On militant feminism for a new world
Sarah Michal Hamid: "I want to live in liberated world where we get to worry and live and struggle in community."
Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing room.
I’m in a residency for young feminist writers, in a room somewhat reminiscent of Ursula K. Le Guin’s entirely wood-panelled writing room. Entirely wood-panelled house. I make a mental note not to light any candles. But I’m pretty relaxed. I’m so far removed from my daily life, struggles, financial worries, and disillusionment with various experiences I’ve had recently. All of that existed in another plane, in another dimension.
I hear sounds coming from other parts of the house; wooden floorboards are the worst for masking sound. But the sounds are welcome. I know that in this space, I’m in community. That knowledge of being in community, even though I cannot see the other writers roaming around the house, is what props up my sense of capability and belief in self. I write, even though I didn’t always believe that my words mattered or had any value. And I write in different styles, because I know that this space wouldn’t hold me to examples that are held up by a racist and sexist publishing industry and White-dominated areas of professional success. I speculate. Is it possible that every single thing and system that oppresses us, ultimately oppresses our imagination? That would be their greatest success. That we believe that things cannot change, that systems will not change, and that those in power will not change, when they all inevitably do.
Okay, I’m not actually in a young feminist residency. I was just exercising my power of imagination, before it gets zapped up by the powers of authoritarian, patriarchal, neoliberal capitalist systems that we currently inhabit. But I know that I will, one day. It’s been a dream of mine for years, something that I talked over and over about with friends in Rio de Janeiro, had meetings and drew up plans about. Maybe the timing hasn’t worked out yet, but I know that it will. Trust. In the meantime, I can renew my well of creativity, visioning, and joy with young feminists.
Today’s interview is with Sarah Michal Hamid. I originally interviewed Sarah as a profile for Teen Vogue, alongside four other young feminist activists and advocates, and I wished that Teen Vogue had allowed me another 5000 words to publish the full transcripts of each interview, as they were all incredible. Here’s an extended excerpt of my conversation with Sarah Michal Hamid.
Photo: Sarah Michal Hamid
SMH: My name is Sarah Michal Hamid and I’m an anti-imperialist transnational feminist. [I am 19]. I work with AF3IRM Haiwai’i, [which is a grassroots, completely unfunded transnational feminist activist organization led by Native, Black, immigrant, queer and gender diverse women of color.] I’m one of the co-coordinators. We basically organize for women’s liberation and decolonial movements in Hawai’i. We’re part of a larger national organisation but our chapter specifically focuses on institutions of patriarchal and colonial violence because that’s so prevalent in Hawai’i.
NW: What was the process of you beginning to identify specifically as an anti-imperialist, transnational feminist? How did your feminist identity develop?
SMH: I definitely wasn’t born with it [identifying as a feminist]. I feel like a lot of people have been super acquainted with the modern [feminist] movements and I definitely knew what feminism was and identified as a feminist but I didn’t identity specifically as an anti-imperialist transnational feminist until I actually came to AF3IRM and was greeted with a sisterhood of people that would allow me to unpack those experiences. I think a lot of times, as women of color and whose homelands have been brutalized by colonization and occupation, we aren’t necessarily as akin to these terms. All that we’ve ever known is our colonizer’s language. So if I talk to my dad about feminism, he’s a very open person, he appreciates it, but if I say anti-imperialist transnational feminist, then he’s like, “Isn’t feminism just feminism?” But it kinda highlights the fact that we need specific movements to liberate our own communities. And we need to make sure that we’re having a very focused lens on issues of class and capitalism. And when we’re looking at issues of occupation and colonization, that’s something that anti-imperialist, transnational feminism really brings to the table.
Photo: Sarah Michal Hamid
NW: What has it been like for you to co-coordinate a chapter of AF3IRM? Have you had to push back against anyone who didn't believe in young feminist leadership? How has it been to share power with your co-coordinator?
As an organizer in AF3IRM, I was taught that my young feminist fire is something to be cherished & fueled, and co-coordinating a chapter of AF3IRM has demonstrated just that. When I stepped into the co-coordinator role, I was met with a deep ethic of militant love and community which has allowed me to grow in the most feminist way possible. Supported by a community of sisters who are navigating the struggle together, I have found that sharing power is not an ideal, but a practice that we take very seriously. Grounding ourselves in feminist conflict resolution, we engage with each other in a way that recognizes how women have historically been pitted against each other. As we navigate our work, we honor the fact that conflict is inevitable, and can also be addressed in a feminist justice centered manner. The encounters I have had with those who dismiss young feminist leadership are people outside of AF3IRM and also practitioners of liberal white feminism. AF3IRM spaces are intergenerational and multigenerational spaces, because sharing power is part of being in sisterhood. In our AF3IRm sisterhood all generations are at the table, on the frontlines, and in the community.
