Sissy at 100
Celebrating 100 Years of Sissy Farenthold
October 2, 2026 would have been Sissy Farenthold’s 100th birthday. In honor of her centennial, the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice and the Sissy Farenthold Fund for Peace and Social Justice invite you to join us for Sissy at 100, a year-long celebration of her remarkable life, work, and enduring legacy.
Celebrate Sissy at 100
October 1–2, 2026 | University of Texas School of Law, Austin, Texas
Join the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice and the Sissy Farenthold Fund for Peace and Social Justice to celebrate what would have been Sissy Farenthold’s 100th birthday.
This two-day celebration is the culmination of a year-long series of programs honoring Sissy’s life, leadership, and legacy. The celebration will feature documentary film screenings, dialogues on reproductive justice, peace and disarmament, and environmental justice, as well as a keynote address by Skye Perryman, President & CEO of Democracy Forward.
Register for the Event Here
Location: Eidman Courtroom, University of Texas School of Law
Dates: October 1–2, 2026
Thursday, October 1
5:30 p.m. – Film Screening & Talkback
Screening of Films about Sissy Farenthold
directed by Joe Bailey, Jr. (1982–2026) and produced by the Rapoport Center
Talkback following the Films
Participants
- Alice Bailey (’08), Lawyer & Wife of Joe Bailey, Jr.
- Bennett Torres, Film Editor
- George E. Farenthold II, Labor & Environmental Activist and second son of Sissy Farenthold
___________________ - Cooper Christiancy, lawyer & educator
- Athena Hawkins, writer & podcast creator (“The Life and Legacy of Sissy Farenthold”)
Moderated by Karen Engle
Minerva House Drysdale Regents Chair in Law and Co-director, Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, University of Texas
7:00 p.m. – Birthday Cake Cutting
Friday, October 2
9:00 a.m. — Pastries & Coffee
9:30 a.m. — Keynote Address
Skye Perryman
President & CEO, Democracy Forward
Introduced by Neville Hoad
11:00 a.m. — Dialogue on Peace & Disarmament
Genevieve Vaughan
Peace and Justice Activist and Writer; Founder, Foundation for a Compassionate Society; Maternal Gift Economy Movement
Maylene Hughes
Nuclear Threats Program Senior Coordinator, Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles
Moderated by Roxanne Elder
Former Staff, American Friends Service Committee, Nuclear Freeze Campaign, and the Office of Governor Ann Richards
1:30 p.m. — Dialogue on Reproductive Justice
Representative Maria Luisa “Lulu” Flores (’80)
Member, Texas House of Representatives; Partner, Hendler Flores Law
Zoraima Pelaez (’22)
Staff Attorney, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project
Moderated by Karen Engle
Minerva House Drysdale Regents Chair in Law and Co-director, Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, University of Texas
3:00 p.m. — Dialogue on Environmental Justice
Terry O’Rourke (’71)
Environmental Lawyer; Legal Adviser to Sissy Farenthold
Bekah Hinojosa
Co-founder, South Texas Environmental Justice Network
Moderated by Gerald Torres
Dolores Huerta and Wilma Mankiller Professor of Environmental Justice, Yale School of the Environment; Faculty Director, Yale Center for Environmental Justice
4:30–5:00 p.m. — Closing
Register for the Event Here
Speaker Biographies
Skye Perryman is President and CEO of Democracy Forward, TIME 100 honoree, and New York Times bestselling author of Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times: How to Reclaim Your Power, Fight for Freedom, and Reimagine Democracy (Ten Speed Press, 2026).
Perryman is a native Texan and a nationally recognized legal strategist and advocate for the promotion of democracy and good government. Democracy Forward, the nonpartisan organization she has led since 2021, uses litigation, regulatory engagement, communications, policy education, and research to challenge government corruption and overreach and defend civil rights, fair wages, reproductive health, and the environment.
Before leading Democracy Forward, Perryman served as Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She began her legal career in litigation roles at WilmerHale and Covington & Burling. She has received a Lifetime Award for the Pursuit of Justice from the Georgetown University Law Center’s O’Neill Institute and the Sissy Farenthold Social Justice Award from the Harris County Democratic Lawyers Association. Perryman has been recognized as one of the 500 Most Influential People Shaping Policy by Washingtonian Magazine, one of The NonProfit Times’s Power & Influence Top 50, their 2025 Influencer of the Year, the 2025 “Resister in Law” by the Feminist Majority Foundation, and a Woman to Watch by The New Republic.
Perryman earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Philosophy magna cum laude from Baylor University and a Juris Doctor with honors from the Georgetown University Law Center, where she served as an Editor for the American Criminal Law Review (“ACLR”) and an Editor-in-Chief for the ACLR’s Annual Survey on White Collar Crime. She serves on the boards of the Interfaith Alliance, the Atlas Performing Arts Center, the Texas Observer, the Baylor Line Foundation, and the Rise Up: Federal Workers Legal Defense Network. She co-chairs We Hold These Truths, Democracy Forward’s initiative to provide accessible civic education to the American public.
