For those of you who missed it, my fellow feminists and I had a TON of fun last weekend at our 8th Annual National Young Feminist Leadership Conference. We had great speakers from many different backgrounds and work experience, leading to great feminist discussions.
“We are not apathetic, we are angry. We are not the future, we are the now. We are the forth wave, and we will not go back!” – Shelby Knox, Change.org
Our General Assemblies had some wonderful leaders in the fight for gender equality such as Sandra Fluke, Shelby Knox, Delegate Charniele Herring, State Senator Barbara Favola, Delegate Heather Mizeur, Francois Girard, Kim Gandy, Ellie Smeal and so many awesome activists from SUNY Purchase, Stonybrook, University of South Carolina, Salem, Brandeis, Western Illinois, Purdue, and more!
We also had great workshops that dealt with many themes – from immigration rights to worker’s rights to queer activism to reproductive justice – we had a vast amount of subject matter discussed.
We talked about the war on women and what’s at stake in 2012. Strategies and ideas were discussed to get the vote out in the upcoming election to stop the rollback of women’s rights. Speakers such as Amber Jamil of National Nurses United had a lot to say about the attack on our reproductive rights as it intersects with attacks on the working class.
Most importantly, we met and spoke with passionate, hardworking young feminist activists and advocates. Activists in attendance are trailblazing at their schools, thinking of creative and effective ways to create change on their campus and in their community. We saw a lot of idea-sharing and networking in the hopes of creating a large beneficial feminist activist community so we can all work together to fight the assaults on women and equality.
We want students’ feedback of their experiences at the conference, so if you weren’t able to fill out the evaluations, you can do that here. You can also still fill out your activism pledge here. And if you’d like to write a blog about it, please let us know! We’ll have photos from the conference uploaded to flickr soon. And be sure to check for your picture and add more to our new Feminist Campus tumblr!
We thank everyone for the time, money, and energy spent to trek all the way to DC to meet with everyone. Let this be a blast off point for feminist campus activism nationwide!