As we head into 2022, some mainstream media is doing a good job of summarizing what we legitimately need to fear in 2022.

However, here at LiisBeth, unafraid to look up and ready to act, we see  comets, but also the stars, ways to get there, and light that has not yet reached the earth. 

With our lens set to different coordinates, we wanted to share with you five 2022 actionable themes and related articles that might serve as useful prompts to stoke some hope plus inform your intention setting and personal liberation work for the coming year. 

Learning to Live with Climate Crisis

The climate crisis age is here. We still have to work to reduce its severity. But we now also have to learn to live with it. How do you imagine a tomorrow when the present seems, whichever way you look, to be hovering on the brink of another climate driven hurricane, flood or fire? What does solutioning, living, working, building an enterprise in a climate crisis driven society and economy look like? Catherine Bush’s novel, Blaze Island (2020), gives us a glimpse of the near future and raises larger questions about interfering with nature and the harm or good that may result.  Read more, download a free excerpt and watch our interview with Bush and her climate change scientist sister, Elizabeth Bush on YouTube. 

The Re-Emergence of  Real-Life Feminist Spaces

In this ode to in real life feminist spaces and events, we are reminded about the power of 5D, or even 10D, sensorial-powered spaces, events and connections.  Living in Zoom powered 2D for almost two years has shown us what it means to be human.  Multi-dimensional, real life, embodied events open our minds and expands our capacity to imagine new worlds. We dream bigger when we spend hours together, bumping shoulders, in real time. We need to make the effort to both create and attend live, large events again–as soon as it is safe to do so. 

Increased Support for Revolutionaries

The recent passing of bell hooks shook our hearts and souls. Thank fully we have her books to maintain our relationship with her work. But not every feminist revolutionary becomes famous or writes. Those that do often remind us how important it is to nurture and support all kinds of revolutionaries among us–both large and small; Their work is all interlaced-like an underground  mycelium network driving change above.  In this article, we talk with adrienne maree brown about “building the new in the shell of the old.” In “Solutionary Ideas from a Love-Based Revolutionary” we interview Rivera Sun who tells us “Change doesn’t just happen through protest.  It does not just happen – for regular people anyway – through calling politicians or senators. And it doesn’t usually just happen through buying the right goods as individuals. It happens when we organize.”  To learn more on the topic of organizing, check out The Fine Print Episode with Nora Loretto. 

To get a glimpse of grassroots revolutionary work, consider reading A Recipe for Justice and Full Stream Ahead. 

Coping Effectively with Burnout

We have been writing and publishing more about activist burnout in the past two years.  We can’t afford activist burnout. We need everyone pulling on this side of the rope. Heed Instagram artist @liberaljane’s advice which says “You can’t light yourself on fire to keep someone else warm”. So, if you are still feeling the burn as you enter 2022, this interview with Canadian anti-globalization and anti-racism activist, Annahid Dashtgard provides useful strategies for coping and taking the long view approach to this work. 

Consider Writing as Medicine for the Soul

Mental health is another casualty of the pandemic.  Journaling and writing is often prescribed as part of a healthy coping strategy. If you are thinking of kicking up your journaling work or taking your writing skills to new heights in 2020, you might want to consider joining a writing group–or sign up for a writing school.  If the latter is appealing, check out our profile on Sarah Selecky and her writing school here. 

Re-engage with the Arts

All arts. Yes. But in particular, re-engage with live music events. More than other cultural experiences, live music performances, in pubs or halls, inspires, bridges differences and can bring joy and pleasure to revolutionary work. If you are looking for a new playlist to energize your soul, check out one of LiisBeth’s ten feminist playlists here. It was compiled just before the 2020 US election but it still electric and relevant. If you want more options, you can listen to ten playlists we have published by typing playlist in the search bar. We also encourage you to keep Venusfest, a feminist music festival, on your 2022 radar.

Finally, if you are lining up your reading list for 2022, have a look at our book recommendations; All feminist classics and must reads in our opinion. 

Looking Ahead

Our first story in 2022, written by Sue Nador, will introduce you to Kohenet Annie Matan, a Jewish, feminist, queer, Hebrew Priestess and Mama and her work. 

Over the course of the next few months, you will see more “see it, dream it” stories on feminists driving change through community projects, nonprofit, academic, enterprise work, policy making and organizing. 

We believe that in 2022, the pandemic-driven economy and political climate will make radical venture design and growth an increasingly lonely and difficult endeavor as people turn their attention, time and money to surviving the now versus building the new. 

Now more than ever, radical work will depend on the support of the people–you.-

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The assault on Congress on January 6 has provoked extensive discussion about the rise and breadth of the far right in the United States. But what of Canada?

Over 6,600 right-wing extremist social media channels, accounts linked to Canada, study finds

Well, I can tell you that I once received a bullet in the mail at my home in Toronto, one of twelve “prominent Jews” in the city to get that threat, serious enough for a police investigation. That was 1994, and I had just stepped down as president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women.

Like many negative things in our history we don’t like to talk about, Canada has always had fascists in our political spectrum.  They had enough influence during World War II for the government to turn away a boatload of Jews fleeing the Nazi holocaust in Europe. Since Trump’s election in 2016, fascism — or at least far-right extremism expressing white supremacy, racism, anti-Semitism, and misogyny — has been on the rise in Canada.  As reported in NOW Magazine, there are now 300 far-right extremist groups in Canada, 30 percent more since Trump came to office. Canada is among the most active countries on white supremacy discussion forums, just behind the U.S. and Britain.  Anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment has been on the rise. A 2019 EKOS poll found that some 40 percent of white Canadians now view immigration as a “threat.” And there has been more than a 700% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in Vancouver since Covid hit.

