www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS,
August-September 2002
Southern Convention
Memphis, Tenn.--The fourth annual Southern Girls
Convention was held July 19-21 in Athens, Ga. Activists from across the South
were invited to lead workshops, give lectures and educate others on organizing
in their region. The convention began right here in Memphis when the Women’s
Action Coalition took on the task of starting what would now be an annual
radical gathering of activists based out of the South. This year saw incredible speeches by Mississippi-based
civil rights activist Constance Curry and former Black Panther chairperson
Elaine Brown. Both women spoke about their history in the movement and answered
questions from the packed auditorium. Though fraught with several organizational flaws, this
year’s conference saw many informative workshops, skill shares and roundtable
discussions. One example was the “How to start an abortion fund in
your town” workshop led by Wyndi Anderson of the National Network of Abortion
Funds. The NNAF helps women pay for abortion procedures, and even provides
housing, transportation and emotional support. Several women, including myself,
left this workshop with immediate plans to start an abortion fund in their town. Other topics covered were “TransFeminism,” a
discussion on transwomen as part of the feminist movement; “Lame is good: How
to be an ally to disabled folks,” in which ableism within radical communities
was discussed; “Intersex--what it is & how it affects you” offered a
detailed account of life as someone who is intersexed. The weekend ended with a meeting of organizers past,
present and future, and it was decided that next year the conference will take
place in Asheville, N.C. All of us decided to keep in touch via a list serve to
create an organizers’ manual to be passed along from year to year. There was
also talk of keeping the focus away from the primarily white punk community, as
it detracts from a major part of what makes the South so wonderful and that is
the fact that it is a melting pot of all types of different people and
communities. —Michaela Parra |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
