going out to educate people about domestic violence. She would speak in general terms about domestic violence and describe certain warning signs and behaviors.
People would come up afterward and say that Jessie had just Described their own lives.
It was an eye-opening experience for her. Even in bucolic Chester County, there was a serious domestic abuse problem, and not always in families that you think.
“It really cuts across all socio-economic lines. We saw a lot of examples of upper class, white people who were being abused. Leaders in communities are sometimes the worst abusers.
Everybody knows someone who’s being abused. There’s so much domestic abuse in our culture.” Why?
“A dysfunction you’re raised in will always be within you,” she says. “Alcohol and drugs play an important role. It’s passing dysfunction from one generation to the next.” Sadly, the children are the ones who are affected the most.
“Children are like sponges. They absorb all the energy in the room. They know Courtesy photo Jessie Cocks protests nuclear proliferation and nuclear arms testing in the 1980s.
Pictured here is the VW bus with a replica of a cruise missile on top. Jessie co-founded the Chester County Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze, and was the chairperson for Pennsylvania’s campaign as well. Just one cruise missile could have wiped out Chester County.
What’s going on and they feel a responsibility for it.” When those children grow up, they seek partners who are either submissive or abusive and the cycle of dysfunction continues to another generation.
“It’s hard to break the patterns. It takes lots of therapy—good therapy.
It’s important to survive, but it’s also true that that there’s more to life than being a survivor.” Jessie left the Women’s Resource Center in 1980. The United States was a fragile Super Power entering the new decade, with painful memories of the Iran Hostage Crisis still fresh. The United States and the Soviet Union became locked in a nuclear chess match that threatened all of mankind.
Living in United States in the Reagan-era was living in a dangerous place in a dangerous time, especially for those who value peace. There was a challenge to be met.
“I became a workaholic, working for change,” she recalls.
“That seemed to be noble to me at the time.” While Jessie is a pacifist who abhors war, she was a true warrior when it came to fighting for peace. Going back to the teachings of Martin Luther King, she embraced nonviolent action to help the underprivileged and protect the world from nuclear disaster.
An unlikely prisoner, Jessie found herself behind bars when she participated in “Blockade the Bombers” with the Quakers for Peace Affinity Group.
She explains, “Nonviolence is open and honest. If I’m going to protest, I’m going to say that I’m going to do it. You know that you’re going to get arrested if you trespass, and you have to be ready for that.” She co-founded the Chester County Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze and was later the chairperson for the entire Pennsylvania effort. Conferences, fundraising, public speaking, and lobbying for the cause became a part of her life.
Soon, she was cruising around in VW bus that had a lifesize cruise missile replica atop it. The reason? The real cruise missile could have wiped out all of Chester County and then some and President Reagan seemed determined to collect more of them than the Soviet Union.
“One of the greatest challenges for me is to say that I love Ronald Reagan. I may detest his policies as President, but I love him.”
She co-founded the American Peace Test, an international organization that promoted nonviolent resistance to stop nuclear testing.
Once again, she found herself journeying out west, but this time it wasn’t to the comfortable environment of her cousin’s farm. She established an American Peace Test office near the Nevada Test Site, which was the stage for more than 900 nuclear blasts, provided most of the iconic images from the nuclear era. It was established in 1951, in the embryonic days of the Cold War.
Jailed several more times for peaceful protest, Cocks found a way to fight for justice while remaining at peace with those who opposed her.
“It’s about finding a place where you can connect with someone, a respectful, compassionate place so that you can resolve the issue. It’s so important to approach things with a positive attitude. You have to approach change in your life or in your community with an open heart and a positive attitude. That’s key.” In many ways, the Nevada Test Site served as an intersection of Jessie’s life. The nonviolent protests at the test site were straight out of the Martin Luther King playbook. Here, Jessie met and worked along with Civil Rights legend Cesar Chavez, who championed the cause of the farm workers that she had worked alongside as a child. And the peace movement allowed her to develop the skills necessary to run a grass-roots campaign, akin to a political campaign.
She organized and led thousands of people in nonviolent resistance over the years.
She explains the importance of trying to bring change to the world.
“I feel like, if I helped just one battered woman, then that was enough. I get so much out of doing that service. It makes the Universe happy, or God, or Buddha, or whatever you believe. Mother Earth certainly responds to that.” Between 1987 and 1989, Jessie worked as a Las Vegas Catholic Worker volunteer. Once again, she found herself behind bars when she was jailed because she and three others blockaded a city bulldozer that was going to destroy the makeshift “homes” of destitute citizens in a tent city.
She was a member of Carl Sagan’s “think tank” on building mass movement for social change.
Jessie attended and led numerous workshops on nonviolence.
She made an appearance on “The Phil Donahue Show” to discuss the topic in 1988. She served as an advisor for a scene in the movie “Nichtbreaker” about protests at the gate of the Nevada Test Site, meeting stars Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez.
Eventually, Jessie and that replica of the cruise missile ended up in Washington D.C. for further protests against nuclear testing. Proving her skills as a communicator, she served as a liaison between the protesters and the Washington D.C. police and the Secret Service.
By 1990, the world was moving faster than ever and the changes were coming quickly. The Reagan-era was over. In the aftermath of Glasnost, the Soviet Union was set to crumble. The computer age arrived.