So how do we stem the rise of fascism and far-right extremism, even turn it back? From the 1980s, I was deeply involved in a battle to secure the most important victory the women’s movement in Canada has ever had – the legalization of abortion. There are important lessons to be gleaned from that struggle that might serve us well in the battle against white supremacy and neofascism.

Lessons Learned from Fighting Anti-choice Activists

The pro-choice movement faced a well-organized, ideologically rigid, anti-feminist, fanatical anti-choice faction not afraid to use violence and threats, and it had ties to both Church and the Conservative Party. 

Beginning with the Abortion Caravan in 1970, pro-choice activists waged a nearly 20-year struggle — in the streets, in the courts and in the legislature, until the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the abortion law in a landmark decision citing women’s right to privacy—in effect women’s rights to control their own bodies.

I got involved in the struggle in the fall of 1981, when Carolyn Egan and her co-workers in a birth control centre called a community meeting with the idea of opening an illegal abortion clinic to challenge the law, along the model of Dr. Morgentaler’s in Montreal, which had been virtually legalized by the Quebec government after three juries acquitted Morgentaler of breaking the restrictive abortion law.

In Toronto, white middle-class women with connections had some access to abortion under the 1969 law, but birth control workers realized that poor women, immigrant women, rural women, and young women, couldn’t get access. So, they sought to open an abortion clinic and build a movement to support it. The Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics (OCAC) brought together pro-choice groups to generate public support, even before the clinic opened. A rally of 1,000 people at a downtown auditorium, featuring Dr. Henry Morgentaler and activist/journalist June Callwood, kicked off the campaign.

The mass movement in the streets was key, but so was our community work. We would speak and debate the anti-choice anywhere and everywhere. I don’t think I’ve been in as many churches in the 30 years since that time. While it’s hard to change the mind of a true believer, you can convince their followers. For instance, a lot people opposed abortion for religious  reasons and fell prey to the anti-choice movement’s distortions of the procedure. We faced that head on. 

Debate Needs Action

In the fall of 1982, we introduced a resolution supporting the legalization of free-standing abortion clinics at the Ontario Federation of Labour convention. It was controversial but we mobilized almost all the women in the room to line up at the microphones to support it; the ones who spoke were passionate about the importance of the issue to working-class women.

The clinic opened in June 1983 on Harbord Street in downtown Toronto. Dr. Morgentaler arrived in the afternoon. It was my job to escort him across the street, which was crowded with both supporters and reporters with a huge bank of cameras waiting for something to happen. And it did. Half way across the street, a man leapt out at Dr. Morgentaler, threatening to stab him with garden shears. I blocked the attack and chased the man down the street. Courage in the face of threats and attacks is a must in fighting fanatics. Not everyone is able to do that, but some people have to and the rest have to back them up. Those of us who were spokespeople would get threats regularly at work, at home and sometimes in the street. Part of the job of fighting right-wing fanatics is facing their threats.

Three weeks after the clinic opened, the police arrested Morgentaler and the two other doctors working there. Dr. Morgentaler closed the clinic until the trial. Once again, as in Quebec, a jury acquitted him. That outraged the anti-choice activists, and we had to confront them. As the Crown prepared their appeal, the anti-choice faction demonstrated regularly in front of the clinic and harassed women seeking a procedure. We deployed people to be there every day, to help the women through the lines and keep the anti-choice off the property. Direct action, we might call it today. Labour activists who knew how to hold a picket line helped us a lot. 

A critical point came when the Catholic Church decided to call out their troops, asking priests to give their sermon on the evil of abortion and call on all their constituents to demonstrate in front of the clinic. Every day of that week, Monday to Thursday, 2,000 people, including children from Catholic schools, were bused in to demonstrate in front of the clinic. They garnered media coverage night after night.

Agree to Disagree, But Act

By this point, we had held many rallies, but none bigger than 2,000. We didn’t think we could mobilize that many people. A less radical but very important pro-choice group – the Canadian Association for Repeal of the Abortion Law (CARAL)—argued against mounting a counter demonstration, feeling it would make us look weak if fewer numbers showed up. OCAC discussed it and decided, whatever numbers, we had to fight back. Otherwise our people would get demoralized. We called a counter demonstration on Friday. CARAL was furious, but they pulled out all the stops trying to make to make the demonstration a success. At that moment, I learned something key about building a movement: You have to build broad coalitions with people you might disagree with, but it’s winning the struggle that matters. OCAC and CARAL had differences but both were committed to building the movement. Even though CARAL was sure the demonstration was a mistake, they knew once OCAC called it, they had to put everything into supporting it, even if it proved they were wrong. Here is another lesson: Unite in action, even if there are doubts.

In the days leading up to our rally, every media report of the Catholic protest announced the time and date of our rally as balance. People who had been quietly cheering on Dr. Morgentaler in the privacy of their own homes decided now was the time to show their colours. More than 15,000 people rallied at Queen’s Park, with people spilling out into the streets, then marched to the clinic. Until then, the anti-choice thought the majority sided with them, and I guess the government may have as well. But that night it was clear, as Henry had always said, “the people are with us.”

The pro-choice movement was the broadest and most successful social movement I have ever seen in Canada. We were able to turn back and marginalize a strong fanatical movement with strategies that might serve us well today in confronting the ugly rise of white supremacy and neofascism.

