More than a year ago I heard one of India’s most powerful activist poets, K Satchidanandan, recite a poem he had written for Indian activist Irom Sharmila. Sharmila has been on hunger strike for the last fourteen years in protest against the brutal Armed Forces Special Powers Laws. Similar to you -and others like you, in Palestine, […]
“You’ve got rules telling me what to do but is there anyone checking up on you?” “Activism takes on many forms. I speak out through my music and share wherever I can. This song was inspired by seeing, hearing, feeling stories of injustice. It’s a plight for equal rights for all people regardless of […]
By Doaa Abdelaal 9th November, 2014 Life is so strange most of the time. It is the 9th of November again… for those who can remember, it was on this same 9th day of November, at night, when the Berlin wall started falling. I was 13 years then, watching it on the screen of our […]
by Fatma Emam In my country, we are witnessing the backlash of an incomplete revolution. We are suffering at the hands of a military junta and the Islamists who stole our dreams. In spite of this, we go on in the heat of solidarity and the power of our passion. I want to confess […]
Sometimes, the women who fight for us, need other women to fight for them. I wondered what it must be like to be buying water to quench your thirst and your entire world changed. The news articles stated that you were buying water when you were arrested. I wondered what made you step out […]
by Olutimehin Adegbeye “There’s really no such thing as ‘the voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard.” - Arundhati Roy In three years’ time, my daughter will be five years old. She will have started school, learnt to read and ride a bicycle, decided that boys are nasty and mastered the […]
Monday, 17th November 2014 Cambridge You were there in Kampala Dear Yara My name is Njoki Wamai, an African feminist from Kenya and a scholar activist who is currently a student at the University of Cambridge. I first heard about you in Kampala at the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) sponsored non-fiction writer’s workshop which […]
by Jessica Horn I Mtu ni watu. A person is people. Or maybe a person is not a person without other people. By defending other people you become a person. But what if that person is a woman who speaks luminous truths to dictatorial power? What if she is a woman that breathes the words […]
July 16, 2014 Dear habibty Yara, It’s Nelly Bassily here. Yara, first, I’m sending you lots and lots of solidarity and love from Canada! Habibty, you have to be one of the strongest and most amazing young feminists I have the pleasure and honour to call a friend in Egypt. When I first saw […]
By Patrice Juah For so long, we were torn apart Our voices were buried in the cold dark earth, Our songs were cries and our rain, tears. We were silenced and banned from speaking our truths. Hate towards each other burdened us, as fear crippled us. We were blinded by lies that tore our efforts […]