Brown 1 Nena Brown Professor Meredith Tweed WST 4415 19 April 2012 Service Learning Reflection for Global

and Transnational Feminisms

PROJECT SUMMARY

Members of our class met several times to formulate our project and our organizational structure. As a group we decided to work with the Youth and Young Adult Network of the National Farm Worker Ministry (YAYA), mostly because no one researched other possible local community partners. We also saw that all the global issues we were interested in working on womens health, environmental sustainability, human trafficking, and literacy factored into the farmworker movement. Our proposed work with YAYA involved relationship-building between the Global class and YAYA members through attending and assisting with YAYA meetings and events, fundraising, and participating in Abis year-long community garden project with the Fellsmere community. We initiated our project without a global community partner. The highlight of our work with YAYA was participating in the May Fellsmere Community Garden Day in which we joined side by side with members of YAYA, classmates, other friends from Orlando, and members of multiple communities in Fellsmere to clear land for an organic community garden. We exceeded our fundraising goal of $100, collecting a total of $277, in addition to a large amount of gardening tools and long sleeve t-shirts for donations. To share the work and mission of our global partner, Navdanya, we tabled on the UCF campus, covering the topics of food security, water democracy, and the harms of multinational agricultural business.

Brown 2 We struggled to come up with an organizational structure because we had little understanding about the work we were getting into. We eventually established liaisons for our local and global community partners, a fundraising committee, and an ethics committee. In actualizing our project, our planned organizational structure barely took shape. Everyone pitched in at different times and sometimes in unison in order to get the work accomplished, and also to establish their own connections with YAYA, our group, and our project. Though I was designated community partner liaison, several other classmates also attended meetings and events, with some joining YAYA on their own. While roles shifted organically or randomly, I think we suffered due to lack of formal positions. Without many formal positions, we had difficulty holding ourselves and each other accountable and in actually completing tasks, such as facilitating meetings. We also had difficulty respecting each other, and the lack of structure seemed to go hand-in-hand with low group morale. As we got to know each other better inside and outside of class, we slowly started to work more cohesively as a group. I am still uncertain about our classs culture of distrust. I have learned the necessity of establishing a group identity and mission along with an actual project prior to determining an organizational structure. If groups start with everyone clarifying their aims and desires, finding the overlap of these goals and interests, and making human connections, the group can clearly identify the glue that holds it together. Bare bones meeting facilitator, note-taker, and coordinator will suffice for an intermediary group structure during the forming process. Unless everyone involved has more experience with organizing and said type of activism, this method seems to make the most sense. Establishing relationships and group identity, along with investigating tangibility of the projects work, will set a sound foundation not only for determining a structure, but also for working together effectively. My

Brown 3 understanding of classroom texts and issues completely came to life through working on this project. We practiced organizing global to local feminist activism across difference as people in our class have diverse situated knowledges, backgrounds, interests, skills, experience, etc.

SYNTHESIS

In order to work together with other women, feminists and women must find shared cause to unite them. As feminists and women, we must have a grasp on our own history and identity, and understand the role we play in larger frameworks of oppression and social reality due to race, gender, class, upbringing, family connections, values, and education, which all shape our privilege, our experience, our ethic, and our situated knowledge. We must be aware of our own social location, which reflects the intersection of our identity factors and thus what we represent to the world around us. We must also have awareness of the values we choose to move from, decide our loyalties, and develop our own ethic. Then we must share passion for effecting social change, understanding that global issues look different in local places, yet are perpetuated by the same global institutions. In order to begin to understand how our experiences connect even as they differ, we must learn to engage in ethical and caring dialogues (and revolutionary struggles) across the divisions, conflicts, and individualist identity formations (Mohanty 125). Mohanty suggests that we do not allow our differences to encourage divisiveness, but to ultimately move beyond our attachment to individual identity and to genuinely strive to understand the reality, concerns, and views of others. Most importantly, we need to act from a place of kindness within ourselves; from our hearts. With an ethic rooted in compassion and kindness, we understand that our individual and communal experiences of oppression may look different. In genuinely engaging each other, we can find ways to unite in order to work for unified causes. As Russo suggests,

