CenterShift, National

Women of Color to Helm AF3IRM’s CenterShift II Conference: Full Schedule Revealed

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Media Contact:  nynj@af3irm.org
Tel:  (917) 3970989

New York:   An astonishing array of women luminaries will be at the helm of AF3IRM’s CenterShift Conference on October 21st – a vivid image of the diversity of color, cultures, experience and perspective in the women’s struggle for liberation.

Two principal main features will anchor the day’s discourse.  After the Conference is formally convened by AF3IRM Chair Ivy Quicho, union organizer and activist for women’s rights, the morning session will center around the panel, “Constellations of History,” featuring the following presenters:

  • Claudia de la Cruz, Dominican American, founder of Da Urban Butterflies, co-host and producer of Telesur English’s Ñ Don’t Stop;
  • Nayoung Kim, Korean, legal scholar focusing on feminist jurisprudence, activist
  • Muriel Miguel, Kuna and Rappahannock Nations, founder of Spiderwoman Theater
  • Raissa Robles, Filipina, journalist and foreign correspondent, book author
  • Farah Tanis, black American, founder of Black Women’s Blueprint, activist and organizer for women’s human rights

The panel will be moderated by immediate past AF3IRM Chair Jollene Levid, also a union organizer and an activist since her teen years.

The second feature is an annotated performance by Pura Fe, Tuscarora Nation musician.  This will anchor the afternoon session.  Apart from being a great artist, Pura Fe is also an environmental activist, joining at one time Winona La Duke’s two-day tour against oil and fracking.

The conference will also feature afternoon workshops on such topics as Migration, Marriage & Divorce,  Building Solidarity Across Borders,  Gender and Revolution and other issues germane to our times. View the full schedule on the AF3IRM website.

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A sliding scale registration fee is requested of participants.  Registration can be done here:  http://bit.ly/af3rr17.  Contact centershift@af3irm.org with additional questions.  Group rates for three or more registrants are available.  —  ###

 

CenterShift, National

AF3IRM Leadership to push for new directions for feminism at October 21st CenterShift II Conference in New York City

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Media Contact:   
Email:  NYNJ@af3irm.org
Telephone:   (917) 397-0989

NEW YORK—The bold leaders of AF3IRM – including three of its past and current national chairpersons — will continue to challenge the ideals and boundaries of feminism in the United States at this year’s national conference. The push by leadership has always been to theory build, to imagine, and to take action, with these efforts taking on even more urgency in a time of heightened neo-fascism and white nationalism.

Ivy, Ninotchka, and Jollene in DC for the Women’s March on January 21, 2017

At AF3IRM’s Center Shift II Conference in New York City,  National Chair Ivy Quicho, past Chairperson Jollene Levid, and founding GABNet Chairperson Ninotchka Rosca will join activists of differing histories and cultures to help chart possible directions for this current wave of feminism during this October deliberations.  The three have been pivotal in the meteoric rise of AF3IRM as a center for women of color and transnational women in the struggle for equity, rights and liberation.

Born in Alberta, Canada, Ms. Quicho, who now resides in Los Angeles, has worked in the labor movement for almost a decade, advocating on behalf of resident physicians and nurses, and currently works for the Directors Guild. Ms. Levid, a Los Angeles native, is a well-known union organizer with a history of fighting for women workers. She now organizes with UTLA, fighting against the privatization of education. She served as AF3IRM’s National Chair from its launch in 2010 to 2016. Renowned author and former political prisoner Ninotchka Rosca was the founding chair of GABNet in 1989 and has been an outspoken advocate for women’s rights for decades.

As first national chair of AF3IRM, Ms. Levid oversaw the organization’s survival from the near-catastrophic impact of severing its ties with a hierarchical political organization.  Under the slogan “A woman’s place is at the head of the struggle,” she affirmed the right and duty of women to have a voice in social transformation movements.  

Ms. Quicho, who was elected to chair position in the seventh year of AF3IRM’s existence, launches her term with the slogan “a woman’s place is at the helm of the struggle,” in a declaration of women’s right to ideological and political leadership to guide movements toward the building of a just and equitable social organization.  

Ms. Quicho will formally open the Conference, delivering the parameters of deliberations and discussions for the presenters and participants.  

Ms. Levid will facilitate and moderate the plenary panel “Constellations of History” which will present the achievements, strategy and tactics of women struggling in different cultures.    

Ms. Rosca along with the New York chapter of AF3IRM have been leading the efforts of the CenterShift II Conference, bringing together a stellar lineup of speakers for the Constellations of History panel, shaping its ideological direction, and working with sister chapters to organize workshops.

Leaders and current members of AF3IRM chapters from across the United States are flying in to New York to take part in these deliberations and to add their own experience.  Join in this historic gathering by registering at http://bit.ly/af3rr17. Space is limited. For questions, please email centershift@af3irm.org.

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Farah Tanis of Black Women’s Blueprint Joins AF3IRM’s October 21st CenterShift II Conference

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Media Contact:  nynj@af3irm.org
Phone:  (917) 397-0989 

NEW YORK– “Our girls are trafficked, sexually exploited or found dead in alleyways, while police violence thrives and we continue to bear the trauma of poverty, “ she said bluntly in an interview on the end of the March for Black Women on Washington DC.  This is Farah Tanis, co-founder and executive director of Black Women’s Blueprint, located in Brooklyn, New York.  The center has been pivotal in many events and programs addressing the issue of sexual violence against women and girls in the Black/African American communities.

