| The struggle against racism and imperialism,
the class struggle, the struggle for liberation for women, and for all
gender and sexually-oppressed people, the struggle for social justice,
is my life.
As a child growing up in the 1950s in the racially segregated Alabama
in the Deep South, I was raised to agree unthinkingly with the
prejudices of the dominant culture—to believe that white supremacy was
"natural" and "good" and to believe that the State that enforced the
segregated system was "right," and I was to take my place in that
system as a heterosexual white woman.
Fortunately, the liberation movements of the 1960’s—the
African-American civil rights movement, the Black Power movement, the
anti-Vietnam war movement, the women’s liberation movement, and the
lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender liberation movements—broke through
into my consciousness and my life. I understood that I had been lied
to—by government leaders, teachers, preachers—and I dedicated myself to
unlearning what I had been taught. I set out to fight for my own
liberation, and to be the best ally I could be to others targeted for
oppression under this unjust social and economic system.
I’ve written about this process of consciousness-changing in my
essays in Rebellion. What is crucial for me now is this: We must
act on what we understand to be unjust, or our hard-won
consciousness is useless, nothing more than sand running back and forth
through an hourglass.
I understand now that social justice does not come simply through a
change in "attitudes." After years of working to educate and "change
attitudes," I see that we must change the underlying economic structure
of capitalism that constantly re-invents and uses prejudices and
stereotypes to keep itself running.
I have become more involved in fighting U.S. imperialism abroad
through the International Action Center. Please visit the IAC's web site
at
http://www.iacenter.org/
Organizing in the South
Most recently, the government-created catastrophe of Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita in the South has renewed my commitment to the
simultaneous struggle against domestic injustice, particularly racism
and sexism, and the fight to end U.S. aggression overseas. The
re-direction of money to repair the Mississippi levees to the U.S. war
on Iraq has been well-documented in investigative reporting in the New
Orleans Times Picayune. Some researchers estimate that 80% of
Katrina survivors were women of color with their children.
Last spring, I was one of the 100 people to participate in the
historic protest called “Walking to New Orleans,” from March 14 through
19, 2006. Together with hundreds of U.S. veterans for peace and
Katrina/Rita survivors, I marched over 150 miles from Mobile, Alabama,
along the Gulf through Mississippi, to New Orleans under the slogan,
“Every bomb dropped on Iraq explodes on the Gulf Coast.”
Here are two articles I wrote about the demonstration, with links to
the eight podcasts I recorded as we walked:
http://www.workers.org/2006/us/mobile-new-orleans-0330/index.html
http://www.workers.org/2006/us/mobile-new-orleans-0406/index.html
Here is a gallery of photos
from the march.
Building an Anti-Imperialist Women’s Movement
Minnie Bruce Pratt being arrested at an anti-imperialist demonstration
against U.S. intervention in El Salvador and Nicaragua during the 1980s,
Washington, DC.
My commitment to an anti-imperialist women’s liberation movement has
intensified with continued Bush administration claim of “women’s rights”
as justification for U.S. aggression.
