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October 7, 2014

Betty Reid Mandell, Longtime Welfare Rights Advocate, Dies at 89 
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The activist, professor and writer Betty Reid Mandell, a longtime
advocate for welfare rights, has died in Massachusetts at the age of 89.
Known locally as the "fairy godmother" of the welfare office, Mandell
distributed survival tips to help homeless people obtain aid, and
published frequent articles challenging what she saw as a war against
the poor. She was a former editor of the journal New Politics along with
Marvin Mandell, her husband of 60 years.

 

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