Feminism and Protest Camps: Entanglements, Critiques and Re-Imaginings [1 ed.] 1529220165, 9781529220162

Citation preview

Feminism and Protest Camps ______

E n ta n g l e m e n t s , C r i t i q u e s a n d Re - I m a g i n i n g s

______

edited by Catherine Eschle A l i s o n B a rt l e t t

FEMINISM AND PROTEST CAMPS Entanglements, Critiques and Re-​Imaginings Edited by Catherine Eschle and Alison Bartlett

First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1–​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +​44 (0)117 374 6645 e: bup-​[email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2023 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​2016-​2 hardcover ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​2018-​6 ePub ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​2019-​3 ePdf The right of Catherine Eschle and Alison Bartlett to be identified as editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the editors and contributors and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Andrew Corbett Front cover image: Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp by Janine Wiedel Bristol University Press use environmentally responsible print partners. Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents List of Figures and Tables Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements

v vi xii

1

Introduction: Feminism/​Protest Camps Catherine Eschle and Alison Bartlett

PART I 2

Gendered Power and Identities in Protest Camps Safe Spaces and Solidarity: Confronting Gendered Violence in the US Occupy Encampments Celeste Montoya The Pu‘u We Planted: (Re)birthing Refuge at Mauna Kea Māhealani Ahia and Kahala Johnson ‘You Can’t Kill the Spirit’ (But You Can Try): Gendered Contestations and Contradictions at Menwith Hill Women’s Peace Camp Finn Mackay Women Activists, Gendered Power and Postfeminism in Taiwan’s ‘Sunflower Movement’ Chia-​Ling Yang

3 4

5

PART II Feminist Politics in and through Protest Camps 6 The Feminist Movement in Turkey and the Women of the Gezi Park Protests Yeşim Arat 7 Feminism and Protest Camps in Spain: From the Indignados to Feminist Encampments Emma Gómez Nicolau 8 ‘Why the Compost Toilets?’: Ecofeminist (Re)Generations at the HoriZone Ecovillage Joan Haran

iii

1

17

37 61

78

99

115

135

Feminism and Protest Camps

PART III Feminist Theorising and Protest Camps 9 Protest Camps as ‘Homeplace’? Social Reproduction in and against Neoliberal Capitalism Catherine Eschle 10 Project Democracy in Protest Camps: Caring, the Commons and Feminist Democratic Theory Anastasia Kavada 11 Feminised and Decolonising Reoccupations, Re-​existencias and Escrevivências: Learning from Women’s Movement Collectives in Northeast Brazil Sara C. Motta, Sandra Maria Gadelha de Carvalho, Claudiana Nogueira de Alencar and Mila Nayane da Silva PART IV The Feminist Afterlives of Protest Camps 12 Feminism on Aboriginal Land: The 1983 Pine Gap Women’s Peace Camp, Central Australia Alison Bartlett 13 Remembering an Eco/​Feminist Peace Camp Niamh Moore 14 US Occupy Encampments and Their Feminist Tensions: Archiving for Contemporary ‘Big-​Tent’ Social Movements Heather McKee Hurwitz and Anne Kumer 15 Greenham Women Everywhere: A Feminist Experiment in Recreating Experience and Shaping Collective Memory Kate Kerrow, Rebecca Mordan, Vanessa Pini and Jill (Ray) Raymond, with Alison Bartlett and Catherine Eschle 16

Conclusion: Rethinking Protest Camps, Rethinking Feminism Catherine Eschle and Alison Bartlett

Index

157

176

195

217

235 256

273

294

308

iv

List of Figures and Tables Figures 3.1 Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu 3.2 Hale Wahine and Hale Māhū at Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu 3.3 Authors at Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu during the 2020 camp reunion 4.1 Radomes at Menwith Hill, Yorkshire, November 2005 4.2 Moonbow Corner camp as it was when I first visited 5.1 Men centre stage in the Main Chamber during the 3/​18 Movement parliamentary occupation 7.1 The #OrditFeminista encampment, Valencia, 8 March 2020 7.2 ‘Free abortion’ demand poster on a tent 7.3 Open activities in the camp 8.1 Learning circle at the EAT residential course, 2016 8.2 Starhawk teaching at the EAT residential course, 2016 9.1 Occupy Glasgow tents in George Square 9.2 Faslane Peace Camp 13.1 Temperate rainforest with moss growing on branches 13.2 Moonscape 13.3 Logging truck 13.4 Woman standing beside a tree in the forest

38 42 57 62 65 84 124 125 127 141 141 165 168 236 237 238 245

Table 5.1

Interview participants

81

v

Notes on Contributors Māhealani Ahia is a PhD student in English (Hawaiʻi/​Pacific Literature) at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa. Los Angeles-​born, Māhea is a Kanaka Maoli artist, scholar, activist, songcatcher and storykeeper with lineal ties to Maui. With a background in theatre arts, writing and performance, she is committed to creating artistic and academic projects that empower Indigenous feminist decolonial research. She teaches Composition, Creative Writing and Indigenous Literatures, and edits Hawaiʻi Review and ʻŌiwi: A Native Hawaiian Journal. A founding member of Puʻuhuluhulu University and the caretaker of Hale Mauna Wahine at Mauna Kea, Māhea is co-​organiser of the Mauna Kea Syllabus Project. Claudiana Nogueira de Alencar currently works on the PhD Program in Applied Linguistics (POSLA) and on the Master’s in Education and Teaching (MAIE) at the State University of Ceará (UECE), Northeast Brazil. Claudiana coordinates the Program Viva a Palavra: dynamics of language, peace and resistance of Black youth of Fortaleza’s outskirts. Her research on Critical Linguistics and Decolonial Pedagogy focuses on the cultural grammars of resistance and survival of youth in the urban landscape. Yeşim Arat is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. She has published widely on the women’s movement and women’s political participation in Turkey, including Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracy: Islamist Women in Turkish Politics (2005) and Violence Against Women in Turkey (with Ayse Gul Altınay, Punto, 2008) which won the 2008 Pen Duygu Asena Award. Most recently, she published Turkey: Between Democracy and Authoritarianism (with Şevket Pamuk, Cambridge University Press, 2019). Yeşim is a founding member of KADER (Association for the Support and Training of Women Candidates). Alison Bartlett is Senior Honorary Research Fellow in English and Literary Studies (now retired) at The University of Western Australia. Her archival research on Pine Gap Women’s Peace Camp is widely published. She has also published books on Australian women’s writing, maternal culture, and vi

Notes on Contributors

flirting in the era of #metoo, and edited volumes on Australian feminist objects, museum studies, social memory, Australian literature, and more. She has worked with the National Museum of Australia on feminist activist legacies and memorialisation, been Chair of the Australian Women’s and Gender Studies Association, and Editor of Outskirts journal. Sandra Maria Gadelha de Carvalho currently works in the Faculty of Philosophy and Education Dom Aureliano Matos (FAFIDAM) at the State University of Ceará (UECE), Northeast Brazil, where she co-​founded and leads the Intercampus Masters in Education and Teaching (MAIE). Sandra’s research is on education and social movements, particularly in relation to popular education and Paulo Freire’s pedagogy. She was president of the Union of Higher Education Workers (2018–​21) and has decades of experience working with pedagogical development and women’s solidarity economy projects in the Movimento Sem Terra (MST, Landless Workers’ Movement), Brazil. Catherine Eschle is Senior Lecturer in the School of Government and Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. In addition to her award-​winning research on feminism and protest camps, she has published extensively on feminist ‘anti-​globalisation’ and anti-​nuclear activism. Her publications include Making Feminist Sense of the Global Justice Movement (with Bice Maiguashca, Rowman & Littlefield, 2010) and a special section of International Affairs on ‘Feminist Interrogations of Global Nuclear Politics’ (co-​edited with Shine Choi, 2022). Catherine has served as co-​editor of the International Feminist Journal of Politics and on the executive of the feminist section of the International Studies Association. Emma Gómez Nicolau is Lecturer in Sociology at the department of Philosophy and Sociology at the University Jaume I, Castelló de la Plana, Spain. Emma is part of the research group DESiRES –​Sociology and Methodology Studies of Inequalities and Resistances, and has been a visiting scholar at Cardiff University (2013) and City, University of London (2021). Her research interests are feminisms, menstrual and health activism, and youth studies. She is author of Re-​writing Women as Victims: From Theory to Practice (Routledge, 2020) and ‘Trajectories of Embodiment and Counter-​Hegemonic Readings of the Body’ (Recerca: Revista de pensament i anàlisi, 2022). Joan Haran is Honorary Research Fellow with the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. In 2022, she was an IASH-​SSPS Research Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, working on the project Feminist Stories in Movement. She vii

Feminism and Protest Camps

held a Marie Skłodowska-​Curie Global Fellowship at the Centre for the Study of Women in Society, University of Oregon (2015–​18) and at Cardiff University investigated the cross-​fertilisation of fictional or artistic cultural productions with social and political activism. Publications include Genomic Fictions: Genes, Gender and Genre (University of Wales Press, forthcoming). Heather McKee Hurwitz is Project Staff (faculty) in the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology, Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, and Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Heather has long participated in and studied social movements, including global justice, feminist and anti-​war movements. Currently, her research focuses on cancer disparities, prevention, community outreach and the social determinants of health. She is author of Are We the 99%? The Occupy Movement, Feminism, and Intersectionality (Temple University Press, 2020), and led the creation of the open-​source Occupy Archive. Kahala Johnson is a PhD candidate in Indigenous Politics and Futures Studies, with a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa. Their research focuses on gender queer and poly decolonial love. Kahala is from Nā Wai ʻEhā, Maui, and calls themself a Hina-​kiaʻi-​ mauna for Haleakalā. Kahala also resided for eight months on Mauna Kea as a protector, served as founding member and coordinator for Puʻuhuluhulu University as well as co-​founder and kahu (caretaker) of the Hale Mauna Māhū, recounted in the ‘Native Stories’ podcast interview series. Their dissertation examines decolonised futures of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Anastasia Kavada is Reader in Media and Politics at the University of Westminster, UK, and leads the MA in Media, Campaigning and Social Change. Her research focuses on the relationship between digital media, advocacy groups and social movements. Interests include the role of the internet in alternative practices of democracy; processes of organising, decision-​making and collective identity formation; and how online tools affect activists’ interaction with targets of their campaigns and the media. She has published on Occupy, Avaaz and the Indignant Movement in Greece, in journals such as Information, Communication & Society; Media, Culture and Society; and Communication Theory. Kate Kerrow is a writer, researcher and lecturer, and the founder of the women’s history archive The Heroine Collective (http://​www.thehe​roin​ecol​ lect​ive.com). She co-​created the Greenham Women Everywhere archive with Rebecca Mordan, collating the largest collection of oral testimonies from the 19-​year campaign, and co-​writing Out of the Darkness: Greenham viii

Notes on Contributors

Voices 1981–​2000 (History Press, 2021) which brings these testimonies to print. Anne Kumer is Interim Team Leader, Technical Services at Case Western Reserve University, Ohio. She collaborates with library departments, faculty and students to design and implement metadata schema that will enhance the search and discovery of electronic resources and digital collections. She develops long-​term solutions for improved metadata management, enrichment and interoperability, with a vested interest in the changing landscape of item-​and collection-​level description as it relates to digital resources, advocating for consistent, equitable and inclusive cataloguing practices for library collections in all formats. A former archivist and taxonomist, she holds an MLIS from Simmons College. Finn Mackay is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of the West of England, Bristol, and the author of Radical Feminism: Activism in Movement (Palgrave, 2015) and Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars (Bloomsbury, 2021). Finn has been involved in feminist activism for over 20 years, founding the London Feminist Network in 2004 and working to revive the London Reclaim the Night march. Previously, Finn worked in policy on domestic abuse prevention education and anti-​bullying. They are a Trustee of the Feminist Archive, an Ambassador for the Worker’s Educational Association and a Trustee of the British Sociological Association. Celeste Montoya is Associate Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Celeste’s research focuses on the ways in which women and racialised groups mobilise to enact change, and how these groups work within and outside of political institutions, domestically, transnationally and intersectionally. Her work is informed by studies of social movements, public policy, political institutions, political behaviour, and gender and race politics. She is author of From Global to Grassroots: The European Union, Transnational Advocacy, and Combating Violence Against Women (Oxford University Press, 2013) and co-​editor of Gendered Mobilizations and Intersectional Challenges (ECPR Press, 2019). Niamh Moore is an interdisciplinary feminist researcher in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. She has published extensively on ecofeminism, including the book The Changing Nature of Eco/​feminism: Telling Stories from Clayoquot Sound (UBC Press, 2015). She has also published widely on methods and ethics in research, co-​authoring The Archive Project: Doing Archival Research in the Social Sciences and co-​editing Participatory Research in More-​than-​Human Worlds (both Routledge, 2017). Her forthcoming book, DIY Academic Archiving (with ix

