Ever wonder why women are bought and sold the world over, sometimes legally, often illegally, and more often, in disguised transactions like arranged marriages?  How did this become a part of cultures almost everywhere? 

Answers to these and other questions regarding the Woman Condition can be learned at AF3IRM NY’s Summer School of Women’s activism, starting on July 21st and every Saturday thereafter from 1 pm to 4 pm. 

To make it easier for women with children to participate, AF3IRM is offering child care this year.  Registrants who wish to avail of the service should  email nynj@af3irm.org and provide how many and what ages the child/children they will be bringing to the school.

To highlight the transnationalist character of SSOWA’s content, AF3IRM NY will be providing light lunch for the participants who come earlier than 1 pm.  The food will be drawn from the cuisines of Korea, Mexico, and Philippines.

The four Saturdays cover such subjects as:  Women and Private Property;  Trafficking and the International Sex and Labor Markets;  Militarism and Constant Wars and the piece de resistance, Building for the Fourth Wave of Feminism. 

In the last, participants will be engaged in the creation of a vision that marks the Fourth Wave as both flowing from its antecedents but differing in both methodology and content.  This will mark the beginning of AF3IRM’s preparations for demographic changes within the US and the increasing historic significance of women of color in the dynamic for change. 

SSOWA’s faculty include Minerva Arias, who works at the International Rescue Committee;  Maria Garcia Mugg and Rosalia Abreau of GEMS, Olivia Canlas who just finished law school, Leilani Montes of SEIU Local 1199 NJ, Kimberly Sarabia of the New York Immigration Coalition, Ninotchka Rosca, and several guest presenters. 

Registration which ends on July 20 can be done at www.ssowa2012.eventbrite.com. 

The fee, which include a Reader and the lunch, are as follows:  $40 for professional women;  $30 for students and for the down-and-out, please talk to us.

Held once a year, the SSOWA is unique in being the only open school for women activist to learn history, political economy and campaign creation.