I’ve recently written a several articles about women liberation and
the current U.S. “endless war.” You can access them at:
“Women’s Liberation and Afghanistan”
http://www.workers.org/ww/2001/women1206.php
"Women's Liberation and 'The New War'" 11/12/01
http://www.margieadam.com/action/pratt.htm
”The Women’s Movement and the U.S. War in Afghanistan”
http://www.workers.org/ww/2002/afghan0620.php
”Violence Grows Against Women”
http://www.workers.org/ww/2002/ftbragg0808.php
“Fighting War Is a Woman’s Issue”
http://www.workers.org/ww/2003/womwar0123.php
”Women Say No to U.S. Bases”
http://www.workers.org/ww/2003/antiimp0313.php
An excerpt from a speech I gave on women’s liberation and the war was
published in Emma: das politische Magazin von Frauen (the German
feminist magazine) in August 2003. You can link to Emma in
German/Deutch at:
http://www.emma.de
For more on my thinking about building an
anti-imperialism women’s liberation movement, you can explore the report
from the 30th Anniversary of The Scholar and The Feminist
Conference at Barnard College. See:
The Scholar & Feminist, Summary, Panel 2,
Panel description and other video clips from the panel “Women and
Resistance: Grassroots and Global Activism” where “in response to an
audience member's question,
Minnie Bruce Pratt takes up the issue of building an
anti-imperialist feminist movement”
Learning about economics, socialism and communism
As part of combating U.S. imperialism, I am also
educating myself about economics and about socialism. The current rise
in organizing for immigrant rights is adding to my education and my hope
in struggle. You can go to a recent article I wrote about International
Women’s Day to see some of my thinking on how issues of women’s
oppression, national oppression, immigrant rights and economics are
intertwined:
“Immigrant rights & international women's rights:
Two struggles intertwined”
http://www.workers.org/2007/world/women-0301/index.html
“La lucha por los derechos de l@s inmigrantes y de
la mujer: Dos luchas entrelazadas”
http://www.workers.org/mo/2007/mujer-0308/index.html
Some of my thinking on resistance to U.S. policies
is in an interview with me done in Seattle, December 1999, at the end of
a historic week of protest against the World Trade Organization (WTO)
and the impact of its worldwide exploitative policies. See
interview by Nan Macy in Push Magazine, a publication of Queer
Feminist Subversions
For more thinking on organizing, you could also
look at a 2005 article, “Activists
Share New Perspective" from The Quad, the student newspaper
of West Chester University of Pennsylvania.
In the summer of 1997, I joined the Venceremos Brigade to travel to
Cuba. We stayed in Havana province where we worked cooperatively with
Cubans to build housing. Later I traveled with other delegates from the
14th World Youth Conference to Santa Clara, to stay with a
local family and learn more about daily life in Cuba under the brutal
U.S. economic blockade.
Click here for an
article about my visit to Cuba and a picture of my wonderful Santa
Clara hosts.
Fighting racism
And the struggle against racism always occupies a central place in my
political work. Here’s
a podcast from April 24, 2000 about how I got involved in
anti-racist activism.
I am currently involved in the campaign to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, a
former Black Panther, a writer and journalist, and a fighter against
racism and injustice, now on Death Row in Pennsylvania. I am working
with other lesbian, gay, bi, trans, two-spirited people to stop his
execution and get him a new trial.
Here is a
podcast of a April 17, 2000, interview I did with Nancy Nangeroni &
Gordene O. MacKenzie on their transgender topics radio program,” Gender
Talk,” about Mumia's case and a massive solidarity event in New York
City.
Also here’s a January 20, 2000, piece I wrote about Mumia’s case
called "Honoring
Dr. King Through Struggle."
For more information look for Millions for Mumia and Rainbow Flags for
Mumia at
http://www.iacenter.org/
Political writing
I became a writer in the matrix of struggle and my work continues in
that tradition. I spoke at a 2005 Syracuse University Women's Study
Program, Hill TV
Forum Talk, about the censorship attack by Senator Jessie Helms
against my writing in the early 1990's.
Here is a link to a recent talk called: "At
the Intersection of Oppression and Resistance: Changing Identities,
Changing Lives" on April 17, 2007 in Balch Auditorium, Scripps, The
Women's College at Claremont, CA.
(Note: Scroll Down to find the link.)
One way to be a political writer is to join a writer’s union. The
National Writer's Union provides access to medical insurance, model
contracts, information about agents, staff to help you with contract
negotiations, and many other services. Phone 212-254-0279 on the East
Coast, 510-839-0110 on the West Coast, or visit
www.nwu.org
And for a poem, "Driving the Bus," that I wrote against the
current U.S. war in Iraq, go to Poets Against the War:
http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/displaypoem.asp?AuthorID=3447
Here are some recent articles on "Clinic Defense"
in Alabama.
Defending Women's Clinics Against Hate, 7/19/2007,
http://www.workers.org/2007/us/women-0726/index.html
Reproductive Justice Victory in Alabama, 7/26/2007,
http://www.workers.org/2007/us/alabama-0802/index.html
Here are two photo galleries from my travels to
Taipei in 2003 and
Italy in 2004.
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