Work Of Activists Research Articles

Violence, Ritual, and Vogue: Black Queer Feminist Praxis in Motion

Abstract As an unapologetically Black feminist artist, Ntozake Shange furthered the cause of black girl representation on Broadway stages with the 1976 debut of for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. Shange’s award-winning choreopoem eschews the masculinist liberation discourse of the Black Power era and instead centers the concerns of Black girls within the freedom struggle. Using twenty poems interlaced with dance and music, Shange illuminates the subjectivity of seven “colored girls” who experience sexual, emotional, and physical violence in their communities. Committed to the health and safety of the entire Black community, Shange concludes the performance with a ritual dance to foster unity and community healing from violence. Her early Black feminist intervention serves as a foundation for the artistic work of Black Lives Matter activists today, many of whom continue to use ritual performances to promote community healing in the wake of white-authored violence. Black Lives Matter movement artists and activists Gorgeous Mother Karma Gucci, Adonte Prodigy, and Amya Miyake-Mugler, for example, performed ritual Voguing at a Chicago demonstration on 3 June 2020 to bring greater visibility to the intracultural violence reaped upon Black queer and transgender girls. Their ritual Voguing, which I situate as Black queer feminist praxis in motion, reimagines the Black radical tradition as collective liberation. Collectively, the work of Shange, Gucci, Prodigy, and Mugler affirms the vital truth that none of us are free until all of us are free.

Where is the party? Explaining positions on same-sex marriage in Europe among would-be members of parliament

The rapid adoption of marriage equality legislation for non-heterosexual individuals in Europe is attributed to many factors, including dramatic shifts in public opinion, the work of transnational activists and changing international norms. Usually, these factors must be filtered through the halls of parliaments where most policy change happens. Given the importance of parliamentarians’ attitudes, it is surprising that we know so little about how attitudes towards same-sex marriage are distributed across political candidates in Europe and what factors shape them. This article fills that gap by using an underutilised dataset on the political preferences of candidates for parliamentary office. We find that beyond attachment to party families, a candidate’s religiosity and practice has a greater effect on a would-be Member of Parliament’s attitudes towards same-sex marriage. The findings suggest that the success of parliamentary action on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights depends not on the partisan composition of the legislature, but rather on the representation of secular candidates.

‘Go Home, Get a Job, and Pay Some Taxes to Replace a Bit of What You’ve Wasted’: Stigma Power and Solidarity in Response to Anti-Open-Cast Mining Activism in the Coalfields of Rural County Durham, UK

This article explores the nexus of stigmatisation and environmental activism in the Campaign to Protect Pont Valley against open-cast mining in the northeast of England. Drawing on Imogen Tyler’s work, our analysis examines stigma power as embedded in wider efforts to police and repress environmental dissent and defend core neoliberal values. Examination of qualitative interviews with campaigners, drive-past insults shouted at activists, online police statements and public responses, and online trolling of activists by mining employees and the wider public reveals stigmatisation to be a process of power, informed by neoliberal ideologies (of the threat and danger of worklessness), and reproduced through neoliberal power structures (the state, corporate power, and popular culture), shaped by the insecurities that are specific to social and political contexts. We show how the state mobilises stigma through ideologies associated with austerity and the hostile environment to delegitimate activism through association with worklessness/idleness and the inaccurate representation of activists as part of broader processes of criminalisation, policing, and management of protest. In an area renowned for its work ethic and high levels of unemployment, the work of environmental activists is dismissed as illegitimate, drawing on tropes associated with the disciplining of the so-called deviant working classes. The historical importance of coal and activism in the defence of the ‘mining way of life’ feeds into dominant narratives associated with work and individualism. Pride associated with coal mining is reconfigured and forms the basis of insults against those (working class and otherwise) who are recast as ‘outsiders’, ‘wasting time and money’ in resisting environmental destruction. Finally, we examine how activists were able to largely deflect stigmatisation through collective engagement, solidarity, and political analysis of the process they were subject to.

