“I have been waiting twelve years for this book.” —Rebecca Walker

Feminism has long been associated with a few important issues like reproductive rights and equal pay for equal work. But for some time young feminists have found this too limited an agenda, and have been frustrated that their other activist concerns were not welcomed by the feminist establishment. One of the first organizations to conceive of feminism in a different way, The Third Wave Foundation has been committed to cultivating young women as leaders and activists, so that they could influence politics in the ways that concerned them most. The foundation has no central platform: its assumption is that women choose their own objectives, with the corporation providing resources, tools, or connections with other women doing related work.

Vivien Labaton and Dawn Lundy Martin were there at the beginning: Dawn as one of the four founders of The Third Wave Foundation; and Vivien as its first executive director. They raised money for small, women-led groups across the country; they also made focussed visits to regions where dozens of organizations had little financial support and trained those organizations in strategic and fund-raising efforts.

Now Martin and Labaton have put together The Fire This Time, a collection of essays that takes a multi-issue approach to feminism and activism. Ayana Bird dissects the role of black women in hip-hop; Joshua Breitbart and Ana Noguiera describe the power of Indymedia to break the hold of the corporate media over the news; Jennifer Bleyer reviews the exhilirating power unleashed by the Girl Zine movement; and Syd Lindsley explores the relationship between immigration policy and mainstream environmental groups who advocate zero population growth.

The Fire This Time is an inspiring and heady collection, illuminating—and exemplifying—the new feminist activism.


Contents

Foreword: We Are Using This Power to Resist
Rebecca Walker

Introduction: Making What Will Become
Vivien Labaton and Dawn Lundy Martin

Part 1
Changing Minds and Eyes: Media and Culture

Claiming Jezebel: Black Female Subjectivity and Sexual Expression in Hip-Hop
Avana Bird

An Independent Media Center of One's Own: A Feminist Alternative to Corporate Media
Joshua Breitbart and Ana Nogueira

Cut-and-Paste Revolution: Notes from the Girl Zine Explosion
Jennifer Bleyer

Can You Rock It Like This? Theater for a New Century
Holly Bass

The New Girls Network: Women, Technology, and Feminism
Shireen Lee

Part II
New Activism in the Global City

Exporting Violence: The School of the Americas, U.S. Intervention in Latin America, and Resistance
Kathryn Temple

Domestic Workers Organize in the Global City
Ai-Jen Poo and Eric Tang

A Baptism by Fire: Vieques, Puerto Rico
Elisha María Miranda

When Transgendered People Sue and Win: Feminist Reflections on Strategy, Activism, and the Legal Process
Anna Kirkland

Bearing the Blame: Gender, Immigration, Reproduction, and the Environment
Syd Lindsley

She Who Believes in Freedom: Young Women Defy the Prison Industrial Complex
Robin Templeton

Afterword
Looking Ahead: Building a Feminist Future
Vivien Labaton and Dawn Lundy Martin

Coda
Wilma Mankiller

Recommended Organizations
Notes
Acknowledgments


“These essays don’t simply tell us about third wave feminism, they show us its breadth and impact. By the end of The Fire This Time you will have a better understanding of the activism that’s required to change the world.” —Jennifer Baumgardner & Amy Richards, coauthors, Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and The Future

“These voices give us hope that the new wave of activists are not just invigorating the movement for future generations, but making significant gains in social justice at the same time. The Fire This Time is strong and optimistic; a powerful organizing tool that I’ll keep on my desk for years to come.” —Sunita Mehta, editor, Women for Afghan Women

“A feast of original insights and radical acts by some of our generation’s sharpest writers and doers.” —William Upski Wimsatt, co-editor, How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office

The Fire This Time will give younger readers company on the road to revolution, older readers the confidence there still is one, and all readers the reward of saying, ‘I didn’t know that!’ This landmark anthology belongs on every 21st Century bookshelf.” —Gloria Steinem

“This first rate collection of writings by young activists represents the new wave of gender, race and class analysis for the twenty-first century century.” —Manning Marable, Director, Center for Contemporary Black History, Columbia University

“This collection, by an extraordinary bunch of young people—mostly women, a few men—will awaken you and excite you. What they are writing and doing gives new life to the word “feminist.” If their ideas and actions take hold, we could have a different world.” —Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of The United States

 
Vivien Labaton is a third-year law student at New York
University School of Law. She was the founding director
of the Third Wave Foundation, the only national young
feminist organization in the country, and currently serves
on the boards of Third Wave, Political Research Associates,
and the Women’s Funding Network. She lives in
Brooklyn, New York.


Dawn Lundy Martin is one of the four cofounders of the
Third Wave Foundation. She has a long history of activism
in antiwar, queer rights, and environmental justice movements.
A Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of
Massachusetts in Amherst, she is also an award-winning
poet and author of the chapbook The Morning Hour. She
lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.