Common Sense Coalition Workshop

Freeda Cathcart is the facilitator. She has over 30 years of grassroots organizing and coalition experience. She helped to build a coalition of pro-choice and pro-life organizations to support legalizing midwifery in Virginia. The legislation passed unanimously in the Senate and nearly unanimously in the House in 2005. In 2007, she worked with Pro-Choice and Pro-Life organizations to create a National Summit to Ensure the Health and Humanity of Pregnant and Birthing Women in Atlanta, Georgia. From that gathering, relationships were built that resulted in many positive legislative successes from requiring that incarcerated birthing mothers be unshackled to pro-breastfeeding laws. She is a founding board member emerita and a trained facilitator with Points of Diversity that has won a national award. She founded Indivisible Virginia in January 2017.