Politics

The Queen of Anarchism

Posted on by Shelly
Emma Goldman (1869-1940) was a Jewish immigrant and political radical who became one of the major Anarchist political figures in Europe and North America in the decades before the Second World War. A public intellectual, author, lecturer, and activist, Goldman helped to transform the face of Anarchism and the political left, developing a political and social philosophy that would come to be known ...
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Nina Simone

Posted on by Shelly
Nina Simone (1933-2003) was an American musician and activist who became an important voice of the Civil Rights Movement, and of anti-racism in the music industry. Her experiences as an artist prompted her to speak on oppression not only towards black people, but within the community; she openly addressed colorism as a dark-skinned woman who did not harbor eurocentric features, and the erasure...
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A Woman’s Rights Man

Posted on by Shelly
“Right is of no sex — Truth is of no color.” It was on this bold motto that Frederick Douglass (c. 1818-1895) founded his antislavery newspaper, The North Star, in the mid-1800s. Commonly known as one of the leading Black abolitionists of the 19th century, Douglass also proved to be a staunch proponent of women’s rights. After escaping slavery in 1838, the Maryland-born activist quickly got to ...
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Audre Lorde

Posted on by Shelly
Audre Lorde (1934-1992), self identified as a black feminist, lesbian, poet, mother, warrior; she was critical to shaping the intellectual landscape of  the women’s movement, black arts movement, black feminist, and gay liberation movements globally. Lorde herself was shaped by a larger sociocultural context of WWII, McCarthyism, and witnessing the unfolding of the Civil Rights Movement. Her wo...
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Undocumented Women

Posted on by Shelly
Approximately 5.2 million undocumented immigrant women live in the United States. Without legal status, most of these women do not have permission to work or get driver’s licenses, and do not qualify for many of the social services reserved for citizens. Many immigrant women face compounded intersectional hardships due to the interplay of their undocumented status with other facets of their lives,...
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The Lesbian Avengers

Posted on by Shelly
“Lesbians! Dykes! Gay Women! We want revenge and we want it now.” If you had been a woman at the 1992 New York Gay Pride March, a flyer with those words might have been shoved into your sweaty hand. Keep reading: “We're wasting our lives being careful. Imagine what your life could be. Aren't you ready to make it happen?” That flyer was printed and distributed by the thousands by six lesbians, A...
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#InternationalWomensDay

Posted on by Shelly
March 8 is International Women’s Day (IWD), a celebration of women that takes place in countries on every continent.  It has a deep socialist heritage, one connected to the cause for women’s suffrage, women’s right to vote, and importantly, for working women’s right to fair wages and safe working conditions.  Today, it is recognized by the United Nations as part of a global call to promote gender ...
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Black Feminism(s)

Posted on by Shelly
One could argue black feminism began in the nineteenth century with Sojourner Truth’s declarative question, “Ain’t I a Woman” since her words are an inaugural instance of intersectionality, the notion that race and class status are inseparable from the struggle for gender equality. But there were many black feminists in the 19th century like Anna Julia Cooper, Frances Harper, Harriet Tubman, Id...
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Latina Feminism(s)

Posted on by Shelly
Latina feminism(s) describes a range of historical political collaborations among Latinas and culturally specific Latina-led political struggles for gender and social justice in the United States. “Latina” is an umbrella term for women living in the United States whose families have current or historical ties to Spanish-speaking regions of the Caribbean, Central America, South America and North Am...
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Wilma Mankiller

Posted on by Shelly
  Wilma Pearl Mankiller (1945-2010), was born in Okalhoma. She was a tireless advocate for the Cherokee people, and she became the first female principle chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1985. With a focus on improved healthcare and education systems, Mankiller served two full terms as Cherokee chief. She also founded the Cherokee Nation Community Development Department, which helped to...
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Alice Paul

Posted on by Shelly
Alice Paul (1185-1977) was crucial to the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. constitution granting women the right to vote in 1920. In 1923, she drafted and proposed the first version of the Equal Rights Amendment, then known as the Lucretia Mott Amendment. While studying in England, Paul became active in the suffrage movement, learning important lessons about community organizing an...
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Bella Abzug

Posted on by Shelly
Famous for her trademark hats, Bella Savitsky Abzug (1920-1968) was a pioneer for civil rights. Born in the Bronx, New York to Russian Jewish parents, Abzug studied at Hunter College, The City University of New York. In the 1940s, she attended Columbia University School of Law after Harvard refused her admission because of her gender.  Abzug became a powerful voice of women's leadership. Wh...
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Black Power Feminism

Posted on by Shelly
As a political practice Black Power feminism bridges black feminist thought and black power politics simultaneously. As a theory it embraces the central tenants of the Black Power movement including self-definition, political participation, and self defense while also prioritizing gender justice. Black Power feminism situates race and gender as equal parts in eradicating various forms of oppres...
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Eco-Feminism

Posted on by LBH
Feminist thinkers, focused on moving toward sex equality, turned their attention to the root causes of sexism and the oppression of women. In the process, thinkers and authors such as Carol Adams, Josephine Donovan, Greta Gaard, Vandana Shiva, Val Plumwood, Susan A. Mann and Marti Kheel unearthed common ground between feminists, environmentalists, and animal activists, connecting with and advancin...
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ACT UP

