In honour of International Women’s Day on March 8th, combined with our yearning for more Black Anarchafeminism after What Is Black Anarchism?, we decided on reading more on Black Feminism, Anarchism, and Intersectionality.
We will be reading The Combahee River Collective Statement (1977) as a primer for our other two readings Femme Queen, Warrior Queen: Beyond Representation, Toward Self-Determination (2021) by Nsambu Za Suekama and Until All Are Free: Black Feminism, Anarchism, and Interlocking Oppression (2016) by Hillary Lazar.
The Combahee Statement includes the early formulation of “identity politics,” and argued that various oppressions such as racism, sexism, heteronormativity, and classism are interrelated and must be addressed as a whole. They also believed that Black feminism was the logical political movement to fight against these simultaneous oppressions.
Femme Queen, Warrior Queen and Until We Are All Free together draw insights from various sources, including the Street Trans* Action Revolutionaries, Claudia Jones, the Combahee River Collective, Frantz Fanon, and Malcolm X. The central message is that centering Black trans women not only advances their liberation but also contributes to the universal freedom of all African and oppressed people. The piece emphasizes the need to transcend divisive discourse and work toward transformative movements that address material conditions and internalized antagonisms within the Black trans struggle1. It invites readers to engage with honesty, good faith, and a commitment to revolutionary learning and movement building.
The Combahee River Collective statement can be read on BlackPast or downloaded here. It can also be listened to as a podcast episode on A People’s Anthology, read by Beverly Smith, one of the original members of the Combahee River Collective.
Femme Queen, Warrior Queen is on the Anarchist Library, as well as Until We Are All Free. These two are able to be downloaded packaged together here as Screen or Imposed Zine.
As always, we meet at Camas Books and Infoshop, 2620 Quadra Street, on unceded Lekwungen Territory at 6:30pm on Sunday March 3rd.
We were split down the middle between delving more into insurrectionary anarchist theory, and social, organizational anarchist theory. Therefore, we have decided to read both How to Start a Fire:
This week, the circle decided to read a chapter from the acclaimed anarcha-femininst and witch, Starhawk. Starhawk is founder of the Reclaiming Tradition of witchcraft, which combines magickal practices with social and ecological activism, communialism, as well as sustainable land-based reclaiming techniques, such as permaculture gardening, and so on.
