Memory is resistance. When your story is silenced or challenged, remembering the truth is critical. And when we document our experiences, we pass on the lessons we learned. For the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence (25 November-10 December), Take Back the Tech! wants to look back (and forward) at the movement to end gender-based violence – to digitise and preserve our memories and examine them for lessons we can use now and in the future.
In 1993 the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, recognising that women have a right to live without violence, and two years later the Beijing Platform recommended related actions for states, civil society and the private sector. Women around the world have been organising and agitating for an end to gender-based violence for decades, from streets to servers, from consciousness-raising groups to hashtag conversations, from Take Back the Night to Take Back the Tech!
Let's tell the story of the movements that make up this global surge for change. How did your movement start? Whose stories are missing from the mainstream narrative? What impact has technology made? What lessons from the 90s are useful for our activism today?
Share the wildest protest, most powerful statement, bravest act of solidarity. Spotlight the creative ways people take action. Shout out influential artists, activists and outcasts. This is your movement! Get curious about your feminist history and celebrate our collective power as we continue to resist.
Take action!
1. Keep it alive!
Help us build a Museum of Movements to showcase materials from the movement to end gender-based violence. Dig into your history and share artefacts from your community like old or recent flyers, t-shirts, buttons, videos, graphics, radio shows, podcasts, zines, essays and blog posts. You can document in two ways:
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Upload media files to https://vrr.im/09cb along with a text, ODT or Word doc with the following info: media file name, date of media creation, media creator (optional), country and a brief description.
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Tweet links to your artefacts using #feministmemory.
2. Examine it!
Whose work needs to be more visible? What are the most creative organising strategies you've seen? How do you engage on GBV from a politics of care? We're producing a dialogue on these issues from activists in different countries. When it's live on https://www.takebackthetech.net, share it and join the conversation in two ways:
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Share your memories, ideas and questions on Twitter with #feministmemory.
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Interview someone from your movement and share the results in the medium of your choosing. Tweet a link with #feministmemory or submit it to sara.baker@apcwomen.org to be published on our site.
3. Open it up!
How can we strengthen our collective knowledge? What tech tools enable stronger, more open resistance? Join our Twitter chat with Whose Knowledge? on the use of technology for feminist knowledge sharing and resistance in a digital age on 7 December at 17 UTC by following #feministmemory.
4. Give it a feminist lens!
How do you define feminist movement building in a digital age? We're relaunching the Feminist Principles of the Internet (FPI) website, so watch for more information about FPI actions and follow #feministinternet.
Claim your history in the movement. Expand your vision as you build a feminist future. Revisit to resist and take back the tech!