Feminism and Protest Camps

Dunne, Hanlon and Karels) draws on the experience of creating the online archive, Clayoquot Lives: An Ecofeminist Story Web. Rebecca Mordan is Artistic Director of Scary Little Girls (https://​scary​ litt​legi​rls.co.uk) and a graduate of the Bristol Old Vic. She founded Scary Little Girls in response to the dearth of diverse roles and opportunities for women in the performing arts. She is an experienced writer, director, producer and performer, with her work appearing in the BBC’s Cornish Voices Writers Room and on BBC Radio 4. With Kate Kerrow, she co-​ created Greenham Women Everywhere (https://g​ reen ​ hamw ​ omen ​ ever​ ywh​ ere.co.uk) and co-​authored Out of the Darkness: Greenham Voices 1981–​2000 (History Press, 2021). Rebecca has been an anti-​war and feminist activist since her childhood at Greenham Common. Sara C. Motta is a proud Mestiza-​salvaje of Colombia-​Chibcha/​​Muisca, Eastern European Jewish and Celtic lineages currently living, loving and resisting on the unceded lands of the Awabakal and Worimi peoples, NSW, so-​called Australia. She is mother, survivor of state and intimate violence, poet, bare-​breasted philosopher, popular educator and Associate Professor at the University of Newcastle, NSW. Sara has long worked with resistances in, against and beyond heteronormative capitalist-​coloniality from around the world. Her latest book, Liminal Subjects: Weaving (Our) Liberation (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), won the 2020 best book award from the feminist section of the International Studies Association. Vanessa Pini has 15 years’ experience of teaching drama and leading in schools. She is also a writer, performer and producer, and has staged her work at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as well as in her home city of Leeds. She joined Scary Little Girls in April 2020 to work on the Greenham Women Everywhere project. Jill (Ray) Raymond was an artist and hand weaver until Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp sidetracked her life. In 1986 she moved into an ex-​MoD truck to ‘spend more time with her family’ at Bloo Gate. She is now a trustee for Greenham Women Everywhere, interviews Greenham women for the archive and is involved in the promotion and outreach of the project. Mila Nayane da Silva holds a degree in Pedagogy and a Master’s degree in Education and Teaching, both from Ceará State University, Brazil. Mila is a collaborating professor at LECAMPO in Dom Aureliano Matos Faculty of Philosophy, at the campus in Limoeiro Norte. She develops research with women from the Landless Rural Workers Movement (known as MST). She x

Notes on Contributors

is currently studying curriculum design and teaching methods to integrate sexuality into early childhood education. Chia-​Ling Yang is Associate Professor at the Graduate Institute of Gender Education, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan. Her research interests include women in civil society, social movements in Taiwan and migrant Chinese workers in Sweden. She has published on the gender politics of the ‘Sunflower Movement’ in Social Movement Studies (2017).

xi

Acknowledgements This book was mostly written and put together during the COVID-​19 pandemic, during which time our academic lives were sharply reduced –​ chiefly to our homes, the Zoom screen and email. As a result, the ideas in this book did not travel far while in development and our acknowledgements are briefer than they could have been. We would like to thank each other for being there when needed, and our authors for sticking with us in difficult times. Pre-​pandemic, in 2018, Alison spent study leave from the University of Western Australia as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, which enabled her to meet Catherine, Joan and Niamh in person and spend some time talking about mutual interests. Catherine thanks her colleagues in the Strathclyde University Feminist Research Network (SUFRN) for inviting Alison to give a talk on her research into the Pine Gap camp and for coming along to the ‘brown bag’ research-​in-​progress session to give feedback on the work that was eventually to morph into Chapter 9. Subsequently, a group of us made it to the European Conference on Politics and Gender held in Amsterdam in July 2019. Joan, Niamh, Heather, Rebecca, Yeşim and Catherine presented very early drafts of our papers on a panel with a view to exploring the possibility of an edited collection. We are grateful to the conference organisers for that opportunity and to the audience for their enthusiastic and constructive response. And we are particularly grateful for the hospitality of Manuela Maiguashca and her family, who hosted several of us for the duration of the conference, and to Bice Maiguashca for helping to sort that out. The fact we decided to keep going and write a book is in no small part due to what a great time was had in Amsterdam, courtesy of the Maiguashcas. Beyond that, we would like to express our thanks to our commissioning editor Shannon Kneis for her enthusiasm for the project and her persistence in those early stages when the idea was still in development, and to editorial assistant Anna Richardson for her hard work shepherding the manuscript through review and completion. We acknowledge the extensive feedback from the anonymous reviewers for Bristol University Press –​two for the xii

newgenprepdf

Acknowledgements

proposal and one who read the initial manuscript in its entirety. We hope we did justice to your comments. We would also like to thank the designer of the wonderful cover for this book, Andrew Corbett, as well as Annie Rose of Newgen for her forensic attention to detail and her patience with the process of preparing the manuscript for publication. Finally, we are enormously grateful to Janine Wiedel for permission to use her striking image of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp on the cover. You can see more of Janine’s remarkable photographs of marginalised and resistant communities at: https://​arch​ive.wie​del-​photo-​libr​ary.com/​index The book is dedicated to Alison’s daughter, Izzy Bartlett, and Catherine’s mum, Sheila Eschle. Mum, your trips to Greenham continue to reverberate. I am proud that you were part of feminist and peace-​making history, and so glad you sometimes took me along. And Izzy, thanks for coming with me to Greenham decades after the camp finished just to see where it happened.

xiii

1

Introduction: Feminism/​Protest Camps Catherine Eschle and Alison Bartlett

Like freshly sharpened pencils, red rings painted on sleek white, the ready for business missiles line up efficiently in their silos while the women’s peace camp sprawls in contrast the other side of the fence. New circle of tents blooming colours onto the empty scrubland … but those who live permanently here, it is obvious, sleep under sheets of grubby plastic tarpaulin thrown over a pegged down tree. … [W]omen have learned to live with only the amount of stuff that can be held in your arms during an eviction. ... Immediately it feels as though I have wandered into an enchanted forest. Jane Campbell1 Love or its sister/​ forces has stained Cumhuriyet Caddesi with blood but les pavés pressed hand to hand dry flowers become barricades, underneath, roots of the red apple. We aren’t static, aren’t mad. Come see what our revolution has done to us! Andrea Brady2 This book asks feminist questions of protest camps. An increasingly important social movement tactic, protest camps are set up by activists as a temporary home in spaces that are politically useful, symbolically resonant or otherwise important to a community, in order to facilitate action for specific political ends and often to prefigure alternative ways of life. Camps can be spaces of 1

Feminism and Protest Camps

personal experimentation, radical lifestyle innovation and muddy, colourful contrast with adjacent militarised or corporate structures, as indicated in Jane Campbell’s testimony of her time at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in the UK. They can also be spaces of intense if fractured collective identity formation and of violence from the state and other sources, as intimated in the haunting imagery of Andrea Brady’s poem, written in solidarity with activists protecting Gezi Park in Istanbul. While protest camps have been much documented and analysed, as we will show later, this book seeks to explore a dimension that been neglected in the academic literature. It asks: how do the politics of gender intersect with other social identities and power dynamics to shape protest camps? What happens when feminists are involved in protest camps or set up their own? How can contemporary feminism help us see afresh both the limitations and the potential of the protest camp form? What are the legacies of past involvement in camps for feminist theory and practice? The contributors to this book answer such questions by together examining a range of protest camps, including those at Gezi Park and Greenham Common, as sites of gendered politics and feminist activism. Propelled by feminist experiences, both negative and positive, in recent camps across the world, the book is also rooted in the legacy for feminism of western Cold War women’s peace camps like Greenham. Uniquely, then, this collection brings together case studies of both women-​only and mixed-​gender protest camps. Reflecting on these cases with the help of a range of feminist theoretical and methodological tools, the contributors from around the world offer the first sustained feminist analysis of the possibilities and limitations of the protest camp form, as well as telling new stories of feminist organising and agency. In this three-​part introductory chapter, we discuss the rationale for the book by exploring the recent history of protest camps and explaining why a feminist revisiting is necessary. We then outline the feminist lens shared, in broad terms, by contributors. Finally, we explain the organising themes of the book and highlight some of the empirical and conceptual contributions of the chapters that follow.

Why a feminist book on protest camps? Protest camps gained unprecedented prominence in 2011–​12 as a crucial element of a ‘global wave’ of mobilisation, also known as the ‘movement/​ s of the squares’, centring on the occupation of public space. Beginning with the iconic Tahrir Square camp, when the so-​called ‘Arab Spring’ reached Egypt (Ramadan, 2013; Roccu, 2013), this global wave then rolled on to Spain, where camps were established by Indignados in several Spanish cities (Dhaliwal, 2012; Kaika and Karaliotas, 2016), and to Athens 2

Introduction

and the mobilisation of anti-​austerity protestors in Syntagma Square camp (Goutsos and Polymeneas, 2014; Kavada and Dimitriou, 2018). Shortly afterward, the Occupy movement began in Wall Street, New York, before spreading to many cities worldwide (Kohn, 2013; Graeber, 2013; Lorey, 2014). Since then, high-​profile encampments have been set up by government critics in Gezi Park in Turkey, mentioned earlier (Ağartan, 2018); by participants in the 2014 Sunflower Movement in Taiwan and Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong (Rowen, 2015; Yang, 2017; Wang et al, 2018); at Standing Rock in the US in 2016 (Cappelli, 2018); at the Extinction Rebellion climate change action in London in 2019 (Gayle, 2019); and in the democratisation protests in Khartoum, Sudan, the same year (Morgan, 2019). Even in pandemic conditions, protest camps remain irrefutably important to contemporary social movement struggles, as evident in the camps set up in 2020 at road junctions across Bulgaria as part of anti-​government protests (Al Jazeera, 2020). Together, these much-​reported camps have brought renewed visibility to what is in fact a long-​held and widely practised social movement tactic of standing ground, of occupying place. It is thus unsurprising that camps have attracted burgeoning attention from social movement scholars. Most notably, publications by Anna Feigenbaum and colleagues have developed an innovative theoretical framework for making sense of the dynamics, implications and potential of protest camps (Feigenbaum et al, 2013; Frenzel et al, 2014; Brown et al, 2018). There has also been significant research into individual camps that were part of the ‘global wave’ and beyond, as well as on the commonalities or differences between them, and the political lessons that can be drawn (see, for example, Ramadan, 2013; Sbicca and Perdue, 2014; Chabanet and Royall, 2015; Ancelovici et al, 2016; Perugorría et al, 2016; Fernández-​ Savater and Flesher Fominaya, 2017). Taken together, these diverse works on protest camps constitute a substantial new academic field of literature. Yet there is a glaring lacuna in this otherwise exciting research: with a few exceptions (Feigenbaum et al, 2013: 215–​17; English, 2018; Wang et al, 2018: 119–​20, 124; Eschle, 2018), social movement scholarship remains largely silent on gendered dynamics in camps and on feminist responses and perspectives. Existing feminist studies do not yet fill this gap –​despite a growing, vibrant body of academic feminist work on the phenomenon of women-​ only peace camps in Europe, the US and Australia, in the later period of the Cold War (for example, Krasniewicz, 1992; Roseneil, 1995, 2000; Bartlett, 2011; Feigenbaum, 2015; Eschle, 2017). Such work clearly shows how participant re-​creation of daily life in these camps, and their contestation of state militarism, drew upon but also challenged norms of femininity and heterosexuality, in a close if often conflictual relationship with the broader 3

