Our Shared Shelf discussion

As suggested, please post feminist actions you'd like help with here. Could be a letter, petition, occupation, boycott, buycott, etc. Current action is Nuit Debout in Europe....

I started a literacy project in NW Pakistan taught by uni students in homes: http://opendoorsliteracyproject.weebl...

i wrote this for my global youth activism book draft, might be useful: Successful Strategies for Changemaking

Identify widespread outrage about injustice that violates deeply held values, such as it’s not fair that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer or that school food is unhealthy. Define the problem: The unfair economic system is the focus of recent activism. People also need to have hope, Obama’s campaign slogan along with “Yes We Can.” Many student groups work on environmental issues. Email me for a list of them.

Reach out to potential activists on social media and with face-to-face meetings. Include incentives such as food, live music and raffle.

Decide on your top priority and action to achieve it. Think of planning a non-violent battle strategy including gaining allies, coalitions, and mentors. Create a power chart of who has control around your issue, such as a principal, school board, or city council. Who are the pillars of support for the power holders and celebrities that you can influence? Soccer fans helped out in uprisings in Egypt and Turkey and Leonardo Decaprio speaks for the environmental movement. Pope Francis told a Brazilian crowd of young people, “The young people in the street are the ones who want to be actors of change. Please don't let others be actors of change."

Form a local organization based on an issue: Models are Quebec and Chilean student groups working for affordable education. Study successful campaigns such as the Civil Rights Movement or the campaign for GLBT acceptance. Read Gandhi’s autobiography, and Bill Moyer and Gene Sharp analysis about how to create a sustained movement.
For example, the women’s movement in the US greatly changed attitudes. Betty Friedan named the problem that had no name in The Feminine Mystique. Women and male allies held huge marches and lobbied politicians to change laws. They organized influential groups like NOW and the Moral Majority. They publicized concepts with skilled speakers like Gloria Steinem who advised doing an outrageous act daily. High schools and colleges formed feminist groups.

In organizing, involve people by giving them specific tasks that they report on to the group. Teach skills like how to facilitate a meeting, rotate leadership positions and conflict resolution. Successful groups like immigrant Dreamers provide direct action training. Large meetings can use hand signals such as a twinkle with fingers for approval or thumbs down. People are more likely to get involved if their friends are participating and they think success will result. Celebrate small successes and give praise for good work. Why Civil Resistance Works review of resistance movements indicates they succeed if 3.5% of the population participates and non-violent tactics are the most effective because they invite more participation.

Brand your campaign as if were Nike shoes. What do you want your audience to learn? Educate them. Pick a logo, symbol, color, and slogan. A popular symbol is a flag or a black fist, created by Serbian Otpor to overthrow their corrupt president. Otpor said “We’re trying to make politics sexy.” Quebec students used a red felt square pinned on your shirt to symbolize being in the red. Popular slogans during the recent youth-led uprisings were “Enough” and “We’re the 99%.” Create a “frame” or identity such as it’s cool to be an activist.
Create stickers, posters, flyers and YouTube videos that educate about the facts, graffiti, and T-shirts with your slogan and logo. See the Arab Spring slogans and art at http://en.qantara.de/content/symbols-...
Create polls and petitions where people give input into decisions and feel they have power.
Get attention from many people and media with marches, demonstrations, boycotts or “buycotts,” strikes, sit-ins, and occupations of public spaces—the main tactic of recent uprisings. Think in terms of photo opps for media with banners, costumes, symbolic actions such as presenting a petition to a city mayor. Environmentalist Bill McKibben advised keep up the pressure, be a pain in the neck, and never give up as 350.org did with their campaign against the XL oil pipeline. Organize fun fundraisers such as a race. German high school students raised money with solar panels on their school.

Make activities fun and attractive to media, such as Chilean student demonstrators dressed as superheroes. They also held a kiss-a-thon and danced to Michael Jackson songs.

Gayle wrote: "As suggested, please post feminist actions you'd like help with here. Could be a letter, petition, occupation, boycott, buycott, etc. Current action is Nuit Debout in Europe....

I started a litera..." I applaud this notion. Thanks for offering your help.

Sign up this petition to support criminalisation of marital rape in India.
criminalize-marital-rape

Please sign this petition to support criminalisation of marital rape in India.
criminalize-marital-rape

Done and posted it on my FB and Twitter pages. Might want to put it on change.org too?

This website provides "I'll go with you" buttons to wear and guidance for how to use them to support trans people in avoiding or minimizing harassment and bullying in gendered spaces such as bathrooms.

http://www.illgowithyou.org/get-your-...

More on tactics for changemaking from my global youth activism draft. Let me know if you'd like to read more.
"Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath teaches how to get an idea across using simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotion, and stories. (They also wrote "Switch: How to change Things When Change is Hard," 2010.) To get the masses over their fear barrier to resistance, youth disrespected tyrants, showing the soles of their shoes to insult Mubarak and a mural in Bengasi portrayed Qaddafi being kicked in the rear. Humor is an effective tool to subvert powerful leaders, as used when Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez accused protesting students of being in the pay of the CIA in 2007. They assembled in front of a government bank loudly scolding it for blocking their imaginary checks from the CIA.

I'm proposing a letter campaign to the American Family Association with the goal being to have them stop their trans-phobic, invasive protests of Target by having cis men entering female bathrooms to prove a misguided point.

What the AFA doesn't understand is that there have been zero reported cases of a trans individual harming anyone in a public restroom. However, the likelihood of a trans person or a cis woman being assaulted in a public restroom by a cis man is terrifyingly high. That's why women tend to go to the bathroom in packs! There's safety in numbers.