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The post Fighting Fascism: Lessons from the pro-choice struggle appeared first on LiisBeth.

With the new year and a vaccine on the horizon, many entrepreneurs are crawling from the wreckage known as 2020, dusting off, and thinking, what next?

In the past, mainstream entrepreneurship has focused on opportunity and extraction: find a market gap or problem, figure out how to exploit it, and then work to extract as much wealth and power for yourself and investors as possible. Meanwhile, social entrepreneurs sought to find the harm caused by Big C Capitalist pursuits; figure out how to fix the mess; then set to work abiding by capitalist light rules.

Neither one of these models make sense for the ground that has shifted beneath our feet this past year and for what’s coming next. The very purpose of entrepreneurship, attendant policies, and the way we do business must undergo a profound revolution.

So, in addition to all the things we normally think about—launching,  pivoting, downsizing, upsizing, going digital, managing growth (some enterprises are thriving!), getting through the next lockdown, making payroll—there is this to consider: how to build a truly accountable enterprise that models an inclusive, restorative, and generative future versus perpetuating the rapacious systems, standing behind decorative diversity mission statements and operating with the fear-based mindset of the now.

Of course, no one knows the answer to that big question, but here are some things to kickstart the process of getting there:

1. Stop perpetuating systemic oppression: Take a hard look at your culture, policies, pay scales, processes and practices. Centre the word ‘care,’ and start rooting out anything that enables oppression—whether racism, anti-black racism, white supremacy, colonialism. Let’s turn the page on the way we lead, communicate, operate, and design products and services.
2. Advance critical consciousness: Do action work. Participate in and encourage difficult, uncomfortable conversations that lead to personal growth, political awareness, and systems thinking mindsets for staff, customers and suppliers. Everyone, not just the founder, must evolve and reckon with internalized oppression as well as external. We learn best in community with others. Seek out expertise and communities that facilitate growth and help sustain them in return.
3. Take stock of whose work and ideas you amplify: What stories do you tell on your company blog? Whose ideas do you advance on social media? What art do you hang on your workspace walls? Looking at who and what you focus on can also tell you who and what you’re not supporting—and should.
4. Re-write your procurement policy: Make a commitment to sign up to WEP and direct 30 per cent or more of your procurement spend to enterprises owned by women, BIPOC, trans or gender-expansive folk. These directories can help you find the services or products you need:  Black, Women’s or LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce, The Native Women’s Association, Immigrant Women in Business, Feminist Founders, WEKH Ask and Give app, WeConnect and Femmbought—to name just a few. Follow our stories about services offered by feminist founders on www.liisbeth.com and in our newsletter. We have profiled over 183 feminist identified, progressive enterprises that are all looking for customers and a shot at new generative collaborations.
5. Get Political and connect with other aligned social movements: Social change is collective work—not hero work. And the best and freshest thinking today is generated by BIPOC, women-led, grassroots, activist groups, not large, corporatized institutions. Engage with BLMCda, BLM USA, the LEAP, DIEM25, Pace e Bene, Salmon Nation, and other generative movements that embrace social justice, feminism, and environmentalism. Sign up for their newsletters. Donate. Invite their speakers to talk to your stakeholder group. Invite an activist to sit on your advisory or fiduciary board.  Answer their calls to action. It has to be a give and take.
6. Diversify your media spend and attention: Spend at least 50 per cent of your annual media budget on indie outlets to diversify your listening power. Consider indie outlets such as rabble.ca, APTN (Indigenous) Yes Magazine, Herizons, Peeps Magazine and, of course, LiisBeth.com
7. Ask who’s in the room? Who’s not? And consider why? Over 54 per cent of all businesses in Canada have one to four employees (considered micro companies by StatsCan) often including the founder and co-founder.  This presents an obvious challenge when it comes to advancing inclusion: your company may just be a close-knit founding team of three cis-het white women with no plan or money to hire. And that’s OK. But there are countless ways micro companies like this can engage with the 30 per cent of the Canadian population that is BIPOC identified. Make that engagement a priority as it will inform and strengthen your work. Need advice? Join the Feminist Enterprise Commons community (FEC).
8. Trailblaze like a trailblazer: Like Bloom + Brilliance, a women-owned website and branding company, be transparent about your intersectional feminist values on your business website. Integrate the use of pronouns in your staff directory and website. Radically change your bylaws to strengthen accountability. Consider implementing a barter pay system in addition to trading in cash (because a lot of folks will have a lot less of it next year).

As brutal as the year was, 2020 delivered a gift: it has unveiled what needs fixing in ways that not even mainstream folks can continue to ignore.  We cannot turn away from it or all the suffering will have been for nothing, all the pain and carnage will continue. I suggest we heed the words of Audre Lorde: It is time for us all to be “deliberate and afraid of nothing.”

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Wanda Deschamps is a crusader for inclusion:

• founder of Liberty Co, an organization helping to increase the participation level of the neurodiverse population in the workforce,

• a champion for the Inclusion Revolution, a worldwide movement launched in 2018 to spearhead broader thinking about disability, especially disability employment,

• advocate for gender equality through the #women4women collective,

• co-founder in 2019, with Liz LeClair, of the National Day of Conversation, a digital conversation about the issue of sexual harassment of fundraisers in the charitable and nonprofit sectors.

We spoke with Deschamps about hosting the second National Day of Conversation on Nov. 26  this year.