Feminism and Protest Camps

contemporaneous feminist movement. However, there has as yet been very little feminist scholarly attention to more recent mixed-​gender camps, or to protest camps as a distinctive mode of social movement activism and political organising. Nor has feminist scholarship systematically considered how participation in protest camps, whether women-​only or mixed-​gender, and the exclusions and alliances forged in such spaces, have shaped the development of feminist theory and practice more generally. Indeed, it can be argued that participation in protest camps has been not only underplayed in dominant stories of the history and development of feminism, but actively disavowed (Moore, 2008, 2011). This book begins from the assumption that a feminist study of protest camps remains acutely necessary, for at least two reasons. Most obviously from a feminist perspective, protest camps can be significant sites of gender-​ based violence and inequality in activist communities, intertwining with and compounded by heteronormative, racist and transphobic marginalisations. As we discuss in the chapters that follow, many camps have seen high-​profile, well-​documented incidences of rape, sexual violence and gender-​based harassment, along with other forms of marginalisation and silences, such as the persistence of the gendered division of labour; racist stereotyping; hostility to feminist, queer, anti-​racist and trans interventions and their dismissal as divisive ‘identity politics’; and White, male, straight, cis dominance of speeches and other forms of communication (Eschle, 2017, 2018). Such phenomena have posed pressing dilemmas for activists in many contexts (see, for example, Glasgow Women’s Activist Forum, 2011; Anonymous, 2012; Hafez, 2012), and raise crucial questions about the inclusivity and sustainability of the protest camp form as well as its capacity to prefigure a more equal world. Conversely, protest camps have also been important sites of feminist engagement. Compelling evidence for this claim is provided by the feminist research on the Cold War women-​only peace camps already mentioned, documenting as it does how these camps were spaces for experimentation with gender, with womanhood, with women’s political and intimate relationships, and with feminist ways of life. Moreover, feminists have been highly active in mixed camps. For example, the encampments of the ‘global wave’ saw feminists work with queer and anti-​racist allies to enable the fuller participation of a diversity of voices and bodies, to create safer spaces for all on site, and to integrate feminism into camp visions of a better world (Talcott and Collins, 2012). It remains an open question how successful these strategies have been, and their impact on camps and wider movements, along with the legacy of immersion in camps for individual feminist activists and for the broader trajectories of feminist mobilisation and feminist theory.

4

Introduction

How is our approach to protest camps feminist? While the main drivers of the book are empirical and political in character, we also have a more intellectual motivation, in that it is the joint conviction of all contributors that feminist ways of thinking can offer distinctive insights into protest camps. To put this another way, it is not just the substantive focus on women and on gender relations that makes this book feminist, but also its approach. As we will show in this section, our contributors share a feminist lens on camps, in broad terms, with both theoretical and methodological dimensions. Theoretically speaking, our contributors are all attentive to gender as structuring protest camp dynamics and outcomes. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical traditions, the authors conceptualise gender in different, if overlapping ways. Some treat it as an identity, socially constructed or performed in camps. Others analyse gender as a power relation in camps, as a key factor in structuring relations of privilege and oppression or in disciplining individuals, permitting some to enter and to lead, and excluding or marginalising others. In some chapters, gender is a symbolic or discursive system that permeates conceptions of activism, leadership and social change circulating in and from the camp. All the contributors, we suggest, view gender as a pervasive feature of social and political life, as constitutive of camp life and outcomes, and as deserving of greater reflection among contemporary activists and protest camp scholars. Crucially, whatever the specifics of how it is understood, gender is viewed in the chapters that follow through an intersectional prism. Since its influential early articulations in Black feminist thought (Combahee River Collective, 1977; hooks, 1981; Crenshaw, 1989), ‘intersectionality’ has become the dominant analytic deployed by feminists and others to conceptualise power and identity. This means gender can never be considered in a vacuum: it should always be treated as constituted in and through other forms of identity and power. In this book, the contributors prioritise the relation of gender to race, ethnicity, sexuality and class, with several also bringing the distinction between cis-​and trans-​gendered identity into view. Finally, the book seeks to retain the political dimension of intersectional knowledge production, which inheres in the ‘commitment to placing race and women of colour at the centre of feminist analysis’ (Mügge et al, 2018: 31). If some chapters remain focused primarily on the experiences and voices of White, western activists, others offer revisionist accounts of camps with women of colour front and centre, and the collection as a whole seeks to critically interrogate White –​as well as male –​dominance in camps and to bring a wider range of experiences and voices into view (see also Montoya, 2019; Hurwitz, 2020). One way we do this is by provincialising the Cold War western women-​ only peace camps that have dominated feminist scholarship, and the US and 5

Feminism and Protest Camps

European protest camps that have dominated social movement scholarship of the ‘global wave’, placing them in a broader international framework alongside case studies from Taiwan, Turkey and Brazil (see also Brown et al, 2018). But more than this, the collection also has several chapters that reckon with the persistence and contemporary realignment of the colonial matrix of power, along with its racialised underpinnings. Drawing variously on critical Whiteness theory, Indigenous critiques of settler colonialism and White feminism, alternative Indigenous cosmologies, and Afro-​Brazilian feminist epistemologies, these chapters draw into view the colonial construction and racialised dimensions of gender (Lugones, 2007). These chapters also critically assess the ways in and extent to which gender and feminism are remade in protest camps that seek Black or Indigenous sovereignty and decolonisation. Methodologically speaking, while contributors gather and analyse data on different camps in a variety of ways, from interviews to ethnography to reconstructing secondary sources, they all share what we see as a feminist attentiveness to the experiences and/​or representation of women and other marginalised groups. They look not only for the loud, most heroic and most well-​documented elements of camp life, but also for the silences and the erasures, what happens offstage and what is left outside of the archive; and for the humble, ordinary routines and relationships that sustain camp daily life. And in the spirit of a feminist emphasis on reflexivity (see, for example, Ackerly and True, 2008), the authors interrogate, to differing degrees, the complexities of their own personal entanglements in the camps they study and in the wider movements on which these draw. Some do this by adopting an auto-​ ethnographic approach and writing their own camp involvement into their narratives; others draw on the recent ‘archival turn’ in feminism (Eichhorn, 2013) to interrogate not only the ephemeral, transitive and fragile documentary traces left by a particular camp, but also their own relationship to those traces. After all, archives are now widely understood not as repositories of truth but as actively constructed and read through subjective frames, even when these are unconscious. The attention in this book to how past protest camp involvement is told, collected and passed on responds to an increasingly urgent call to create, interrogate and re-imagine feminist archives (Hemmings, 2011; Eichhorn, 2013; Bartlett and Henderson, 2016). In treating the construction of camp archives as a form of feminist activism as well as of knowledge production, our authors ensure that past camps escape their temporal boundaries and continue to resonate in contemporary feminist theory and practice. It is our contention that bringing this broadly feminist theoretical and methodological lens to bear on protest camps casts new light on individual encampments and their legacies for feminist theory and practice, as well as on the protest camp form more generally. In the next and final section, we begin to substantiate this claim by surveying the individual chapters ahead. 6

Introduction

Outline of the book The rest of the book is divided into four parts, mapping on to the four questions with which we opened this Introduction. We begin in Part I by examining how gender shapes protest camps and how camps reshape gender. The first two chapters focus our attention squarely on the persistence of gendered violence in camps, a problem that intersects with and is compounded by other forms of oppression. Charting the complexities involved in responding to this problem in Occupy camps in the US, Celeste Montoya argues that sustainable ‘safe spaces’ were created only when they took on board the intersectional character of oppression and did not seek to exclude trans women –​so often themselves the targets of violence because of their gender identity –​or rely on police intervention, given the history of US police violence toward African American men. The chapter by Māhealani Ahia and Kahala Johnson, on the camp set up by Kanaka Maoli (Indigenous Hawaiians) to protest the expansion of an astronomical installation on the sacred Mauna Kea mountain, may be read as a detailed accounting of an attempt to institute the kind of intersectional strategy called for by Montoya. Ahia and Johnson’s poetic, painstaking account of the creation of what they prefer to call ‘brave spaces’ within the Mauna Kea camp shows how these required a careful, ‘trauma-​informed’ approach, along with the creative reinterpretation of sacred stories of the origins of Kanaka Maoli in the light of diverse progressive discourses from elsewhere. In such ways, the reframing of gender relations and sexual identity in the camp is positioned by Ahia and Johnson as crucial to the camp’s promise of a decolonised, healing future. The next two chapters focus on gender identity and gender inequality. Finn Mackay’s evocative, personal account of their time in the women’s peace camp at Menwith Hill in the UK explores, among other things, how the camp was a space to play with gender expression and roles, as well as with feminism: to perform gender differently, in ways at odds to and subversive of the binary gender norms dominant in wider society at the time. Mackay effectively extends Sasha Roseneil’s analysis of the ‘queer tendencies’ of Greenham by showing how the activists at ‘Womenwith Hill’ ‘queer[ed] gender, unstructuring, de-​patterning and disorganizing it’ (Roseneil, 2000: 4). Chia-Ling Yang, in contrast, draws our attention to entrenched gender hierarchies in mixed camps, showing how what she calls ‘gendered power’ was deployed to maintain male dominance within the protest camp set up by the Sunflower or ‘3/​18’ movement at the Taiwanese parliament. Yang analyses how the creation of informal networks among elite-​educated, heterosexual men, along with the prevalence of a ‘postfeminist’ political culture in which feminist identification had become unfashionable, together ensured that elite, heterosexual men maintained their presence centre stage while female, LGBTQ and Indigenous protestors were 7

Feminism and Protest Camps

pushed to the margins, forced to resort to individualised strategies that often involved ritualised gender performances. In sum, these chapters illustrate the persistence of gender inequality in mixed camps, as well as revealing how gender identity is reasserted or reshaped within both mixed and women-​only camps. We also begin to glimpse the diversity and complexity of feminist responses to the gendered dynamics of camping together. In Part II, the entanglement of feminist mobilisation in protest camps becomes our primary focus. Three chapters trace the impact of feminism on camps and vice versa, the reshaping of feminism as it flows through camp spaces. In this vein, Yeşim Arat’s chapter tells a vivid story of the involvement of women and feminists in and around the Gezi Park protest camp, and their success in imprinting the protest with feminist values and language. While the ‘fugitive democracy’ that took shape in Gezi proved to be short-​lived, in the face of intense state backlash, Arat argues that the women’s movement in Turkey was irrevocably changed by the experience, particularly in terms of the connections forged in the protests to a range of other struggles and between pious and secular women. In contrast, Emma Gómez Nicolau’s assessment of the relationship of feminism to the camps of the Indignados or 15-​M movement in Spain is more circumspect, highlighting as it does the reluctance that initially greeted feminist demands and the continued struggle of feminists and their queer allies to be taken seriously in mixed movement spaces. For Gómez Nicolau, these difficulties are one impetus behind a general revival of autonomous feminist organising in Spain since the 15-​M movement, as well as the specific endeavour to establish the women-​only or ‘non-​mixed’ camp that is the focus of her chapter. While both Arat and Gómez Nicolau concentrate on social movement dynamics, the final chapter in this part has a very different approach to the question of feminist mobilisation in camps, zeroing in on an individual activist and organiser, the ecofeminist Starhawk. Encountering Starhawk in the archives of the HoriZone Ecovillage in Stirling, Scotland, Haran spirals outward to show how ecofeminist and permaculture ideas and practices, as represented by Starhawk, have threaded through anti-​nuclear, ecological and anti-​globalisation mixed-​gender camps in many different settings over several decades. In this way, Haran offers a subversive retelling of the history of both protest camps and feminism in recent decades in the West, by recovering an ecofeminist lineage common to both. The third part of the book elaborates on what feminist theory has to say about the limitations and possibilities of the protest camp form. To begin with, Catherine Eschle’s chapter on camps and social reproduction leans on Marxist and Black/​anti-​racist feminist literatures on domestic space and the gendered division of labour to help explain the persistence of inequalities and violence in protest camps and continuities with the wider neoliberal capitalist context. Reflecting on case studies of Occupy Glasgow and Faslane 8

