Kathy Change

Kathy Change
Born	October 10, 1950 Ohio
Died	October 22, 1996 (aged 45–46) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Other names	Kathleen Chang
Spouse(s)	Frank Chin (div.)

Kathleen Chang (October 10, 1950 – October 22, 1996), better known as Kathy Change, was an American performance artist and political activist who killed herself in an act of self-immolation on the University of Pennsylvania campus in 1996. She changed her performance name to Kathy Change to indicate her commitment to political and social change. She was the daughter of Chinese academics who emigrated to America in the wake of the Chinese Revolution. Change was married for five years to writer Frank Chin.

Change was born as Kathleen Chang in Ohio in 1950. Her father, Sheldon Chang, was an engineer and a professor at the State University at Stony Brook, Long Island, New York. Her mother Gertrude was a writer. She had one brother. Her parents divorced while she was a teenager. Her mother committed suicide when Kathy was 14 years old.

Change graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in New York City and briefly attended Mills College and the Bronx campus of New York University. Upon her marriage, she moved to California.

In 1976, she wrote and illustrated a 24-page children's book, The Iron Moonhunter. The book is about the life of Chinese workers on the Central Pacific railroad in the 19th century.

In 1981, Change moved to Philadelphia. Around this time, her life became increasingly defined by her political activism and by what many observers would term mental illness. The New York Times noted that she had seen psychiatrists off and on for her adult life, although friends were unaware if a specific illness had been diagnosed. For a brief period in the early 1980s, she squatted in an abandoned Philadelphia building with others.

In the later years of her life, she added an "e" to her last name, and informally changed her name to Kathy Change.

Change was drawn to political activism for diverse causes for most of her adult life. In 1990, she was named "Freedom Fighter of the Month" by High Times magazine, recognizing her activism for cannabis legalization. For 20 years she gave colorful one-woman street performances on Penn's campus and around Philadelphia to protest the government, during which she danced, sang, played the guitar and electronic keyboard, waved handmade flags, and made speeches. These performances included a weekly presentation on Sunday afternoons at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In the final years of her Art Museum performances, she was joined by singer/songwriter David Downing, who wrote "Stop the Business (Transformation Day)," an anthem for her political movement. In a packet of her writings that she delivered to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Daily Pennsylvanian, and several of her friends and acquaintances on the morning of her death, she explained the rationale behind her suicide:

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