NW: How has AF3IRM's membership, history and ties to other transnational organizations shaped your own transnational politics? Do you have colleagues and comrades in other countries, and how do you build with them?
Founding members of our organization, and Hawaiʻi chapter organize with women, trans and queer comrades in the Global South, where many of us trace our family origins. We continue to center our organizing and transnational feminist praxis in the reality of patriarchy, imperialism, and capitalism in the Global South. In 2019, AF3IRM was personally invited by the Semillas Collective to the "Segundo Encuentro de Mujeres que Luchan" in Zapatistas territory in Chiapas, Mexico. AF3IRM shared space and sisterhood with the revolutionary Zapatista women who fight against the trafficking and exploitation of women in their community. We continue to work with our sisters, and trans and queer comrades in the Philippines, and partner with organizations like the National Association of Asian and Pacific Islanders and Balik sa Dagat Bangka Journey to aid in developing sexual violence relief resources in communities facing disaster. Our newest chapter [of AF3IRM] is in Boríken (Puerto Rico) and we can't wait to continue building the fierce sisterhood of revolutionaries who are working to dismantle patriarchy, imperialism, and all other systems that keep us in chains.
NW: What larger feminist movement do you think that you’re proud of and what are some larger movement moments or achievements that you feel really proud about?
SMH: Because of COVID-19, it’s been very difficult to feel connected to the work that others are doing, because we feel so isolated. And that’s how I felt for the first couple of months, but I got to get kind of re-acclimated to a kind of new way, on the internet, on Zoom, this style of engaging with people. One of the most proud moments - uprisings that I’ve seen - is seeing people demand abolition and not leaving out the need of survivors, women, queer folks, people of color. I think a lot of people think that abolition means that we leave out accountability. One of my really good friends and mentors says that, there can be no abolition without a culture of accountability. And accountability is a deeply way for us to constantly examine our positionality and our relationship in community. We also - this happened a couple of months ago, but it went into effect on July 1st, we worked with a really awesome public policy advocate called Jen Jenkins - and they’re a Black nonbinary individual and they’re so wonderful - we worked with them under their leadership to to pass a Gender Acts License Bill, which would allow for anybody to choose a gender marker other than male or female. That was really big for us because - there is a very very wonderful kind of shift in feminist movements right now - in the mainstream feminist movement - to recognize the importance of LGBTQ and queer centered feminism. Especially in Hawai’i, we are super focused on indigenous-led and Black queer feminism, and women of color queer feminism, and we’ve gotten to work in community and hold space in community, not just for this Bill but also for this beautiful network of solidarity to be established, even during the pandemic. That’s honestly not even something I would have imagined could have happened during COVID-19.
NW: I was just about to ask you, as well, what you’ve been working on during COVID, what you’ve been advocating for or if you wanted to talk about the Feminist Economic Recovery Plan, like if you were a part of that, or just like a project that you’ve been working on during COVID. It doesn’t need to have any kind of results.
SMH: You know what, that’s how some of the best projects end, right, is that there’s nothing necessarily tangible, but you leave these beautiful seeds that blossom into a movement. That’s what I like to tell myself, at least. We’ve been working on a couple of projects that have seen some really wonderful, tangible impact and results. One of the main projects that we worked on during COVID is - we organized and managed the only sex trade survivor and sex worker mutual aid fund in Hawaii. We have basically able to keep women and queer folks and mothers off the streets and away from dangerous situations. That kind of work is so life giving, to know that we’re helping and centering the most vulnerable at this time and making sure that we’re protecting the most targeted. We’ve also been doing a lot of community education, a ton of webinars. We had a Gender to the Center workshop last week, that was about gender diverse and trans experiences in Hawaii. That had such a beautiful conversation. That just continued to remind me why it’s so important to hold space and center our community in these times.
Also, our reproductive justice chair is working with Hawai’i Women and Film - they host a youth women in film summer camp, usually it’s in person and this year it’s virtual. The theme is reproductive justice, For us, reproductive justice is super important. As women and gender diverse people, a lot of our relationship to land and our homeland is connected to our identities. We’ve seen how colonization and occupation cuts our literal connections to our homeland. So when we’ve been working on issues of reproductive justice, it’s not just some of the more mainstream reproductive rights discourse that you’ll see, like accessible birth control and menstrual care products, but also accessible midwifery care and birthwork services and making sure that women or people who have endometriosis or PCOS are able to have space held for them. People who are infertile, queer people and families who don’t reproduce in the way that Western patriarchy would see it fit. It’s been really cool to - I’ve been working with these young students - it’s so amazing to see what youth will come up with. The way that young women are ignited just as much as different generations of women are during this time.
NW: That just sounds like a lot of work during COVID as well.