Introduction

Peace Camp, Eschle calls for more caution in scholarly claims about protest camp autonomy from wider society. Anastasia Kavada’s subsequent chapter on camps and democracy offers what is perhaps a more hopeful reading through a feminist lens, with reference to interview-​based research into the ‘movements of the squares’ across Europe. Kavada argues that the potential of camps as a site of ‘project democracy’, and the existential challenge this poses to liberal democracy, can only be fully understood through a feminist approach that encompasses social reproduction, care ethics and the commons. This is followed by a chapter by Sara C. Motta, Sandra Maria Gadelha de Carvalho, Claudiana Nogueira de Alencar and Mila Nayane da Silva, which centres Afro-​Brazilian feminist epistemologies in an effort to think about the revolutionary and life-​affirming potential of Black and Indigenous women’s resistance. Engaging with the actions of a women’s cooperative in the landless movement and the words of a radical Black feminist poetry collective, both in Northeastern Brazil, Motta et al argue for an expansive understanding of protest as reoccupation not only of physical spaces, but also of the political itself, and of the emancipatory political subject. Finally, the chapters in Part IV consider the legacies of past involvement in encampments for contemporary feminist theory and practice. Troublingly, these chapters point to some startling silences in and about feminism in relation to protest camps. Thus Alison Bartlett’s chapter on the Pine Gap Women’s Peace Camp in Australia in 1983 addresses engagements between Indigenous and non-​Indigenous feminist protestors from the archives to complicate the popular remembering of second wave feminism as fundamentally racist; Heather McKee Hurwitz and Anne Kumer’s chapter hinges on the absence of feminism from dominant narratives of the Occupy movement in the US; and the chapter by Niamh Moore, on the one hand, and our conversation with Kate Kerrow, Rebecca Mordan, Vanessa Pini and Jill (Ray) Raymond, on the other, are both rooted in what they see as the strange sidelining of Greenham from academic and popular remembering of feminism in the UK. In response, these chapters all advocate for contemporary feminists to undertake revisionist archival readings and/​or feminist (re)creations of the archive in order to preserve or reframe the ephemera, testimonies and experiences that these camps have left in their wake and thereby amplify and expand collective memory of feminist involvement. In this vein, Bartlett rereads the Pine Gap protest through its location on First Nations territory, emphasising the ways place and language are implicated in the ongoing legacies of colonisation for feminism –​and its archives –​in Australia. Moore interprets the creation of her digital archive of oral history interviews from Clayoquot Sound ecofeminist peace camp in Canada as a form of feminist counter-​memory, one that enables us to see the persistent influence of marginalised ecofeminist perspectives within contemporary feminism. Similarly Hurwitz and Kumer 9

Feminism and Protest Camps

maintain that the process of creating an open access, inclusive digital archive of the Occupy camps is itself a form of feminist activism, one that enables them to recover and publicise eclipsed feminist voices within a broader social movement coalition. Their work also shows how Occupy and other ‘big-​tent’ movements are an important part of the story of contemporary US feminism. Finally, the chapter by Kate Kerrow and colleagues reflects on their project to create a digital archive of interviews with Greenham women as a way of recentring Greenham in contemporary popular narratives of British feminism. In effect, these chapters expand the temporal boundaries of protest camps, insisting on the continued significance of camps as sites of feminist politics and imagination, and arguing for deeper feminist engagement with their archival traces and echoes. We acknowledge that this book has some significant geopolitical and disciplinary omissions. These are important not only because they remind us that the empirical story we tell here is incomplete and partial, but also because their inclusion would bring in different feminist theoretical perspectives –​and perspectives on feminism –​that would further nuance the arguments about both protest camps and feminism outlined here. We return to these points in the Conclusion. Nonetheless, we submit that the chapters offer a unique and productive engagement with protest camps, by centring feminist concerns and perspectives, and by bringing together research into both women-​only peace camps and mixed-​gender encampments of the global wave. We hope that social movement scholars and feminist theorists and activists will find much to interest them in what follows. Notes 1

2

Reprinted with permission. Jane Campbell, under the pen-​name Maj Ikle, writes evocatively about her first trip to the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in the UK in the 1980s in search of a rumoured ‘hotbed of lesbian sex’. Campbell’s is one of many written and oral testimonies on the Greenham Women Everywhere website, discussed in Chapter 15 in this volume by Kate Kerrow et al, see https://​gree​nham​wome​ neve​rywh​ere.co.uk/​pre​tend​ing-​to-​prot​est/.​ Reprinted with permission. This excerpt is from the poem ‘Gel Gör Beni Aşk Neyledi [Come See What Love Made Me] #direngezi’, by Andrea Brady, posted on the website Solidarity Park Poetry at: https://​sol​idar​ityp​ark.wordpr​ess.com/​2013/​08/​04/​poem-​53-​ in-​sol​idar​ity-​gel-​gor-​beni-​ask-​neyl​edi-​direng​ezi/. Brady wrote the poem,​ ‘in solidarity hope and desire, for the protestors camped at Gezi Park in Istanbul in the summer of 2013, discussed by Yeşim Arat in Chapter 6 of this volume.

References Ackerly, B. and True, J. (2008) ‘Reflexivity in Practice: Power and Ethics in Feminist Research on International Relations’, International Studies Review, 10(4): 693–​707.

10

Introduction

Ağartan, K. (2018) ‘Politics of the Square: Remembering Gezi Park Protests Five Years Later’, New Perspectives on Turkey, 58: 201–​17. Al Jazeera (2020) ‘Police Clear Protest Camps Across Bulgaria’, 7 August. Available from: https://​www.aljaze​era.com/​news/​2020/​08/​pol​ice-​ clear-​anti-​gov​ernm​ent-​prot​est-​camps-​bulga​r ia-​2008​0710​5102​621.html [Accessed 14 August 2020]. Ancelovici, M., Dufour, P. and Nez, H. (eds) (2016) Street Politics in the Age of Austerity: From the Indignados to Occupy, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Anonymous (2012) ‘Occupy –​the End of the Affair’, Social Movement Studies, 11(3/​4): 441–​5. Bartlett, A. (2011) ‘Feminist Protest and Maternity at Pine Gap Women’s Peace Camp, Australia 1983’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 34(1): 31–​8. Bartlett, A. and Henderson, M. (2016) ‘What Is a Feminist Object? Feminist Material Culture and the Making of the Activist Object’, Journal of Australian Studies, 40(2): 156–​71. Brown, G., Feigenbaum, A., Frenzel, F. and McCurdy, P. (eds) (2018) Protest Camps in International Context: Spaces, Infrastructures and Media of Resistance, Bristol: Policy Press. Cappelli, M.L. (2018) ‘Standing with Standing Rock: Affective Alignment and Artful Resistance at the Native Nations Rise March’, SAGE Open, 8(3). Available from: https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​21582​4401​8785​703 [Accessed 3 August 2019]. ​ ccupy Movements Chabanet, D. and Royall, F. (2015) ‘The 2011 Indignés/O in France and Ireland: An Analysis of the Causes of Weak Mobilisations’, Modern & Contemporary France, 23(3): 327–​49. Combahee River Collective (1977) ‘Combahee River Collective Statement’. Available from: https://​www.blackp​ast.org/​afri​can-​ameri​can-​hist​ory/​ comba​hee-​r iver-​col​lect​ive-​statem​ent-​1977/​ [Accessed 14 June 2022]. Crenshaw, K. (1989) ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics’, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1): 139–​67. Dhaliwal, P. (2012) ‘Public Squares and Resistance: The Politics of Space in the Indignados Movement’, Interface: A Journal For and About Social Movements, 4(1): 251–​73. Eichhorn, K. (2013) The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

11

Feminism and Protest Camps

English, C. (2018) ‘Security Is No Accident: Considering Safe(r) Spaces in the Transnational Migrant Solidarity Camps of Calais’, in G. Brown, A. Feigenbaum, F. Frenzel and P. McCurdy (eds) Protest Camps in International Context: Spaces, Infrastructures and Media of Resistance, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 353–​70. Eschle, C. (2017) ‘Beyond Greenham Woman? Gender Identities and Anti-​ Nuclear Activism in Peace Camps’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 19(4): 471–​90. Eschle, C. (2018) ‘Troubling Stories of the End of Occupy: Feminist Narratives of Betrayal at Occupy Glasgow’, Social Movement Studies, 17(5): 524–​40. Feigenbaum, A. (2015) ‘From Cyborg Feminism to Drone Feminism: Remembering Women’s Anti-​Nuclear Activisms’, Feminist Theory, 16(3): 265–​88. Feigenbaum, A., Frenzel, F. and McCurdy, P. (2013) Protest Camps, London: Zed Books. Fernández-​Savater, A. and Flesher Fominaya, C. (eds) with contributions from L. Carvalho, Çiğdem, H. Elsadda, W. El-​Tamami, P. Horrillo, S. Nanclares and S. Stavrides (2017) ‘Life After the Squares: Reflections on the Consequences of the Occupy Movements’, Social Movement Studies, 16(1): 119–​51. Frenzel, F., Feigenbaum, A. and McCurdy, P. (2014) ‘Protest Camps: An Emerging Field of Social Movement Research’, Sociological Review, 62(3): 457–​74. Gayle, D. (2019) ‘Police Attempt to Clear Extinction Rebellion Protest ​ ww. Camps in London’ , The Guardian, 8 October. Available from: https://w thegu ​ ardi​ an.com/​envi​ronm​ent/​2019/​oct/​08/p​ oli​ ce-a​ ttem ​ pt-t​ o-c​ lear-e​ xt​ inct​ion-​rebell​ion-​prot​est-​camps-​in-​lon​don [Accessed 4 November 2019]. Glasgow Women’s Activist Forum (2011) ‘Open Letter from Glasgow Women’s Activist Forum to Occupy Glasgow’, libcom.org, 2 November. ​ ome​ ns-​ Available from: https://​lib​com.org/​arti​cle/​open-l​ ett​ er-g​ lasg​ ow-w activ​ist-​forum-​occ​upy-​glas​gow [Accessed 6 March 2014]. Goutsos, D. and Polymeneas, G. (2014) ‘Identity as Space: Localism in the Greek Protests of Syntagma Square’, Journal of Language and Politics, 13(4): 675–​701. Graeber, D. (2013) The Democracy Project: A History, A Crisis, A Movement, London: Allen Lane. Hafez, S. (2012) ‘No Longer a Bargain: Women, Masculinity, and the Egyptian Uprising’, American Ethnologist, 39(1): 37–​42. Hemmings, C. (2011) Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. hooks, b. (1981) Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, Boston, MA: South End Press. 12

