Brainstorm #4 - Sarah Yang

The Womxn Who Rock Archive and it’s unconference is centered around the goal to uplift communities who are not heard loud enough and celebrate every community’s similarities and differences. Through the sharing of women’s art, there is also the spreading of feminism and activism in many forms. There is a recognition that women “can’t just try… we do have to step up there and it has to be our best. Because men can get away with being so-so, and that’s ok, because at least they tried. And we don’t get that measure of comfort” (Notes on Women Who Rock, 8:00). Womxn Who Rock actively try and liberate their communities by giving them the space they need. In addition, the organizers who work to put together the goals and events for Womxn Who Rock are fierce advocates for being active in their communities, and consider it essential for calling oneself an activist, educator, researcher, or scholar. The mission of Womxn Who Rock is closely connected to activist Chela Sandoval’s beliefs about activism and differential consciousness. As she stated in Queer Globalizations, dissent globalization depends on the activism of international collectivism. As a whole, differential consciousness allows “activists of color involved in the civil rights, antiwar, Black, Chicano, Asian, Native American, student, women’s, and gay liberation movements [to see] themselves as bonded, despite distinct and sometimes contrary aims and goals, in a coalitional form of “third world” consciousness opposed to dominating powers and oppressive racial and social hierarchies” (Queer Globalizations, 22). I find the missions and work of both Womxn Who Rock and Sandoval to be inspiring and necessary in bringing communities together to be more educated and elevated.