Megan Boler has a new article on the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement and the current state of feminism and it’s a good read. She looks at the relationships between the feminist movement and the concerns of the people involved in OWS activities.
But the tide seems to have turned. Feminism’s re-emergence was spotted on the horizon by numerous long-term feminist organizers months ago. Kathy Miriam, a professor and feminist organizer who lives in Brooklyn, recognizes this as a, “fluid, dynamic moment” in which anything is possible. As Miriam wrote in a blog post this fall:
“Can feminist solidarity reap the whirlwind and reinvent itself within new forms of social association too? … [T]he dynamism released by Occupy Wall Street [OWS] involves women – lots and lots of young women – who, like their male counter-parts are caught up in the momentum of movement-creating. This means that women are agitating, aroused anew as political actors on the stage of history. If there is any situation then, in which feminist ideas might stick and take root, this is it.
Will Occupy Wall Street be open to re-orientation through the lens of feminist action and vision? Will feminism re-invent itself as a movement within the new political situation and its forcefield of political possibilities?