Introduction

Hurwitz, H.McK. (2020) Are We the 99%? The Occupy Movement, Feminism, and Intersectionality, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Kaika, M. and Karaliotas, L. (2016) ‘The Spatialization of Democratic Politics: Insights from Indignant Squares’, European Urban and Regional Studies, 23(4): 556–​70. Kavada, A. and Dimitriou, O. (2018) ‘Protest Spaces Online and Offline: The Indignant Movement in Syntagma Square’, in G. Brown, A. Feigenbaum, F. Frenzel and P. McCurdy (eds) Protest Camps in International Context: Spaces, Infrastructures and Media of Resistance Bristol: Policy Press, pp 71–​90. Kohn, M. (2013) ‘Privatization and Protest: Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Toronto, and the Occupation of Public Space in a Democracy’, Perspectives on Politics, 11(1): 99–​110. Krasniewicz, L. (1992) Nuclear Summer: The Clash of Communities at the Seneca Women’s Peace Encampment, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lorey, I. (2014) ‘The 2011 Occupy Movements: Rancière and the Crisis of Democracy’, Theory, Culture & Society, 31(7/​8): 43–​65. Lugones, M. (2007) ‘Heterosexualism and the Colonial/​​Modern Gender System’, Hypatia, 22(1): 186–​209. Montoya, C. (2019) ‘From Identity Politics to Intersectionality? Identity-​Based Organizing in the Occupy Movements’, in J. Irvine, S. Lang and C. Montoya (eds) Gendered Mobilization and Intersectional Challenges: Contemporary Social Movements in North America and Europe, Colchester: ECPR Press, pp 135–​53. Moore, N. (2008) ‘Eco/​Feminism, Non-​Violence and the Future of Feminism’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 10(3): 282–​98. Moore, N. (2011) ‘Eco/​Feminism and Rewriting the Ending of Feminism: From the Chipko Movement to Clayoquot Sound’, Feminist Theory, 12(1): 3–​21. Morgan, H. (2019) ‘Khartoum Sit-​in May Be Gone, but Its Dream of a Democratic Sudan Remains’, Al Jazeera, 12 June. Available from: https://​www.aljaze​era.com/​featu​res/​2019/​6/​12/​khart​oum-​sit-​in-​ may-​be-​gone-​but-​its-​dream-​of-​a-​dem​ocra​tic-​sudan-​rema​ins [Accessed 13 December 2021]. Mügge, L., Montoya, C., Emejulu, A. and Weldon, S. (2018) ‘Intersectionality and the Politics of Knowledge Production’, European Journal of Politics and Gender, 1(1/​2): 17–​36. Perugorría, I., Shalev, M. and Tejerina, B. (2016) ‘The Spanish Indignados and Israel’s Social Justice Movement: The Role of Political Cleavages in Two Large-​Scale Protests’, in M. Ancelovici, P. Dufour and H. Nez (eds) Street Politics in the Age of Austerity: From the Indignados to Occupy, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp 97–​124. Ramadan, A. (2013) ‘From Tahrir to the World: The Camp as a Political Public Space’, European Urban and Regional Studies, 20(1): 145–​9. 13

Feminism and Protest Camps

Roccu, R. (2013) ‘David Harvey in Tahrir Square: The Dispossessed, the Discontented and the Egyptian Revolution’, Third World Quarterly, 34(3): 423–​40. Roseneil, S. (1995) Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham, Buckingham: Open University Press. Roseneil, S. (2000) Common Women, Uncommon Practices: The Queer Feminisms of Greenham, London: Cassell. Rowen, I. (2015) ‘Inside Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement: Twenty-​Four Days in a Student-​Occupied Parliament, and the Future of the Region’, Journal of Asian Studies, 74(1): 5–​21. Sbicca, J. and Perdue, R.T. (2014) ‘Protest Through Presence: Spatial Citizenship and Identity Formation in Contestations of Neoliberal Crises’, Social Movement Studies, 13(3): 309–​27. Talcott, M. and Collins, D. (2012) ‘Building a Complex and Emancipatory Unity: Documenting Decolonial Feminist Interventions Within the Occupy Movement’, Feminist Studies, 38(2): 485–​506. Wang, K.J., St John, H.R. and Wong, M.Y.E. (2018) ‘Touching a Nerve: A Discussion on Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement’, in G. Brown, A. Feigenbaum, F. Frenzel and P. McCurdy (eds) Protest Camps in International Contest: Spaces, Infrastructures and Media of Resistance, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 109–​33. Yang, C.-​L. (2017) ‘The Political Is the Personal: Women’s Participation in Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement’, Social Movement Studies, 16(6): 660–​71.

14

PART I

Gendered Power and Identities in Protest Camps

2

Safe Spaces and Solidarity: Confronting Gendered Violence in the US Occupy Encampments Celeste Montoya

Introduction In the autumn of 2011, a wave of mobilisation spread across the United States and beyond to protest growing economic inequality and the loss of democracy to the economic elite. Occupy Wall Street and its many corollary mobilisations inspired the imagination of a new generation of activists, reinvigorated existing activists and networks, and profoundly changed political discourse. The universalising message ‘We are the 99%’ provided a wide discursive base for building a movement. Creating a meaningful and enduring solidarity across social cleavages, however, proved more challenging, and was wrought with both internal and external obstacles. One test to the struggle for solidarity came in the form of allegations of sexualised violence and harassment in the protest camps. Starting in October, the concern was raised in a number of general assemblies and reports began circulating both in the news and on social media sites. Internally groups grappled with how to respond to the allegations of violence. Some questioned the legitimacy of these claims or dismissed them as a symptom of larger societal ills and not a specific characteristic of the encampments. Others, however, committed themselves to addressing the gendered violence, through direct and indirect action. The varied strategies to construct ‘safe’ or ‘safer’ spaces, however, demonstrated a varied understanding of gendered violence, including who it impacts and the way it might intersect with other forms of oppression. Complicating this struggle further was the external co-optation of these allegations to discredit the movement and justify eviction. Conservative 17

Feminism and Protest Camps

media outlets seized on the spectre of sexual assault as a means to delegitimise the movement. Politicians later used it to justify the eventual evictions, introducing another form of violence. The co-​opting and reframing of internal calls to address the gendered violence placed the movement in the difficult position of simultaneously addressing threats (of interpersonal violence) within the movement while fending off those (including state violence) from outside of it. This chapter engages with the challenges and strategies for addressing gendered violence in protest camps, by examining the US Occupy encampments. It emphasises the importance of intersectional analysis as a means for better understanding the spatial politics of protest camps and for evaluating the efforts to address gender violence. While a failure to address gender violence poses a threat to movement participation and solidarity, so too do efforts to address it that fail to consider multiple and interlocking modes of oppression. The chapter starts with a discussion of sexual violence within the context of social movements and protest camps. It then provides an overview of some of the different narratives about the violence in circulation, both within the encampments from those participating and from those on the outside. It includes narratives drawing attention to the violence in an attempt to combat it and build a stronger and more inclusive movement, as well as narratives using the spectre of violence to undermine the movement. The chapter then looks at dismissive responses within the movement as well the complexity of intersectional considerations and how they were (or were not) addressed.

Theorising sexual violence within the context of social movements and protest camps While the social movement literature has addressed various forms of violence associated with political mobilisation, very little attention has been given to interpersonal forms of violence occurring within movements. The relative silence on the issue is probably a characteristic not only of the stigma associated with gendered violence, but also of movements themselves. Darren Lenard Hutchinson (1999) describes a political culture among activists and members of oppressed communities that disfavours open self-​criticism or the ‘airing of dirty laundry’ out of fear that such criticism might reinforce negative stereotypes about groups or movements; provide oppositional actors (state and non-​state) opportunities to appropriate the criticism as a means of delegitimising the movement; and dismantle political unity and forestall social change. While these are all credible concerns, not acknowledging interpersonal violence (such as sexual violence and harassment) as a form of oppression serves to marginalise members in a way that also undermines unity. For progressive movements like Occupy, failure to address internal 18

Safe Spaces and Solidarity

oppression (in any form) also represents an acquiescence to the ideologies they ostensibly seek to challenge and a violation of the prefigurative model they try to build (see Chapter 9 by Eschle and Chapter 14 by Hurwitz and Kumer in this volume). While gender violence can occur in any type or form of social movement, understanding the spatial dimensions of the Occupy movement can help provide insight into the challenges faced by activists. Feminist geographers have argued that social identity plays an important role in how people experience and navigate different spatial locations. They argue that place and space are gendered, raced, classed, aged and otherwise influenced by structural inequalities in manners that have implications for mobility, liberty and safety (Durham, 2015). Most encampments (and all of the encampments examined in this particular study) occurred in urban settings, often in city parks, and around the clock (with many, but not all, participants sleeping at the encampment). The use of tents and other temporary shelters blurred the lines between public and private spaces, and in many cases, the encampments were sharing spaces with other groups already ‘occupying’ there, including people experiencing homelessness. This geography is an important aspect of the spatial politics of protest camps, as is their construction as an ostensibly progressive political space. Numerous studies have explored how women’s experiences with or fear of sexual violence shapes how they navigate public spaces (Valentine, 1989; Stanko, 1990; Koskella, 1999; Pain, 2001; Meyers, 2004; Starkweather, 2007; Wattis et al, 2011). Particular spaces (geographic and temporal) are constructed and understood as having more or less risk, whether or not those assessments of risk are accurate. Although women are more likely to be sexually assaulted by a known assailant in a familiar private setting than by a stranger in public urban settings, dominant narratives and/​or ‘rape myths’ contribute to perceptions that the former space is safe and the latter space risky. Part of this perception is tied to other forms of sexualised oppression that are more prevalent in the public sphere. Sexual harassment and the appropriation of space can negate women’s relationships with public space (Kelly and Radford, 1996; Skeggs, 1999; Wattis et al, 2011). Intersectional analysis complicates understandings of spatial oppression and exclusions. Rachel Pain (2001) argues that fear of crime can be considered to create and reinforce exclusions from social life and from particular urban spaces in a number of ways that demonstrate the complexity of intersecting social locations, both for those who perceive they are being threatened and for those who are perceived as a threat. She notes that exclusions occur through the experience of crime itself, by which violence increases the subordination of marginalised groups (see also Young, 1990) and as a result of subcriminal acts, by which racist, sexist, homophobic or ageist harassment and incivilities remind people of their vulnerability, increase their fear and ultimately affect 19

Feminism and Protest Camps

their social and spatial behaviour (Junger, 1987; Painter, 1992). Exclusion also occurs when groups are constructed as a threat to community safety and subjected to formal or informal policing (Garland, 1996). Studies of gendered violence show similar intersectional patterns. While gender may render certain groups more vulnerable to violence, so too might race, class, sexuality, age and other dimensions of structural inequality. Studies have shown that women of colour and immigrant women are victimised both for gender as well as race, with race playing a prevalent role in violence that occurs in public spaces (Crenshaw, 1991). Their social position at the intersection of multiple marginalities impacts not only the prevalence of violence, but also the response to it. Social location can determine perceptions of victims as credible and deserving of sympathy and justice (Razack, 2002; Haskell, 2003; Phipps, 2009; Randall, 2010). These societal perceptions are replicated in the legal system (Davis, 1985; Crenshaw, 1991; Corrigan, 2013; Ritchie, 2017). Social location is also used to determine who constitutes punishable perpetrators. Men of colour are significantly more likely to be charged and prosecuted for sexual violence than White men. These tropes play a role in shaping anxieties and perpetuating oppression. In her study of an urban area in California, Kristen Day (1999) found that White women’s perceptions of vulnerability were constructed partly in relation to the perceived threat of rape from men of colour, even though studies show that they are more at risk of violence from White men. There is a long established pattern of using (White) women’s safety to justify violence, including state violence, against men of colour. Such co-​optations feed into racist and xenophobic oppression in a way that not only impacts men of colour, but also leaves women of colour more vulnerable to violence because they feed into the racism and xenophobia that are intersecting components of the sexual violence and harassment these women face. These intersectional considerations have important implications for understanding the impact of gendered violence and how to address it in progressive social movements and protest camps. First, sexual violence and harassment may have a direct impact on those who experience it within social movement spaces, in ways that preclude, limit or otherwise affect their participation. Given common patterns of sexualised violence, this is more likely to affect female and/​or LGBTQ participants (as well as those at the intersection of these and other identities). Second, fear of sexual violence might influence movement participation, something that is also more likely to impact structurally vulnerable groups. Third, failure to respond to sexual violence does not alleviate potential exclusions and may indeed confirm them. Fourth, uncritical movement responses that do not pay attention to relevant intersections may introduce or reinforce other forms of oppression and exclusion.

