It’s time to Meet The Team! In this series, the FMF Campus Organizers will talk a little bit about ourselves and also give you valuable organizing advice that we’ve picked up along our ways. Oh, and we’ll show you lots of photos of ourselves. Because that’s important.
Hello Feminist World!
My name is Brooke Hofhenke and I am the new National Campus Organizer for the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Western States Campus Choices Leadership Program. I want to tell you a little bit about myself, how I came to FMF, and what work I am currently doing.
I recently graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I majored in Sociology and minored in Feminist Studies and Applied Psychology. While there, I had an amazing instructor for one of my classes who introduced me to Reproductive Justice and showed me what it meant to be a feminist activist. From then on I knew that activism would always be a part of my life. My instructor became my mentor and together with a group of like-minded students we formed a group called End Fake Clinics. EFC raised awareness about deceptive practices of so-called crisis pregnancy centers on campus and worked to get CPC advertisements regulated on our campus (Learn more about how YOU can take action to expose fake clinics.)
We succeeded in getting over 1,600 signatures from UCSB students in support of a Truth in Advertising resolution and bill. Soon thereafter, with the leadership of great feminist Senators, our Associated Students passed the first Truth in Advertising resolution and bill ever on a UC campus. Today, women on and around our campus are less likely to be fed blatant lies about their bodies, abortion, and birth control because of UCSB’s strong policy against fake clinic ads.
In the next few months I will be working with you all on our reproductive rights and health campaigns and especially our Get Out Her Vote Campaign to excite and inform students about the upcoming election. I will also be headed over to Montana to fight against Legislative Referendum 120, a dangerous mandatory parental notification initiative, and then on to Colorado to hopefully start new groups and strengthen ties with existing ones!
The last thing I want to say to all of you young activists reading this is that, in our line of work, everyone needs a helping hand and a support group. Having a mentor was incredibly important to my activist growth and I would not have been able to get this far without her guidance. This being said, please feel free to use me as a resource. It does not matter if you are a seasoned activist or someone new just looking for a way to get involved, I am here to help you out, so don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions you may have.
Thank you so much for reading this post and for the work that you do! I look forward to meeting you all!