The AFA believes they are protecting women by sending cis men into their personal spaces, when the reality is, cis men are the very people women need protecting from!

Currently, the bathroom choices for a transgendered person are to be beat up or raped in one, or arrested in the other. Target is trying to end that in their stores and be inclusive, but the backwards AFA is letting their ignorance put everyone in danger. Women and transgender individuals deserve peace of mind when using a public facility.

Here is an article summarizing the events: http://leadercall.com/2016/05/anti-lg...

Here is the homepage of the American Family Association:
http://www.afa.net/

Here is where you may send your letters:
American Family Association
P O Drawer 2440
Tupelo, Mississippi 38803

I hope the AFA will be receiving more than just my letter this month! Thank you all for reading!

I volunteer with an organization that helps women in our community find jobs that pay above minimum wage. A lot of the women there have spent their whole lives never being taught a skill, not being allowed to get an education, or being told they are worthless. I teach classes on resume building, interview skills, and computer literacy, but also lead classes on things like breaking trough your personal barriers that are keeping you from moving forward.

This is the type of thing I am truly passionate about and wonder if anyone has any ideas how I could do more of this or if anyone works with any similar organizations.

If you haven't already looked into https://www.dressforsuccess.org/
Becky, I would check it out.

Summary of a useful article on how to change the system:
From Barcelona, Kevin Buckland reported after the Paris climate change conference in November 2015 on a shift from the climate change movement to revolutionary system change, part of the recent youth activist emphasis on intersecting issues and uniting groups with various causes including indigenous movements that provide alternative models and leadership by the people most harmed by the system. Buckland observed the creative new approaches “blur the lines between tactics, resistance, prefiguration, and revolution.” He gave the example of the decentralized digital Climate Games where activists posted over 200 calls to peers to take action including radio frequency takeovers, bank occupations and the Red Line with 5,000 red tulips, seen in a video. Climate Games tactics spread to other European countries. Buckland contrasted the new movements and local actions with large NGOs with rigid hierarchies, short-term planning, and overwork. Another new trend counters the chronic problem of burnout by developing “movement health” in a focus on process. And of course the most visible tactic of the new uprisings is occupying public squares with prefigurative politics of free services.
Kevin Buckland, “Cultural Shifts in the Climate Justice Movement,” ROAR Magazine, March 22, 2016.
https://roarmag.org/essays/paris-atta...
Kate Aronoff, “Climate Games Challenge Paris Protest Ban with Peer-to-Peer Disobedience,” Popular Resistance, December 12, 2015.
https://www.popularresistance.org/cli...
videos: https://www.facebook.com/climategames and http://d12.paris/

Suggest that your country develop a similar plan:
The US was the first country to organize a Strategy for Adolescent Girls, launched by Secretary of State John Kerry in 2016. The International Center for Research on Women, Millennium Challenge Corporation, and Girls Not Brides lobbied for the policy. Kerry explained, “This plan brings together resources and expertise from all of the agencies [USAID, Peace Corps, etc.]” The State Department planned to focus on laws and polices such as insuring that girls go to school, and ending child marriage and genital mutilation.http://www.state.gov/secretary/remark...

If the planet is trashed, feminism is secondary. We can learn more about this suit. Something similar happened in the Netherlands?

Victoria Barrett, age 16, joined 20 other young people in suiting the US government to take science-based action to develop a science-based “climate recovery plan.” Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein call it the most important lawsuit in the world. Barrett explained,

People label our generation as dreamers, but hope is not the only tool we have. I am young, I am a teenager, and I want to have fun, and be creative, and hang out with my friend. I want to do what I love and live a life full of opportunities. I want the generation that follows to have the same and I absolutely refuse to let our government’s harmful action, corporate greed and the pure denial of climate science get in the way of that.

Ecofeminism (2014) is discussed in a book of that name by Second Wave feminists Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva. The authors represent the global North (Germany) and South (India). The authors co-founded Diverse Women for Diversity to save the environment. A main ecofeminist concept is that domination of women and nature is similar and that patriarchy undergirds capitalism; in turn ecofeminism is criticized

If the planet is trashed, feminism is not relevant. Apply for grants for young environmental projects?

The Pollination Project provides seed grants to young environmental activists, partnered with Levi Strauss & Co. and Earth Island Institute’s New Leaders Initiative. Young people planted fruit trees for the community in Kenya and school gardens in Malawi, and created an orangutan habitat in Indonesia. In India, youth organized a recycling project in villages in India with no garbage sites and distributed leftover food from universities to hungry people. Rooftop gardens flourished in Tripoli, Lebanon. Other examples of funded projects from around the world are listed here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-nes...

Write a letter to Brazil's interim President to protest sexism.
The interim President Michel Temer appointed an all white cabinet in a country where they’re the minority and proposed that women retire earlier than men, assuming they do the family work as well as paid work: "The woman, in addition to outside work, does the inner work in the home, she is a mother, etc., sometimes cares for siblings."

Spread the word: two teenagers started a new political party in Hong Kong to preserve some autonomy from Beijing--Agnes Chow and Joshua Wong. Their party poster is a photo of Ms. Chow as Katness with bow and arrow and flames, and the slogan "The Younger Games." A photo of the poster is on the FB page Global Youth SpeakOut. Know of any other teens who started a political party--ever?
Her video went viral: https://www.theguardian.com/world/201...

https://www.malala.org/yesallgirls?so...

Join Malala as she campaigns for girls' education, traveling globally on her birthday July 23.