Dialogue on Peace and Disarmament
Genevieve Vaughan is a peace and justice activist, writer, and founder of the Foundation for a Compassionate Society and the Maternal Gift Economy Movement. As an independent semiotician, feminist scholar, and philanthropist, Vaughan has played a vital role in the global women’s peace movement. Vaughan developed the theory of the maternal gift economy, conceptualizing women’s free labor in the home as an unacknowledged free economy from which communication and community derive. Along with her cousin Sissy Farenthold, she also played a foundational role in organizing the Women’s Peace Tent at the 1985 UN Conference on Women in Nairobi, Kenya, including through philanthropic support. In 1987, Vaughan created the Foundation for a Compassionate Society. For two decades, the foundation supported staff working on projects relating to social change and provided philanthropic support for activists working locally and globally. Vaughan’s books include The Gift in the Heart of Language:The Maternal Source of Meaning (Mimesis International, 2015) and For-Giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange (Plain View Press, 1997). Vaughan continues to write, lecture, and organize webinars on the maternal gift economy, feminism, peace, and social change. She earned a B.A. in English from Bryn Mawr College in 1963 and attended the University of Texas at Austin for her graduate studies.
Maylene Hughes is Nuclear Threats Program Senior Coordinator at the Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles. Hughes coordinates the Southern California hub of Back from the Brink, a nationwide grassroots coalition to prevent nuclear war. She focuses on connecting nuclear weapons with social justice issues by emphasizing their local impact. Hughes is passionate about bridging academia and community organizing, drawing from her experiences as a low-income, queer, Black/Asian individual. Before joining PSR-LA, Hughes served as an Equity Ambassador at Occidental College and interned at Liberation Ventures, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, and the Irish Network Against Racism. She earned a B.A. in Critical Theory & Social Justice from Occidental College in 2023.
Moderator: Roxanne Elder is a nuclear disarmament activist based in Austin, Texas. She currently serves on the Steering Committee of Texans Ending Nuclear Dangers, the Texas hub of the national Back from the Brink coalition. In her role as staff at the American Friends Service Committee and the Nuclear Freeze Campaign, Elder was a leading organizer of anti-nuclear grassroots efforts across Texas during the 1980s. She also served in the Office of Governor Ann Richards.
Dialogue on Reproductive Justice
Maria Luisa “Lulu” Flores is a member of the Texas House of Representatives representing District 51 and partner at Hendler Flores Law in Austin. A nationally recognized community and political leader, Flores has long been a champion for women’s issues and the fight for social justice and equality. Her work in the Legislature prioritizes women’s autonomy, the right to vote, health care access, investment in education, and human dignity. Flores formerly served as Director at the Mexican American Bar Association of Texas, Director of Governmental Relations at the State Bar of Texas, and Assistant Director for Alternative Fuels Policy and Legislation/Governmental Affairs at the Texas Railroad Commission. She also served two terms as President of the National Women’s Political Caucus, the second Texan after Sissy Farenthold to hold that office. Flores has served on the boards of Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region, Battered Women’s Center, and the Texas Advocacy Project. She has been recognized as the 2020 Distinguished Lawyer of the Year by the Austin Bar Association, National Latina Lawyer of the Year in 2010 by the Hispanic National Bar Association, and an inductee to the City of Austin Women’s Hall of Fame. Flores earned a J.D. (1980) and a B.A. in government (1977) from the University of Texas at Austin.
Zoraima Pelaez is Staff Attorney with the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, where she previously served as an Equal Justice Works Fellow. Pelaez litigates cases in state and federal courts to protect and expand access to abortion and pregnancy-related care across the United States, including challenges to state restrictions on Medicaid coverage for abortion, advanced practice clinicians’ provision of abortion care, and access to midwifery and birth center care. Before joining ACLU, Pelaez worked as a community organizer and grassroots lobbyist for the Texas Freedom Network and NARAL Pro-Choice Texas (now AVOW) and was an abortion storyteller with We Testify. During law school, she worked on a clinic team that secured an 8-1 victory in the U.S. Supreme Court in Ramirez v. Collier, a case that challenged Texas’s ban on touch and audible prayer by spiritual advisors during executions. Pelaez has served on the boards of the Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity and Jane’s Due Process, Texas-based abortion funds, and the national American Constitution Society. She was the 2016 recipient of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship. She earned a J.D. (2022) and a B.A. in Humanities (2018) from the University of Texas.
