Photo by AJ Colores on Unsplash
“To live a lifetime of audacity, dwelling in the place where joy meets justice, year after year, can only be sustained by being so in love with a vision of what’s possible that we no longer flirt with despair.”- Aurora Levins Morales
Friends,
Audacity – a word that underpins the struggle and possibility inherent in feminist organizing against all forms of injustice – for people and for planet.
This weekend, as the United States elected Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as their next President and Vice President, we celebrated a powerful movement of people who rose up to vote for change, for healthy communities, for equality and for action on climate change. We celebrated an historic first, with Kamala Harris becoming the first woman, first Black and first South Asian Vice President-elect.
We must uplift, celebrate, resource and defend the women of color-led organizing that got us here. It is clearer than ever that we must heed the leadership of Black, Indigenous, and women of color feminists, who mobilized and organized for change against extreme repressions. We must also reckon with the reality that this election did not represent a repudiation of white supremacy and patriarchy. Millions of people cast their vote to uphold systems of violence and oppression, including a majority of white women, reminding us that patriarchy has no gender.
As feminists in the United States steel our resolve for the work ahead, we find strength in knowing we are connected to visionary movements rising up in this moment all around the world. From Nigeria to Chile to Bolivia to Poland, feminists are at the forefront of liberatory struggles for democratic governance, a world free of state-sanctioned violence, our right to bodily autonomy, and beyond. We know that this election outcome is part of this wave of global people-powered movements, fighting back against climate injustice and rising machofascism for more just futures.
The work ahead is great – but our vision of what’s possible has never been clearer – a just, peaceful and healthy planet for all.
This election outcome is a crack in the door that we are ready to push open – in alliance with grassroots leaders across the United States and the globe, and in coalition with our partners working to advance a Feminist Green New Deal and Feminist Foreign Policy.
Climate and care must be at the center of our advocacy. From dismantling structural racism and patriarchy in policy, to investing in a care economy and resourcing care jobs, to ensuring feminist climate finance and restoring multilateralism, we will continue to hold this new administration accountable to the movements that got them there. Global climate justice cannot wait.
As Mariame Kaba teaches us, “hope is a discipline.” We know all too well that injustice thrived well before this moment, and we must remain vigilant and uncompromising in our promise to struggle against white supremacy, patriarchy, and all other forms of injustice, in this new administration and beyond. Hope is a radical choice, and we are committed to choosing hope for the possibility of change. Our hope has always been rooted in movements, not individual politicians, and this will remain so.
Let us find power in this moment, whatever that means to you, and continue to push for the feminist future we need boldly and unapologetically.
Grateful to be in struggle with you all,
The WEDO Team