SMH: [laughing] I wouldn’t have it any other way. I know that liberation won’t come if we’re doing it in a safe way or doing it in a way to push the boundaries of all of these toxic systems. It really requires a very militant kind of attitude. That’s why our tagline is ‘We are militant because we matter’. Some people think that our tagline means that we support the military but we’re like, no, we are anti-imperialist! We are anti-military. You can be militant in other ways and we are militant in our feminism.
In recognizing that liberation isn’t a moment, there isn’t a time and place where our work is done, we don’t get to wipe our hands and sleep well at night. I envision the feminist future that we will all get to live in: all of the colonial and patriarchal institutions that exploit our kin and land to be destroyed. I remember when someone told me, “I want to live in a world where mothering matters more than money”. I want to live in liberated world where we get to worry and live and struggle in community. Where we get to hold each other. I am here because of the women who birthed and bled, and struggled and fled. But I don’t want that to have to be a reality for people anymore. I want the next seven generations to be able to speak confidently and live confidently in a world that doesn’t want to see them harmed.
NW: Specifically around young feminists, do you see a difference in what young feminists today are bringing to the table and working across different issues. I think for this piece, I am interviewing some young feminists who are not specifically in feminist organizations as well. They’re kind of working across different issues, different sectors, but they themselves identify as young feminists. I think they bring that perspective.
SMH: I think that that’s probably the thing that I really want to see come out of the young feminist movement. People and organizations and movements who are at the forefront of change proudly identifying themselves as feminist. I myself have this kind of contentious relationship with the US climate justice movement for example, because I feel that it’s only been in the past year that we’ve seen demands for it to become more intersectional. Even though we know that Black and Indigenous people of color, immigrants, women, queer folks are the most likely and most heavily impacted by climate change, yet we see White men or men in general taking the [microphone]. I want to see movements that aren’t afraid of feminism, because feminism is necessary for every person’s liberation. I want to see that socialist and Marxist, communist and socialist movements - people proudly identifying themselves as feminists, because we can talk about class struggle all we want, but we have to talk about the fact that women are an oppressed class. We have to talk about the fact that Black women, Black trans women - we can’t have conversations about the world that we want to live in without talking about if we aren’t talking about gender and feminism. And if we aren’t talking about feminism, then you’re doing a disservice to the global movement. I want to see this militant, undying energy and power and demand - for a movement that centers women. For a world that centers women. That’s what I want to see.
NW: Could you describe feminist movements in Hawai’i a little bit more? A little bit more about the other orgs doing the work, maybe about some Indigenous feminist women doing the work, a little bit more about the community that you’re in.
SMH: I have basically learned all of the organizing skills that I know from Indigenous and Black feminists in Hawai’i. I would be nowhere without them. Not even just books and readings, but the actual care and time that my mentors put into believing in me and trusting in me as someone who would bring change in my community. Two of these really important moments are ‘Ilima Lam. She’s f*cking amazing. She and Joy Enomato are two of my really strong mentors, as well as Khara [Jabola-Carolus], actually. All three of them have worked really specifically on feminist issues for - the kūpuna, for Native women. I think we saw this culminating last summer with the Mauna Kea movement. It’s still going on. Last year, we went up to the top of the - to protect the summit from another telescope that would only bring more harm, grief and pain. And my other co-coordinator, Yvonne (Von) Mahelona, she was actually on the Mauna from the day that everyone went up til the day that everyone went down. She was coordinating food, care, anything that as happening, for elders, for support. And, on the first day that arrests were happening, the elders were arrested. It was this really intense moment where we were like ‘They were literally arresting our grandparents’, our builders. And then, right after the kūpuna line was arrested, the line behind them was entirely - it means powerful women. They held that line and they chanted and stood there until all the police, all the construction vehicles left. They held the line, they held their power.
For a lot of Indigenous feminists, specifically kūpuna feminists, there’s a lot of apprehension about identifying as a feminist, because for a lot of people, that’s been marked as a White thing, or something that White people invented. Which couldn’t be further from the truth, but that’s where they’re at. But that moment demonstrated: that is the power of feminism, that is the power of strong, resilient, Indigenous, connected women, protecting their land. This is the epitome of what I want to show people about feminism in Hawai’i, those women who are so grounded in the need to overturn this colonial systems, this patriarchal systems, that they would put their lives on the literal line. Kanaka women. Joy, in particular, she’s a Black and Kanaka woman, her work is so intersectional. After that moment, she was talking about and talking about how all of her liberation is connected. For some people, they don’t think of Hawai’i as significant. They have this racist, colonial idea of how Hawai’i is. But that is what Hawai’i is. It’s a moment and it’s a movement of people that are fighting so hard against colonialism, against imperialism, against patriarchy. And that’s why I’m so proud to be a part of the movement. I would be nowhere without these women who literally showed me what the struggle looks like, you know. I don’t know if that answered your question. It’s so hard to explain. It’s this really amazing moment to see. You can look up images and videos of that day, you’ll see mothers holding their children on the frontline. That’s the kind of militant feminism that I want to practice. That’s the kind of militant feminism that I want to struggle in.
