Women Writing Digitally: Online Activism
Compiled by Amy Winter
One of the greatest strengths of the internet in general, and blogs in particular, is their potential for organizing people to action quickly, and getting out reports on actions in a very timely way.
At La Chola, brownfemipower puts together information on scheduled housing demolitions in New Orleans during the month of December:
“On the 12th day before Christmas, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is planning to unleash teams of bulldozers to demolish thousands of low-income apartments in New Orleans. Despite Katrina causing the worst affordable housing crisis since the Civil War, HUD is spending $762 million in taxpayer funds to tear down over 4600 public housing subsidized apartments and replace them with 744 similarly subsidized units - an 82% reduction.”
There’s also information in the same post on a gift drive for kids in the area and how to participate.
I Am Emily X documents the experiences of Planned Parenthood clinic workers and volunteers, using text and video, during the anti-choice “40 Days for Life” campaign:
“In 1998, Dr. Slepian, an abortion provider at the clinic I worked at was shot and killed in his home. I was one of the first doctors to go back to that same clinic and continue providing abortions. There were nine federal marshalls who protected me. People ask me if it was scary -- it was, it was terrifying. But it wasn't about to stop me from providing a critical service to women in this country.”
Best of all, Planned Parenthood’s ingenious “Pledge a Protester” campaign--one of my all-time favorites--raised over $56,000 in donations during this time.
Pretty Bird Woman House is a domestic violence shelter for women on the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota. They maintain their own blog, which reports on the staggering difficulties facing native women trying to escape male violence, and the shameful paucity of resources they have to draw upon. After struggling through a funding crisis, which was averted through a cooperative fundraising effort by several Left bloggers, this fall their shelter was attacked by thieves, rendered uninhabitable, and most of their furnishings and supplies were stolen or ruined:
“The first signs of danger came when Pretty Bird Woman House offered shelter to a woman whose batter[er] had a record of extreme violence. Fearing for her safety, they transferred her to a shelter off of the reservation. The next day someone cut the shelter's phone lines. Police did not have the manpower to come out and see the cut phone lines and eventually the phone company fixed them.
Shortly after this unknown men entered an adjoining abandoned building. They kicked and tore a hole through the drywall wide enough to walk through and looted the shelter of anything they could carry: televisions, computers, clothing, toiletries (all donated or purchased with donations) - literally anything that could be carried. This happened in broad daylight while the shelter was empty - the staff were all absent transporting women to court or other shelters. Clearly the perpetrators watched the shelter for such an opportunity.
After a second break in, local government and Pretty Bird Woman House realized that the shelter could not function safely. The staff moved out and returned to the unheated donated office space. The day after they moved out the crisis line got a telephone call: ‘Lady, your shelter is on fire, they are burning down your shelter.’ Arsonists had thrown some kind of molotov cocktail through a basement window, setting fire to the building.”
So Pretty Bird Woman House is once again seeking donations of money and supplies in order to continue providing services to women.
Witchy-woo, among many other UK bloggers, reported on her experience at London’s Reclaim the Night March in late November. Unfortunately for our purposes, the post is mostly photographs, and really inspiring ones at that! So do check it out if you have the chance.
Some blogs are completely dedicated to activism; one excellent example is the Blog of Feminist Activism. Author charliegrrl gives her take on London’s Reclaim the Night 2007, including great photos:
“I went to this years Reclaim the Night. Was worth the journey from up North.
The best part of the event was listening to the speakers. Jane from Bradford Rape Crisis gave a powerful speech about the reality of working in a rape crisis centre-- that being begging for funding by filling out grant application forms. She told us how one time she had spent all day filling out a grant application form, having to compete with hundreds of other projects, just to get cash for the Rape Crisis she works in...This is the reality of rape crisis centre, Jane reiterated, that they have to spend so much energy begging for funding, rather than focusing on helping women and girls who have been raped. They shouldn’t have to beg for funding…
Another great point was remarked by Julie Bindel saying lets forget talk of ‘new’ feminism, ‘third wave’ feminism, and I’d add queer feminism, whatever…there’s nothing wrong with the radical feminism that the ‘new’ feminisms try to distance themselves from-- and the radical feminist battles that we still have not won.”
However, charliegrrl and her cohorts routinely perform guerrilla activism against pornography by stickering sexist and pornographic posters, advertisements and magazines throughout their area--and she brings you photos! They also write letters to misogynist businesses, protest sexist TV shows, and petition newsstands to move the porn out of sight.
Two other blogs, Adhesively Unchallenged and Stick It!...to the Patriarchy provide printable artwork and stickers that you can download and use to emulate charliegrrl and her friends. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all. From Stick It!:
“It would be such a shame if these accidentally got stuck, oh, I don't know, on the back of the men's room door in a Hooter's somewhere? Or even on the back of the stall door? How distressing for the gent-about-town to have to look at such propaganda while he's trying to take a nice relaxing crap. How wrong to harsh his misogynistic mellow. But that could never happen; upstanding young feminists that we are, we could never condone such reckless defacement of property, such callous disregard for the mandated omnipresence of woman-hating.”
This is just a small sample of the kinds of activist projects and reports you can find online--from the serious to the whimsical, the organized to the anarchic.
Amy Winter is a radical lesbian feminist blogger and the webspinster at feminist reprise, a radical feminist archive and online feminist resource. You can read her blog here.
Thanks to Kya for her help with this piece.