Audra Trower Williams (born March 10, 1976) is a Canadian social activist and communication consultant, principal of Lefty Lucy Communications, and a former child actor.

Name

Born Audra Marie Williams, she later took on the name Audra Estrones Williams, Estrones being Welsh for "alien woman." [2173] In 2003 she substituted her grandmother's surname, Trower. [2174]

Early life

Williams was born in Richmond Hill and later grew up in Durham Region, Ontario.

She started acting at the age of five, after taking lessons to address her shyness. She appeared in commercials, in episodes of The Littlest Hobo and Loving Friends and Perfect Couples, and in the science fiction television movie Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, which would later be featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. She stopped acting after her parents divorced.

She studied at St. Clair College in Windsor, Ontario, and later moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she is now based.

Activism

Williams is best known for her five years as the lead moderator of babble, the popular Internet forum of the online magazine rabble. In April 2006, she was fired by rabble's management committee. The circumstances of this dismissal were highly controversial among babble's virtual community, and a large and vocal group who supported Williams and questioned rabble's governance and labour relations called for a protest or "strike;" a few members spammed babble. An alternative Babble Strike board was established, and soon moved toward taking on a permanent life of its own.

Williams has also consulted on and moderated an Internet forum for the Council of Canadians. Williams and her collaborators at Lefty Lucy have done web design, photography, and other graphic design and media relations work for clients including Jeremy Hinzman, Maureen MacDonald, Jesse Dangerously, the group producing a Genuine Progress Indicator for Atlantic Canada, and a variety of other activist groups, musicians and artists, and independent businesses.

Williams researched racial issues in Canada for Lawrence Hill's book Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. For four years, she worked as an American Sign Language interpreter in a small town for a client she describes as "the greatest Deaf kid ever."

She contributed a chapter to Rebel, Rogue, Mischievous Babe: Stories About Being A Powerful Girl (HarperCollins Canada, 2001), a non-fiction anthology edited by Sharlene Azam. [2175]

In 2003, Williams participated in the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In 2004, she jointly led the successful campaign to convince Tourism Nova Scotia to pull its advertisements from reality television series The Swan, which encouraged "ugly duckling" women to get cosmetic plastic surgery to win a beauty pageant.

In March 2006, "A Gap in the Movement," her call for the greater inclusion of young women in the feminist movement and for the revival of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, appeared in This Magazine. [2176] [2177]

External links

Audra Williams' blog

Lefty Lucy Communications

Babble Strike board

Rabble Fires Moderator Audra Trower Williams - Members Call For Strike / Boycott (HalifaxLive.com, April 10, 2006)