Summer School of Women's Activism

AF3IRM’s annual Summer School of Women’s Activism (SSOWA) will soon usher in its sixth year on Saturday, July 16th. The sessions will be held over four Saturdays—July 16, 23, 30 + August 6th—from 11am to 4 pm. This year, the school will include interactive trainings, theory-building workshops, and interactive panels of women leaders representing different facets of feminism.

Themes tackled in SSOWA include: intersectionality, militarism, neo-liberalism and women’s work; and four continents feminism. Teachings will examine the history of the male right of sexual access from the woman-of-color perspective, and how that is manifested in the policing of the world and communities of color; and in corporate globalization in the parallel phenomena of colonizing territories, resources and bodies. The school concludes with participants developing a 360 degree-view of the history and current status of the right of women to body integrity and the violations of that right both historically and at present.

SSOWA serves as a political education bootcamp as it is designed to encourage students to connect their personal experiences with political theories, learn about intersectional and transnational feminism, and develop their own analysis and vision of the women’s movement with a cohort of others who are committed to sisterhood.

All classes include skills training to help participants a) document everyday sexism; b) make public such a documentation; c) deal with coercive authorities like the police; and d) manifest solidarity across national and ethnic boundaries.

AF3IRM NYC considers the SSOWA one of its major contributions to the emergence of the Fourth Wave of Feminism, in which women of color and transnational women should have a singularly strong voice.

Women and women-identified of color are eligible to enroll. Participants will receive a reader, lunch, and the ability to share and learn in a “safe space.”

For more information, please visit ssowa2016.tumblr.com or register here.

The cost of registration is $60 for individual participants, $70 for professionals and those that can afford it, and $100 for institutional representatives. There are a limited number of scholarships and volunteer opportunities available.

For more information, please email: nyny@af3irm.org.

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AF3IRM NYC is the local branch of AF3IRM National, an organization of transnational women engaged in the theory and practice of intersectional and transnational feminism.  We bring an intersectional (class, race, gender) perspective and a transnational (cross-borders) perspective to local, national and international issues.  Our multi-ethnic membership of women of color is dedicated to movement building in the United States and horizontal solidarity with other women’s organizations in other countries on specific issues.  We seek social justice and social transformation through grassroots organizing and mobilization, trans-ethnic building, mass education, advocacy and direct action.