 

LiisBeth: Why did you start a conversation on this topic?

I’ve been a gender equity advocate my entire life. And I worked in the charitable sector for a generation—25 years. I have noticed questionable behaviour, inappropriate behaviour. I have certainly been aware of the sexism…and the lack of equity at the top. Seventy per cent of our employees are women, yet we participate at about 30 per cent of the leadership level.

But it didn’t all come together until my experience at the University of Waterloo. I was sexually harassed for the three years that I was there. And I complained, and I experienced retaliation.

On Jan. 2, 2019, I was—like so many people—reading the national headlines for the first business day of the new year. It was a cold, dark morning. And I saw the oped in the CBC by Liz LeClair where she shared her own experiences of sexual harassment as a professional fundraiser.

I sat there, stunned. I did not think, given my experiences, given the retaliation, that someone would speak out that way. And so, I was in touch with Liz right away, as were a number of people.

Gradually, our movement was born and we decided on a day of conversation about sexual harassment in the charitable and nonprofit sectors. And that’s how we got to where we are today.

LiisBeth: How has COVID-19 affected equity in the charitable sector, and how does the National Day of Conversation address that?

The pandemic has highlighted inequity and the charitable sector is part of that inequity. But awareness does make a difference; addressing an issue begins with awareness. You can’t address inequity if you don’t think there’s a problem. When I was walking home last year from our in-person session, I thought we are making it increasingly difficult for people to say: ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know there was a problem. I didn’t know there was an issue. I didn’t know so many people were affected by this. I didn’t know that it was having such an impact.’ And after the online sessions on Nov. 26 this year, I believe that we will feel the same way.

LiisBeth: What do you hope people take away from the National Day of Conversation this year?

On November 26, at 11:59 PM, will our work be over? No.

We need to keep doing what we’re doing; we need to keep the conversation going.

We say that we have a trifecta call to action: promote the day in your social media channels, join the conversation online, and register. And we have hours of virtual dialogue and speakers lined up from across Canada and beyond who are thinkers, leaders, advocates, experts, so we believe there’s something for everyone to learn.

Participate in the National Day of Conversation by posting and sharing content with the hashtags #NationalDayofConversation and #NDOC on your social networks, and start a conversation at your workplace about the sexual harassment and assault of fundraisers – review organizational policies and support systems with leadership.

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Each week, I am privileged to lead “check in” calls for several communities of feminist enterprise activists– people who create and leverage their enterprises to support feminism plus other social and eco-justice movements they believe in.

 

If you were a fly on the screen in one of these conversations you would witness compassion, friendship, plus a few heart-quickening, Hannah-Gadsby-style “fuck that shit” rants that that generate both laughs and tears. You would hear stories of both the inner and outer work (not sure which is more difficult) required to work to advance social justice; and the mother-bear creativity and grit that goes into resourcing an enterprise that resists patriarchal, extractive capitalistic and winner- take-all-entrepreneurship creeds.

In your notebook, you might write “activist communities are awesome,” and maybe underline it twice.

However, in these past two weeks, you would have witnessed a community processing pain, dealing with feelings of powerlessness (does anything we do really matter?) and sheer exhaustion. You would also notice that the groups are smaller than usual—because even regulars in these meet ups can’t bear to talk about the horrific events of the past several weeks just yet.  In your notebook, you might write this in big bold letters:

ACTIVIST BURNOUT?

While still reeling from the pandemic, we witnessed what was basically a snuff film on social media—the slow, public execution of a Black man by a sadist cop and three fellow officers. And while all eyes were on George Floyd protests, we also learned that Chantal Moore, an Indigenous woman, was shot five times by an officer performing a wellness check in New Brunswick. Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a Black Toronto woman, “fell” 24 stories after police arrived at her home to check on her, and Caleb Tubila Njoko, a London ON man, who died under similar circumstances. In Dallas, a Black trans-woman, Lyanna Dior, was beaten by mob of Black and other racialized men, underlining the critical need for an intersectional lens on racism, reminding that all Black lives matter .

While protests raged, Louisiana and several states threw up new obstacles to access to abortion, provoking more protests. And we heard yet more news about increases in domestic violence around the world during COVID lock downs.

I could go on. And on.

Change makers are hopeful that innovative new policies may result, but history tells us that overarching systems of oppression (patriarchy, capitalism and white supremacy, to name a few) are not easily dismantled, even when we seemed primed to embrace change.

Despite Roosevelt’s New Deal in the ‘30s, the Civil Rights Movement in the ‘60s, another revival of feminism in the ‘70s, building environmental movement over the past 40 years, still gross economic inequality, racism and misogyny (led by misogynist-in-chief Donald Trump) rages on.

All this, along with pandemic related unpaid work (home schooling anyone?), no wonder activists are questioning whether real change will result this time — and feeling burned out.

Why Activist Burnout BURNS

You might feel burnout toiling for an over-demanding, clueless boss or in a soul-sucking work culture. But you can always escape by changing who you work for.

But activists struggling to change a system are stuck working in that system.

Studies on activist burnout highlight unique stressors: slowness of progress, lack of resources to affect change, consequences of being a systems outsider, the weight of the emotional labour required to develop a “deep understanding of overwhelming social conditions related to suffering and oppression.”

Symptoms are similar to other forms of burnout: physical depletion, insomnia, negative thinking, depression, anxiety, lags in attention and memory, poor health, procrastination and increased substance abuse.

Those can trigger activists to withdraw entirely—at the very time they are most needed. Like now.