NW: What are 5 things that you recommend for young feminists? They can be books, songs, links, organizations, whatever you feel like you've learnt from and would like to share with others.
1. Stay grounded in community, patriarchy will try and detach you from all that gives you life & joy.
2. Read "How We Get Free", "This Bridge Called My Back", and "Women, Race and Class" over and over and over again.
3. I Am Light - India Arie will lift you up when you need it.
4. Honor your foremothers and ancestors, let their resistance and wisdom fuel you.
5. We are leading the struggle, we need to treat ourselves with the radical care, love, and patience that we deserve.
You can read the Teen Vogue piece with Sarah Michael Hamid and other young feminists here.
*Feminist news*
A roundup of what I’m reading, people who I admire are writing, and feminist news to keep us going.
Feminist activists changed the name of the National Commission of Human Rights to ‘Ni Una Menos refuge house’ on the third day of the occupation. Photo credit: Andrea Murcia, Agencia Cuartoscuro.
Feminist activists and family members of victims of femicide and forced disappearances have taken over Mexico City’s National Commission of Human Rights’s office and created a shelter for victims of gender-based violence. Andrea Murcia, a Mexican feminist photojournalist, has photographed the ongoing occupation and highlighted its incredible significance for Mexican feminist movements.
“I’ve seen first-hand the toxic racism in international women’s rights groups” by Lori Adelman. “After working with international feminist organisations for more than a decade, I can attest that racism is prevalent in the sector. White women occupy the majority of leadership and decision-making roles. Black and brown colleagues are subjected to microaggressions and toxicities, ranging from awkward to harmful. This should be unacceptable in any workplace, let alone one whose aim is to end poverty, misogyny, and discrimination.”
Who is your Global South feminism serving? by Fungai Machirori. Fungai is one of my favorite writers and someone who I’m privileged to have in my life, albeit in a virtual way. Read her words and who knows… maybe you’ll see an interview with Fungai on New Wave. After I read this article, I immediately texted her to talk about how her opening story struck me and how Nepalese migrants in Hong Kong frequently open up Indian restaurants and grocery stories because of people’s familiarity and proximity to India, but not Nepal.
“I spent much of my career listening to White folks complain about Africa and Africans” by Raksha Vasudevan. Stephanie Kimou was often the only African on staff at White-led institutions and today, she runs Pop Works Africa, a consulting firm that seeks to decolonize aid work by shifting power and resources to communities receiving aid.
How to care for older people during a pandemic by Malaka Gharib. Young people are doing a lot during the COVID-19 crisis, including translating news, sharing public health information and recommendations with their families, and caretaking. Here are some recommendations for those who are primary caretakers and those who aren’t from NPR’s Goats and Soda section.
A younger feminist prompted Awino Okech to write this graceful meditation, Lessons From My Thirties. My favorite one: “My skills are mine. My worth is not determined by a 9–5 job. We live in a world where our worth is often determined by job titles, income brackets and the organisations we work for. So long as my body is healthy, I will survive and thrive. For three years, I was a successful independent consultant, supporting a range of feminist organisations in ways that fed my soul. This was an important turning point in my life because I no longer have a problem walking out of any job.”
“A tape put on our mouths” - what it’s like being Kashmiri women during the world’s longest lockdown by Sunny Shergill. “Ather believes the biggest threat to women’s safety in Kashmir is “military patriarchy and what that has done to women’s lives”. Kashmir is the most heavily militarised region in the world – for every one Kashmiri there are eight soldiers.”
“Reading The Cardinals crystallised for me the fact that a black woman who had lived under apartheid, in similar conditions to mine, had succeeded in carving out a creative life – a fact that, until then, had not been a possibility I’d been remotely aware of.” This is an extract from Barbara Boswell’s new book, And Wrote My Story Anyway, Black South African Women’s Novels As Feminism.
Meet the influencers: Activists from around the world talk about building a social media following and how platforms are a part of the work by Rest of World Staff. I didn’t love the rather flat and simple questions that they used for these young activists, but I suppose my newsletter is the way that I address that, and it is important to see space being given to young activists in the media, although it does often seem tokenizing.
I love Mona Eltahawy’s writing and was lucky enough to meet her during an activists and donor retreat nearly a decade ago, when I was 19 years old. I wonder if she remembers me and if I made an impression, but I’m gobsmacked that she subscribed to my newsletter and so I’d like to plug her new one as well, Feminist Giant, also about feminist news and resistance to the patriarchy in a global context here. Sign up.
Stay tuned for Interview 02 With Bárbara Paes, co-founder of minas programam in São Paulo, Brazil in two weeks time. See you on Wednesday the 23rd!