Posted on by Shelly
ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) founded in New York City in 1987, is a direct action organization working to end the AIDS crisis. At its height there were 140 ACT UP chapters internationally. Through a democratic structure rooted in Affinity Groups, Working Groups and regular Monday night meetings, often of hundreds of people,  ACT UP achieved transformative breakthroughs for people with ...
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Intersectionality

Posted on by LBH
Discrimination and oppression are not singular systems. Instead, multiple factors simultaneously interact to produce systems of injustice and inequality. Race, gender expression, class position, sexuality, religion, nationality, age, and ability are some of the factors that interact and produce intersectional, simultaneous, and complex structures, manifestations, and processes of discrimination ag...
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Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015)

Posted on by Shelly
Because she was so involved with civil and labor rights, the FBI assigned to follow her decided she was at least, partially, black. But Grace Lee Boggs—born Grace Chin Lee—was Chinese American. Her activism defies categorization. At college, and later in graduate school, Boggs studied Hegel and Marx—she earned her Ph.D at Bryn Mawr. And with her advanced degree, she had trouble finding empl...
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Lesbian Lit

Posted on by Shelly
Lesbian Literature includes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that feature same sex women’s love, relationships, and themes. While there is a history of lesbian literature before the 20th century—most notably Sappho of Lesbos—most of the literature offered only subtle lesbian themes. The first explicit lesbian novel published in English, The Well of Loneliness (1928) by Radclyffe Hall was deemed obs...
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Sci-Fi Feminism

Posted on by Shelly
The historical role of feminism in science fiction is somewhat contested. On the one hand, common wisdom would have it that SF was a genre for white male writers at least until the late twentieth century. It’s true that male authors generally dominated science fiction during the early history of the genre, which stretches from the “scientific romances” and utopian narratives of the turn of the cen...
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The First Black Woman Presidential Candidate

Posted on by LBH
  Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (1924-2005) made history when she became the first African American woman elected to Congress in 1969; she served 7 terms, ending in 1983. And in 1972, she became The First Black Woman to Run for President on the Democratic Party ticket. She won 152 votes at the 1972 Democratic National Convention. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Chisholm’s parents were...
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#ImWithHer

Posted on by Shelly
While Hillary Rodham Clinton is the first woman in the United States to win the presidential nomination for a major political party, Victoria Woodhull is the first woman to run for President of the United States (POTUS).  She ran for office in 1872, forty-eight years before the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote. In her acceptance speech, Clinton reminded her supporters that their “...
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Dolores Huerta

Posted on by LBH
History knows Dolores Huerta (b. 1930) as a powerful union organizer, Chicana civil rights leader, and feminist activist. In the 1960s, Dolores Huerta, along with César Chávez, united Mexican, Mexican-American and Filipino farmworkers and founded the United Farmworker Union (UFW) in central California. Huerta led the struggle to organize exploited migrant farmworkers who worked in abysmal conditio...
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Trust Black Women Partnership

Posted on by Shelly
The mission of the Trust Black Women Partnership is to develop strong network of African American women organizations and individuals mobilized to defend our human right to make abortion and family planning decisions for ourselves. We work to counter the growing anti-abortion movement in African American community and defeat race- and gender-based campaigns and legislation that limits abortion acc...
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Roe v. Wade

Posted on by Shelly
1970 was the dawn of a decade of radical and swift change for women in the U.S., none more profound than the right to control whether and when to become a mother. That year, a Texas woman named Norma McCorvey—a poor former carny with addiction problems and two previous pregnancies (one daughter forcibly taken from her by her mother, the other placed for adoption)—found herself pregnant a third tim...
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#NotYourSidekick

Posted on by Shelly
In 2013 Suey Park raised the profile of Asian American feminism in the digital age with her Twitter campaign. In one tweet, she writes that she’s “tired of patriarchy in Asian American spaces and sick of the racism in white feminism.” In another, she writes, “I’d rather base build with other Asian Americans than rely on allies, who have a history of being absent.” Park’s description of racism a...
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Rape

Posted on by Shelly
Sexual intercourse or sexual penetration without consent is rape. Rape, or sexual assault, is a violent crime perpetuated by persons who believe they have dominant, controlling power over another. Rape can also take place in instances of domestic abuse, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person who is unable to consent, such as against a person who is unconscious or against a person wh...
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Transgender

Posted on by Shelly
GLAAD,  a non-profit organization in the service of LGBT communities, describes transgender as “a term used to describe a person whose gender identity differs from the sex the doctor marked on their birth certificate…For transgender people, the sex they were assigned at birth and their own internal gender identity do not match. People in the transgender community may describe themselves using one ...
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Women’s Lib (Feminism 101)

Posted on by Shelly
Feminism, the feminist movement, the women’s liberation movement, or women’s lib are movements designed to transform models of power that facilitate the social, political, and economic sexist exploitation and oppression of women. Feminism is not only about women being equal to men. It is also interested in challenging the prevalence of rape and domestic violence—think Bill Cosby, Emma Sulko...
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Equal Rights Amendment

Posted on by LBH
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is really very simple: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” It suggests the basic principle of equal humanity. And, it is shocking that ERA remains only a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Equality between the sexes is not part of the Constitution. (more…)
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