In November of 2017, the 14th Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encuentro in Montevideo, Argentina brought together 2,200 feminists from all over Latin America as well as several European countries, with their different feminist experiences, diverse ideological and political positions, epistemic perspectives and collective projects.
This year, many of us at AWID have continued to be inspired by the community of activists, and movements with whom we have held space. These include feminists who use digital technologies to create vibrant online communities, to people protecting the planet for future generations, to migrant workers and refugees highlighting the need for fair working conditions for all, to economists who conceptualise a world rooted in just economies.
Internet technologies are firmly embedded into many of the landscapes of feminist organising. But the ‘online’ is still an extension of the ‘offline’ in many ways.
This autumn brought the third edition of Chouftouhonna, the Tunis International Feminist Art Festival. Chouftouhonna is an intersectional feminist space by and for women, questioning gender roles and breaking the importance of patriarchy.
For those who have attended a previous AWID Forum you can probably remember the energies that are generated in a space with 2000 feminist and social justice activists. The strength and renewal we feel when we meet with fellow activists all working together to co-create a better world. The learning and new knowledge we gain, create, and share. The solidarity we feel when we are able to build and strengthen connections.
In the lead up to the first Black Feminisms Forum, This is Africa will be publishing a series of interviews, features and articles about Black Feminisms. First up, Maggie Mapondera sits down with renowned activist, scholar and thinker Gay J McDougall, a member of the BFF’s Working Group, to talk about the struggles faced by women of African descent the world over.
Our freedom dreams are a roaring Black; swellings of coming insurrection manifested. This roar is felt in the tip of a brush about to paint the sounds of our resistance; in the cadence of saxophones, playing the drawings that our grandmothers sketched, of struggles unrelenting; in the poems inscribed by the movement of our bodies when that bass drops.
That is the basis for the historic gathering of over one hundred Black feminists from around the world happening in Bahia, Brazil in September 2016. I see you.
Whether they’re demanding that #FeesMustFall in South Africa, contesting white settler colonialism in Canada, or defending the right of Afrofeminists in France to self-organize and decolonize, Black Feminists around the world are fighting interconnected (yet unique) struggles.
A year ago today, 1,800 feminists and women’s rights advocates from all corners of our movements gathered on the shores of Bahia for the 13th AWID International Forum.