Toppling Walls, Building Bridges: The Rise & Prospects of New Global Feminism
CSBR is honoured to have been able to connect with our sisters in Turkey, and those from around the world as far as Peru, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Ireland and more–for an important and timely conversation on “Toppling Walls, Building Bridges: The Rise and Prospects of New Global Feminism“, sponsored by Heinrich Boll Stiftung in Istanbul, from 2-3 November 2017.
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Over two days speakers shared lessons & insights for strengthening feminist organizing in a political moment where authoritarianism, the “polypore state“, militarism and neoliberal global economic interests are coalescing in new ways to suppress and threaten women’s human rights around the world.
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On the fourth panel on “Resisting & Organizing Locally and Globally“, our Advisory Committee member Aliyme Asli Demir discussed the interconnected rise of ‘right-populism’ globally, from the Turkey to the US to India and beyond, and the shifting terrain and tools we have available as activists to resist and organize creatively.
CSBR Coordinator Rima Athar, discussed transnational networks of anti-rights actors–including evangelical Christian NGOs, the OIC block, the Russian Orthodox Church and others–that are pushing an international campaign to suppress sexual and bodily rights under the guide of “protection of the family” and “traditional values”. She highlighted implications for new feminist organizing that recognizes that recent hate-campaigns against LGBT communities in Indonesia, Egypt, Malaysia are not isolated events, but rather connected to similar campaigns that have taken place in Russia, Uganda, and at international UN forums with increasing frequency and coordination in the last decade.
Emily Morgan Waszak, an organizer of the organic and powerful women’s protest against the Anti-Abortion Law in Ireland, discussed the methods and considerations of calling the women’s strike to repeal the 8th amendment, which equates the life of a pregnant women with that of an unborn fetus. The #Strike4Repeal was inspired by the Polish women’s black protest the year before, and brought thousands to the streets in Ireland to claim reproductive autonomy.
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The full program can be seen on Heinrich Boll’s website here: https://calendar.boell.de/en/node/111607, and is copied below.