After spending the better part of a decade fighting for her causes, Jessie found herself turning inward.
She became involved with healing, hypnotherapy, and SpiritBody and Reiki. She immersed herself in learning. She studied the science of intuition and participated in Sisterhood of the shields with Amy Lee, an Iroquois medicine woman, and tried Living Dance.
In 2000, George W. Bush became President. For people like Jessie, the world was turning more dangerous again.
“It’s a terrifying statement that an election could be stolen that way, that we let something so undemocratic happen.
He’s the most dangerous President we’ve had. He has undermined the country’s reputation as a caring, compassionate country, and he’s done more damage than we even know yet. If Al Gore had been President, global warming would have been addressed immediately. We wouldn’t be in the predicament that we’re in in Iraq. We’d have better healthcare for children.” She decided to enter politics at the local level, becoming a Democratic leader in Kennett Square. She led the “Coalition of Good Government” candidates as they campaigned for four seats on the Kennett Borough Council, and worked to help other County Democrats get elected.
When times get hard, she believes, that’s when people need to stand up and stand together. “It’s a call for people to make a change, for them to make a difference in their family, community, or the world. You don’t have to be a world leader to make a difference.” When she looks back at her career of activism, she takes some pride in knowing that her activism was really just her leading her life the way that she was supposed to lead it.
“If nothing else, if I didn’t change policy or stop the arms race, at least I made a change in the people who know me.
If you believe in something, you can go do it. You can make it happen.” It starts with a seed. A seed is planted. A tree grows.
Once again, she found herself journeying out west, but this time it wasn’t to the comfortable environment of her cousin’s farm. She established an American Peace Test office near the Nevada Test Site, which was the stage for more than 900 nuclear blasts, provided most of the iconic images from the nuclear era. It was established in 1951, in the embryonic days of the Cold War.
Jailed several more times for peaceful protest, Cocks found a way to fight for justice while remaining at peace with those who opposed her.
“It’s about finding a place where you can connect with someone, a respectful, compassionate place so that you can resolve the issue. It’s so important to approach things with a positive attitude. You have to approach change in your life or in your community with an open heart and a positive attitude. That’s key.” In many ways, the Nevada Test Site served as an intersection of Jessie’s life. The nonviolent protests at the test site were straight out of the Martin Luther King playbook. Here, Jessie met and worked along with Civil Rights legend Cesar Chavez, who championed the cause of the farm workers that she had worked alongside as a child. And the peace movement allowed her to develop the skills necessary to run a grass-roots campaign, akin to a political campaign.
She organized and led thousands of people in nonviolent resistance over the years.
She explains the importance of trying to bring change to the world.
“I feel like, if I helped just one battered woman, then that was enough. I get so much out of doing that service. It makes the Universe happy, or God, or Buddha, or whatever you believe. Mother Earth certainly responds to that.” Between 1987 and 1989, Jessie worked as a Las Vegas Catholic Worker volunteer. Once again, she found herself behind bars when she was jailed because she and three others blockaded a city bulldozer that was going to destroy the makeshift “homes” of destitute citizens in a tent city.
She was a member of Carl Sagan’s “think tank” on building mass movement for social change.
Jessie attended and led numerous workshops on nonviolence.
She made an appearance on “The Phil Donahue Show” to discuss the topic in 1988. She served as an advisor for a scene in the movie “Nichtbreaker” about protests at the gate of the Nevada Test Site, meeting stars Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez.
Eventually, Jessie and that replica of the cruise missile ended up in Washington D.C. for further protests against nuclear testing. Proving her skills as a communicator, she served as a liaison between the protesters and the Washington D.C. police and the Secret Service.
By 1990, the world was moving faster than ever and the changes were coming quickly. The Reagan-era was over. In the aftermath of Glasnost, the Soviet Union was set to crumble. The computer age arrived.
After spending the better part of a decade fighting for her causes, Jessie found herself turning inward.
She became involved with healing, hypnotherapy, and SpiritBody and Reiki. She immersed herself in learning. She studied the science of intuition and participated in Sisterhood of the shields with Amy Lee, an Iroquois medicine woman, and tried Living Dance.
In 2000, George W. Bush became President. For people like Jessie, the world was turning more dangerous again.
“It’s a terrifying statement that an election could be stolen that way, that we let something so undemocratic happen.
He’s the most dangerous President we’ve had. He has undermined the country’s reputation as a caring, compassionate country, and he’s done more damage than we even know yet. If Al Gore had been President, global warming would have been addressed immediately. We wouldn’t be in the predicament that we’re in in Iraq. We’d have better healthcare for children.” She decided to enter politics at the local level, becoming a Democratic leader in Kennett Square. She led the “Coalition of Good Government” candidates as they campaigned for four seats on the Kennett Borough Council, and worked to help other County Democrats get elected.
When times get hard, she believes, that’s when people need to stand up and stand together. “It’s a call for people to make a change, for them to make a difference in their family, community, or the world. You don’t have to be a world leader to make a difference.” When she looks back at her career of activism, she takes some pride in knowing that her activism was really just her leading her life the way that she was supposed to lead it.
“If nothing else, if I didn’t change policy or stop the arms race, at least I made a change in the people who know me.
If you believe in something, you can go do it. You can make it happen.” It starts with a seed. A seed is planted. A tree grows.
No comments:
Post a Comment