Captive Passages: Geographies of Blackness in Guantánamo Memoirs

AbstractThis article reckons with the figure of Blackness in the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, from captives who are racialized as both Muslim and Black to the invocations of racism and slavery in discourses incited by the prison. Broad continuities between the War on Terror and various forms of anti‐Black state violence have long been observed by critical commentators, but this article aims to theorize these relationships with greater precision through the analytic of captivity. As a modality of racialization, captivity entails mobility across contexts as well as encounters of captivation through public narrative. This approach offers a distinctive vantage point on how the War on Terror’s racialization of Muslims cross‐cuts diverse geographies of Blackness, including in Muslim‐majority societies. This essay follows the memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi (Mauritania) and Walid Muhammad al‐Hajj (Sudan) and is informed by the author’s experiences as an attorney and activist working to close the prison.

In search of reciprocity: Feminist challenges in Posthumanist thinking – An intellectual meditation

abstract There are many spokes to the critical wheel of Posthuman Feminism. It is a richly diverse field of thinking, and may be considered from multiple vantage points. Indeed, the metaphor of the rhizome, following Giles Deleuze, is more appropriate here and is, in fact, used more frequently in this context. In this article, I shall sketch simple and broad contours of the move towards Posthumanism in general, and Posthuman Feminism in particular, drawing from key Posthuman feminist theorists, such as Rosi Braidotti. Prompted by my own academic journey and learnings as a literary critic and emerging feminist from the 1970s – the “politics of location” from which I speak − I will highlight some of the signposts I am encountering en route to understanding Posthumanism and Posthuman Feminism, as I revise my ways of reading and inhabiting our common world. Developed, against the broad background of my own journey as a critical scholar, the essay is presented as a simple, exploratory introduction to a wide, engaging and convoluted field, and will conclude with a few important challenges for Posthuman feminist intellectual and activist work in the current global and planetary context.

“Una casa hecha de palabras”: Unsettling the Wounded Family Paradigm in Diario de una princesa montonera. 110% verdad (2012) by Mariana Eva Pérez

ABSTRACT In the aftermath of the Argentine dictatorship, the national imaginary anchored memory through a familial relation to loss, constituting a wounded family, that is, a broken lineage of family members of the disappeared whose biological kinship has become the motor for memory work and political activism. In this article, I explore the gendered implications of what it means to bear witness and be a member of the wounded family in the novel Diario de una princesa montonera. 110% verdad (2012) by Mariana Eva Pérez. As a daughter of disappeared parents, Pérez’s work constitutes a postmemory text that uses humor and genre experimentation to unsettle the solemnity and performative imperatives within the wounded family imaginary. Through a feminist criticism lens, I argue that the metafictional strategies of the text re-envision the possibilities of memory narratives and challenges that the conventional codes of remembering present within the Argentinian national imaginary.

Democracy's Dislocations

Abstract This article examines the 2019 Hong Kong protests from the perspective of urban space and the city's historical founding as a colonial entrepôt. Specifically, it explores how the protests destabilized both the urban fabric of the city and the political and economic agreements that have defined the city's governance since handover. The analysis of the protests, and of the history leading up to them, is informed by writings on democracy and space by Chantal Mouffe and Doreen Massey, and considers the work of activists, researchers, and journalists whose voices have often been out of step with the movement and with international media narratives that have defined it. The article provides historical and theoretical insight into the role of both collaboration and conflict in the formation of the city's political identity and points to possibilities for engaging with the still-open question of the meanings and practices of democracy in Hong Kong.

Looking beyond the Laws: Disjuncture between LGBTQ+ Laws and Conditions in Ecuador

Despite Ecuador's progressive laws, there continues to be violence against LGBTQ+ communities. This article analyzes current conditions through the lens of three main areas of life: LGBTQ+ stability and mobility, basic necessities, and safety. It demonstrates that a lack of government enforcement of laws creates constant barriers for LGBTQ+ community members. The work of activists, NGO, NPO, media publications, and intergovernmental organizations is crucial in analyzing the reality of these conditions. Along with the continued progress legislatively and judicially, there needs to be enforcement of these protections, and work put in to drive a social and cultural shift for the protection and progression of LGBTQ+ communities. Furthermore, this article seeks to provide supporting evidence for asylum applicants from countries such as Ecuador by highlighting to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and immigration judges that Ecuadorian laws may not be an accurate reflection of conditions within Ecuador.

