UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA WGS 498/GSJ 598

Reflection (M7)

Summary 

In this Module, we learned that when community activism and organizing is cognizant of intersectionality and intersectional oppressions, organizers take into account that a problem does not impact every member in the same way, shape, or form. Intersectional activism and community organizing centers the voices of those worst affected by the problem or crisis in an effort to develop an action plan that will improve the situation for the worst affected. The assumption is that when the worst affected members find respite, the rest of the community is uplifted as well. 

When intersectional oppressions are addressed, the systems contributing to the intersectional oppressions are also individually held accountable and a call for reform or change is set forth thus creating a systemic change for multiple social structures. For example, the various grassroots-level movements that are connected with the WECAN platform are connected to unique issues facing various communities around the world. All of these movements have identified carbon capitalism and capitalist patriarchy as contributing systems that are directly or indirectly responsible for the suffering of their communities. So, when any of these grassroot level movements becomes successful in their resistance against their immediate oppressive systems, they also present resistance to carbon capitalism and patriarchy. 

The module looked at food sovereignty movements, climate justice movements, and dalit feminist labour movements to demonstrate how existing researchers have used an intersectional framework to understand these cases. We also looked at the inner workings of these organizations to learn how activists incorporate intersectionality as a methodology to develop their own strategies for organizing. 

The purpose of this module is to witness intersectionality in practice and application. So, when we look at solidarity-based organizing efforts, we need to address the issue of identity categories and their impact in activism and organizing. As discussed throughout the module, communities are heterogeneous and their members can have affiliations with diverse identity categories. When participating in activism, this heterogeneity can be used as strength, as long as the leadership and participants involved in the organizing efforts embrace an intersectional approach and focus on the hyper-marginalized individuals and groups to identify the systems that cause this marginalization, and center their activism to eliminate that systemic barrier.

For example, Dalit women tea plantation workers demonstrate how they face oppressions because of their location at the intersection of patriarchy, castism and capitalism; an end of their exploitation would also lead to an end of  exploitation of other workers in these plantations. When labour unions and feminist activism participate in solidarity-based organizing efforts focused on these Dalit women tea plantation workers of South Asia, they can call for the elimination of exploitative labour practices and sexual harassment of workers and create better working and living conditions for all workers including women. Furthermore, an intersectional framework for studying activism leads us to reflect on the complex power relations between the researcher and the subjects of research. We need to recognize the heterogeneous identities of the group members who make up the membership of the movement we are studying, while being attentive to the hyper-marginalized identities when selecting research subjects.