Moderator: Karen Engle is Minerva House Drysdale Regents Chair in Law and founder and co-director of the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. She is a leading scholar of international human rights law and humanitarian law, with a focus on the interactions between social movements and law. She is a member of the faculty leadership team of the Sissy Farenthold Reproductive Justice Defense Project. Her forthcoming article (with Jennifer Laurin) examines the legal strategy of lawyers and advocates in Texas to use local government ordinances and civil litigation as sites for what the authors call criminal law claiming, if not criminal lawmaking, in the context of abortion. She earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1989 and a B.A. in Philosophy from Baylor University in 1984.
Dialogue on Environmental Justice
Terry O’Rourke is an environmental lawyer whose career in public interest litigation has spanned more than 50 years. His determined efforts to hold polluters accountable have made him one of Texas’s leading environmental litigators. He has served as a Special Assistant County Attorney for Harris County working on environmental litigation, as well as Assistant Attorney General of the State of Texas. He played a leading role in Harris County’s litigation concerning the dioxin-contaminated San Jacinto River Waste Pits, resulting in a landmark $29.2 million settlement against Waste Management and McGinnes Industrial Maintenance in 2014. Recognized as an early Texas environmental prosecutor, O’Rourke was also a colleague and legal adviser to Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold, serving as legislative counsel during her time in the Legislature and working with her on peace and environmental causes. He earned a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law (1971) and an M.A. in Hydrology from Rice University in 1972.
Bekah Hinojosa is an artist, community organizer, and co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network and founding member of Another Gulf Is Possible. Hinojosa spent over seven years as a Gulf Coast organizer with the Sierra Club, mobilizing communities against major industrial polluters. In South Texas, she has played a leading role in grassroots campaigns opposing three proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals at the Port of Brownsville and the expansion of SpaceX operations near Boca Chica. Her work centers on protecting local communities, defending vulnerable coastal ecosystems and wildlife habitat, and preserving public access to Boca Chica Beach and the surrounding coast. She has earned the Sierra Club’s Behind the Scenes Hero Award and been recognized as one of Grist’s “50 Fixers” for advancing climate and environmental justice. She earned a B.S. in Geography from the University of North Texas in 2014.
Moderator: Gerald Torres is Dolores Huerta and Wilma Mankiller Professor of Environmental Justice at the Yale School of the Environment and Professor of Law at the Yale Law School. He is also faculty director of the Yale Center for Environmental Justice. A leading scholar of environmental law and Indian law, Torres examines the intrinsic connections among the environment, agricultural and food systems, and social justice. His research into how race and ethnicity impact environmental policy has been influential in the emergence and evolution of the field of environmental justice. Torres is board chair of the Earth Day Network and has served as president of the Association of American Law Schools, Counsel to the Attorney General on environmental matters and Indian affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice, and a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council. He earned an LL.M. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1980, a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1977, and an A.B. in Political Science from Stanford University in 1974.
Talkback Panelists
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| Alice Bailey Lawyer & Wife of Joe Bailey, Jr. |
Bennett Torres |
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| Cooper Christiancy Lawyer & Educator |
George E. Farenthold II Labor & Environmental Activist and second son of Sissy Farenthold |
Athena Hawkins
Writer & Podcast Creator (“The Life and Legacy of Sissy Farenthold”) |
Sissy at 100 Events
Past Events
Fighting Pollution: Protecting People and Planet with Law, Advocacy, and Action
April 22, 2026
Tags: Environmental Justice
Crisis, Stasis, Slow Violence, and Short Histories: Understanding International Law Amid Contemporary Conflict
April 14, 2026
Tags: Peace
The ICJ Advisory Opinion on Climate Change: Perspectives from US and International Law
April 7, 2026
Tags: Environmental Justice
Viet Thanh Nguyen
“On Undefeated Despair: Writing Inside Empire”
10th Annual Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold Endowed Lecture in Peace, Human Rights and Social Justice
March 26, 2026
Ira Helfand
“The Growing Danger of Nuclear War and What Students Can”
March 12, 2026
Tags: Peace; Nuclear Disarmament
Ira Helfand
“The Growing Danger of Nuclear War and What We Can Do About It”
March 11, 2026
Tags: Peace; Nuclear Disarmament
Genres of Environmental Justice
March 4, 2026
Tags: Environmental Justice
Lina-Maria Murillo
Fighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care, and Race in the US-Mexico Borderlands
February 23, 2026
Tags: Reproductive Justice
Lina-Maria Murillo
Fighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care, and Race in the US-Mexico Borderlands
February 23, 2026
Tags: Reproductive Justice
Rachel Rebouche and Mindy Jane Roseman
Accessing Abortion
February 12, 2026
Tags: Reproductive Justice
Spotlights on Sissy
Our “Spotlights on Sissy” weave together documents available on the Sissy Farenthold Papers online exhibition, including material newly digitized for Sissy at 100, to illustrate Sissy’s longtime advocacy for reproductive justice, environmental justice, and peace and disarmament.
"The Longest Revolution" 
"Protecting this Fragile Planet" 
"Conscience of a World on the Eve of Annihilation"