How to Heal Yourself—and Others

Annahid Dashtgard is a Canadian, author, change-maker and co-founder of Anima Leadership, a highly respected international consulting company supporting transformational change, especially in areas of diversity and inclusion. Previously Dashtgard helped lead the anti-corporate globalization movement (including organizing the 100,000 strong anti-globalization demonstration in Quebec in April, 2001) and has frequently been referred to as one of the top activists to watch.

In her recent book, Breaking the Ocean, Dashtgard writes about her 20-plus years as an activist. “Saving the world was a relationship of passion requiring fidelity and obsession…there was never any time for here and now. My activism and identity became one.” And burnout was the consequence.

Dashtgard says activist burnout results when we push beyond what we and our bodies can sustain. She advises activists to “Go at the speed of your own nervous system,”  as well as “learn to say no”and “unplug when you feel you need to.” She reminds us that “not a single one of the systemic issues any of us are working to change is going to change overnight, so pace accordingly.”

To those feeling despair, Dashtgard reminds us that activism does lead to positive change– history shows that, over time, “the arc of the universe tends towards morality.”

When it comes to guiding activist-led enterprises, she cautions against reacting too quickly to current events. “Often there’s such urgency to jump into action, but any change efforts need to be built on a solid foundation.” She recommends talking to people and gathering perspectives before taking next steps.  “The answers are often in the group, and often unfold through a process of listening as much as directing.”

Caring for the Movement

As well as heeding sound self-care advice, we can also experience a recharge by caring for our movements and each other. How? Consider this additional advice from other long-time activists:

1. Write Activist Love Letters: Syrus Marcus Ware, a Black Lives Matter and trans rights activist, encourages people to think about their role in sustaining movements by writing love letters to activist leaders. He has personally mailed thousands of letters around the world to activists and organizations “as a salve to heal activist burnout.” Ware adds, “It’s [also] been amazing to get replies and be connected to activists around the globe.” Imagine the shot of energy we could bring if we each wrote five love letters to people working hard to change the world?
2. Shift Your Focus: If the glacial pace of change gets you down, one way to refill your cup of hope is to take your eyes off the sky (the big picture) and focus on the ground – at the “emergent forms of life in the cracks of the Empire” — advice from Joyful Militancy authors carla bergman and Nick Montgomery. Activist-led experiments and startups below the radar are doing amazing work. Find them. Collaborate. Nourish them. Your support in whatever form that takes can make make an impact in ways that are felt right now versus decades from now.
3. Say Yes to Pleasure: In Pleasure Activism, author adrienne maree brown suggests making space for pleasure – it’s a fierce form of resistance and critical for changing the world and staying resilient in fucked-up times. She recommends that we get in touch with our erotic and deep desires as part of our resiliency practice. “I touch my own skin, and it tells me that before there was any harm, there was miracle.” Tantalize your senses, take your mind on a trip, open up to great sex, take delight in the very beauty of existing.

 

We know that unless systems of oppression are dismantled, none of us will be free. If we don’t re-imagine our economic system, a handful of predominately white male billionaires will continue to call the shots. With rampant environmental destruction, Mother Earth will echo George Floyd’s now iconic plea “I can’t breathe” for years to come– and we will all suffer.

But we can’t do this vital work when we’re suffering to the point of burn out.  Self care, yes. But also remember that just being alive is a miracle worth celebrating everyday. Take a look at the flowers growing in between the cracks in the cement, cracks you are creating.  They will remind you that a better world is possible and indeed emerging.

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The post Coping with Activist Burnout in Extraordinary Times appeared first on LiisBeth.

Let me gift you with a feminist trivia game for your next feminist holiday gathering. And I’ll wrap it up with a big hint: the questions all have the same answer.

Question #1: Who was the woman who saved the life of abortion rights advocate, Dr. Henry Morgentaler, by fearlessly stepping in front of an attacker wielding garden shears at Morgentaler during the opening of Toronto’s first abortion clinic on Harbord Street?

Question #2: Who led the fight to get abortion legalized in Canada in the 1980s, while serving as president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NACS), the feminist lobby group that represented more than 700 women’s rights groups across Canada and, from 1971 to 2007, successfully pressured the government to take action on daycare, birth control, women’s right to choose, maternity leave, family law, poverty, racism, women’s equality in Canada’s Charter of Rights, and violence against women—to name just a few issues?

Question #3: Who is Canada’s Gloria Steinem? Okay, that’s not an entirely fair question as we like to think Canada has a few. But, on top of authoring seven books, hosting a prime-time TV show, and writing countless articles about the women’s movement and social justice, this woman also co-founded rabble.ca, Canada’s largest independent, alternative news outlet and discussion site, and served as its publisher?

Question #4: Who understood and acted on intersectional feminism—social justice for all women—long before it was a thing?

Still stumped? You can imagine my frustration when I excitedly gabbed to everyone I knew that I was meeting Judy Rebick for lunch! Too often, the response was, Who is Judy Rebick?

Judy Rebick’s latest book is a memoir titled Heroes in My Head

 Who is Judy Rebick?

Well, I can tell you that Judy Rebick is a woman who not only shows up when she’s needed—she gets there early. She was already waiting for us at The Pilot tavern, a hangout for writers, musicians, and artists since Toronto’s Yorkville hippie days in the 1970s. Gordon Lightfoot performed with Bob Dylan here. It’s also steps away from the Toronto Reference Library, a place where writers spend a lot of time.

