Editor’s note: Brooke Malloy is the Executive Director of the Phyllis B. Frank Rockland County Pride Center.
What is happening in Rockland County right now is not a resurgence of anything. It is the same old machinery grinding in plain sight, the one every woman in leadership has learned to navigate without ever needing to name it. We recognize the pattern immediately. The shift in a voice. The correction disguised as concern. The expectation that we will absorb other people’s comfort and swallow our own truth. The instinct to classify us as the problem rather than look at the harm we are describing. The only people surprised by what women are saying out loud right now are the ones who benefited from our quiet.
Before we look ahead, we need to understand the ground beneath us. Rockland did not become a place shaped by justice or progress by accident. Women built that foundation. Women held the line. Women carried the emotional, professional, and physical labor of protecting this county long before anyone bothered to call it leadership. Forgetting that truth is how power convinces us to doubt our own eyes.
Women leaders throughout Rockland are confronting crises that have nothing to do with “politics” and everything to do with basic humanity. Some of us are facing coordinated attacks on LGBTQ+ people meant to terrify them into silence. Others are watching immigrant families threatened with deportation by people who know the threats are illegal but count on fear to do the work. Many are battling a hunger crisis engineered by policymakers who weaponizehunger itself, holding basic survival hostage for political gain. Some are defending disabled neighbors treated as disposable once the cameras shut off. And some are protecting children targeted by adults who weaponize them for attention while ignoring the predators in their own circles. (See: Epstein List.)
These harms are not abstract. They show up at our doors every day. They sit in our programs. They collapse in our hallways. And when we name any of this plainly, we are told the problem is our tone.
So let’s be honest about what that actually means.
It means some people would prefer we dilute the truth rather than make them confront the consequences of their decisions. It means we are expected to protect the reputations of the powerful instead of the people who walk into our buildings for help. It means women in leadership are still treated as the ones who need to adjust, even when the crisis in front of us makes politeness feel like a moral failure.
Which brings us to the women who taught us how to lead through all of this.
Dr. Frances Pratt stood at the center of Rockland’s civil rights movement and refused to soften her language so the powerful could feel unbothered. She organized, confronted injustice directly, and forced this county to hear what it preferred to ignore.
People tried to sideline her with words like difficult and divisive.
What they meant was that she would not be contained.
Carolyn Fish pulled domestic violence and sexual assault out of the shadows and made Rockland face the violence happening inside its own homes. She challenged police departments, courts, and elected officials who wanted the problem to disappear quietly.
She was called abrasive and extreme.
What they meant was that she would not play along with their denial.
Dolores Treger rejected the lie that hunger was the result of personal failure. She created the People to People pantry and forced Rockland to confront food insecurity as a public responsibility rather than a private shame.
She was called dramatic and unrealistic.
What they meant was that she refused to let the county look away.
Dr. Mary Lukens pushed disability justice into rooms that treated disabled residents as afterthoughts. She challenged policies built on exclusion and insisted on dignity long before the law caught up.
She was called uncompromising and impractical.
What they meant was that she refused to accept crumbs disguised as progress.
Legislator Harriet Cornell began her public service at a time when women were expected to sit politely on the sidelines. She built coalitions that men confidently predicted would crumble and then watched those same men take credit once her work succeeded.
She was called pushy and naïve.
What they meant was that she overturned their expectations.
Congresswoman Nita Lowey brought that same tenacity to Washington, where she reshaped national conversations on education, family policy, and equity. She refused to be talked over in rooms that never expected to take direction from a woman.
She was called shrill and stubborn.
What they meant was that she transformed the debate.
Lottie Swann became Rockland’s first Human Rights Commissioner and built the county’s early civil rights framework when few people in power wanted those conversations to happen. She pushed for fairness in hiring, housing, and public services while absorbing hostility that would have silenced a less determined leader.
She was called aggressive and unreasonable.
What they meant was that she refused to let discrimination hide behind politeness.
Dr. Arlene W. Clinkscale broke locked doors in Rockland’s education system. She became the first Black teacher in Pearl River, the first Black principal in the county, and later the first Black woman superintendent in New York State. She transformed institutions that were never built to include her and forced them to confront their own barriers.
She was called intimidating, too direct, and “hard to work with,” the coded language routinely used to police Black women in leadership.
What they really meant was that her authority threatened them.
Sister Cecilia LaPietra built One to One Learning and stood with immigrant families when others debated their humanity. She fought for language access, safety, and belonging when it was politically easier to look away.
She was called idealistic and naive.
What they meant was that her clarity exposed their indifference.
The Ramapough Lenape women who have carried their community’s history and sovereignty through centuries of erasure, did not ask permission to tell the truth about stolen land, poisoned water, and the cost of being Indigenous in the Hudson Valley.
They were called unreasonable and disruptive.
What people meant was that they refused to disappear.
These women were not celebrated when they did this work. They were not embraced by the people who held power or by the systems that preferred their silence. Time softens the public memory of what they endured, but it does not erase the truth. They pushed this county forward not because they were welcomed, but because they refused to obey the script written for them.
Which brings us back to now.
So here is the real question. How can any of us remain silent or dress our concerns in polite, measured tones while the people we serve are under attack? How are we expected to look our Transgender colleagues in the eye and pretend the threats against them do not demand absolute urgency? How can we reassure immigrant families while standing with officials who threaten them? How are we meant to comfort hungry parents when policies created by disconnected individuals make it harder for them to access food? How can we pretend to be neutral while disabled residents are used as props and discarded when the cameras turn off?
We all know the answer. Silence would make us complicit. Politeness would make us liars. And none of us are willing to betray our own people to keep the powerful at ease.
Leadership is not about staying agreeable. It is not about performing calm for the sake of someone else’s political performance. It is not about absorbing disrespect so the people causing harm can avoid accountability. Leadership is refusing to look away from what is happening in real time, even when that truth unsettles people who are used to being protected.
This moment requires women who will not shrink. Women who will not be managed. Women who refuse the choreography of silence. Women who understand that protecting our communities will always matter more than protecting anyone’s ego.
Maybe it is time all of us reintroduce ourselves to Rockland County. Not as the quiet, diplomatic versions we were trained to perform, but as the women we actually are. The women who tell the truth. The women who refuse the script. The women who understand that courage and clarity are acts of service. The women who know that our communities are watching to see if we mean what we say.
Because the women who built this county did not hand us a legacy so we could perform gratitude. They built it so we could continue the work. They built it so we could refuse to be managed. They built it so we could tell the truth in the daylight.