Disrupted and Unsettled: An Introduction to Monuments, Memorials, and Italian Migrations

Disrupted and Unsettled: An Introduction to Monuments, Memorials, and Italian Migrations

ОБЕСПЕЧЕНИЕ ФУНКЦИИ ОБЩЕСТВЕННОГО КОНТРОЛЯ В ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ РЕГИОНАЛЬНЫХ ОБЩЕСТВЕННЫХ СОВЕТОВ В КУЗБАССЕ

T^e subject matter of the paper is the consideration of the public control forms through the information content of the official websites of public council acting at the regional authorities of the Kemerovo Region - Kuzbass. The purpose of the study is to identify the main forms of public control through the system of information content of official websites in the activities of public councils at the regional authorities of the Kemerovo Region - Kuzbass. The methodology of the study was based on two groups of methods and methodological approaches. The theoretical approaches of the study were the structural-functional approach of T. Parsons and the legal and regulatory approach. The empirical part of the study included the results of processing quantitative and qualitative data from public council websites using the content analysis method. Most of the pervious researches on the issue review features and prospects of the public councils1 activities at the federal level, or the dynamics of the public councils1 development under regional authorities. In the conducted study the activities of 40 public councils operating as of January 1,2022 have been analyzed. The authors have analyzed the minutes of meetings for the period of 2019-2021 as the main source of information. The study focuses on the issues characterizing the work of public councils - the topics of the meetings, social and occupational features of the councils1 staff, which ultimately has made it possible to assess the forms of exercising public control over the authorities. It is observed that such studies are aimed at solving the problem of systematizing data on the activities of regional public councils with subsequent informing the regional authorities. The study has noted a positive trend in the content of public council websites. The significant problems identified include a low level of exercising the function of public control in the work of social activists and the use of a limited number of forms of public control

Neurodiversity as Status Group, and as a Class-within-a-Class: Critical Realism and Dyslexia

Dyslexia is seen as one of a number of often overlapping neurodiversities which define a disadvantaged sector of the general population in developed countries. Neurodiversity is redefined in terms of the positive advantages of being a member of this “status group”. The role and status of this group in society are considered in the light of stratification theorists such as Marx and Bhaskar—with advocacy for group consciousness as a “class within a class” (Marx) in seeking and asserting change, using Bhaskar’s critical realist model. The paper draws on the work of recent scholars and political activists in advocating a model of “humanist class struggle” by the neurodiverse community, adopting Janine Booth’s model of trade union enterprise on behalf of the neurodiverse class of workers.

Corona warriors-front-line workers with varied ophthalmic presentations during the lockdown in COVID-19 pandemic in a tertiary care center in South India

Aims and Objective: To analyze the various ophthalmic presentations among the Corona warriors-front line workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional observational study conducted at a medical college hospital in the ophthalmology department. All the front-line workers including doctors, postgraduates, interns, staff nurses, Hospital staff, health-care workers (HCWs), Police personal were involved in the study after obtaining informed consent. Twenty-five front-line workers were examined after taking necessary safety precautions. A thorough history was taken regarding ocular symptoms. Best-corrected visual acuity was recorded using Snellen's visual acuity chart. Anterior segment evaluation was done using a slit-lamp examination, fundoscopy done. Medical management was done in 23 patients, and emergency surgeries were performed in two patients who required surgical management. Results: Among 25 front line workers mean age was 34.5 years, males were 15, females were 10. There were 20 HCWs among whom 8 were doctors, 2 postgraduates, 4 interns, 6 nurses. The other 3 were accredited social health activist worker, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike workers, hospital cook, and 2 police personal. Twenty-one workers had varied ocular manifestations which were managed medically. Two workers had retinal pathology and underwent retinal barrage laser. Two policemen had road traffic accidents and underwent emergency surgery. Conclusion: Corona warriors-front line workers are leading the battle against COVID-19 from the front, putting their own lives at risk with selfless determination for the sake of saving lives, they truly are our heroes in these challenging times. During this tough phase, they were working relentlessly and faced spectrum of the ophthalmic issue. It is, therefore important to monitor these front-line workers for any eye problems and ensure that timely treatment is given. Hence their safety is our responsibility. This is a tribute to all the front-line workers working tirelessly during the uncertain pandemic.