When I arrived, Rebick looked up. Though we had never met, we recognized each other immediately. Her stance, head of thick but now graying curls, and iconic glasses gave her away. Rebick greeted me with a big “in solidarity” hug. LiisBeth’s associate editor Lana Pesch, rushed from her day job, as eager to meet this feminist icon as I was, joined us soon after.

We quickly ordered coffee and lunch so that we could get down to talking without further interruptions. Rebick, now 73, was as keen to know about us as we were her. We shared histories and some great stories, then I shifted the conversation to a topic we came to learn more about: growing a sustainable media outlet in a time of turmoil for media enterprises in general.

Judy Rebick on Idle No More

I asked her what we, as feminist changemakers and publishers, could learn from her experience both as a long-time feminist journalist and as a co-founder/publisher/editor of rabble.ca, an alternative online publication (launched 2001) and now one of the country’s most successful, attracting 800 members, two million page views, and 350,000 unique visitors per month according to Google Analytics.

Specifically, for LiisBeth and our readers, I wanted to know the path to rabble.ca’s success. How did it ever get off the ground and survive this long, without a major foundation footing bills, angel investors or sponsors, or even a paywall?

Rebick told us that she and her co-founders were convinced that Canadians were frustrated by the mainstream press extolling neoliberal narratives. They wanted and deserved an alternative point of view on current issues and events. So Rebick and friends created a plan and hit the road to find funding. In one year, they raised $200,000 in startup funding including $120,000 from the Atkinson Foundation along with funds from some 18 unions—enough to code and launch rabble.ca.

Seventeen years later, Vancouver-based rabble.ca now generates approximately $350,408 in revenues, of which $121,000 (34.8 percent) come from reader donations. Income from sustaining partners (unions) represented another 50 percent while 14 percent comes from grants and various sponsorships. While the site promotes its advertising utility, less than 1 percent of its revenue comes from ads.

Rebick explained that unions backed rabble.ca as the publication offered a way for the left to connect and unions to connect with their constituents about ideas, critiques of policy, and economic analysis that the mainstream media largely ignored.

The idea of an online newspaper and participative forum for readers was totally rad at the time. That was early-stage internet and way before Facebook or Google.

Since its launch, some 90-plus independent news and magazine channels have appeared, and none have readership figures as high as rabble.ca yet. In Canada. But as Rebick filled us in on rabble.ca’s journey—the type of stories they chased and how—we were reminded how critically important alternative media is to any functioning democracy. Such media organizations hold political and business leaders accountable, bring new business models to light and offer an outlet for ideas of alternative world–making.

We were also reminded that financially sustaining an alternative indie media enterprise is a little like figuring out how to keep a fish alive and healthy out of water. After all, how do you challenge the status quo if you’re trying to raise money from people who benefit from systemic inequality?

Rebick certainly got us thinking, because at LiisBeth, we have similar values and face many of the same challenges as rabble.ca. We believe passionately that feminist entrepreneurs can change the world. We have faith in the idea that grassroots storytelling and discussion opportunities matter. And we dig deep to figure out what it takes to create, grow, and leverage a sustainable, social justice–forward digital media enterprise in today’s world.

Rebick believes that technology-enabled movements, aided by aligned alternative media outlets, are transforming power. Social movements—not governments, lobby groups, or corporate social responsibility initiatives—are correcting the course, exploding our ability to imagine new worlds, advance democracy and human rights, and force action on climate change. Rebick explained how different recent tech-enabled protests such as Arab Spring, Idle No More, and Occupy were to the anti-globalization rally in Quebec in the late 1990s. And she should know. She was there. On the ground. Involved in it all.

And suddenly, it was 2 p.m. Rebick was in demand again, at another meeting. She signed my copy of Ten Thousand Roses, the book she wrote on the making of a feminist revolution, and graciously rushed out.

Lana and I lingered, talking about how our conversation with Rebick was like getting drawn into an incredible living book on Canadian feminist action and social progress. The entire meeting was so engrossing that we completely forgot to document the occasion. No group selfie or even a picture of Judy. And we are a social media organization, with an online magazine and newsletter!

How will anyone ever recognize this incredible feminist icon? Chagrined, we took a picture of the chair she sat in.

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https://www.liisbeth.com/2015/11/30/a-sit-down-with-ruth-bader-ginsburg-and-gloria-steinem/

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The post Woman is Wolf to Woman appeared first on LiisBeth.

LiisBeth: Your brilliant critique argues that feminism has been high jacked by neoliberalism, giving us what you call marketplace feminism, where women are engaged with individual choice and empowerment rather than the hard work of tackling and fixing systemic inequality. I want to start where your book leaves off. What kind of feminism do we need going forward in order to make meaningful change?

Andi Zeisler: Something that I hope is clear throughout the book is that I don’t think that marketplace feminism has replaced systemic, boots-on-the-ground feminism. I absolutely think that’s always been happening and will continue to happen. Marketplace feminism just happens to be the most amplified version of feminism right now. All the feminism work that’s been going on over the past decade is absolutely having an effect on things and that will continue to happen. I have seen feminism become much deeper, much more intersectional, much more enmeshed in people’s everyday lives and that’s the kind of feminism we need going forward. It’s not an activist project they need to take time out of their lives to do but it is their real lives and part of their everyday life.

LiisBeth: In your critique of choice feminism — whatever a self-declared feminist chooses is feminist is feminist — you argue that there has to be a “line in the sand,” that surely feminism has to stand for something. What is that?