20

Safe Spaces and Solidarity

This last point is particularly important, and one that invites alternative consideration of how to address gender violence. Women of colour feminists have long been critical of traditional legal/​​carceral approaches to gender violence (Davis, 1981, 1985; Critical Resistance and INCITE!, 2006; Richie, 2000, 2012; Ritchie, 2017). They instead advocate for alternative community-​based measures that take sexual violence seriously, but that consider the gendered, racial, sexual and class dimensions of the violence as well as of the response to it (Critical Resistance and INCITE!, 2006). For example, the restorative justice and transformative justice models seek to decrease the role of the state and increase the involvement of personal, familial and community networks, emphasising the repairing of harms rather than punishing crimes (Frederick and Lizdas, 2010; Ptacek, 2010; Armatta, 2018). Such approaches help to resolve potential tensions between inaction and harmful action. For example, Common Justice’s restorative justice programme is based on four principles: survivor-​centred responses, safety-​driven responses, accountability and equity (Sered, 2017; Armatta, 2018).

Data and method In this chapter, I use discursive analysis to consider perceptions of and responses to gender violence in the Occupy encampments. My data includes mainstream and independent news sources, social media and a series of interviews conducted with Occupy participants. The interview data comes from interviews conducted after the evictions of the protest camps (with the first interview in December 2012 and the last in July 2014) with participants from major mobilisations across the United States (including New York, Oakland (California), Boston, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Portland (Oregon), Philadelphia, San Diego and Denver). These participants represent identities that vary across gender, race/​​ethnicity, sexual orientation and age, many of them participating in some form of identity-​based organising within the movement (such as Women Occupy Wall Street, People of Color Caucus, Queering OWS, Decolonize Wall Street). This study does not seek to make or challenge any claims regarding the prevalence of sexual violence or harassment in the encampments. My vantage point is as an external observer. At the time of these encampments, I was at home with an infant. A challenge with studying sexual violence and harassment in any arena is the difficulty of determining, with any degree of certainty, its prevalence. While systematic efforts have been undertaken at the national level and within more fixed institutional contexts, the fluidity of protest camps is less conducive to such an assessment. No such systematic data collection of the Occupy encampments was undertaken.

21

Feminism and Protest Camps

The Occupy encampments and narratives of sexual violence The Occupy mobilisations started in September 2011, with the first encampment set up in New York City’s financial district, in Zuccotti Park. A month later, similar encampments had spread across the United States and globally to more than 1,000 town squares (Hurwitz and Taylor, 2018). These encampments became a mechanism for participants to pool resources, create group consciousness, and formulate and debate strategy and tactics: ‘In conjunction with the consensus process and the general assembly, the decision to share food, books and blankets … became a prominent public expression of the movement’s understanding of inclusivity and equality’ (Schein, 2012: 336). As the encampments grew, however, conflict began to emerge along the lines of gender, race, class and sexuality. Identity-​based groups organised in many of the mobilisations, motivated by perceived exclusions related to visibility and representation (Montoya, 2019). A prevalent discourse among these groups was a concern for ‘safe spaces’ as both a physical and metaphorical concept. While the safe space discourse came to mean a lot of things, one particular manifestation was in the context of sexual violence. Some participants, in particular female-​identified activists, articulated concerns they had for their safety in an environment that some characterised as male-​dominated and misogynistic. Narratives regarding sexual violence in the Occupy protests varied both within and outside of the encampments. Dominating the external narrative were mainstream news media reports about a handful of cases where police were called in to investigate or make an arrest. In New York, a man was arrested for allegedly groping one woman and later raping another. In Dallas, police arrested a convicted sex offender for having sex with a 14-​year-​old female runaway. In Cleveland, police responded to a report by a 19-​year-​old woman that she was raped in a shared tent. In Seattle, police investigated a possible case of sexual assault, when a woman was found passed out and naked from the waist down. A man was arrested and later convicted for a fatal shooting near the Occupy Oakland encampment and for a sexual assault that occurred five days later, although neither the assailant nor either victim were associated with Occupy. In Baltimore, a local affiliate news station reported that a woman was raped and robbed, although police later concluded that there was no evidence of sexual assault. Often reported together and in the context of other crimes, these incidents became part of a larger news narrative portraying the movement in a negative light, particularly among the more conservative outlets. Fox News discussed the alleged assaults under the headline ‘Occupy Protests Plagued by Reports of Sex Attacks, Violent Crime’ (Chiaramonte, 2017). The New York Post characterised Zuccotti Park as being ‘so overrun by sexual 22

Safe Spaces and Solidarity

predators attacking the women in the night that organizers felt compelled to set up a female-​only sleeping tent to keep the sickos away’ (Freund, 2011). Extreme Right website Breitbart kept a running ‘#OccupyWallStreet: The Rap Sheet, So Far’. The incidents covered in the news also became a part of movement discourse, usually in the localities in which they were reported to have occurred. Concerns of sexual violence were often raised as one part of a larger discussion of offensive and oppressive gendered behaviour. More widespread than stories of sexual assault were reports of unwanted touching, harassment, misogynist language, and male domination of movement spaces and processes. In some of the encampments, the discussion of sexual and/​or gender violence extended to sexuality and gender identity and experiences with homophobia and transphobia. A number of working groups, caucuses and affinity groups formed around concerns with safety. These concerns often started with a general discomfort with sleeping in the encampments (an important spatial and temporal aspect of participating in the movement), but were often amplified by other gendered experiences within the encampments. While none of the people interviewed, and very few of the writers of personal accounts, claimed to be sexually assaulted in the encampment, discussions of safety were almost always raised in conjunction with other oppressive and gendered behaviour. While these concerns were sometimes addressed in general assemblies, discussion more frequently took place in the context of the women-only and/​or feminist spaces that often formed in response. One of the original participants in Women Occupy Wall Street (a group originating in New York City, also referred to as WOW) noted how reports of sexual assaults led to a concern for safety that became a major driving force in the formation of WOW. Here she recalls the night the group met as such for the first time: ‘Well the formation of it happened one night, maybe the third week. One night I stayed there very late, the latest I ever stayed and there was just this feeling of (sigh) you know. As it started to get crowded, with more and more people, I think there was just this feeling of an instability and a lack of safety. And a whole bunch of girls, young girls actually, got together and wanted to discuss what to do, how to get a safe space going. And I ended up being a part of that conversation and we ended up coming up with the Women Occupy Wall Street working group.’ (M from New York) By the next week, the handful of women turned into several dozen who were meeting regularly. Manissa McCleave Maharawal writes about attending an anti-​patriarchy meeting (which would later become the Safe Space working 23

Feminism and Protest Camps

group) after noticing that it seemed to be mostly White men taking charge of committees and making announcements: A lot was said at the anti-​patriarchy meeting about what was safe and wasn’t safe in the occupied space. Women talked about not feeling comfortable in the drum circle because of men dancing up on them and how to change this, about how to feel safe sleeping out in the open with a lot of men that they didn’t know. (Maharawal, 2011) In Boston, similar accounts were given in a joint interview with several of the founding members of the Occupy Boston Women’s Caucus: ‘We had met some other women and also had been talking with some other women on Twitter who were also part of the camp and ended up meeting with them and talking about what would be the benefits of having a women’s group, and how the need for it was there and how this particular woman felt physically threatened and the sexual awareness and sexual violence by this man. From there it was just a matter of us –​we set a date and a sign pointing the way.’ (A from Boston) One of these participants (M from Boston) recalled “just hear[ing] these really horrible tales of women who were choosing to stay over at the encampment and felt physically and sexually threatened”. She, like many of the older women in the Occupy movement, chose not to stay overnight in the encampment. Some, but not all, groups explicitly extended the discourses on safety for women to include the LGBTQ community. For example, this statement co-​written by the anti-​harassment group Hollaback! was released online: For as long as public space has existed, women and LGBTQ people have been trying to ‘occupy’ it safely –​with distressingly little success. Harassing comments, groping, flashing and assault are a daily, global reality for women and LGBTQ individuals. Too often, these injustices are met with little or no response, simply regarded as ‘the price you pay’ for being female, trans, or gay in public. As supporters of the Occupy movement, we believe that a world where everyone has the right to occupy public space safely is not only possible –​it is essential to building a strong lasting movement. (Occupy Wall Street, 2011a) Oakland Occupy Patriarchy formed as a feminist/​​queer bloc with a statement clarifying that ‘Women, Trans people, Queers, Fags, Dykes, need a space that is OURS. We are marginalized, harassed, and attacked in other spaces 24

Safe Spaces and Solidarity

all the time’ (Oakland Occupy Patriarchy, 2012). This group also notably included a commitment to ‘confront, and attack structural racism and white supremacy in this city and in our spaces’. Not all forms of violence or oppression that were understood as gendered were necessarily sexualised. Feeding into the narrative of male domination and oppression were the other ways in which male behaviour took on physical and controlling dimensions. One young woman of colour talked about oppression in regard to respect for personal autonomy (bodily as well as cognitively): ‘More often than not I would get pulled back by, lots of times, white males. Physically, like my arm would be pulled back onto the sidewalk and reprimanded that I was disobeying the police and I was unsafe and I was putting other people in jeopardy. And so it was like a pretty constant awareness that your decisions were being scrutinised, criticised, and that it was automatically assumed if you were queer, trans, a POC, or ciswoman that you didn’t know what you were doing and that you were unknowingly putting yourself in harm’s way. So it was a pretty oppressive atmosphere.’ (S from New York) In this setting, the physical oppression took on a somewhat paternalistic form and was a part of the internal policing of the movement. The participant was physically restrained in the name of ‘safety’, but in a way that seemed gendered and raced, disallowing her from exercising autonomy.

Dismissive responses The internal and external narratives of sexual violence and harassment received a mixed response from other participants in the movement. While some responses were positive and affirming, others were dismissive or even antagonistic, posing significant obstacles for the activists working to address the issue. A number of respondents talked about some very vocal opponents to any discussion that extended beyond class, particularly when it addressed issues of race, sexuality or sexual harassment. ‘Even in a meeting of a hundred and fifty, two hundred people, there were probably 75 percent to 80 percent of the folks or more that were happy to entertain any and all discussions that pertained to any kind of oppressive politics. There were also some very vocal opponents to talking about race, or sexuality, or sexual harassment or safe spaces. It was typically older white men that would become irate and would occasionally start screaming people down saying “we aren’t here to talk about that stuff ”.’ (M from Baltimore) 25

Feminism and Protest Camps

This type of story was not uncommon, and characterises some of the contemporary challenges to addressing gendered issues (including sexualised violence) within the encampments. While efforts were made to address these types of hostile challenges, others were much more complicated and less readily dismissed. Another challenge to addressing violence came from how people understood it within the movement in relation to society in general, and what this might mean for how to respond to it. Many participants understood the violence (as well as the other forms of internal movement oppression) as a microcosm of the broader society: ‘I was really blown away with the messaging of the movement. To me it was this incredible opportunity to be part of something that was important. But then I discovered that essentially the encampment was kind of a microcosm of the broader society in that all of the ‘isms’ that exist outside were kind of manifesting as well in the encampment.’ (M from Boston) And A from Philadelphia comments: “It’s hard to admit that any of the encampments aren’t really a utopia just because we are all really excited about social change, that the Occupy encampments are sort of microcosms of larger societies … so all of the issues that we face: racisms, classism, and sexism, etc.” Understanding the problem in this way was not necessarily a hindrance to addressing it. These quotes came from activists engaged in efforts to address the issues of sexual violence and harassment in Boston and Philadelphia. For them, and those that felt similarly, it was a motivation to do better and build a stronger movement. For others, however, this characterisation was used in a manner that seemed to abdicate responsibility. The violence and harassment, and in particular the failure to respond to it, was seen as a betrayal from a movement that was supposed to be better, something expressed in the following excerpts from two published essays: Some women who stayed with #Occupy (for a limited time –​most left in the months afterward) said, ‘It’s a microcosm of the world at large. Of course there’s sexism’. They weren’t wrong, but those of us who were busting our butts for the movement weren’t wrong either to expect, just this once, in this ‘radical’ setting that we wouldn’t have to beg to be believed. (Ren-​Jender, 2013) Too often, the Occupy movement has betrayed its own vision by revealing itself as a sexist microcosm of the society it opposes. Harassment and assaults required women to define safe sleeping 26

