Activism

On the 2nd of February, we're expecting more than 200 women to descend on George Washington University for a one day conference on women, feminism and technology.

This is the beginning of a conversation started between different people about the tide of change happening to all kinds of activism, especially in the feminist front. Blogs have become one of the most powerful points of discussion and organizing among a not just a new age of feminists but a new technological tribe of feminists that cross ages, ethnicity, race, ability and even gender itself.

I was in the middle of some of these conversations about the present, past and future of feminism and felt that there was a need to get the veterans and the noobs, the geeks and nerds, the men and women and all the different "tranches" of what we today call "Feminism" in the United States, throw them in a room and just have them shake hands and start conversations, collaborations or debates.

It is my hope that Feminism 2.0 is the first of annual meetings where feminists of all kind can come together to celebrate and air, vent and dream, rinse and repeat

It's why we need your help to spread the word. We need media partners : People who will advertise the event on their blogs, spread the word on their mailing lists, twitter the hell out of what happening, make it a thing on Facebook and MySpace.

If you take the code and decide to help spread the word about Feminism 2.0, please leave your name and a link to your blog in the comments section or use the private message feature at the foot of this post. We want to link back to your blog and acknowledge your contribution.

Ad codes after the jump.

I've always thought of the internet as a kitchen where every web page, every email, every embed is a menu of creative delicacies feeding the soul of our culture. Every image, every word, every interaction carries meaning for the post or page where it is found. Collectively, all those billions of moments are not just being archived for as long as the blog or website is in place. Together, they are transforming our consciousness -- the way we talk, the way we speak and, more importantly, the way we think of each other.

When I started blogging in 2001, there were fewer than two-million blogs worldwide. Blogger was the biggest blogging platform and yet a work-in-progress for the little company that created it, Pyra. MovableType, Typepad's older sister, was still in beta. Wordpress didn't exist and neither did Flickr, YouTube, MySpace or Facebook. Google was only 3 years old. Wikis were just going into the early adopter mainstream -- Wikipedia had just been launched in January of that year.

It was an exciting time to set foot on the web and publish online from a technological point of view. Historically speaking, it was a tumultuous time as well.

I started blogging in December of 2001, months after the destruction of the World Trade Center. As any other New Yorker, I was still shell-shocked, yet had no time to dwell with a baby and a toddler to take care of. Yet it was the smell of the still-burning debris, magnified by the prospect of our country not just going to war but trampling our constitution in the process, that pushed me out of a writer's block I had been carrying for years and dropped me smack in the middle of the first wave of bloggers.

I did it in search of kindred spirits, in search of other women and men who shared my hopes, my fears and my sense of outrage. And I make the distinction of putting "women" first because back in the day it was rare to find women with their own online domains.

Slides of the presentation Chris Rabb and I gave at "Facing Race" on both 2007 and 2008.

I was a teacher for almost 10 years here in NYC. When I started, I was very young (21 years old) yet had had years of experience teaching children, teenagers and adult alike as a Spanish language instructor.

I decided to work as a teacher a few years after graduating from college, so when I started as a Public High School teacher here in NYC, I couldn't teach Spanish, for it wasn't my major in college. I was thrown into the History department of Eastern District High School to teach a mostly immigrant population of teenagers History and Social Studies in (mostly) Spanish and (some) English.

It was a horrible and yet formative experience in my life.

Years before teaching, when I was still a Catholic, I had studied the teachings of  Gustavo Freire's in "Pedagogia do Oprimido" and Leonardo Boff in "Teologia da Liberação". What struck me, as a  middle class intelectual wannabe of "grey collar" parents, was the focus on the violence of poverty.

Hunger, homelessness, unemployment, discrimination, illiteracy : We don't even have to talk about actual physical violence acts in order to think of all the different violent ways in which poverty and marginalization hit many communities of color.

69% of Latinas do not vote. Even though we have the highest pregnancy rates and the fastest growing incidences of AIDS in the United States. 70% African American and Asian American registered voting women also abstain from voting.

Pass on this video clip to every single, Black, Latian, Asian, Native US American woman you know and ask them to pass it on to their family friends.

Faced with the prospect of a McCain presidency that would squash any hope of Universal Health Care and would put on the bench Supreme Court Justices that would bring back reproductive slavery, it is absolutely necessary that each and every minority woman and man go out and vote.

From the EngageHer blog :

Kyle has compiled a whole collection of images from white supremacist rallies against immigrants. Here's the lede:

The Sanctuary:: 5 English Lessons From the Anti-Immigrant Movement: "Any nativist will tell you that polls show 1,000% of 'Mericans support speaking only English in the United States of America. It doesn't matter if the U.S. can't even understand the languages of the countries it goes to war with (you don't need to understand people to shoot at them). If people can't speak English like they're supposed to, they're not real 'Mericans.

Using this iron-clad logic, I thought I'd compile a list of five English lessons for those that want to learn to how to be a real 'Merican and speak English."

The results are HYSTERICAL. Go see the whole collection, NOW!

(Via The Sanctuary:: 5 English Lessons From the Anti-Immigrant Movement.)

Yesterday I had a bit of fun at the expense of the Republican noise machines and their efforts to paint themselves already as a loud and marginalized minority in Capitol Hill. I was so caught up on the moment that I didn't blog about it until this morning but Kenneth Quinnell described it as a "Twitter Bomb" and has happy to spread the word :

Twitter Bomb

This wasn't my idea (although I came up with the cool name), I think Liza Sabater was the one who started it, but it's too brilliant to pass up.

Those of you who are on Twitter, send as many tweets as you can over the next few days with #dontgo in them. The conservatives are using this hash mark (like a tag) to spread misinformation about offshore drilling and their latest publicity stunt. What Liza and a few others started doing was to flood that hash with counter-commentary or irrelevant posts. Sort of like a google bomb, this can either disrupt what they're doing or, at the very least, annoy the crap out of them. We can all do this.

Whatever you're posting on twitter, try to fit #dontgo into it. And make sure you include the # sign, which is key.

If you aren't on Twitter, this might be the type of thing to get you into it.

And before I even start to explain, let me break down the lingo for you.

Image by Pantone801, found at Flickr.com

This is so mindboggling it defies commentary. Up until the 1st of July of 2008, Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist by the United States.

Bush Removes Nelson Mandela from Terror Watch List
By VOA News
01 July 2008

U.S. President George Bush Tuesday signed a bill that allows Nelson Mandela to enter the United States without special clearance.

The measure officially removes Mr. Mandela and his African National Congress from a U.S. terror watch list.

The former South African president may now visit the United States without the U.S. secretary of state having to certify that he is not a terrorist.

Mr. Mandela was placed on the list because of his work with the African National Congress (ANC), which fought to end white minority rule in South Africa.

Mr. Mandela spent 27 years in prison for his work with the ANC to fight apartheid rule in South Africa.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner turns 90 on July 18.

Un.

Be.

lievable.