Brown 4 We need to build common grounds, which may not have the same centersbut do have shared commitments to the survival of all of us (310). While this sentiment does not dictate how we connect and what it looks like, it does indicate an understanding that our lives are already interconnected. Building solidarity across communities and from woman to woman requires heartfelt effort. In Fellsmere I had the opportunity to speak with Yolanda, the Fellsmere community organizer for Farmworkers Association of Florida. As I listened to her view of the treatment of women in her community, I began to learn how her experience differs from mine and to get a glimpse of what I can do to help her situation. We both experience gender oppression, but in different ways. I think the fact that people of various genders work together within YAYA may inspire members of other communities, such as those in Fellsmere, to work together across genders as well. Just as Ferree and Tripp claim that the goal of empowering women should be considered feminist whether or not a group or individual claims the title of feminist, I believe Yolandas work and initiatives are feminist in nature (vii). She wants for the women and men to work together and for the women in her community to experience life beyond the constraints of domestication and to have access to healthier food for themselves and their families. In the brief moments of speaking personally with Yolanda, I listened attentively and with all my softness and humility. I found that we approached each other with open hearts, and I felt grateful that she readily shared her concerns and passions with me. Mohanty reminds us that dialogue across differences isfraught with tension, competitiveness, and pain, and I have seen this many times over in our classroom setting (125). But the tension only breeds further tension, the competiveness inhibits our listening to one another, and the pain we feel as we try to converge across difference makes us want to crawl back into ourselves and our own individual

Brown 5 realities. I suggest that vulnerability is our greatest strength. As we allow ourselves to remain tender in speaking with one another and firm in our shared commitments to survival of us all, we begin to build solidarity within and across communities, multiplying our strength as we come together.

REFLECTION AND CONNECTION

Our group both effectively and ineffectively modeled global feminist organizing. Many of us did not come into the project with an ability to effectively communicate our identities and a genuine openness to others. We lacked in patience, compassion, and general kindness. People became very defensive about their thoughts, identities, and opinions and thus lashed out at others, often became quite angry, and/or completely shut down. What I have learned from these experiences is that all the instructions for how to do transnational feminism the sentiments from our readings are very literal. Yes, we all feel pain from our lifes heartache, how we have been discriminated against, how we have been judged, heartbroken, torn down, discouraged, defeated, racialized, sexualized, etc. Dialogue across our differences can seem risky, but it is possible and necessary. Ultimately, keeping a kind heart is essential not only to transnational feminist organizing, but to working with people in any context, to building solidarity, and to living. Kindness, patience, compassion, and a resilient persistence for pursuing greater awareness of oneself and the world are required to create a stronger ethic. I have also realized that I do not have a whole, tangible understanding of my own history, identity, and position in the world. I understand that I must do further investigation into and integration of myself, my history, and my place in order to become more effective in building solidarity with others. I have also learned that I do not always know what is best or how to lead or organize something, nor should I always be the one to do it. With working on this project, I

Brown 6 felt much more effective when I took a step back from my natural tendencies towards structure and leadership and listened to everyone around me. I shifted my position in the group to that of a supporter. I focused on building morale and making sure everyone had access to the same information (coordinating). I did not need to lead or construct very much because we had many strong members of the class already doing this work, successfully. I found our group to be a little bit more cohesive when I began to support whoever took on leadership. This experience helped me to understand the tremendous importance of validating and encouraging one another. I give myself an A.

Brown 7 Works Cited Ferree, Myra Marx., and Aili Mari. Tripp. Global Feminism: Transnational Women's Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights. New York: New York UP, 2006. Print. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham: Duke UP, 2003. Print. Russo, Ann. "We Cannot Live Without Our Lives." Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1991. 297-313. Print.