Page 260 - SpringBoard_ELA_Grade8_Flipbook

Political role
9 Mrs. Maathai has been arrested several times for campaigning against deforestation in Africa.
10 In the late 1980s, she became a prominent opponent of a skyscraper planned for the middle of the Kenyan capital’s main park—Uhuru Park.
11 She was vilified by Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi’s government but succeeded in thwarting the plans.
12 More recently, she evolved into a leading campaigner on social matters.
13 Once she was beaten unconscious by heavy-handed police. On another occasion
she led a demonstration of naked women.
14 In 1997, she ran for president against Mr. Moi but made little impact.
Esteem
15 But in elections in 2002, she was elected as MP with 98% of the votes as part of an opposition coalition which swept to power after Mr. Moi stepped down.
16 She was appointed as a deputy environment minister in 2003.
17 Mrs. Maathai says she usually uses a biblical analogy of creation to stress the
importance of the environment.
18 “God created the planet from Monday to Friday. On Saturday he created human beings.
19 “The truth of the matter is ... if man was created on Tuesday, I usually say, he would have been dead on Wednesday, because there would not have been the essential elements that he needs to survive,” she told the BBC.
20 The Nobel Peace Prize committee praised her for taking “a holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights and women’s rights in particular.”
21 She thinks globally and acts locally, they said.
22 She was born in 1940 and has three children.
23 Her former husband, whom she divorced in the 1980s, was said to have remarked
that she was “too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn and too hard to control.”
My Notes
vilified: subjected to vicious statements
thwarting: preventing
coalition: an alliance of people or groups
holistic: emphasizing the whole of something, as opposed to its parts
sustainable: able to be maintained
aCTIvITy 3.17
continued
Unit 3 • The Challenge to Make a Difference 233
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