Third Actor Karen Friedeborn has devoted her life to community organizing and guiding young people toward productive lives. Drawn to social justice causes while she was still in high school, she has never wavered in her commitment to service: it’s been a thread that weaves through every decade of her life, dedicating herself to an astonishing number of worthy causes and organizations, many of which she founded. “There are two important days in everyone’s life,” Karen told us, recalling an adage she once heard. “The first is when you were born. The second is when you discover why you were born.” Early on, Karen discovered her life’s purpose: “I really like helping other people find why they were put on earth. My life’s work is not at all altruistic. I truly like to help people find their personal power. It gives me great joy.” How, we wondered, does someone develop and sustain such a keen sense of purpose and commitment?
In 1970, Karen was just 14 when she determined to start a high school environmental action group. “I had read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring exposing the harm of pesticides, and my family had taught me to care about the natural world. Then there was a teacher who believed in me when many others didn’t. I think that kind of support and encouragement is crucial for young people. I learned I could make a difference.” By the time Karen was a senior, she had organized an Earth Day celebration, a “teach-in” at the high school and a municipal recycling program, the first in Massachusetts, and was already volunteering with a welfare rights organization.
For college, Karen made an unusual choice: inspired by the work of the American Indian Movement which advocated for the rights of urban Indians, Karen attended Bemidji State College in Minnesota, which was surrounded by Ojibwe Indian reserves. From the Ojibwe people, she learned a whole new perspective on our relationship to the natural world. She also saw racism for the first time, something she had never noticed in her almost all white, Christian hometown.
She completed her college degree at Cornell, where aside from studying, she found time to work with Ecology Action to successfully fight a highway through Ithaca and become a founding member of a storefront organization promoting alternative energy, local food production, and a local bartering system.
Unstoppable, Karen was drawn to the national stage during the 1980 election, working for the Citizens Party and Barry Commoner for President. At the same time, she met her future husband in a Cornell class serendipitously called the Helping Relationship. “I don’t know what he was doing there since this was a kind of social work class, and he was a horticulture major, but I’m glad he was there.” At this point, she was faced with a major decision that would determine her path: the Citizens Party had invited her to work with them on the national level in Washington DC, but she had just met the love of her life. Then Reagan won by a landslide and the Citizen’s Party lost badly, drawing votes away from Jimmy Carter, and she became deeply disillusioned with national organizing. Instead she chose marriage, life in Ithaca, and working on the local level, where she learned she could make more of a difference, one change at a time, working at the Ithaca Youth Bureau.
Karen and her husband designed and built a house where they still live. Although he has never been involved in her work— he owns a tree business— he’s been more than supportive. “My husband’s happy place is in the garden. He has that grounding.” With two children of their own, they informally took in six other children who needed the support into their own family. Today, they are a close extended family.
Karen is a Quaker and believes deeply that “there is that of God in everyone”, a Quaker tenet that’s a driving force for Karen. “It sustains me. It’s a discipline that helps keep me on my path.”
After 35 years with the Ithaca Youth Bureau, planning, coordinating, and developing programs: a youth council, a municipal youth jobs program, a youth-run cafe, a college Discovery program to name a few, Karen retired in 2015. But she hadn’t abandoned her passion for service. She once again became involved in direct political activism, phone calling, texting and letter writing to turn out voters and joined a campaign to elect a state senator.
She was drawn to Third Act when she and her husband tuned in to a national call with Bill McKibben. She likes the clarity of the objectives, the creative energy, and the tone of joy and humor that reminds her of her early street organizing days. Now as a member of Third Act Upstate New York, she hopes to help her 19th US Congressional District elect Josh Riley. And she is especially excited about the Uplift Democracy “Senior to Senior” Project. She figures all those years working with teens may come in handy.