Safe Spaces and Solidarity

areas –​immediate necessities yet questionable strategically, since they can become ‘ghettos’, while the problem, a male sense of entitlement goes unchallenged. (Morgan, 2012) For these activists, sexual violence and harassment were incompatible with the progressive vision of the movement, a vision that should not tolerate oppression. Given the maligning of the movement by the mass media, conservative outlets in particular, another form of challenging discourse centred around concern with possible infiltration, false claims and misrepresentation. This is perhaps best represented by an incident in Baltimore, where movement participants suspected a set-up by Fox News: “There was one incident of violence that was reported that I am pretty sure was planted where there was a woman who supposedly was raped and/​or stabbed at the settlement but I never got verification that that actually indeed occurred” (L from Baltimore). ‘One of the things that was brought up was totally fabricated. There was what seemed to be a setup from Fox News … an African American woman that claimed to be homeless that who was sleeping in the #Occupy Baltimore encampment that claimed that everyone there had been on drugs and that she had been raped in the encampment. She came onto the encampment with a camera crew from Fox. But that accusation had never been brought up within the encampment. It was only brought up to Fox 45. And nobody even knew who this person was and no one ever remembered her sleeping there or participating in a meeting. And the police investigated and found that there was nothing true to the claim.’ (M from Baltimore) This case is particularly complicated in that the positionality of the woman and the tendency to see this claim as false fits within problematic race scripts which discount the claims of women of colour and poor women. Yet, the two people interviewed were active in the anti-​racist activism of the Baltimore movement and acknowledged sexual harassment as an issue in the encampment. The negative characterisation of the movement by the media in general raised concerns for protestors, particularly when it was invoked to paint the movement as a threat to public safety, something that was later used to justify forcible evictions. This put activists trying to address sexual violence and harassment in the awkward position of having to defend the movement at the same time that they were criticising it, sometimes even using the ‘microcosm’ narrative as a defence. The women’s caucus of Occupy Philly issued the following statement following an attempted rape occurring in their camp: 27

Feminism and Protest Camps

The recent demonizing and vilifying of the #Occupy movement in the media is a scape-​goating of the problems and violence that plague our communities and cities daily. Rape happens every day, murder happens every day and suicide happens every day. These tragedies are not symptoms or creations of the #Occupy Movement, nor are they exclusive to the #Occupy Movement; they are realities of our society and of our everyday lives. (Kacere, 2011) The members of a sexual assault survivor team at OWS released a similar statement after the reported assault in their encampment: We are also concerned that segments of the media have attempted to use this incident as another way to disingenuously attack and discredit OWS. It is reprehensible to manipulate and capitalize on a tragedy like this to discredit a peaceful political movement. OWS exists within a broader culture where sexual assault is egregiously common. (Occupy Wall Street, 2011b) At the same time as they critiqued the media, they maintained the seriousness of the claims: We are aware that this is one of several known cases of sexual assault that have occurred at OWS. We are dismayed by these appalling acts and distressed by the fear among many Occupiers that they may have caused, as well as their negative impact on our ability to safely participate in public protests. We have the right to participate in peaceful protests without fear or violence. (Occupy Wall Street, 2011b) Yet this discourse of defence fed into some of the tendencies to dismiss claims of sexual violence and harassment. In a published essay, another participant in the Baltimore movement expressed her frustration with this: Just like the blasé dismissal of media critiques as ‘trolling’, it’s indicative of the larger dynamic at play in McKeldin Square. Dominant, mostly male voices are calling constantly for an end to discussion of ‘gender-​ specific issues’ in order to focus on the nebulous call for economic reform, which has defined the Occupy protests across the nation. Complaints of sexual harassment at the site are belittled as ‘personal problems’, as though it’s somehow possible to affect change as a divided and internally oppressive community. (Gaeng, 2011) While the media portrayals and threat of state repression posed external threats to the movement, the sexual violence and harassment served as an 28

Safe Spaces and Solidarity

internal threat that could not be ignored. Some allegations of sexual assault may have been fabricated or manipulated by external opponents, but this did not mean that concerns were unfounded. Patterns in gender violence reporting suggest that it is likely that many more incidents of sexual violence occurred that were never reported.

Safety for whom? Intersectional considerations More complicated than the dismissive discourses were the responses from activists problematising efforts to address sexual violence and assault. A significant challenge for the movement was how to create ‘safe’ or ‘safer’ spaces, without replicating or introducing new oppressive practices. The term ‘safer space’ originated in women’s and queer movements of the past decades ‘as an identifier of space that is explicitly committed to safety for individuals or communities that are targets of oppression’ (Newman, 2011: 138). The feminist and anti-​patriarchy groups seeking to address the issue of sexual violence and harassment engaged in a variety of strategies. The safer spaces working group in OWS reported working to ‘educate and transform our community into a culture of consent, safety, and well-​being’ using strategies such as ‘support circles, counselling, consent training, self-​defence trainings, community watch, awareness campaigns, and other evolving community-​ based approaches to address harm’ (Occupy Wall Street, 2011b). The setting up of ‘safe spaces’ might also involve the building and policing of borders (physically as well as socially), something that can be in tension with other norms of inclusion. As observed by Amy Schrager Lang and Daniel Lang/​Levitsky (2012: 22–​3): ‘One of the most fraught and contentious debates over inclusion within Occupy concerns “disruptive behaviour” –​what constitutes it, who is understood to engage in it, and who can be excluded from what because of it’. Here, the complexity of multiple and sometimes intersecting forms of marginalisation are relevant. One response to the issue of sexual assaults was to set up women-​only spaces, usually for sleeping but sometimes beyond that. What was meant by ‘women-​only’ varied. Some of these spaces were comparatively broad, in providing space for female and/​or queer-​identified participants. Some were more focused on ‘female-​identified’ participants, which included those who were transgender. Oakland Occupy Patriarchy, along with a group called Safer Spaces, an anti-​oppression group formed by a group of self-​identified Queer and Queer allied people, arranged for family-​friendly children’s areas as well as Women and Trans Safer Spaces where men were asked to refrain from entering. Sometimes the focus was narrower. In New York, some ‘women-​only’ groups and spaces provoked criticism from ‘A Bunch of Trans Women Occupiers’ (2012: 129) who issued a statement that ‘OWS Must Resist Cis-​Supremacy and Trans-​Misogyny’: ‘As feminists, we 29

Feminism and Protest Camps

enthusiastically support women’s groups and women-​designated safer spaces, but, as trans women and allies, we oppose (and will categorically block) any group or space that excludes trans women … as well as any standard that functionally asserts authority over our self-​determined gender identities.’ Another complicated component of creating a safe space was the creation of policies and norms about who and what would be allowed within the encampments. Having norms and standards of behaviour is essential in addressing sexual violence and harassment in a meaningful way that challenges gendered power asymmetries; however, such norms also served as a form of displacement to other vulnerable populations. The encampments were frequently set up in urban parks, spaces that are already used by groups that are often constructed as threats to community safety. In this regard, Lang and Lang/​Levitsky articulate an important point also raised by others: From Oakland to London, ‘bad behavior’ is ascribed more often than not to participants in Occupy/​​Decolonize encampments who arrived already ‘homeless’ or impoverished, who are people of color, who are (or are assumed to be) substance users, who are read as disabled. The greater the number of these descriptions that can be applied to a given person, the more likely their actions are to be labeled as ‘disruptive’. (2012: 23) While the ‘bad’ or ‘disruptive’ behaviour associated with sexual violence (harassment in particular) extended well beyond these particular groups, some of the policies aimed at creating a safer space did (intentionally or not) target them. This set up a dilemma in regard to addressing the concerns of participants, who felt threatened by those perceived as threats, some of whom had been inhabiting locations before protest camps were constructed. Lester Spence and Mike McGuire (2012: 58) argue that some of the formal and informal rules served to socially displace and marginalise poor populations of colour, acting as another form of gentrification. Even if these norms were set up in a manner that considered some of these possible exclusions, how they were enforced was another matter of concern. Some encampments had community security forces (often self-​ appointed). Some volunteers had previous experience in law enforcement and/​or the military and might replicate institutional practices critiqued by the movement. Note the quotation earlier in the chapter of a woman who felt oppressed by the tactics of these groups. Such controversies were particularly pronounced regarding the involvement of actual law enforcement. An ongoing debate within the larger encampments was about whether or not the police could be a part of ‘the 99%’, and when, if ever, they should be called into the encampment. Many in the movement were critical of the police as an arm of the state that they were protesting, including the role the police 30

Safe Spaces and Solidarity

played in enforcing unequal economic policy. This included critiques now heard as part of the Black Lives Matter discourse on institutionalised racism. The debate, especially within the context of addressing sexual violence, caused some significant conflicts and divisions. Critiques that focused more on the harm that police might cause to victims were better received within some feminist spaces. The OWS working group on safe spaces, in a statement released on the OWS webpage, discussed a case where the police (at the request of an assault victim) were called in, but responded in a way the group deemed victim-​blaming: [W]e were troubled at the time of her report that responding police officers appeared to be more concerned by her political involvement in OWS than her need for support after a traumatic incident of sexual violence. A survivor is not at fault for being assaulted while peacefully participating in a public protest to express their political opinions. (Occupy Wall Street, 2011b) This example illustrates why feminists of colour have long been sceptical of the state as a remedy for gendered violence (Davis, 1981, 1985; Critical Resistance and INCITE!, 2006; Richie, 2012; Ritchie, 2017). Such arguments were seen as salient in the context of mobilisations facing antagonistic encounters with the police (something that seemed to become more apparent even in more ‘police-​friendly’ movements once the evictions started). Debates arising around the inclusion/​exclusion of past assailants, however, were less well received, particularly in relation to registered sex offenders. This came up in Boston and ultimately led to some of the women leaving the movement. ‘I think it’s really complicated. Even people who are supportive feminists have a lot of negative experiences with the law and see how the law can be manipulated. But basically it also became clear that besides those people there were a lot of people who just didn’t care about preserving the safety or at least the comfortable feeling that women could have when participating and prioritise like “This is for everybody, paedophiles and sex-​offenders are in the 99%” and I just kind of got disgusted hearing a lot of the conversation surrounding it.’ (A from Boston) In this case, the tensions of inclusion/​exclusion surrounding safe spaces were more difficult to resolve in a way that some feminist groups found acceptable. They expressed the need for clear norms and accountability. While some groups started to discuss solutions more embedded in restorative and transformative justice –​approaches that centre survivors and safety, and 31

Feminism and Protest Camps

demand accountability, but that consider community-​based and equitable solutions –​the evictions ended the encampments and the discussion.