AZ: It has to stand for equality and the autonomy and freedom of all women, not just women who can afford to make consumer choices that prop up their sense of empowerment or sense self actualization. It has to be about supporting women’s equality in every way, whether that’s financial, body, social, as a parent or whatever. It really does have to be about real equality and not a facsimile of it.

LiisBeth: You offer great examples of how feminism has been co-opted by neoliberalism and capitalism, for instance with femvertising, which is using feminism to sell things. How is this harmful to women?

AZ: Anytime a political and social movement becomes excessively individualized and made to seem that it’s something you can choose and has no impact on everyone else, that is harmful. A good example is the so-called mommy wars that has being going on for the last couple of decades, where women who opt out of the workforce because they can afford to…and talk about it as if that’s a choice versus something that’s coerced out of them by a capitalist system that’s still based on having a stay-at-home parent as an anchor. That’s damaging. It makes it seem like it’s a choice and has nothing to do with how we value women in society and in the workforce. It’s like saying that the framework of capitalism has nothing to do with people’s choices and, of course, it does.

LiisBeth: Given that we exist in this neoliberal world of capitalism, how should feminists engage with it? Are there areas or ways we can co-opt or exploit capitalism to move the feminist project forward?

AZ: I’m not saying this is an ideal form of activism but it’s one we have that seems to work well and that is public shaming — calling out companies when they stereotype women in advertising, when they make really gross gender generalizations. Or calling out TV shows when they use slurs or stereotypes. All of these things threaten to hit corporations and pop culture products where it counts, which is in the chequebook. When a critical mass of people tell them what they are doing is wrong and threaten their bottom line, that tends to get their attention.

LiisBeth: How do you think we can engage men in feminism?

AZ: This is one of those questions that I find bothersome, the very idea that men have to be invited to engage in feminism. If men care about feminism, they should not have to be invited…. (Their role) is to take feminism into spaces where they already have the ears of their peers or superiors and make change there. We absolutely need men advocating for gender equality. But if they are men who are going to wait to be invited, they are probably not the people we need. We need the people who are already on our side and willing to do the work in their community

LiisBeth: Okay, put another way, how can men gain from feminism?

AZ: Feminism has always been, by extension, about men because it’s about decimating the idea there’s a gender binary, that there are certain things women do and certain things men do. Of course, feminism has already had men in mind when we talk about things like child rearing, emotion and sexuality. That women should not be constrained by centuries of stereotypes that are often based on nothing applies to men too. When women are liberated from constricting ideas of gender, so are men and that can be really powerful.

LiisBeth: Bitch has grown from a zine into a business with a website, a lecture series, a feminist curriculum for the classroom, a lending library, a writing fellowship. How do you promote or maintain feminist values in your business?

AZ: For a long time, it was really hard because we are a nonprofit running on a shoestring and there were definite issues around the amount we were able to pay people or that we weren’t able to pay health insurance for a long time. Part of the reason we moved (from San Francisco) to Portland 10 years ago was so we could have an organization that could live its mission of being feminist. That means paying everyone a fair wage; paying health insurance for everyone, including part-time employees; having family leave policy; having a generally hierarchical but respectful staff structure. As a nonprofit, we talk about mission and visioning a lot. We talk about communication and the importance of communicating respectfully, listening to people, being open to discussion, being open to dissent. It’s not necessarily enforced in a structural way, but it’s an important organizational value.

LiisBeth: How do you practice feminism in your personal life?

AZ: I accepted a long time ago that you can be a feminist, you can advocate for feminism, but it’s impossible to live every bit of your life in what other people might consider a feminist way. For instance, I was married for almost 16 years, but I would never argue that marriage is a feminist institution or that as a feminist getting married, I made it feminist. Whether it’s where you live or how you live, what you wear, whether you shave legs — when we start talking about whether x or y is or isn’t feminist (that) gets us into that individual unhelpful place where feminism is no longer an ongoing ethic but this idea of a personal choice that can be weighed on the scales of goodness and found acceptable.

LiisBeth: You have said that feminism is not supposed to be fun or cute or sexy. It’s a movement about changing a system and changing values and that’s really hard work and demands hard conversations and conflict and confrontation. Are you bitch slapping feminists to get back into the streets to hold meaningful protests? If so, what kind of protests would you like to see?

AZ: I don’t think there’s any lack of protests. They just don’t look like they did 40 years ago. A lot of activism now happens online, which is a much more inclusive way to do activism when you think about it. Consider how many people couldn’t participate in those protests in the ’60s and ’70s because they were working in factories or their religions didn’t permit it or whatever. I think there’s much more acceptability in how we collectively practice activism and understand activism now. Feminist activism needs a range of people. Some are going to put their heads down and write policy; some will be out in communities talking to and mobilizing people. The way activism is understood now, there’s a lot more for people to do according to their strengths and what their skills are.

LiisBeth: What makes you optimistic about feminism?

AZ: There’s a lot that makes me optimistic. A lot of it is going to universities and seeing that young women are so very immersed in and involved in feminism and politics and thinking deeply and critically about media and economics and gender roles and things like that. I never understand when older feminists say, where are all the feminists? I just think they’re looking in the wrong place or they’re looking at a much narrower range subjects than today’s feminists are actually focusing on.

LiisBeth: Do you think your work at Bitch will change as a result of immersing yourself in this look at feminism, or your views of feminism will change?

