Press Release June 19, 2007
FIRE WILL FOCUS ON
WOMEN’S PARTICIPATION
AT US SOCIAL FORUM IN ATLANTA
San José, Costa Rica --
Women’s participation and perspectives will be the focus of media
coverage by FIRE – Feminist International Radio Endeavour -- at the
US Social Forum (USSF)
in Atlanta, Georgia, June 27-July 1, 2007.
Tens of thousands of women’s rights, peace, racial and economic
justice activists and movements will come together as part of the
international process started in Brazil in 2001 under the slogan:
“Another World is Possible.”
Social Forums are an opportunity for activists to meet and
strengthen global, regional and local social movements worldwide.
Women have been present is every forum, comprising more than half of
the participants.
FIRE will be taking to the Forum a Costa Rica women´s initiative
calling for solidarity in their resistance to the Central American
Free Trade Agreement – CAFTA. The initiative will bring to the Forum
the “Quilt of our Dreams” where women from the U.S. can
paint or write their messages of solidarity with women in Central
America.
FIRE will also participate in three panels, and cover the US Social
Forum Court of Women.
The panels include:
-Rebuilding Women’s Movements Across All
Borders (Thur. June 28),
which will explore ways of rebuilding and ere-energizing women’s
movements across borders of power and privilege;
-Popular Education for Social
Transformation: Case
Studies from Around the Globe (Fri. June 29), which will explore
examples of popular education from different contexts and countries,
and discuss common struggles and themes in using popular education
for social transformation;
-Women Make Media: Not War (Sat. June
30)
While most mainstream media
cover war through the eyes of the war makers, many women at all
levels of media concentrate efforts in rendering visibility to
women´s voices about peace. In this session, feminist grassroots
media practitioners will describe their experiences, successes and
the obstacles they face.
Further they will brainstorm among each
other and with the audience on how to can collaborate on projects to
give their work greater visibility and global reach. In particular,
they will explore how to can interact on a global scale with such
dynamic projects as the Women's Media Pool, which was initiated for
Beijing 10+.
A Feminist Observatory of Transformation Politics (FOTP) (Observatorio Feminista
de la Trangresión)
will take place at the Forum with the objective of observing what
women are doing in this political space in order to influence the
Forum´s Agenda their activities, concerns and perspectives in the
promotion of equality, peace and justice. FIRE and Just Associates,
as member of the FOTP will undertake such action.
The FOTP will also
be present at the first U.S. Social Forum so as to contact and
connect with women’s groups and organizations to inform them about
this initiative and encourage them to join the FOTP in future
actions, such as the Feminist Observatory that will take place in
Costa Rica in the framework of the CAFTA Referendum to decide about
the destiny in that country of the signing or rejecting CAFTA.
The initiative to create
the FOTP emerged from an agreement among 25 feminists from Central
America and Mexico, who came together in Panama for a meeting on
“Imagining and Reinventing the Feminism of the Future” from
September 19-22, 2006, organized by the international organization
Just Associates
with the support of
Hivos
of the Netherlands.
FOTP activities so
far have included the Feminist Observatory of the Nicaraguan
Elections in 2006, a fact-finding mission to Costa Rica regarding
women´s resistance to CAFTA in March, 2007, and a recent Feminist
Observatory in Oaxaca, Mexico, during the meeting of “Women in
Resistance” (also known as “Women Crossing the Line” at this action)
in April, 2007.
FIRE will also cover the US Social Forum Court of Women (June
29, 1- 5 pm), which will focus on three human rights abuse topics in
the US including
-
Violence
Against Women
-
Hurricane
Katrina
-
The Criminal
Justice Systems, Federal, State, and Local.
-
US immigration
issues will be integrated throughout these topics.