Essentially Surplus: The Struggle for the California Domestic Worker Bill of Rights (AB 241) and the Afterlife of Reproductive Slavery

This article offers an account of the relationship between “essential” and the category of labor by examining how reproductivity, as the foundation—what is essential—to all work, life, and sociality, is, as Kalindi Vora argues, rendered (and renders those who perform it) into racialized surplus, a condition of devaluation and disposability premised on the extraction and exhaustion of life. I draw on a year of ethnographic research with domestic worker activists following the 2014 implementation of California’s Domestic Worker Bill of Rights (AB 241). This breakthrough bill overturned domestic and at-home care worker labor exclusions grounded in New Deal labor legislation that shored up the rights (and category) of the industrial worker and offered major concessions for organized labor while legally cementing the exploitation and unfree labor conditions of the South’s Black women domestic workers. Rather than positioning California migrant women’s domestic worker activism as a compelling teleological and linear challenge and victory against Jim Crow–era exclusion, however, I tarry in the overlap and disjuncture that such tied fates represent under settler racial capital and demonstrate how this alternative tracing of reproductivity confounds notions of labor, value, and inclusion at the core of the U.S. racial liberal state. I contend that the conditions of New Deal industrial capitalism, shaped as they were by Jim Crow anti-Blackness and the afterlife of reproductive slavery, now form the originary knot through which current-day racialized migrant women’s reproductive labor and life is appropriated under the neoliberal reorganization of care in the United States. I term this atemporal modality of racialized extraction essentially surplus, a “racializing process” that subsumes the life and bodies of racialized migrant women as if they essentially occupy the same category of surplus life occupied by Black women domestic workers historically.

Critical geographies of transport and mobility: Studying power relations through practice, academia, and activism

AbstractOver the last decade, there has been increasing interest among geographers in a critical perspective on studies of transportation and mobility, or studies that take into account the power relations within systems of transportation that produce space, place, mobility, and/or identity. This ever‐growing body of work includes people who might not consider themselves as transportation geographers per se, but nevertheless are expanding geographies of transportation beyond the traditional focus on vehicles, infrastructure, and economics. In this article, we review such work from three different perspectives: critical studies of professional practice, the interdisciplinary approach of Caribbean Studies, and the work of activists and scholar‐activists to connect environmental justice with mobility justice.

Process-based activism and feminist politics in the neoliberal age

ABSTRACT This commentary looks back on my 2016 article “Redoing Feminism: Digital Activism, Body Politics, and Neoliberalism.” Reflecting on my initial aim to develop new theoretical frames for examining the epistemological and activist work undertaken by digital feminisms, I consider how my emphasis on the potential of process-based activism, but also on the incessant circularity of its appropriation and refutation in the context of neoliberalism, resonated with subsequent developments in both protest cultures and scholarship. Situating my work within the trajectory of inquiry charted by Feminist Media Studies across its twenty-year history, I conclude by calling for renewed attention to the aesthetic dimension of feminist activism today.

The Implementation Activist: How One Determined Person with a Camera Has Achieved Enforcement of Smoke-Free Laws throughout Thailand.

Smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke are leading causes of disease and premature death in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where over 80% of smokers live. Over 152 LMICs, including Thailand, have passed laws designating that indoor and outdoor public spaces should be smoke-free. Throughout LMICs, implementation of laws has been a persistent problem. We identified one activist in Thailand who developed his own highly effective strategy for ensuring implementation of smoke-free laws, and whose approach has potential for being a model for implementation activists in other LMICs. We set out to describe the implementation activist's strategy and impact, and to explore his perspective and motivations. We conducted in-depth interviews with the activist, reviewed video recordings and transcripts, and used narrative analysis to identify key themes and illuminating statements. In the implementation activist's assessment, administrators and officials were not being held accountable for their responsibilities to enforce laws, resulting in low public compliance. The activist developed his strategy to first identify public places where no-smoking signs were not posted and/or where people were smoking; take photographs of violations and make notes; and file citizen's complaints at police stations, submitting his photographs as evidence. The implementation activist documented over 5,100 violations of smoke-free laws throughout Thailand and reported violations to police. Often, police officers were unsure how to deal with his complaints, but when he educated them about the law, most undertook enforcement actions. The activist's work has contributed substantially to creating smoke-free schools, sports facilities and parks. This implementation activist's approach can be a model for preventing youth from using tobacco/nicotine, and preventing exposures to secondhand smoke and e-cigarette emissions. Based on his successes, we provide a list of elements that implementation activists can use to be effective, along with recommendations for policy and practice.

