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Allies

Seventh Stream by woodleywonderworksI've been ruminating this week (here and here and here Order premarin without prescription, ) about the possibilities for organizing women's movements in Canada and internationally, and I keep on circling around the idea of allies. "Ally" is a distinctly political term, used on the international stage to describe multi-lateral relationships. Canada is an ally of the United States, purchase premarin online, even though we've got that freaky universal health care system, same-sex marriage and Mr. Buy premarin online without prescription, Lego Hair as our prime minister. In other words, there are serious policy disagreements between the two countries, but what keeps them happily side-by-side, Kjøp Discount premarin, not shooting at each other, is their common interest of keeping the money flowing back and forth.

There might be a lesson in there for people who care about women's movements in Canada and internationally, order premarin without prescription. Premarin pills, The term "allies" leaves behind the contested and difficult word "sisterhood." Who are the people who may be very different from you, but ultimately have the same interests as you do--even if, perhaps, their methods may be different, cheap premarin without prescription, their membership may be different and their values might occasionally conflict with yours. Who are the people who can work with you, Premarin farmacia a buon mercato, and you with them, to achieve a common and happy outcome. And who are the people that you are just needlessly pissing off and alienating.

I feel so despondent when--on listservs and blogs and in person--people are rude, acheter premarin bon marché, snippy, and down right asshole-ish towards people who I know would otherwise be their political ally. Order premarin without prescription, For example, I'm on a women's studies listserv where right now, there is a vigorous discussion about what university women's studies departments should be called: women's studies. Order premarin no prescription, Gender studies. Women's and gender studies. Women, gender and sexuality studies, ordering premarin online cheap. I'm all in favour of vigorous debate, impassioned feelings and sound argument. But I just can't get behind women--feminists, order premarin without prescription. Where to buy cheap premarin, Fellow feminist academics. People who oughtta know better!--writing shit that is sarcastic, purposely disparaging and just mean.

I've also been thinking women who, buy premarin online legally, at a certain point, would have been considered unlikely allies: moms. Billig kaufen premarin, But now, with enough women having grown up enjoying the fruits of feminists' labour and then becoming moms, being a feminist and a mom is not at all contradictory (though if you've read Naomi Wolf's excellent book Misconceptions: Truth, Lies, kjøpe premarin online, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood, you'll be reminded of what a complicated relationship it's been).

Hence Moms Rising Order premarin without prescription, , a group of women in the U.S. Acheter en ligne premarin, who seem really well-organized, and who are reaching out actively to feminist organizations. And it really is in everybody's interests to bring moms to the forefront of women's movements, in no small part because of the economic factor, Connecticut CT Conn. . There is a widespread recognition now of the economic power individual women hold within their families, and a widespread recognition of mommybloggers as major cultural influencers (which in turn translates into economic influencers). Georgia GA Ga. , And as everyone knows, the power lies where the money lies.

I feel like too often we let marginal differences drive a massive wedge between us, order premarin without prescription. As a result, we end up barely tolerating each other, Arkansas AR Ark. . And this makes me think of something I once heard: the opposite of love is not hate, but tolerance. Oregon OR Ore. , Tolerance means keeping an arm's length distance. Tolerance is standing right by the door, ready to bolt. Order premarin without prescription, Tolerance is gritting your teeth, holding your tongue and folding your arms. In other words, Missouri MO Mo. , tolerance stops us from creating and taking action.

I think we're doomed if we can only tolerate the precise people who could otherwise be our allies. Køb discount premarin, I really love the idea of a feminist coalition that brings a wide variety of allies under one roof, actualizing the idea of multi-issue solidarity. I love the idea of the moms, the prostitutes, Louisiana LA , the academics, the anti-poverty activists, Osta alennus premarin, the anti-racist activists, the LGBTQ community, Aboriginal people, the seniors, Hawaii HI , the environmentalists (and all of the pluralistic, cross-polinated identities you can imagine) all rallying around issues like healthcare, Generic premarin, childcare, poverty, housing and homelessness, violence against women, Florida FL Fla. .

And the best part is, you don't actually have to have those endless debates about where the locus of power lies, whether to accept government funding, if you should target the state or corporations or the media...'cause each group on their own has already made their own decisions about that, order premarin without prescription. Just think. You could just get involved with the action.

And all this requires is just a little bit of organizing (okay, a lot of organizing). But hell, I've probably got a few good decades left on planet earth to get this done. Order premarin without prescription, Want to join me.

