We Are Feminist Leaders

🇵🇸 Join us this Thursday 10 October for the next webinar in our series exploring feminist solidarity with Palestine. We will be joined by three fearless feminist activists who have been consistently advocating for and standing in solidarity with Palestine, facing backlash in the process: ✨ Azza Soliman is an award winning Egyptian lawyer and woman human rights defender. Azza is head of board of trustees at the Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance, and has been working on human rights and development issues for more than 25 years. ✨ Rheea Mukherjee is a Bangalore based writer. She is the author of The Body Myth (Unnamed Press, Los Angeles & Penguin India 2019) and The Girl Who Kept Falling in Love (Penguin 2023). Her work and activism is most interested in the intersections of gender, mental health, animal rights, social justice, and pop culture. ✨ Shaista Aziz is co-Director of the Three Hijabis, a writer and journalist. She’s a trained therapeutic counsellor. In October 2023, she was the first Labour councillor in the UK to resign over now Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s infamous endorsement of Israel’s right to cut of water, gas and electricity to the besieged Palestinian population of Gaza. Thursday 10 October 2pm UK; 4pm Palestine Register for free: https://lnkd.in/esKvW-Kn

On 7 October we join with others to continue to fight for the survival and liberation of Palestinian and other oppressed people across the world. In this video we read aloud the words of Palestinian writer Isabella Hamad, from her book Recognising the Stranger. She tells us: “It will be easy to say, in hindsight, what a terrible thing. That was a terrible moment, when the movements of the world were out of my hands. Do not give in." This moment also calls for the work, insights and beauty of artists - and in the comments we share 'The Soul Nebula rendered in the colours of the Palestinian flag' by Kirthi Jayakumar.

🔎 What does feminist leadership look like in this moment? Over the last 12 months we have witnessed failure after failure of international leadership to bring an end to the devastation that violence and occupation is bringing to the lives of Palestinian people. The violence now spills over into other parts of the region. At the same time, feminists from different contexts have been acting in solidarity with Palestine - they continue to organise, protest, and advocate for a permanent ceasefire and the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Some have experienced backlash in doing so - from being fired to losing funding. Others have felt forced to leave their jobs because of their political stance on this issue. We are hosting the fourth in our series ‘Voices for Palestine: Building Feminist Solidarity’ to explore what happens when we speak up against occupation, genocide and oppressive forces; how we navigate backlash; what it means to be a feminist in the face of systemic erasure and oppression; and how as feminists we continue our solidarity and advocacy in these contexts. Speakers will include feminist activists who have been consistently advocating for and standing in solidarity with Palestine, facing backlash in the process: Shaista Aziz Rheea Mukherjee Azza Soliman We hope you can join us. Register for free: https://lnkd.in/esKvW-Kn

🌟 Did you know that more people tend to avoid conflict than engage with it? We did a survey of nearly 150 people working in the social justice sector and most of them reported that their organizations tended to avoid conflict. Question this and other myths, in our four-week, part-time course on feminist approaches to conflict at the workplace. Register now! More info in the comments 👇🏾

🇵🇸 Voices for Palestine: Solidarity in the Face of Backlash Join us for the fourth in our series exploring feminist solidarity with Palestine, where we will be joined by feminists who have been consistently advocating for and standing in solidarity with Palestine, facing backlash in the process. As we witness the passing of 12 months since the genocide began, we will be exploring: 💥 What happens when we speak up against occupation, genocide and oppressive forces 💥 How we navigate backlash 💥 What it means to be a feminist in the face of systemic erasure and oppression 💥 How as feminists we continue our solidarity and advocacy in these contexts. Speakers will include: - Azza Soliman - Egyptian lawyer, woman human rights defender and feminist. Azza is a co-founder of the Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance, and has been working on women’s rights issues for more than 25 years. - Rheea Rodrigues Mukherje - Bangalore based writer. She is the author of The Body Myth (Unnamed Press, Los Angeles & Penguin India 2019) and The Girl Who Kept Falling in Love (Penguin 2023). Her work and activism is most interested in the intersections of gender, mental health, animal rights, social justice, and pop culture. - Shaista Aziz - co-Director of the Three Hijabis, a writer and journalist. She’s a trained therapeutic counsellor and works 1:1 and in group settings providing complementary therapy to refugees, migrants, women of colour and people and communities impacted by racialised violence, generational trauma and colonialism. In October 2023, she was the first Labour councillor in the UK to resign over now Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s infamous endorsement of Israel’s right to cut of water, gas and electricity to the besieged Palestinian population of Gaza. 10th October, 4pm Palestine / 2pm UK. Registration link in comments!

🇬🇹 Can indigenous organising and feminist activism challenge even the most powerful vested interests? Recent events in Guatemala provide us with inspiration and evidence of what grassroots mobilisation to defend democracy can look like. Read more: https://lnkd.in/emhGQPXT

💡 Can we get to a place of liberation and justice without contending with the issue of conflict? As Sarah Schulman puts it: ‘How we understand Conflict, how we respond to Conflict, and how we behave as bystanders in the face of other people’s Conflict determines whether or not we have collective justice and peace’. 🌟 Join our four week part-time course exploring feminist approaches to addressing workplace conflict. Register now! More info in the comments

🌟 What role should men play in feminist leadership? 🌟 Join The Good Trouble Collective’s first member event to discuss engaging men in feminist leadership and what true accountability in the workplace can look like for men. We'll be joined by Sebastian Molano, founder of the Defying Gender Roles Project and convenor of a masculinities in the workplace group at Oxfam America on 1st October, 6:30pm Delhi; 4pm Nairobi; 2pm UK; 9am New York. The event is open to people of all genders. 🌟 This is a member-only event for The Good Trouble Collective, our new membership circle for busy feminists who want to regularly learn, reflect and build collective power. Join as a member here: https://bit.ly/3Xq9w3u

🌟 Feminists need to get better at handling conflict and working across difference. But we cannot default to 'The Masters Tools' for how we do this. Instead, we can learn from decolonial and feminist praxis, as well as abolitionist work. 🌟 We Are Feminist Leaders is piloting a short course on *feminist approaches to addressing workplace conflict* in November 2024. Registrations open on 23 September 2023. More info in the comments. Please share!

It has been two years since Iran's Women, Life, Freedom uprising began - and repression against those involved continues. In this article from the Center for Human Rights in Iran, Iranian women share how they keep the hope for freedom alive. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/g8XRvYq3