haris welcomes Laura McTighe and Deon Haywood, Women With A Vision for a discussion of their book Fire Dreams: Making Black Feminist Liberation in the South. Fire Dreams is a vital toolkit for grassroots organizers, activist-scholars, and all those who dream to make the world otherwise. This event is co-sponsored by Access Reproductive Care-Southeast, Black Feminist Future, Feminist Women's Health Center, The Georgia Harm Reduction Coalition, SisterLove, Inc, SisterSong WOC, and Project South.
For thirty-five years, the New Orleans-based Black feminist collective Women With A Vision (WWAV) has fought for the liberation of their communities through reproductive justice, harm reduction, abolition feminism, racial justice, and sex workers' rights. In 2012, shortly after one of WWAV's biggest organizing victories, arsonists firebombed and destroyed their headquarters. Fire Dreams is an innovative collaboration between WWAV and Laura McTighe, who work in community to build a social movement ethnography of the organization's post-arson rebirth. Rooting WWAV in the geography of the South and the living history of generations of Black feminist thinkers, McTighe and WWAV weave together stories from their founders' pioneering work during the Black HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and their groundbreaking organizing to end criminalization in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina---with other movements for liberation as accomplices. Together, the authors refuse the logics of racial capitalism and share WWAV's own world-building knowledges, as well as their methods for living these Black feminist futures now.
About the Panelists
Laura McTighe is Assistant Professor of Religion at Florida State University and the Cofounder of Women With A Vision’s research arm, Front Porch Research Strategy in New Orleans.
Deon Haywood is Executive Director of Women With A Vision, a New Orleans-based organization that has organized for Black feminist liberation in the South for decades.
Desiree S. Evans is a writer, scholar, and activist from South Louisiana. She is a former Director of Programs at Women With a Vision in New Orleans.
About the Community Co-Sponsors
Access Reproductive Care-Southeast (ARC-SE) is a reproductive justice organization based in Atlanta, Georgia that funds abortion and builds power in the region.
Black Feminist Future (BFF) is a political hub and member-centered organization focused on the dynamic possibilities of galvanizing the social and political power of Black women, girls, and gender-expansive people toward liberation. BFF centers leadership development, community care, and joy to build the political and social power we need to win.
Feminist Women's Health Center (FWHC) is a reproductive health, rights, and justice organization. They provide direct services, including abortion care, and they provide education, advocacy, and leadership development opportunities.
The Georgia Harm Reduction Coalition (GHRC) has been a beacon of hope and support within our community. We are tirelessly dedicated to addressing the urgent needs of individuals affected by substance use, HIV, and other communicable diseases.
SisterLove, Inc., was founded in July of 1989. SisterLove is committed to sexual and reproductive justice and its many intersections. It remains committed by fighting to eradicate society's challenges and inequities, particularly where women, transgender people, and gender non-conforming people lack access. SisterLove's PAP team leads grassroots advocacy campaigns, builds issue-based coalitions, leads policy initiatives, and develops projects in the areas of reproductive justice and its intersections as it relates to marginalized communities and women of color.
SisterSong's mission is to strengthen and amplify the collective voices of indigenous women and women of color to achieve reproductive justice by eradicating reproductive oppression and securing human rights.
Project South was founded as the Institute to Eliminate Poverty & Genocide. Our work is rooted in the legacy of the Southern Freedom Movement and Black Radical Tradition. Our mission is in cultivating strong social movements in the South powerful enough to contend with some of the most pressing and complicated social, economic, and political problems we face today.
The event is free and open to all people, but we encourage and appreciate a donation of $5-20 in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Donate on crowdcast or via our website: www.chariscircle.org/donate or in person the night of the event.
29 мар 2024
