Intersectional Feminism

By Zo Bambara

“I AM NOT FREE WHILE ANY WOMAN IS UNFREE, EVEN WHEN HER SHACKLES ARE VERY DIFFERENT FROM MY OWN. AND I AM NOT FREE AS LONG AS ONE PERSON OF COLOR REMAINS CHAINED.” - Audre Lorde

When we think about the roots of feminism, especially in America, we understand the racist white supremacist roots it bloomed from The early suffragist movements, often characterized by a myopic focus on the advancement of rights exclusively for white women, starkly marginalized and denigrated the struggles of Black and other minority women

As claimed by NewAmerica org, “Tracing the roots of white feminism in the United States back to the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, Beck explains that the founders of the women’s rights movement primarily wanted one thing: “Shared power over systems with men.” Above all, early white feminists wanted to vote. In their pursuit for power, they proved themselves unwilling and uninterested in prioritizing the political enfranchisement of African Americans post-Civil War.

In 1865, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the most prominent figures in the movement, wrote a letter-to-the editor saying, “..now, as the celestial gate to civil rights is slowly moving on its hinges, it becomes a serious question whether we had better stand aside and see “Sambo” walk into the kingdom first.”

White feminism, from the start, sought “self-preservation,” as Stanton put it, above all things Over the course of a century, white feminists sought power over, rather than liberation from, oppressive systems ”

Understanding this history is imperative, for it underscores the inadequacy of approaches that fail to address the multifaceted intersections of oppression We also have to inspect the “why” of the beginning of the white feminist movements It was because white cisgender heterosexual women saw Black folks not only question their oppressors, but utilized the tools to dismantle those systems of oppression that kept them in chains. White feminists wanted in but did not want to dismantle the master’s house, they wanted to build upon it.

Liberation can not be the goal when you are not examining the disparities amongst the group of people you are fighting with. You will never achieve liberation without community, and community can not and will not exclude the most marginalized groups. We have to to be intersectional. We have to fully understand class and the wealth disparity, conducting solidarity to our people incarcerated, Queer folks, and centering folks who have visible AND invisible disabilities.

Not organizing and advocating on their behalf, but knowing how to utilize your voice and privilege to uplift others.

Kimberley Crenshaw, a Black feminist, states that,

"Intersectionality is a metaphor for understanding the ways that multiple forms of inequality or disadvantage sometimes compound themselves and create obstacles that often are not understood among conventional ways of thinking.”

Our fights are intertwined across the Global South and capitalism, imperialism, and the U S empire is the enemy

When you look at policing, specifically Cop City, and Atlanta Police Department's commitment to state sanctioned violence is not an isolated incident and doesn’t just impact us. GILEE (Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange) is a system where Atlanta Police Department Officers travel to Israel (and other colonial and imperialist powers) and teach Israeli occupying forces how to brutalize and terrorize Palestinians.

According to a CAIR Factsheet, “A coalition of Atlanta scholars, faith leaders, civil rights organizations, and human rights activists have called upon Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms to end the Atlanta Police Department’s participation in the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE), 1 a privately-controlled police exchange program founded in 1992. GILEE arranges for law enforcement officials to train with foreign governments that engage in racial profiling, mass surveillance, arbitrary detention, violence against protesters, sexism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia ”

If you look on Gilee’s website, you will see different police officers’ accounts of the program, here is one that really caught my attention

“What I was most impressed with about the program was learning how the Israeli Police force was trying new ways to bring diversity to their police force and their police leadership. Diversity and representation is one of the main points of contention in American law enforcement Communities are speaking out about police departments having a balanced representation of the communities they serve It was eye-opening to see those same sentiments were holding true in Israel Any law enforcement leader looking to expand their knowledge base and experience once-in-a-lifetime memorable moments, this program is top notch ”

- Jason P Armstrong, Chief, Ferguson Police Department, Missouri

Jordantimes.com

Do you all remember what happened in Ferguson? The slaying of Michael Brown and the violent reaction of the police after the community came together to organize. It is important to realize the connections between the police in Ferguson to Atlanta to the the occupying forces in Israel.

Solidarity must be a verb.

Police states affect everyone. State Sanctioned violence affects all Black and brown women, femmes, and girls. Wee see organizations, made by Black women, that are meant to disrupt the powers at be.

“Launched in December 2014 by the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) and Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies (CISPS), the #SayHerName campaign brings awareness to the often invisible names and stories of Black women and girls who have been victimized by racist police violence, and provides support to their families ”

-AAPF ORG

When we consider that we actively live in a police state, and how we are targets of state-sanctioned violence; we have to grasp that our attackers travel to other countries, controlled by fascists, sit in board rooms or gun ranges, and discuss not just what tatics they use to harm us, but how to increase terror, violence, and displacement #SayHerName was to created to raise awareness of Black women and girls who have been victimized by police violence, and those same police forces go to other police forces across the Global north and wreak havoc

More than 25,000 women and children have been killed in Palestine by occupying forces. Everything is connected.

https://euromedmonitor.org/

The Reproductive Justice movement, which was a term coined by Black women, vaticinated the overturning of Roe V Wade and warned this country that our rights were at stake We needed something more than Roe V Wade We didn’t want permission, we wanted protection After the turning of Roe V Wade, we saw pink pussy hats and Handmaid Tale costumes and no recognition that Black women have the highest maternal mortality rate, and Black babies have the highest infant mortality rate We are seeing a surge in hospital closures across rural areas that will of course, disproportionately affect Black, Brown, and poor folks.

