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5 Feminist Collectives for Women of Color Mobilizing on the ’Gram

by BUST Magazine

Internet Intersectionality

The exclusion of women of color from the feminist movement has been well-documented. But since the rise of “intersectionality” consciousness over the last decade, online feminist movements that center women of color, including #TimesUp, #MeToo, #BringBackOurGirls, #NotYourAsianSidekick, #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, and the Women’s March have come to personify the fourth wave while proving WoC can have it out through hashtags and pull up IRL. Following in the footsteps of the Combahee River Collective, that National Black Feminist Organization, the Women of the Young Lords, and the Crunk Feminist Collective, these online intersectional feminist alliances are continuing this important work, reminding us that the movement ain’t dead—it just moved to the web. 

WoC Solidarity

Made by and for women, femmes, and gender-nonconforming people of color, this Instagram feed is all about healing, educating, elevating, and liberating the globe. At their annual conference, founders Florcy Romero and Cheyenne Wyzzard-Jones offer workshops, discussions, and trainings in resistance education—“pushing the paradigm of institutional collective learning, be it in schools, organizations, or communities.?

 

Mujeristas Collective

Inspired by Cuban activist/theologian Ada Maria Isasi-Díaz’s “Mujerista Theology,” which itself was inspired by Alice Walker’s explicitly anti-racist “womanism,” this Latina collective is run by five artists, journalists, and educators from St. John’s University. Producing both ’zines and ’zine fests, the Mujeristas Collective is elevating Latinx voices that are often unheard in media and within their own community.

 

Asian American Feminist Collective

Founded by feminsts who felt excluded and tokenized by the 2017 Women’s March, this collective organizes, politicizes, and talks back. AAFC encompasses the ever-evolving identities of East, Southeast, South Asian, Pacific Islander, multi-ethnic, and diasporic Asian feminism. While boosting visibility for Asian women and girls, AAFC attributes their ability to think and act critically within their community to the previous work of Black feminist thought and feminist movements in developing nations.

 

Black Women Radicals

Rooted in intersectional and transnational Black feminism and womanism, BWR employs Angela Davis’ definition of “radical”—“simply meaning grasping from the root.” BWR pulls no punches about including trans women in their movement as they “seek to uproot and dismantle any violent manifestation that opposes radical, Black feminism and collectivism, including heteronormative white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, imperialism, colonialism, queerphobia, racism, sexism, fatphobia, aporophobia, ableism, xenophobia, colorism, classism, ageism, respectability politics, and elitism.”

Sister Diaspora for Liberation

A “grassroots intersectional feminist collective by and for womxn of color,? this group focuses on folks from the African, Asian, and Indigenous diasporas and provides a space where WoC can support each other in creative arts, healing, and activism. SDL aligns itself with a political practice that aims to end all forms of oppression and injustice, including environmental destruction, militarism, and state-sponsored violence. They also work to end political corruption and to abolish the prison system.

 

By Bry’onna Mention
Illustrated by Dia Pacheco

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2020 print edition of BUST Magazine. Subscribe today

 

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Founded in 1993, BUST is the inclusive feminist lifestyle trailblazer offering a unique mix of humor, female-focused entertainment, uncensored personal stories, and candid reporting that tells the truth about women’s lives.

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