We are four months away from what would have been your 80th birthday—9 July. We still invoke your words, ideas, and commitment to a global movement for the liberation of all oppressed peoples of the world. You would unequivocally agree with #BlackLivesMatter and the younger generation of women and transpeople leading the movement.
In the context of sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR), the subject of pleasure remains a big taboo. Yet many working in the field around the world are struggling to reach young people with vital information relating their sexual and reproductive health and rights. Is this because we are failing to take into account the motivations and desires of those we are trying to engage?
From the 10th-12th of April 2016, the fourth African Feminist Forum will take place in Zimbabwe, bringing together a range of wisdom, experience and insight from feminist organisers and activists from across the continent.
Feminists disrupt systems, spaces, events that oppress, violate and exclude us from living freely, expressing our desires and creating alternative, safe and realised lives. The internet is a space, a platform, a digital connector that we are increasingly using to agitate, communicate and mobilise. As state surveillance of activists increases, misogynist trolls play out their violences, companies mine our data and invade our privacy, we need to disrupt and claim the Internet!
Whether it is our lives as women, our experiences as feminists, our histories as indigenous peoples, our struggles as trans women, our analyses as black academics, our achievements as disability rights activists, very little of our complex knowledge and wisdom is easily accessible to the rest of the world on the internet. Whose Knowledge? and a group of Wikimujeres are at AWID’s forum so that we can address this together.
When organizations and movements are asked what they need to grow stronger, many are clear about their answer - better relationships and alliances across their sector and across movements.
Read as Forum Program Coordinator, Amina Doherty sits down with Carol Rossetti, the artist who made the 12 activist portraits. Learn more about her and her work.
Our hearts get broken. In romantic relationships, in our families, in our organizations and movements, the hurt is real. Raising resources is not easy. Building alliances and deepening relationships takes time. The lessons come most often through adversity.
The year continues on and the year seems to get more and more difficult to manoeuvre. From terrorism, to protests, to taxes, to paying the rent to hating your boss. It would seem that everyday there is some new cluster storm to deal with and as a black woman there is always just that little extra element of misogynoir flavour to add to the mix.
African feminist movements are diverse. But we can, and must, learn from decades of transformational organising on the continent.