<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""><i class="">Everyone at CTC is deeply saddened by Kathy’s passing. One of CTC’s founders, she brought incredible kindness, optimism and vision to our work for more than two decades. Please write me off-list for details on her memorial service and other events recognizing her life. Her family has set up a special donation page for contributions to the National Family Farm Coalition in her memory at:</i></div><div class=""><a href="https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/kathyozerfund" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(149, 79, 114);" class="">https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/kathyozerfund</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/katherine-ozer-leader-of-advocacy-group-for-family-farmers-dies-at-58/2017/01/25/7422fcac-e317-11e6-a453-19ec4b3d09ba_story.html?utm_term=.e881a01cb3d0" class="">https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/katherine-ozer-leader-of-advocacy-group-for-family-farmers-dies-at-58/2017/01/25/7422fcac-e317-11e6-a453-19ec4b3d09ba_story.html?utm_term=.e881a01cb3d0</a><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><b class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">Katherine Ozer, leader of advocacy group for family farmers, dies at 58<o:p class=""></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><a name="444e305d6bcf1bcec7b21c57dd81e8f8354ba567" class=""></a><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""><br class="">Katherine Ozer was the leader of the National Family Farm Coalition, an advocacy group for small farmers. (Family photo)<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">By <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/matt-schudel/" style="color: rgb(149, 79, 114);" class="">Matt Schudel</a> January 25 at 5:59 PM <o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">Washington Post<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">Katherine Ozer, a longtime advocate for small farmers, farmworkers and sustainable agriculture, who helped lead the push for federal legislation to ease credit for financially strapped farmers, died Jan. 22 at a hospital in Philadelphia. She was 58.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">The cause was non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, said her husband, David Battey.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">Ms. Ozer, who lived in Washington, joined the National Family Farm Coalition soon after its founding in 1986 and had been executive director for the past 24 years.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">The coalition, which encompasses 25 organizations nationally, works on policy initiatives to support fair prices for small farmers and to protect their land from predatory buyers.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">Ms. Ozer helped draft and promote the Agricultural Credit Act of 1987, which was passed by Congress in the wake of a severe economic downturn that drove thousands of farmers off the land. It helped many more beleaguered farmers, threatened with the loss of their livelihoods, to renegotiate terms of their loans.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">“Family farmers in this country had no better advocate in D.C. than Kathy Ozer,” said Lorette Picciano, executive director of Rural Coalition, who worked alongside Ms. Ozer on a variety of issues. “She was quite a force who worked behind the scenes with very little credit, but she connected all the groups.”<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">Ms. Ozer was a liaison to dozens of agriculture-related organizations in the United States and abroad, including Farm Aid, which features celebrity-studded concerts to raise funds for family farmers. She also worked on early efforts to promote sustainable agriculture and country-of-origin labels on food and argued against introducing genetically modified foods to the public.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">In the 1990s, Ms. Ozer unsuccessfully lobbied members of Congress to reject the North American Free Trade Agreement, arguing that it would hurt farmers in the United States and Mexico. The issue of NAFTA’s fairness became a major topic in the 2016 presidential campaign.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">In recent years, Ms. Ozer fought to gain sustained funding for the Agriculture Department’s Grain Inspection, Packers & Stockyards Administration, which is designed to help small farmers receive fair payment from giant poultry and meat companies.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">“She pushed some of the most difficult challenges facing rural America,” Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) said in an interview. “She fought for decades. I’m the longest-serving woman in Congress, and I have met thousands of people. She remains in the top tier of Americans who have made a difference.”<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">Katherine Ann Ozer was born Aug. 4, 1958, in San Francisco and grew up mostly in Bethesda, Md., on what had once been a farm. Her father is a neurologist.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">She was a 1976 graduate of the Sidwell Friends private school in Washington and received a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1980 from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">She became an activist in college, participating in environmental campaigns and anti-apartheid rallies. She worked for four years at the United States Student Association before joining the farm coalition.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">Survivors include David Battey, her partner of more than 30 years and husband since 1995, of Washington; her mother, Ann Ozer of Palo Alto, Calif.; her father, Mark N. Ozer, and stepmother, Martha Ozer, of Washington; a brother, Mark P. Ozer of New York City; and three sisters, Elizabeth Ozer and Emily Ozer, both of San Francisco, and Nicole Ozer of Oakland, Calif.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">Ms. Ozer was a representative at agricultural conferences around the globe and was a past or present board member of such organizations as the Citizens Trade Campaign, Community Food Security Coalition and Environmental Mediation Center.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">“Kathy was in the front lines of the battle,” Kaptur said. “She was her own constellation on behalf of the farmers she represented.”</span></div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""><div class="">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; " class=""><div class="">Arthur Stamoulis</div><div class="">Citizens Trade Campaign</div><div class="">(202) 494-8826</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
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