Education research and critical race praxis: fieldnotes on “making it matter” in New Orleans

Urban South Grassroots Research Collective for Public Education (USGRC) is a New Orleans-based coalition melding research and grassroots organizing for racial-economic equity. Buras examines her involvement as a scholar activist working in solidarity with community groups to document the effects of the charter school takeover on black public schools and neighborhoods – and push back. Through narrative accounts, Buras illustrates and analyzes USGRC’s collective efforts as an instantiation of critical race praxis. Unlike mainstream approaches to scholarship, which treat people and places as data points to be leveraged for academic purposes, USGRC’s approach prioritizes the meanings and consequences of research for communities. “Making it matter,” Buras argues, requires insurgent scholarship grounded in history, counter-storytelling, place-based knowledge, democratic collaboration, long-term commitment to community, and anti-racist action. Ultimately, she situates USGRC’s work in a lineage of freedom fighting and reveals how solidarity and historical knowledge sustain scholars and community members engaged in struggle.

"Be Gay, Do Crimes": The Co-Production and Activist Potential of Contemporary Fanzines

Online creative communities are increasingly a space for marginalized groups to build solidarity and engage in activist work, encouraging the exploration and articulation of intersectionally-marginalized identities through processes of creative production. One such context for creative production includes community-driven sites such as Archive of Our Own, which by their design are intended to leverage and effectively support voices that are marginalized on other social platforms. In this paper, we build upon work on creative production and fan communities to further describe the work of fanart and fanzine collectives. We share the results of 1) an interview study with fanzine producers and 2) a two month remote co-design study where we further explored fanzine culture and the potential of future archival support. We used a range of qualitative methods to investigate themes of activism co-production in relation to the fanzine work of these producers, seeking to identify characteristic barriers and opportunities for community support as these artists seek to promote their work, encourage the co-production of work with other artists, and navigate the constantly shifting legal landscape associated with fanart. We conclude with implications for creative community support that amplify marginalized voices and facilitate archival work at the intersection of visual art, folksonomy, and legality.

The Orthodox Dichotomy between the Secular and Islamic Feminisms in Moroccan Young Activists

There has been an ongoing interest in youth activism in recent decades, especially in western countries where youth organizations and associations are very common in schools and colleges. Heather Lewis-Charp et al. confirm that although there is an increasing interest in youth political engagement, there are very few empirical studies on the subject matter (Shawn Ginwright 2006, 22). This lack of research applies to the issue of youth activism and political engagement not just in Morocco, but across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In the wake of the so-called Arab spring, the focus on youth political engagement and activism grew, given the important role of youth and other marginalized communities – especially women – in protests around the region. In Morocco, a large number of the protesters in the February 20th movement were young people; of these, many were actively associated with feminist organizations and work. This is in contrast to the continued association between feminist activism in Morocco and older generations. This chapter will start by sketching a history of feminist movements and organizations in Morocco and will follow with a discussion of recent activist work by two prominent activists, Zineb Fasiki and Youssef Gherradi.

CARING FOR OUR PEOPLE: INDIGENOUS RESPONSES TO COVID-19 ERA INFORMATIC COLONIALISM

Based on qualitative and quantitative analyses, activist work and HCI approaches, these papers show how organizations formed partnerships to curate information resources, and deploy community Wi-Fi and Internet infrastructure across southwest US Indigenous communities during the most challenging months of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. For Native Americans this means ideating while navigating colonial inequality. Through an investigation of sociotechnical interdependencies across a broadband network cooperative, tribes, and university labs, an HCI team reflects on how relational stability sustains fragile Internet ecologies stretched to capacity by the needs of users deeply affected by COVID-19 in New Mexico and Arizona. Through an autoethnography of community-centered digital solutions for Navajo Nation, a member of the Nation considers how the role of K’é informs a system of infrastructural care in a nation struggling with high rates of infection and systemic lack of adequate infrastructure. Through an advocacy-oriented analysis of social media content, a Diné and Lakota social media scholar discerns the relationship between community enforcement of social distancing, the loss of interpersonal interaction, mutual aid, and the impact of public health memes for the Navajo Nation. Through radical librarianship practices, a Tohono O’odham librarian and artist counteracts the values of ‘information neutrality’ shaping whiteness-centering American librarianship by generating a community-curated solution to actionable information about COVID-19 for Indigenous communities. This panel models decolonial liberation rooted in responsiveness across mediated layers of Indigenous belonging. The authors express Indigenous interpretations of collective autonomy vis-a-vis strategic Internet assemblages, and particularly, how an Indigenous ethics of care intersects with the dream of an Internet for social good.