The Web is a fantastic tool for informing yourself about social justice
issues, organizing with others, and getting involved in a myriad of ways.
This page - always a work-in-progress - is a listing of webpages designed
to encourage activism and education.
Feeling distressed about sweatshops? Try buying clothes from: American Apparel, No Sweat Apparel, or Justice Clothing Company.
(***I have a couple of important concerns about American Apparel: (1) They
have allegedly tried to stop workers from organizing a union. (2) Their
advertising is sexually exploitative of women (and men!).
For menstruating women: consider using cotton, reusable Lunapads instead of disposable
menstrual products. It's definitely worth it.
Earth 911 -
Information about water pollution, conservation, and other environmental
topics; also, find local resources and information.
*My Earth-Friendly Living webpage -
Suggestions for an environmentally friendly lifestyle.
PETA's Caring
Consumer page -
Lists of companies that do and don't test on animals, as well as animal
ingredients that are often used
National Coalition Against Domestic
Violence -
As someone who used to work in a battered women's shelter, I have so
much to
say on the issue that I won't even get into it here. But take a look at
this site, especially the section "The Problem", which talks about who
batters, why they do it, why victims stay, etc.
A Person paper
on Purity in Language -
a hilarious satire about how people rationalize the continued use of
sexist language. I highly recommend reading this entertaining and
thought-provoking piece.
Anarchist stuff:
I didn't realize I was an anarchist until it was brought to my
attention that, according to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary,
anarchism is:
1. a political theory holding all forms
of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating
a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of
individuals and groups 2. the advocacy or practice of anarchistic
principles
If you've never thought about why government might be more harmful
than helpful, you can read Civil
Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau.
"Crime, particularly among the poor and downtrodden, is often a last
gesture of liberty."
- Isabelle Eberhardt, The Oblivion Seekers
"It makes me sad when kids think that individuality means running with a
herd of black sheep, instead of a herd of white sheep."
- Jaffer
"I have had essentially the same conversation over and over again with
many men throughout the years. He will say something about feminism being
anti-male, and I will reply that I actually think feminism is pro-female,
and it's a little egocentric, isn't it, to think that someone is against
you just because they are for themselves. Since this conversation usually
fails to make any headway, I have come to the hypothesis . . . that the
fixed idea that feminism is anti-male is really a defense mechanism. It is
a defense mechanism against a deeper fear, namely the fear that feminism
is not about men at all. . . . The fear is that feminism is about women
going off to take care of themselves, leaving us men to take care of
ourselves."
- Harry Brod
"How dare he want me all to himself? Was I an object, to be taken and
owned? What kind of anarchism was that?"
- Emma Goldman, Living My Life
"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion, it is easy in
solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who, in the midst
of the world, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of
solitude."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Far from being an expression of natural differences, exclusive gender
identity is the suppression of natural similarities. . . . The division of
the sexes has the effect of repressing some of the personality
characteristics of virtually everyone, men and women. The same social
system which oppresses women in its relations of exchange, oppresses
everyone in its insistence upon a rigid division of personality."
- Gayle Rubin
"For the degradation of being a slave is only equalled by the degradation
of being a master."
- Virginia Woolf
"Rise up in the cafeteria and stab them with your plastic forks!"
- Pump Up the Volume