| Workshops
A
Place of Our Own and Now it's Gone: Effects of Gentrification on
Women and Girls in the District
presented by Cassandra Burton
Hear one woman's
story about the consequences and effects of gentrification and corporate
development on her beloved community in the U Street Corridor of
Washington DC, and its impact on the lives of women and girls.
Feminism,
Activism, Parenting and Inter-generational Relations
presented by Simin Royanian,
Heather Pankl and Anai Martinez
Family and community
is the soil where revolutionaries grow and Revolution is a Family
Value. If we want to make real changes in this world, we need to
expand and strengthen our relationships, not sever them. Many young
activists tend to feel alienated from their families. There are
ways to overcome alienation and build a familial base to support
our progressive actions.
A second issue
to be discussed concerns the ways in which a radical activist may
reconcile the duties and responsibilities of parenting with earning
a living and political activism; the issue of raising children as
a feminist and radical activist. How can we raise children so that
there is political harmony in the family and the children continue
the struggle?
A third topic
is the raising of children and parenting in a radical and progressive
fashion. The workshop will cover issues of progressive tools of
parenting, educating and raising a young child. The workshop will
use some theory as basis, historical and actual experiences of parents
who have been radical activists.
Behind
Enemy Lines: Radicals and Progressives in Tradtional Institutions
presented by Amelia Reyes, Luke Jones, Tracy Lingo and Cara Elkins
We’ll
be examining the tensions bewteen having radical or progressive
beliefs and working in traditional institutions, such asschools,
businesses, or non-profits, which hamper those ideals. How do we
function day-to-day? What compromises do we make? Which issues do
we push for? Join us to voice your own thoughts and experiences.
Other points include: revolutionary changes v. incremental change:
is it an either or proposition?; finding opportunities to challenge
oppression in mainstream
instituitons...without getting fired!; what to do when the boss
tries to shut you up; creative ways to inject politics into your
workplace; why i almost got fired after 9.11: confronting super
patriotism and living with the consequences; its okay to have people
not like you!
State
of Domestic Violence in DC
presented
by Nancy Meyer, DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Learn about
the policies shaping domestic violence prevention work in the District,
and create action plans for improving our city for survivors seeking
justice and safety.
Our
Struggle: Working Towards a True Feminist Agenda
presented
by Kiran Ahuja, Lisbeth Melendez Rivera, Retta Morris (Sister Source
DC) and Jumana Musa
Historically,
the mainstream feminist movement has failed to address the varying
perspectives of communities of color. This workshop will provide
a forum in which to confront our differences and to develop strategies
for working collectively to build a true feminist agenda.
Juggling
Identities: Walking the Tightrope of Fragmented Selves
presented
by Selina Musuta
The silence around sexuality in communites of color can often be
deafening whether it concerns sexual violence to positive sexuality
to ‘homosexuality’. This workshop will focus on the
multiple ways communities of color communicate issues that involve
sexual/gender subversion and non-conformity. This also will lead
to the continuous debates on authenticity and tradition. Another
issue that will be worked through is how we seem to talk about sexuality.
Many times we contain sexuality outside of a historical, economic,
social, and cultural context, only viewing it within debates that
are based around discourses of legitimacy. This workshop will end
up raising more questions than answers such as how do we continue
to critique our histories/communities while not invalidating the
hostility that stems from colonized histories. How do we proactively
take a stance against reactionary voices that try to delegitimize
our existence while we try not to alienate our communities? What
does it mean to view sexuality through radical frameworks? How do
we as subjects that subvert dominant paradigms also deal with the
fact that we are invested in them? This workshop will emphasize
discussion, participation, and as much of a collective process as
possible.
Constructing
the Body: Self Image and Indentiy
presented by Maha Shami, Erica Smith, Dean Spade, Natalie Illum
and Charisma Lee
Constructing
the Body will examine ways in which Western society characterizes
and classifies people based on their bodies and the external, featuring
perspectives ranging from transgender identity to eating disorder
survival to disability to racial status. We will talk about ways
in which cultural constructions limit and restrict individuals based
on their bodies and appearances, and strategies for truly forward
thinking, revolutionary ways of approaching identity.
Combatting
Street Harrassment
presented by the Anti-Street Harrassment Squad
HEY BABY - sick
of being harassed on the street? Street harassment is verbal and
emotional violence that terrorizes women. It is every person's right
to use public space without being sexualized and insulted. This
workshop will offer personally empowering and socially transformative
techniques to end this oppression. Come to talk about street harassment
in our community and learn how to stop it.
Disrupting
the Structure: A Multi-Racial Discussion on
Challenging Patriarchy
presented by the DC Men's Caucus and more TBA
In the struggle
to end sexism and patriarchy, and within broader movements to fight
oppression and build towards collective liberation, women and transgender/gender
variant people must take the lead. With women and trans people up
front, what is the role of men in the struggle against sexism?
This panel will include self-identified men who have been working
to challenge sexism and patriarchy in their organizing and in their
lives. The focus will be on concrete ways men can support the concrete
struggles of women and trans people, as well as ways to hold each
other accountable in the struggle against all oppression.
