Being an activist is one of the most amazing things that could ever happen to me! I, again, came to this conclusion after participating in a lecture organized by 2110 Center for Gender Advocacy at Concordia University in Montreal. The event welcomed a guest speaker, Loretta Ross, who was addressing topics such as reproductive justice, rape,women's rights, oppression, and building human rights movement. Even thought the theme of the talk may seem quite heavy, the lecture was one of the funniest, the most empowering, and uplifting speeches I have heard in years.
Loretta Ross is one of the main forces behind an organization called SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, whose "mission is to amplify and strengthen the collective voices of Indigenous women and women of color to ensure reproductive justice through securing human rights."
Before I start sharing my observations and learning points, I'd like to shortly explain what 'reproductive justice' is. In short, it can be defined as a freedom for women to decide about their bodies but holding the state responsible for providing the proper framework for women to develop, raise children (if they wish to have them) and have actual choice. Loretta Ross explained the difference between reproductive justice and reproductive rights discourse as "not only have the freedom to have a child or not to have a child but also to be able to raise the child and have a quality life". In another words "for reproductive justice activists, the primary difference between the reproductive rights and health frameworks and the reproductive justice framework is that the rights and health frameworks focus on protecting individual rights and choices, while the reproductive justice framework focuses on broader socioeconomic conditions and bringing about structural change."(1) Loretta also compared those two discourses in a simple way: pro-birth (reproductive rights discourse) vs pro-life (reproductive justice discourse).
It was amazing to watch Loretta speak and share her personal story of sexual abuses and full of challenges in an empowering way, making the audience burst out laughing numerous times. One of the lines that I found very interesting, among many many others, was the way she dealt with receiving over and over again the same question about fighting oppression, she said: "Loretta, aren't you tired of fighting oppression? Then my answer is 'Tired offighting oppression? Not as much as being oppressed!'" It was just the beginning of the lecture and at the same a very powerful moment for me as an activist because this is exactly what I do and what it feels like! Even though Loretta and I work in different fields, it was so easy to relate to her words.
She also addressed the fact that activists and people working towards making a change in the world tend to complain about hardships, being tired, and having endless amounts of work. Her answer to this was: "We social justice people are very privileged! We are very fewpeople who don't put up with hate and oppression. We need to be responsiblewith that privilege! Like with any other privilege! And, please, don't play theoppression Olympics: my oppression is worse than yours! ;)" I was sitting there grinning because I knew exactly what she was talking about! Activists are amazing people but sometimes we need reality check in order to stop, see what we actually have, and we need to learn to appreciate it, and acknowledge how privileged we are to be able to do what we love and work to make change in the world. Not everyone is as lucky as we are!
Loretta talked about knowing differences between an enemy and problematic ally, which brought the audience, first to laughter, and then to a big round of applaud! "I know the difference between an enemy and problematic ally - with the ally you can actually agree on things that you want to work on together even though you may not necessarily understand each others realities". What I found interesting and maybe even a bit intriguing was her statement that in order to be able to work with (problematic) ally, we have to get over the unrealistic expectation that the ally will understand our realities because the truth is that they will not. I guess that this thought could be connected with the belief that many people thinking differently want to reach the same goal, which was identified as one of the major challenges of the human rights movement. Loretta believes that social rights movements need to get over the single-identity agenda fights but instead work intersectionally combining different identities and realities as we are never only 'one'. A person is never only a woman, but can be also trans, or have disability, and so on. We cannot work for equality not communicating with each other and being separated. Another round of applaud came with Loretta's reference to Martin Luther King's sermon delivered just 4 days before his assassination in 1968 where he was speaking about creating not 'only' civil rights movement but human rights movement, which he never managed to witness happening. She jokingly said "for all those years everyone was telling me that Martin Luther King had a dream! No one told me he had a plan!" :) She continued saying that "we need to build human rights movement - intersectional movement, you can't fight for women's rights in racist way, you can't fight for LGBTQ rights and violate disabled people." This also identifies one of the challenges, which is convincing people to work together even though there is no agreement on all fronts regardless of the end aim - equality, respect, and freedom.
This is just give you a taste of what I experienced during 2.5h lecture full of reflection, laughter, and 'aha' moments. I could relate so many things to the LGBTQ or transgender movements, the mechanisms of work, cooperation, and internal struggles follow the same logic or maybe lack of it... To reflect on Loretta's words on being privileged as a civil rights activist, I definitely feel extremely privileged and lucky to be a part of this huge machinery for change! I would never trade this for anything else. I believe that if we let ourselves learn from each other and pay more attention to what we can offer to each other, we would be stronger and more efficient fighting for our rights. As a human being I would like to see people being safe and free; and as an activist, I would like to see one big united human rights movement envisioned years ago by a great activist and leader, Mr King to rock. Who's with me?
(1) Asian Communities for ReproductiveJustice 2005, p.3.
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