According to Sister Song, We must “Analyze power systems Reproductive politics in the US is based on gendered, sexualized, and racialized acts of dominance that occur on a daily basis RJ works to understand and eradicate these nuanced dynamics

• Address intersecting oppressions Audre Lorde said, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives ” Marginalized women face multiple oppressions and we can only win freedom by addressing how they impact one another

• Center the most marginalized Our society will not be free until the most vulnerable people are able to access the resources and full human rights to live self determined lives without fear, discrimination, or retaliation.

• Join together across issues and identities All oppressions impact our reproductive lives; RJ is simply human rights seen through the lens of the nuanced ways oppression impacts self determined family creation The intersectionality of RJ is both an opportunity and a call to come together as one movement with the power to win freedom for all oppressed people ”

The fight for reproductive justice is not solely about personal choice but also about dismantling oppressive systems that perpetuate inequality and injustice. We can connect the acts of forced sterilizations in Puerto Rico to the forced sterilizations of Ethiopian women by the Occupying Israeli forces, to the forced sterilizations that happen in women prisons across this country. Victories in this struggle benefit everyone, underscoring the imperative of community-building across the Global South.

“WHENEVER YOU CONCEPTUALIZE SOCIAL JUSTICE STRUGGLES, YOU WILL ALWAYS DEFEAT YOUR OWN PURPOSES IF YOU CANNOT IMAGINE THE PEOPLE AROUND WHOM YOU ARE STRUGGLING AS EQUAL PARTNERS.”

ANGELA Y. DAVIS, FREEDOM IS A CONSTANT STRUGGLE: FERGUSON, PALESTINE, AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF A MOVEMENT

YOUR FEMINISM SHOULD BE ANTI-RACIST, ANTI-WAR, ANTI-CAPITALIST, AND ANTI-IMPERIALIST.

AN ANTI-RACIST FEMINISM ACKNOWLEDGES AND CONFRONTS THE WAYS IN WHICH RACISM INTERSECTS WITH GENDER OPPRESSION, RECOGNIZING THAT WOMEN OF COLOR FACE UNIQUE FORMS OF DISCRIMINATION AND VIOLENCE. THIS INCLUDES NOT ONLY THE RECOGNITION OF ANTI-BLACKNESS IN EVERY SINGLE CULTURE, BUT THE CONSISTENT FIGHT AGAINST IT. ANYONE CAN BE ANTI-BLACK, INCLUDING PEOPLE OF COLOR.

AN ANTI-WAR FEMINISM RESISTS THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, CRITIQUING HOW MILITARISM PERPETUATES VIOLENCE, EXPLOITATION, AND DISPLACEMENT.

AN ANTI-CAPITALIST FEMINISM CALLS FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM'S EXPLOITATION OF LABOR, UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF RESOURCES, AND REINFORCEMENT OF PATRIARCHAL POWER STRUCTURES.

AN ANTI-IMPERIALIST FEMINISM CHALLENGES COLONIAL NARRATIVES AND PRACTICES, ADVOCATING FOR SELF-DETERMINATION, SOVEREIGNTY, AND DECOLONIZATION.

I am not the first person to connect these dots, and I won’t be the last. It is imperative to recognize that we come from a society, a country, an empire that hyper focuses on individuality. We have a president who dangles the promises of healthcare, student debt elimination, and abortion access (barely), but it is conducting a genocide and inciting other forms of violence in multiple countries. Is your potential access to healthcare more important than the lives on the Gaza Strip? Is your potential student debt elimination more important than the children in the Congo who are dying in coal mines? Is your potential access to abortion more important than the lives in Cuba who are facing hunger and lack of medical access due to United States sanctions? The global south is your community! These are the folks you should be in solidarity with every single day, not an empire that swings promises of basic needs in your face. You deserve more. Your community deserves more. The globe deserves more.

As someone who is a Gen Z individual, who was once a liberal, who was once excited about voting for a president for the first time, you have to start to question any and everything. Why am I voting for someone who promised to codify Roe V. Wade, and failed to do so, but in the same breath gives the police more money and power to kill not only me, but any community that dares to question them? We must challenge everything, and understand that the empire wants to work us until they feel the need to kill us, and we have to fight together, in solidarity, to achieve a liberated world. That is the foundation of being an intersectional feminist.

Your chains are no different than mine. They may be a different metal, but they were manufactured by the same empire.

We are not free, till we are all free!

Black Blessings.

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