Editor's Note

Abstract

Editor's Note Natalie Havlin On March 8, 2018, marches in coordination with International Women's Day and the International Women's Strike took place across the world. In Spain, over 5.3 million women participated in a twenty-four-hour strike chanting, Sin nosotras, se para el mundo ("Without us, the world stops") (Vonberg and Perez Maestro 2018). In the Philippines, the radical women's movement GABRIELA led hundreds through Manilla to demand an end to exploitative labor practices (Cahiles 2018). At the march organized by la Coalición 8 de Marzo in San Juan, Puerto Rico, songwriter Chabela Rodríguez performed the song "Para construir otra vida" ("To build another life"), echoing march organizers' entreaty ¡Paramos para construir otra vida! ("Let us strike to build another life!"). In her performance, Rodríguez intoned, Somos manos amorosasmanos que amasan la vida.Las que tejen en las callesy en la casa dan comida.Sembradoras de esperanzay dispuestas a la lucha. (We are loving hands / hands that amass life. / Those who weave in the streets / and in the house they give food. / Sowers of hope / and willing to fight.)1 Rodríguez's compelling lyrics link a vision of gender and sexual justice with seeking liberation from the particular context of U.S. colonial rule [End Page 9] in Puerto Rico. Since 1898, the United States has maintained control over the Puerto Rican economy and further attempted to consolidate U.S. colonial rule through social policies and laws regarding sexuality, family life, racial segregation, language, and education (Findlay 2000). Most recently in 2016, the U.S. Congress enacted the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), a bill establishing a U.S. federal-appointed fiscal review board that includes devastating austerity measures such as privatizing government services and infrastructure (Bonilla 2018). Following Hurricane Maria in September 2017, the island's already fragile infrastructure has further eroded as a result of the PROMESA fiscal review board's decisions to cut wages and health-care benefits as well as privatize recovery efforts (Bonilla 2018). As of May 29, public-health analysts estimate that over 4,645 people died in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria due to the austerity and storm-impacted failures of infrastructure (Kishore et al. 2018). In response to this context, as Bárbara I. Abadía-Rexach notes in her contribution to Protest, Chabela Rodríguez voices a collective refrain among Puerto Rican feminist organizers that activates hope, self-determination, and mutual aid amid conditions of gender oppression and heterosexism enacted through and constitutive of colonial and state violence. In light of the struggle in Puerto Rico and other recent mobilizations as this issue goes to press—from the Great March of Return in Palestine and demonstrations for independence in Kashmir to ongoing digital campaigns such as #MeToo and #NiUnaMas—Protest provides a timely exploration of the tactics for liberation, survival, and decolonization developed by movements, artists, and individuals addressing social and material conditions of state and colonial violence in Canada, Chile, India, Kashmir, Kenya, Palestine, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the United States. As Elena L. Cohen, Melissa M. Forbis, and Deepti Misri clarify in their introduction, Protest moves beyond a focus on highly visible acts of protest, such as marches and demonstrations, to build a "new historical narrative" of the multiple registers and "repertoire of tactics" that individuals and groups engage to call for and build another world. From articles exploring Maphuche elders' narratives of struggle and LGBTQ Latinx migrants' practices for survival to feminist digital storytelling in Kenya and occupied Kashmir, a common refrain voiced by Protest contributors is that the varied modalities of feminist protest and struggles for freedom, not only address the particular contexts of the gendered and sexual dynamics of [End Page 10] occupation and oppression, but also creatively sustain ways of life targeted for repression and erasure. Like Chabela Rodríguez's invitation to San Juan march participants to join her in song and struggle, we might read Protest as inviting readers to participate in what contributor Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi terms a "call and response praxis." In the issue, guest editors invited Abdulhadi, Angela Y. Davis, and Charlene...