AZ: I’m not sure if I can answer that. A lot of things that I wrote about are still happening and in some ways becoming more pronounced. I also think that marketplace feminism is not necessarily going to remain at the kind of tenor it is now. It’s like environmentalism 10 years ago, which was really embraced by Hollywood and advertising and at some point it was no longer the new lens to promote things. That didn’t mean people stopped caring about environmentalism. It just became less overt. I don’t think that feminist activism has ever stopped or will ever stop as long as things are the way they are. When marketplace feminism is no longer a culturally amplified thing, there will still be a ton of feminist work to be done and a ton of feminists doing that work.

Related Media:

A Conversation with Gender Capitalism Expert Sarah Kaplan, by Margaret Webb

How to Embed Feminist Values Into Your Company, by Valerie Hussey

Why We’re Feminists, by Valerie Hussey

Confessions of a Bad Feminist, Roxanne Gay’s Ted Talk,  by LiisBeth Curator

CBC Here and Now Interview with Andi Zeisler (audio) 

Rotman School of Management Talk Video Clip

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The post A Conversation with "WE WERE FEMINISTS ONCE" author Andi Zeisler appeared first on LiisBeth.

Writer Natalie Clifford Barney once called entrepreneurship “the last refuge of the troublemaking individual.” Surprising words, considering charm and tact are considered essential tools for anyone starting a business. And kicking down doors isn’t exactly charming behaviour.

But for many women, particularly those working within oppressive environments, the very act of starting a business can be frighteningly disruptive to the social order. When entrepreneurship also entails rising out of prejudice or poverty, activism becomes a necessary part of the toolkit. As history shows, it can be an incredibly valuable tool.

Many female business pioneers consistently spoke truth to power while simultaneously building what we would now call their brands. Take, for example, cosmetics magnate Elizabeth Arden. Born Florence Graham in 1884 in Woodbridge, Ont., Arden popularized makeup for women at a time when it was worn primarily by actors and prostitutes. Since that time, of course, women’s relationships to cosmetics can best be described as uneasy; in fact, some might criticize Arden for fostering a culture that not only allows, but mandates cosmetic “improvement.”

But in the early 20th century, wearing makeup was a sign of a woman’s determination to please herself. On a spring day in 1912, Arden did her own unique part to advance the suffrage movement by getting marchers in a New York City parade to sport her signature lipstick. It was bright red of course, the colour of daring and defiance.

Arden’s contemporary, Mary Pickford, is best known as a Hollywood film actor who became “America’s sweetheart.” But she was also a highly successful business executive who also happened to hail from Canada. Pickford (born Gladys Smith) began producing her own features shortly after her acting career began and later co-founded the United Artists studio to secure financial and artistic freedom for filmmakers.

Pickford constantly used her power and profits to help others in the screen trade. Her projects included building a specialized hospital for ailing industry workers, as well as establishing the Motion Picture Relief Fund to provide assistance to impoverished actors. She was also a major fundraiser for the American army’s efforts during the First World War.

Georgina Binnie-Clark wasn’t nearly as famous as Arden or Pickford, but deserves equal celebration. Binnie-Clark was an aristocratic Englishwoman who found herself in a precarious economic position in the early 1900s. At the time, there were almost a million more young women than men in England after many of the latter had been lost to immigration and war. Marital uncertainty became a problem for upper-class women, whose identity was solely defined by their husband and children (working-class women routinely held jobs outside the home).

Binnie-Clark immigrated to Saskatchewan where she did the most shocking thing for an upper-class woman: she became a successful farmer. Throughout her life on the prairies, she fought numerous obstacles. Because she was a single woman, the government deemed her ineligible to own a homestead, despite a petition signed by 11,000 men to get the law reversed. Undaunted, Binnie-Clark devised a plan to bring single British women to Canada and train them in the art of farming. Unfortunately, the program was cancelled due to the outbreak of the First World War. She also wrote two books in which she advocated not only for female farmers, but for all western farmers afflicted by unfair financing practices.

Binnie-Clark, Pickford and Arden were entrepreneurs by choice and activists by necessity. With improved conditions for women in business, is activism a thing of the past?

Not by any means, but there are different reasons for this. Some entrepreneurial activists are so massively successful (think Oprah Winfrey or Jane Fonda) that they can afford to be as troublesome as they wish. Others may start off with less, but find their desire to upset the social apple cart is shared by many other willing partners. An example is Kathryn Finney, creator of digitalundivided (DID), which supports the success of tech start-ups led by African-American and Latina women.

Across the world, others are still fighting for basic gains; like their forebears, they can’t afford not to be activists. Sarah Abu Alia, a concert promoter in Jordan, embraces the role heartily. Of the work climate in her home country she says: “As a woman, you have to fight for everything here, which is a great preparation for being an entrepreneur.” The women of yesterday would no doubt agree.

Publisher’s Note: Micah White, author of The End of Protest, writes, “The lack of protest is perilous for society.” And he might be right. In a time where even innovative protest efforts like Occupy failed to create change, and in a year where presidential hopefuls like Donald Trump can take sexism and racism to a whole new level and still garner a massive following, it may, just may, be a sign to women* everywhere that we too need to examine our toolkit and ask ourselves if our current atomistic, individual “role modeling” and “don’t rock the boat” efforts to advance equality and inclusion are also no longer effective. Perhaps we need new, bolder tools to drive social change. And as entrepreneurs, perhaps we need to start seeing ourselves as social activists and drivers of social change, not just drivers of our economy.

*Defined in gender-expansive terms.

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