It seems rather implausible that a born-and-raised southern belle would find herself fighting to keep pro-choice issues safe thousands of miles away in Michigan, but Dessa Cosma is just such a person. Reared between Augusta, Georgia, and New Orleans, Louisiana the chief field organizer for Michigan’s Planned Parenthood Affiliates chapter was introduced to the issue of choice in a rather startling – though not unexpected – manner.

“When I went to college, my very first semester at the University of Georgia, I was walking through the plaza of the student union, and there was this big, nasty, horrible display from this organization called the Genocide Awareness Project, and it was these huge 30 X 20 boards with supposedly aborted fetuses,” she recalls. “They had pictures of lynchings; the Nazi concentration camps; and they were equating abortion with genocide.

“I just started crying: I wasn’t crying because it was sad, I was crying because it was so wrong, and I was so pissed off about it. That day, when I got back to my dorm, I called this organization called Choice USA, based out of DC, and the next day they took a flight down to Athens, Georgia, and they taught me how to organize a counter-protest, and so I did. Within like 24 hours of having seen this horrible display, we got a counter-protest going – we have leaflets and everything – and ever since then, I’ve been hooked, so that’s kinda how I got my start.”

And thus, a community organizing star was born.

After college, Cosma hoped to pursue work in Africa as an aid worker for women in developing countries, but duty called her up to Michigan, instead. Following Ryan, her longtime partner (and a Michigan native), Cosma began a new life as a field organizer for Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Michigan.

Prior to life in Great Lakes state, though, Cosma’s existence was nothing short of remarkable. In 2004, she helped organize folks in Athens, Georgia, to attend the March for Women’s Lives – which, until Obama’s Inauguration, was the largest rally ever held on United States soil. As a self-taught organizer, Cosma became quickly versed in the tricks of the trade; adapting strategy as mere political survival tactic in her career’s earliest days.

“I was so excited, and I spent, seriously, four months doing nothing but organizing for the [March for Women’s Lives] rally. I was in school, but I wasn’t really going to school. I got 100 people on a bus to go to DC for a weekend, and because I had never really organized something that huge before, I learned a lot by trial and error, so it a good experience of having to just do it. There wasn’t really anybody for me to ask, “How do I do this?” or whatever; I just had to do it, so I basically learned how to organize by doing that, and it ended up being really successful.”

The action wasn’t just limited to Cosma’s collegiate experience, either. Set against a backdrop of southern-style repressiveness and reactionary political foundations, Cosma grew up surrounded by a progressive family and an even more forward-thinking bastion of faith.

“I grew up Unitarian Universalist, which is a very progressive religion,” she recalls. “So, growing up like in an enclave of progressiveness, I think it was a constant reminder that I wasn’t a freak for being progressive. I wasn’t wrong; I never had a doubt for my political views, because I have always known people who share my progressive values. It was always kind of okay and encouraged to be political, and part of the tradition with UU is social justice activism. I grew up knowing that the leaders from my church were leaders in the civil rights movement and the fight for marriage equality and in women’s suffrage, so I knew that that was the history of my faith.

“My grandfather was a civil rights worker in the 60s. My mom did a lot of work with LGBT teens in Augusta, which is so… you know, being out in high school in Augusta is like just asking to be beat up. So [my mom] did a lot of work with teens, and all of those things really helped me strengthen my own ways of articulating my values.”

As the Senior Field Organizer for Planned Parenthood, Cosma has put her progressive and activist upbringing to good use by leading the Michigan Affiliate into a number of successful, savoring victories. Even in the face of backwards-thinking legislature and enough anti-choice laws on the books to earn the state an ‘F’ on Planned Parenthood’s national rating scale, Cosma played a significant role in steering the Affiliate onto tough, triumphant political ground, and has helped render the organization a formidable force for any anti-choice obstructionist to come up against. The future, indeed, is bright.

“Just since I’ve been here in Michigan, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Michigan has gotten more strategic and more savvy and more sophisticated, and just amazingly so,” she says. “It’s been really cool to see that happen, and to be a part of that, and obviously, I’m a small piece of that. I’ve really enjoyed being an organizer through that transition from being important and relevant to being good in all that’s strategic and powerful.”