Las
Mujeres Trabajadoras en Hoteles se Proponen una Meta (Goals
and Strategies of DC-area Women Hotel Workers: A Case Study in Organizing)
presented by Pa'delante/ tenants and workers support committee (presented
in Spanish with English translation)
Local Latina
immigrants share their stories of migration, finding work, losing
it, and surviving and organizing as working women. Presented by
members of Pa’delante, associated with the Workers and Tenants
Support Committee, which is a self-organized group of Latina women,
many first-generation immigrants, working in local hotels and similar
jobs. This workshop will be in Spanish with English translation
available.
The
Radical Potential of Art
presented by Bekka Barker, Kerry Hydrick, and others TBA
Art creates
personal revolutions. Art nourishes political revolutions. Art enables
empathy for others by dipping the viewer into a life that may be
entirely foreign to them. Art creates community by recognizing and
examining the core experiences & emotions that humanity grants
each of us in our lifetime. Speaking
to a feminist context, the panel would like to discuss how political
and personal artistic revolutions sustain one another. More specifically,
we are interested in how many self-identified feminist artists use
traditionally feminine mediums and themes to subvert stereotypes
and how this practice may be problematic to some, while encouraging
and legitimizing to others. We would like to discuss and share art
produced by well-known artists, as well
as art created by our peers, by underground artists, by you and
by me.
Border
Crossings
presented
by Cindy Milstein
The process
of globalization is simultaneously abouttearing down, redrawing,
and blurring borders. Whether figurative or literal, borders are
places of displacement, marking out danger and potentiality in equal
measure. For many, they signify trauma; a better life often isn't
waiting on the other side. And more than ever, border crossings
both geographic and cultural, material and emotional, are becoming
compulsory points of no return for millions due to forces beyond
their control. But over the past decade or more, numerous autonomous
yet webbed movements have offered glimpses of a transborder world
premised on both personal and social freedom for everyone -- movements
of our own forging, precisely at the permeable borders now opening
before us. This workshop looks at the contemporary geopolitical
context we face as activists/radicals/feminists struggling at these
margins. And in the contest over what or whose version of globalization
will win out -- a global world from below or a top-downsociety of
control – this workshop will also offer a utopian response
aimed at drawing out the possibilities in the present for a
free society.
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Other
Activities
Kick-off
Art Night Friday April 18, 2003
in Annapolis Hall multi-purpose room, University of MD, College
Park (map)
doors at 6:00, $5 to benefit HIPS
(Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive)
The
art night to kick-off the 3rd annual Visions in Feminism Conference
will feature DJs, bands and performers, and a film screening. Recently
confirmed:
Hott
Beat (DC feminist electronic)
Morgan Storm (all female hardcore from NJ)
Rachel Jacobs (singer/songwriter from NYC)
Kenyatta Ali (from B-Girl Manifesto)
Mothertongue (DC women's spoken word)
also...the
evening will begin with a screening of The Children We Sacrifice,
a film by feminist filmmaker and activist Grace Poore,
who will be the keynote speaker at the conference on Saturday.
Visit
her website at www.shaktiproductions.net
for more info on her work.
and
featuring the BAD ART SILENT AUCTION
In
between performances, wander through our gallery of entertainingly
bad art. Ponder the portrait of Tom Selleck with the eyes that follow
you. Shed a tear for the paint-by-number of a sad, sad clown. Marvel
at the hologram of Jesus knock, knock, knockin' on heavens door.
Place your wager on small bid sheets next to your favorite peice.
At the end of the night, the highest bidders fork over the cash
and take home their very own tacky disasterpiece.
Keynote
presentation
Grace
Poore
Video
producer, writer and director Grace Poore has firsthand knowledge
of what it is like to grow up in a violent home. It is this personal
experience that drives the focus of her work as an activist. Her
activism includes producing documentaries that are used internationally
as educational and organizing tools to end violence against women
and girls. Grace has been giving workshops and interactive seminars
to campus and community groups in the US for over ten years where
much of her work looks at the intersections between domestic violence,
child sexual abuse and other oppressions, and how mainstreaming
the movement to stop domestic violence and incestuous sexual assault
continues to marginalize women who defy the conventional understanding
of "survivor." She has worked for the United Nations Special Rapporteur
on Violence Against Women in Sri Lanka as well as the US-based National
Coalition Against Domestic Violence where she did crisis advocacy
on the national battered women's hotline and edited the quarterly
journal, NCADV Voice. As a videomaker, she intercuts interviews
with creative expressions of poetry, paintings, dance and music
by survivors of "private" violence, to provide a forum for art that
captures the pain of and triumph against violent trauma. She blurs
the line between those who are survivors of violence and those who
are traditionally thought of as "experts" on violence. Her award-winning
videos, "Voices Heard Sisters Unseen" and "The Children We Sacrifice"
are widely used by advocates working to stop child sexual abuse,
women's rights groups, battered women's programs, mental health
agencies, universities and faith-based groups in the United States
and around the world. Grace has published in various journals and
anthologies and is a graduate of Syracuse University. She is a South
Asian of dual Tamil heritage, born and raised in Malaysia. She has
lived in the US for over 20 years.
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