To that end: Does anyone know if there is an old NAC contact or membership list that is still floating around. And to the RebELLES: I want to join the momentum that you're building and help to build on it. And to our American allies: I think there are enormous opportunities for cross-border cross-pollination of ideas and actions. I want Confabulous to start getting in on your efforts (Tweetchat. Gotta figure that out) and start spreading the word up here. Political bloggers: ideas for strategies on how to join forces.

If you're curious, scared and/or interested in being a part of something that really advances the interests of women and girls (and therefore, you know, humanity), email me at sabine [at] confabulous [dot] ca, or leave a comment below. Let's build on what's already out there (as Karine noted here) and see what we can create.

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Buy Iressa C.o.d.

by Sabine on April 21, 2009 · 3 comments

in Advocacy

voiceestrogen72 Buy iressa c.o.d., For about 20 years now, feminists inside and outside of academia have been having a very important conversation, one that has been a reckoning of sorts, an acknowledgment that North American feminist organizing has been dominated by white, middle-class women who too often failed to respect and acknowledge women's different and competing interests. But it wasn't even just a case of failure to respect and acknowledge: sometimes it was a matter of active exclusion or hostile rejection. There was outright racism, homophobia and transphobia. California CA Calif. , Certain issues got onto the feminist agenda while others were ignored and/or actively pushed aside.

This conversation has, a lot of moments for a lot of people, been very painful; it's been fraught with anger, resentment, goedkope iressa apotheek, fear, guilt, defensiveness--the full gamut of the most difficult emotions. It's also been important, liberating, strengthening, just, honest, and necessary--a panopoly of feelings that have fuelled the direction of women's movements, buy iressa c.o.d.. Purchase iressa online, Sometimes, though, that were no fuelling. Sometimes the upshot was everybody retreating to their corners while the status quo remained intact.

Unfortunately, köpa rabatterade iressa, this necessary, had-to-happen conversation coincided with a period of backlash against feminism, an ebbing of activism, Order iressa no prescription, the rise of neo-liberalism and grassroots organizations dealing with shrinking or vanishing budgets. This made it really hard for people to organize for social change. Buy iressa c.o.d., Yesterday, I wrote about the difference between feminists moving on from this discussion about diversity and moving forward with a discussion about diversity. To me, moving forward means embracing difference--and I mean really embracing it, rather than paying lip service to it, Oregon OR Ore. . Moving forward means "staying in conversation" (is there a Latin word for this. I feel like there ought to be).

It also means not letting the political right drive us apart anymore.

I'm from the Canadian prairies, where lefties of all stripes band together to get stuff done simply because there's so few of us, buy iressa c.o.d.. Cheap iressa pills, But when I moved to Toronto to go to grad school, I discovered that the tiniest sliver of disagreement made people not work with each other. I found this shocking and disheartening. And I've seen more and more of it happen, in organizing and in the classroom and in the blogosphere, Colorado CO Colo. . This, I think, is a problem. Buy iressa c.o.d., What happened to the idea of alliances. Buy iressa from canada, How did it become a political casualty in an era of fractured and freaked out politics.

Our American readers might not know this, so permit me a short discursus on a model for organizing that I would like to pull out of recent women's history. Canada actually has--or had--a model of very effective feminist organizing that is premised on alliances: the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (or NAC, for short), comprar iressa baratos. NAC was an organization that started up in 1971. The model that NAC embodied was kinda brilliant--and is more fitting to today's political climate than ever before, buy iressa c.o.d.. Why.

Because NAC was an umbrella organization, Billig kaufen iressa, one that included a broad array of groups, each of which had different feminist beliefs and mandates. An organization could join the coalition without having to disregard its own base. According to NAC's Wikipedia entry, at its height, Arkansas AR Ark. , 700 groups were affiliated with NAC (which would have translated into thousands upon thousands of individual women coming under NAC's rubric). Buy iressa c.o.d., It seems hard to imagine now (even though NAC's heyday wasn't that long ago), but this was a high-functioning, very active, very visible organization that was comprised of groups and individuals from the full spectrum of feminist beliefs, ranging from liberal to radical to socialist and anti-racist. It was effective in communicating women's interests without insisting on single agenda items. It had a powerful and active voice on the national political stage. Cheap iressa, Lisa Young notes in her book Feminists and Party Politics that in the early 1980s, NAC very successfully made a point of bringing immigrant women, women of colour and Aboriginal women under its umbrella.