Working with Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Ms. Tanis has launched such groundbreaking projects as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address historical and contemporarysexual violence against Black women.  She curates the Museum of Women’s Resistance, internationally recognized as a Site of Conscience.

Blunt and decisive, Ms. Tanis will bring the wisdom of decades of work as a women’s human rights activist and community organizer to AF3IRM’s “Constellations of History” panel for the CenterShift II Conference.  She will bring the distinct and unique voice of one whose work has spanned both academia and communities, local as well as international, in the spirit of transnational feminism.

The panel will be followed by an amazing performance from Pura Fe, whose legacy of 8 generations of Tuscarora Indian Nation, consolidates the past and the present in the sounds of art.

CenterShift II:  Roots & Routes is a whole day event at the Center for Social Innovations, 601 est 26th Street (cross 11th Avenue), Rm. 325, New York, NY 10001.  CenterShift is held every third year by AF3IRM NYC and aims at moving the center of discourse toward the concerns of women of color and transnational women.

A sliding scale registration fee is asked of those who wish to attend;  this includes digital copies of the deliberations.  Please register here:  https://bit.ly/af3rr17 or email centershift@af3irm.org.  — ##

 

CenterShift, National, New York

TeleSur Co-Host and Producer Claudia De La Cruz Joins AF3IRM October 21st CenterShiftII Conference

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Media Contact: nynj@af3irm.org
Tel: (917) 397-0989

NEW YORK—To this South Bronx native whose parents are first generation immigrants from the Dominican Republic, “life is a political project.” Claudia De La Cruz, creator of Da Urban Butterflies, a center meant to develop the character of leadership among young women, has been hard at work for the last two decades on that project. She is dedicated to the deconstruction of systems of oppression and exploitation and toward the imagining of a radically different world for humanity.

Currently, she co-chairs The Popular Education Project (PEP), a collective of organizers and popular educators committed to create spaces for the study, discussion and reflection of political economy and popular education. She is also co-host and producer of TeleSur English’s “Ñ Don’t Stop,” with the hiphop duo, Rebel Diaz. She holds a degree in Forensic Psychology from John Jay College and a double masters in Theology and Social Work from the Theological Seminary of Columbia University.

Ms. De la Cruz sees education as providing students with the ability to contribute in the processes and acts of personal and collective liberation. Young women especially need this ability, as the guideposts of the women’s struggle locally, nationally and globally continue to be erased by Patriarchy and Capital.

She will bring this unique perspective of more than two decades of engagement as a community organizer, educator and journalist to the panel “Constellations of History.” The panel brings together five legendary women, each with her field of work and constituency, but united in the vision of a more amiable human society for women of color.

The panel will be followed by a remarkable presentation by the incomparable Pura Fe, who brings to the conference, the legacy of eight generations of Tuscarora Nation musicians.

The CenterShift Conference II: Roots & Routes will be held at the Center for Social Innovation, 601 West 26th, Rm. 325, New York, NY 10001. A sliding registration fee is asked of participants to cover digital copies of the proceedings. Registration can be completed here: https: //bit.ly/af3rr17.

For those wishing to join but want more information, please contact centershift@af3irm.org. Or call (917) 397-0989. — ###

 

CenterShift, National

Spiderwoman Theatre Founder Joins AF3IRM CenterShift II Panel “Constellations of History”

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Media Contact:  nynj@af3irm.org
Tel:  (917) 397-0989

NEW YORK– A most brilliant star will bring her light to AF3IRM’s CenterShift Conference II:  Roots & Routes on the 21st of October:  Muriel Miguel of the Kuna and  Rappahannouk American Indian Nation and a Guggenheim Awardee, who founded the longest-running American Indian theater group and wrote, for its very first show, the play Women In Violence.

Raised in the tradition of medicine shows, Ms. Miguel is a force unto herself, bringing issues affecting women of the native American nations and First Nations to public consciousness and conscience via a series of performances which has earned her both awe, respect and love.  She headed  the Aboriginal Dance Program  at the  Banff Center for seven years and to this time continues to facilitate Storyweaving workshops in the US, Canada and Europe.

She will bring to the “Constellations of History” panel the unique perspective of a woman who has had to distill raw collective experience into an artform  of resistance.

The panel  is described by Joan Ariete, co-coordinator of AF3IRM NYC, as “a chorale of voices, different in pitch, range and tone, but harmonizing to add to the song of resistance women have been composing since the advent of class society – not only for their liberation as a political class but for the liberation of humanity as a whole.”

CenterShift II: Roots and Routes

The “Roots & Routes” theme of the Conference is meant to look the foundational ideas of U.S. feminism, the continuing relationship of U.S. women’s struggle in the U.S.A. with the ideas, values and women of native American nations, and the contributory streams of ideas and perspectives from women coming from different cultures and nations of the world.  Out of this discourse, AF3IRM hopes, will come a new way forward for women of the U.S.A., especially women of color, to continue and strengthen resistance at a time when neo-fascism is rising.

The panel will be followed with an annotated performance by Pura Fe, the great musician and composer of the Tuscarora Nation, who flies in from Saskatchewan to join the AF3IRM transnational sisterhood.

CenterShift is in reference to AF3IRM’s mandate to shift from the margins to the center the concerns of women usually ignored by political discourse.

The all-day conference will be held at the Centre for Social Innovation, 601 est 26th Street, Rm. 325, New York, NY 10001.  A sliding-scale registration fee is requested of participants.  Please register here: https: //bit.ly/af3rr17.  For additional questions, please email centershift@af3irm.org    —  ###

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