For decades, Gillian Furst organized strategic meetings out of her living room, offering rank-and-file workers a safe haven from corporate oversight and a vision for the future of the labor movement.
She would gently lend her ear to every person in attendance, but could be a vigorous taskmaster while leading the charge for change, friends said. Furst, an international union, civil and women's rights activist, was instrumental in founding the Minnesota chapter of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), responsible for stomping out a wave of corruption across the Teamsters union and making sweeping reforms for workers' rights. She died July 20 of an apparent stroke. She was 81.
"She was the sparkplug that showed people you don't have to sit back and take it; you could change it," said Doug McGilp, friend and fellow Local 1145 Teamster. "Her name isn't that well known, but it should be."
Furst, a British citizen, was born in 1933 in Lahore, then a part of India under British control. She followed in the footsteps of her labor activist grandmother and father, a British civil servant and supporter of Indian independence, after moving to England at age 11.
She went on to graduate from the London School of Economics before getting arrested in her first act of civil disobedience during a peaceful protest in support of nuclear disarmament. A judge jailed her for 30 days after Furst refused to pay a piddly 5-pound fine.
Advocacy became more than a hobby when Furst, a socialist, was named secretary of her Labor Party branch at BBC-TV, where she produced exposés on injustices for a current affairs program. In 1970, the BBC sent Furst to the U.S. to capture the mood after four students at Kent State University were killed protesting the Vietnam War.
She tracked down a New York journalist named Randy Furst for help finding sources. He opened his Rolodex for her, along with his heart. The couple relocated to Minneapolis the next year with her three children from her first marriage, and wed during Randy's lunch break, between newspaper assignments.
In Minneapolis, Gillian Furst grew entrenched in the causes of civil rights, women's rights, American Indian and gay rights. She advocated fiercely for all marginalized groups and fought tooth and nail for the underdog.