Like Amanda Reaume from Antigone Magazine noted in the comments section yesterday, one thing that would really benefit Canadian women's movements would be a new level of support and connectedness among social justice organizations, Massachusetts MA Mass. . I don't see any reason why we can't harness web 2.0 technologies to do precisely that, buy iressa c.o.d.. And I don't see why we can't use NAC as a real-world analogue for a virtual umbrella organization. And once we get this in place for Canada, we can harness up to our American sisters and beyond. Buy cheap iressa, What about NAC's diversity politics. If we used NAC as a model, what kind of diversity politics would we be replicating. Buy iressa c.o.d., Part of the answer to this lies in the story of NAC's slow death.

I don't know much about the details of NAC's decline (my copy of Judy Rebick's 10,000 Roses is currently in the mail!), Missouri MO Mo. , but I suspect there were a number of factors. The 1980s backlash against feminism didn't help, but the rise of neo-liberalism more generally was also a problem. Pharmacy iressa, NAC's opposition to the Charlottetown Accord in 1992 did not endear it to the Tories, Liberals or NDP--and if your organization relies on government funding, pissing off all three of the major federal parties is sure to be a gamble. The Mulroney government instituted the first round of cuts in 1992 and the Chretien government effectively drove the nail into NAC's coffin in 1998 by cutting its day-to-day funding. Two decades later, NAC doesn't even have a website (yes, I've tried www.nac-cca.ca, buy iressa c.o.d.. You can let me know if you ever get anything other than a 404 error), District of Columbia DC D.C. . Wikipedia indicates NAC is currently headed by Dolly Williams, but Dolly's Wikipedia page doesn't mention NAC at all (not to mention that it sounds as though Dolly lives in Brooklyn).

But I also remember there was a minor furor inside and outside of NAC when Sunera Thobani took over from Judy Rebick as the president of NAC. Ordering iressa from canada, Judy Rebick, as president, was mouthy, ballsy and always shoved back. Buy iressa c.o.d., In other words, she was truly inspirational. But when Sunera Thobani, buy iressa without prescription, another mouthy, ballsy, shoving-back woman (who happened to be South Asian) came onto the national scene, Köpa iressa online, some people got their knickers in a twist (now, how much they were upset because she was a woman of colour and how much they were upset because she was a vocal, outspoken, radical, anti-racist woman of colour, buy cheap iressa online, I don't know--and I don't know if this is anywhere written into NAC's history). What I do remember clearly was that this was the 1990s, when political correctness, Osta iressa online, debates about affirmative action and the culture wars had brought issues of race and ethnicity to the fore with a new sense of urgency.

I imagine that Thobani's presidency alienated some segments of the NAC old guard. But I also think that, in the decade and a half that has since passed, things probably would have turned out differently now, order iressa online cheap. I think that now, we can give ourselves credit for more people grasping the improtance of having elected an outspoken woman of colour to the position, buy iressa c.o.d.. Moreover, many of the successive NAC presidents have been women of colour, including Joan Grant-Cummings and Terri Brown, Iressa without a prescription, NAC's first Aboriginal president.

But I've also read account indicating that NAC had had working committees on Aboriginal women's justice starting in the 1970s, and a women of colour caucus from the early 1980s. I gather that having Aboriginal and women of colour in leadership positions (other than the presidency, prior to Thobani) in NAC was actually not that exceptional. And part of NAC's decline was its decision, under Judy Rebick, to side with Aboriginal women who were against the Charlottetown Accord--even though this would mean threatening NAC's funding from the federal government. Buy iressa c.o.d., What intrigues me about NAC--and again, I am not aware of a detailed history of the organization, so I am absolutely open to hearing from people who know more about this than I--is that it was a coalition comprised of individuals and groups who did not agree 100% of the time, AND paid attention to a diverse range of women AND was incredibly effective. Its weak spot, of course, was relying exclusively on government funding.

But it seems to me that there is no reason why Canadian feminists can't establish a kind of "virtual NAC," a broad coalition comprised of a variety of individuals and organizations who just want to get shit done, rather than police each other's feminist chops. If we decide that this is what we want, we can find the funding. And we can do this while still struggling through the conversation about inclusion and exclusion (e.g. the fact that poor, homeless and rural women may not be plugged into web 2.0 technologies is an issue to stay mindful of and a matter to be addressed, but not a reason to not move forward with it), buy iressa c.o.d..

Is there a way for us to stay engaged with each other when it would just be easier to say, "Screw you, I'm leaving". For our American readers, are there models where you live that hold out possibilites for organizing. Is there a way to envision coalition-building when the state of politics at the moment is so fractured. I think so. Do you. Please let us know.

(And stayed tuned for tomorrow's post, where I go into more explicit detail about current possibilities for feminist organizing).

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