Our Bodies, Ourselves (173 page)

Through social media, more teens and young
women are speaking out and taking a stand. Julie Zeilinger was a fifteen-year-old high school student in Pepper Pike, Ohio, when she launched fbomb (thefbomb.org) in 2008 with the goal of creating a community and dialogue for teenage girls “who care about their rights as women and want to be heard.” Within two years, Zeilinger's site had published submissions from all over the world.
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In this new era, traditional gatekeepers have been replaced by a decentralized assembly of digitally empowered citizen journalists. Organizing takes place independent of geographical boundaries, and stories have the potential to reach large audiences quickly. On the flip side, communities have never been more diffuse, and standing out among so many voices can be difficult. Online petitions and other forms of viral protest are sometimes dismissed as ineffective slacktivism. And access to new technology isn't universal; a digital divide exists between the digitally adept and those without access to digital tools and/or those who lack the knowledge and skills to be media creators as well as consumers. Spending a few hours a week in a school computer lab isn't the same as having a laptop or iPad in your backpack.

While social networking and digital media have certainly become important catalysts for change, providing new and effective forms of expression, we need to work to increase access so all of us have the tools and the means to tell our own stories.

This impulse toward activism usually begins when something affects us or someone we know. We may be motivated by a health problem or by injustices in our neighborhoods and schools. A friend or family member may alert us to issues we care deeply about and want to work to improve.

Organizing does not take experts or a lot of money. What it does take is a committed group of individuals willing to invest time and energy to work together toward a common goal. The Internet and mobile technology (which has even higher use among African Americans and Latinos than among whites)
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have made it easier for more people from diverse backgrounds to share information and get involved in causes that matter most to them.

Creating change on a larger level takes many voices. After we have taken a few steps on our own, we may want to get involved with groups working on an issue or start a group of our own. Here are some questions for groups to consider in the early stages of organizing:

• Can we clearly define our issue?

• What do we already know about the issue? What don't we know? What research has already been done, and by whom?

• What will be the scope of our work? Do we have enough people to manage the work we want to do?

• Which online/offline communications tools will we use to spread our message? Which communication tools are used by the people most affected by this issue?

• Are there organizations or individuals already working on the problem? If so, how can we work together?

• How many women are affected? Are the women most affected involved in efforts to create solutions?

• Who are the opposition? How are they supported/funded?

• What approaches to the problem are we considering? What resources are needed to accomplish them? Where will we find the needed resources?

• How will our group be organized? What will be our group norms on inclusiveness, diversity, decision making, and logistics?

The answers to these questions will help you to create a supportive group infrastructure and work toward formulating an action plan. Think of specific objectives and consider what tools and resources you need to realize each goal. Remember to focus on telling people's stories, which helps to personalize the issue.

Don't assume that everyone will know about an event if you post it on Facebook. Think about whom you're trying to reach and adapt your message—and your medium—accordingly.

In our group, very few women had experience speaking publicly to or before the media. So we set aside some meetings to role-play, to practice speaking before a group, and to learn how to say the most important things in the least amount of time. We also practiced saying the things we wanted people to hear, even if they were not related to the interviewer's question. Doing all this is a great way to break through shyness and stage fright.

Need help making your voice heard? These groups work with individuals and organizations, helping them to tell their own stories and develop media expertise.

• The OpEd Project
(opedproject.org) trains female experts in all fields to write for the op-ed pages of major print and online forums of public discourse. The OpEd Project works with universities, nonprofits, corporations, women's organizations, and community leaders and offers seminars open to the public in major cities across the nation. Scholarships are available.

• The Women's Media Center
(womensme diacenter.org) aims to make women visible
and powerful in the media. In addition to offering media training workshops to the public, women can apply for the Progressive Women's Voices Project, an all-expenses paid program that trains women to position themselves as thought leaders/experts in their fields; craft strong media messages and newsworthy pitches; and prepare for both friendly and hostile broadcast inter-views.

• Barefoot Workshops
(barefootworkshops.org) is a New York City–based nonprofit
organization that teaches individuals and organizations how to use digital video, new media, and the arts to transform their communities and themselves.

• “Get Noticed! How to Publicize Your Book or Film”
(aidandabet.org/resources/get-noticed) is your DIY guide to promoting a project. Written by Jen Angel, Matt Dineen, and Justine Johnson, this fifty-plus-page booklet covers everything from writing press materials to using social media and pitching stories to reporters at independent and mainstream media outlets.

In recent years, women of color and their allies have organized a reproductive justice movement that examines how issues of race and class affect women's abilities to exercise their reproductive rights. This dynamic movement is growing, and today many organizations and networks are taking part. The largest among them is SisterSong, a network of eighty local, regional, and national organizations (and many other affiliate organizations) representing five primary ethnic populations/indigenous nations in the United States: African American, Arab American/Middle Eastern, Asian/Pacific Islander, Latina, and Native American/Indigenous.

The reproductive justice movement promotes a broader understanding of women's rights and health, placing abortion within a larger framework that includes maternal and infant health, economic justice, racial equality, and ending violence against women. There are three main frameworks for addressing reproductive oppression: reproductive rights (legal structures), reproductive health (service delivery), and reproductive justice (movement building).

Organizations and individuals are working to strengthen each of these pillars and, by doing so, they are improving access for all women.

In 2010, the Georgia state legislature took up a bill that aimed to limit access to reproductive services. The new twist: The bill falsely proclaimed that women of color were being targeted by abortion providers. So-called “pro-life freedom rides” in the summer of 2010 co-opted important civil rights legacies in order to try to deny women of color access to reproductive choice. This followed on the heels of a controversial anti–abortion rights billboard campaign that called black children “an endangered species.”

“You cannot save black babies by discriminating against black women,” said Loretta Ross, national coordinator of SisterSong. “Civil rights
has always been about expanding freedoms for black people, not rolling back the clock to the nineteenth century like these anti-abortionists want. Should black women again become breeders for their cause?”