Original Date: January 31, 2025
We must know and understand that genocide, armed conflicts, persecution, and the destruction of lives and souls, the natural environment, and so much more, are perpetrated in multiple locations in the world by multiple state, corporate, and civil society leaders of the globalized culture of killing that has engulfed us and threaten the very survival of the planet. So how do we, as feminist in our respective social and geographical locations, make sure to acknowledge that reality and develop planetary frames that amplify our interconnectedness and interdependencies? How do we learn from and with multi-generations of feminist and other radical and visionary families, movements, activists, artists, musicians, journalists, academics, and more on whose shoulders we stand and among whom we exist in this moment? What are things we simply cannot understand, are flummoxed about? What are the foundational principles and practices of “solidarity” in this historic moment? Who must be become to be in such solidarity, given the multiple ways we too or have been socialized and influenced by the “culture of killing”?
Moderated by Moderated by Zinhle ka’Nobuhlaluse Ph.D, Margo Okazawa-Rey, Shailja Patel, and Pregs Govender shared their ideas and invited other participants to share theirs.
About Margo Okazawa-Rey
Margo Okazawa-Rey is an activist-educator working on issues of militarism for 30 years. She has long-standing activist commitments in South Korea and Palestine, with Du Re Bang and Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling, respectively. She also is a founding member of the International Women’s Network against Militarism and its US-based group Women for Genuine Security and the Combahee River Collective, and outgoing President of AWID Board.
About Shailja Patel
Shailja Patel (she/her) is a queer feminist internationalist from Kenya. She is the author of the bestselling Migritude, shortlisted for Italy’s Camaiore Prize, and currently taught in over 200 colleges and universities worldwide. Patel’s poems have been translated into 17 languages. Her essays and commentaries appear in the Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, BBC World Service, and Internazionale, among others. She has appeared on BBC, Al-Jazeera, and NPR. Honors include a Global Feminist Spotlight from the Nobel Women’s Initiative, the Jozi Book Fair Guest Writer Award, the Brittle Paper Anniversary Award, and the Fanny-Ann Eddy Poetry Award.She is recipient of fellowships and residencies from Yaddo, Civitella Ranieri, Sundance, the Nordic Africa Institute, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts, and the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center. Her work features in the Smithsonian Museum's groundbreaking Beyond Bollywood exhibition. Patel was a founding member of Kenyans for Peace, Truth and Justice, a civil society coalition that works for equitable democracy in Kenya. She is currently the Public Affairs Editor for the Massachusetts Review. Twitter/X: @shailjapatel
About Pregs Govender
Feminist writer and activist Pregs Govender, is the author of Love and Courage, A Story of Insubordination, whose transformative lessons for humanity are widely studied, including in Layli Maparyan’s The Womanist Idea, Mary Robinson’s Mandela Lecture and Barbara Boswell’s UCT ‘Great Texts Lecture’. In 1994 in South Africa’s democratic Parliament, Pregs pioneered its influential Women’s Budget. As Chair of Parliament’s Women’s Committee, Pregs drove 80%of its feminist legislative priorities into law. In 2001, she chaired HIV/AIDS hearings during her party’s silence, demanding public access to treatment, and critiquing Big Pharma’s exorbitant patents. In Parliament’s 2001 Defence Budget Vote Pregs was the only MP to oppose SA’s arms deal with Britain, Germany and Sweden, before resigning as MP. In 2009 Parliament appointed Pregs to the South African Human Rights Commission.
During SA’s fight for freedom from Apartheid, SA’s majority women garment union elected Pregs its national educator in 1987 and in 1991 her feasibility study led to the Workers’ College, which she was appointed to head. During SA’s transition Pregs managed SA’s Women’s National Coalition Campaign that mobilized millions to secure women’s constitutional rights.