Conclusion This study of the Occupy movement demonstrates the importance of addressing gendered violence in protest camps, as well as in social movements more broadly. Although internal accounts from within the movement do not support the conservative narrative of assaults as endemic to Occupy, incidences of gendered harassment and oppression did have a detrimental impact on internal perceptions of safety and inclusion within the encampments. While these issues were not seen as unique to the movement, neither could they be dismissed as independent from it. The dismissals of such critiques by some movement participants were seen as antithetical to (or even as a betrayal of) the goals of liberation and equality that were ostensibly central to progressive mobilisation. A primary reason for movement demobilisation is when participants stop believing that the movement represents them (Polletta and Jasper, 2001: 292). This was seen when women walked out of general assemblies, and some ultimately out of the movement, when their concerns were not addressed. At the same time, this study also emphasises the need for careful consideration of how best to address these types of concerns. Narratives of ‘safe’ or ‘safer spaces’ are complicated. In an effort to create spaces where precarious groups felt included, exclusions were often made both in regard to whom was understood as needing protection and who was perceived as being a threat (see also Chapter 7 by Gómez Nicolau in this volume). Groups adopting a more intersectional lens tried to work within these tensions by minimising unnecessary exclusions (particularly of those in positions of precarity), but by working to establish clear communal norms and accountability (where possible) for when oppression occurred. They were doing this difficult and ongoing work when the threat of state violence became realised through evictions. Addressing violence within and outside of a movement requires a model of organising where all forms of oppression are recognised and addressed, and where individuals are held accountable but not treated as disposable (see brown, 2020). Such approaches are intersectional, distinguishing various overlapping and intersecting forms of violence (interpersonal as well as state and structural). They emphasise an ethic of care (see Chapter 3 by Ahia and Johnson, and Chapter 10 by Kavada, in this volume), recognising the humanity of everyone involved. But they also insist on stopping and acknowledging the harm, supporting the survivor and actively taking measures to plan for safety, seeking to prevent future harm (Armatta, 2018). While the Occupy encampments were short-​lived, their prefigurative politics 32

Safe Spaces and Solidarity

are still alive and present in many contemporary movements. The lessons learned may chart a path for stronger and more enduring movements. References A Bunch of Trans Women Occupiers (2012) ‘OWS Must Resist Cis-​ Supremacy and Trans-​Misogyny’, in A.S. Lang and D. Lang/​Levitsky (eds) Dreaming in Public: Building the Occupy Movement, Oxford: New Internationalist Publications, pp 129–​32. Armatta, J. (2018) ‘Ending Sexual Violence Through Transformative Justice’, Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies, 5(1): art 4. Available from: https://d​ oi.org/​10.24926/​ijps.v5i1.915 [Accessed 10 August 2022]. brown, a.m. (2020) We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, Oakland, CA: AK Press. Chiaramonte, P. (2017) ‘Occupy Protests Plagued by Reports of Sex Attacks, Violent Crime’, Fox News, 12 January. Available from: https://​www.foxn​ ews.com/​us/​occ​upy-​prote​sts-​plag​ued-​by-​repo​rts-​of-​sex-​atta​cks-​viol​ent-​ crime [Accessed 30 June 2022]. Corrigan, R. (2013) Up Against a Wall: Rape Reform and the Failure of Success, New York: New York University Press. Crenshaw, K. (1991) ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women’, Stanford Law Review, 43(6): 1241–​99. Critical Resistance and INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence (2006) ‘Gender Violence and the Prison-​Industrial Complex’, in INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence (eds) Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology, Cambridge, MA: South End Press, pp 223–​6. Davis, A.Y. (1981) Women, Race and Class, New York: Random House. Davis, A.Y. (1985) Violence Against Women and the Ongoing Challenge to Racism, Latham, NY: Kitchen Table. Day, K. (1999) ‘Embassies and Sanctuaries: Women’s Experiences of Race and Fear in Public Spaces’, Environment and Planning D, 17(3): 307–​28. Durham, M.G. (2015) ‘Scene of the Crime’, Feminist Media Studies, 15(2): 175–​91. Frederick, L. and Lizdas, K.C. (2010) ‘The Role of Restorative Justice in the Battered Women’s Movement’, in J. Ptacek (ed) Restorative Justice and Violence Against Women, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 39–​59. Freund, H. (2011) ‘Zuccotti Protesters Put Up Women-​Only Tent to Prevent Sexual Assaults’, New York Post, 5 November. Available from: https://​nyp​ ost.com/​2011/​11/​05/​zucco​tti-​pro​test​ers-​put-​up-​women-​only-​tent-​to-​ prev​ent-​sex​ual-​assau​lts/​ [Accessed 30 June 2022]. Gaeng, J. (2011) ‘Occupy Baltimore: One Protester’s Take on the Sexual Assault Memo’, Baltimore Sun, 25 October. Available from: http://​artic​les. baltim ​ ores​ un.com/2​ 011-1​ 0-2​ 5/n ​ ews/b​ s-e​ d-​occ​upy-​baltim​ore-​sex​ual-​assa​ ult-​201110​25_1​ _​ s​ exu ​ al-a​ ssau ​ lt-m ​ emo-p​ rote​ st [Accessed 15 October 2021]. 33

Feminism and Protest Camps

Garland, D. (1996) ‘The Limits of the Sovereign State: Strategies of Crime Control in Contemporary Society’, British Journal of Criminology, 36(4): 445–​71. Haskell, L. (2003) First Stage Trauma Treatment: A Guide for Mental Health Professionals Working with Women, Toronto: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Hurwitz, H.McK. and Taylor, V. (2018) ‘Women Occupying Wall Street: Gender Conflict and Feminist Mobilization’, in H.J. McCammon and L.A. Banaszak (eds) 100 Years of the Nineteenth Amendment, New York: Oxford University Press, pp 334–​55. Hutchinson, D.L. (1999) ‘Beyond the Rhetoric of “Dirty Laundry”: Examining the Value of Internal Criticism Within Progressive Social Movements and Oppressed Communities’, Michigan Journal of Race & Law, 5(1): 185–​99. Junger, M. (1987) ‘Women’s Experiences of Sexual Harassment; Some Implications for Their Fear of Crime’, British Journal of Criminology, 27(4): 358–​83. Kacere, L. (2011) ‘#OccupyPatriarchy: Creating Alternative Models and Safe Spaces’, Feminist Campus, 18 November. Available from: https://​web. arch​ive.org/​web/​201​7020​6213​911/​http://​fem​inis​tcam​pus.org/​occup​ ypat​r iar​chy-​creat​ing-​alte​r nat​ive-​mod​els-​and-​safe-​spa​ces/​ [Accessed 18 November 2021]. Kelly, L. and Radford, J. (1996) ‘ “Nothing Really Happened”: The Invalidation of Women’s Experience of Sexual Violence’, in M. Hester, L. Kelly, and J. Radford (eds) Women, Violence and Male Power, Buckingham: Open University Press, pp 19–​33. Koskella, H. (1999) ‘ “Gendered Exclusions”: Women’s Fear of Violence and Changing Relations to Space’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 81(2): 111–​24. Lang, A.S. and Lang/​Levitsky, D. (2012) ‘Introduction: The Politics of the Impossible’, in A.S. Lang and D. Lang/​Levitsky (eds) Dreaming in Public: Building the Occupy Movement, Oxford: New Internationalist Publications, pp 15–​25. Maharawal, M.M. (2011) ‘So Real it Hurts: Notes on Occupy Wall Street’, Left Turn, 4 October. Available from: http://​leftt​urn.org/​so-​real-​it-​hurts-​ notes-​occ​upy-​wall-​str​eet/​ [Accessed 30 June 2022]. Meyers, M. (2004) ‘African American Women and Violence: Gender, Race, and Class in the News’, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 21(2): 95–​118. Montoya, C. (2019) ‘From Identity Politics to Intersectionality? Identity-​Based Organizing in the Occupy Movement’, in J. Irvine, S. Lang and C. Montoya (eds) Gendered Mobilization and Intersectional Challenges: Contemporary Social Movements in North America and Europe, Colchester: ECPR Press, pp 135–​53. 34

Safe Spaces and Solidarity

Morgan, R. (2012) ‘Occupying the Occupy Movement’, Women’s Media Center, 3 January. Available from: http://​www.womens​medi​acen​ter. com/​news-​featu​res/​occupy​ing-​the-​occ​upy-​movem​ent [Accessed 15 October 2021]. Newman, E. (2011) ‘Safer Spaces of Decolonize/​Occupy Oakland: Some Reflections on Mental Health and Anti-​Oppression Work in Revolutionary Times’, Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology, 3(2): 138–​41. Oakland Occupy Patriarchy (2012) ‘Occupy Patriarchy MOVE IN MEETING Thursday 1/​26’, 25 January. Available from: https://​oakl​ando​ ccup​ypat​r iar​chy.wordpr​ess.com/​2012/​01/​25/​occ​upy-​pat​r iar​chy-​move-​in-​ meet​ing-​thurs​day-​126/​ [Accessed 18 November 2021]. Occupy Wall Street (2011a) ‘Everyone Has the Right to Occupy Space, Safely’, Occupy Wall Street, 8 November. Available from: http://​occup​ ywal​lst.org/​arti​cle/​every​one-​has-​r ight-​occ​upy-​space-​saf​ely/​ [Accessed November 2019]. Occupy Wall Street (2011b) ‘Transfor ming Har m & Building Safety: Confronting Sexual Violence At Occupy Wall Street & Beyond’ [subsection of Occupy Rape Culture], The Feminist Wire, 5 November. Available from: https://​thef​emin​istw​ire.com/​2011/​11/​occ​upy-​rape-​cult​ ure/​[Accessed 30 June 2022]. Pain, R. (2001) ‘Gender, Race, Age and Fear in the City’, Urban Studies, 38(5/​6): 899–​913. Painter, K. (1992) ‘Different Worlds: The Spatial, Temporal and Social Dimensions of Female Victimization’, in D.J. Evans, N.R. Fyfe and D.T. Herbert (eds) Crime, Policing and Place: Essays in Environmental Criminology, London: Routledge, pp 164–​95. Phipps, A. (2009) ‘Rape and Respectability: Ideas About Sexual Violence and Social Class’, Sociology, 43(4): 667–​83. Polletta, F. and Jasper, J.M. (2001) ‘Collective Identity and Social Movements’, Annual Review of Sociology, 27: 283–​305. Ptacek, J. (2010) ‘Resisting Co-​optation: Three Feminist Challenges to Antiviolence Work’, in J. Ptacek (ed) Restorative Justice and Violence Against Women, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 5–​36. Randall, M. (2010) ‘Sexual Assault Law, Credibility, and “Ideal Victims”: Consent, Resistance, and Victim Blaming’, Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 22(2): 397–​433. Razack, S. (2002) ‘Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George’, in S.H. Razack (ed) Race, Space, and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society, Toronto: Between the Lines, pp 121–​56.

35

Feminism and Protest Camps

Ren-​Jender (2013) ‘When the Stupidity About Rape Wouldn’t Stop, I Quit a Movement I Loved’, XOJane, 14 January. Available from: https://​web. arch​ive.org/​web/​201​4083​1085​329/​https://​www.xoj​ane.com/​iss​ues/​sex​ ism-​rape-​occ​upy-​movem​ent [Accessed 30 January 2017]. Richie, B.E. (2000) ‘A Black Feminist Reflection on the Antiviolence Movement’, Signs, 25(4): 1133–​7. Richie, B.E. (2012) Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation, New York: New York University Press. Ritchie, A.J. (2017) Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Schein, R. (2012) ‘Whose Occupation? Homelessness and the Politics of Park Encampments’, Social Movement Studies, 11(3/​4): 335–​41. Sered, D. (2017) ‘Accounting for Violence: How to Increase Safety and Break Our Failed Reliance on Mass Incarceration’, New York: Vera Institute for Justice. Skeggs, B. (1999) ‘Matter Out of Place: Visibility and Sexualities in Leisure Spaces’, Leisure Studies, 18(3): 213–​32. Spence, L. and McGuire, M. (2012) ‘Occupy and the 99%’, in K. Khatib, M. Killjoy and M. McGuire (eds) We Are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation, Oakland, CA: AK Press, pp 53–​65. Stanko, E. (1990) Everyday Violence: Women’s and Men’s Experience of Sexual and Physical Danger, London: Pandora. Starkweather, S. (2007) ‘Gender, Perceptions of Safety and Strategic Responses Among Ohio University Studies’, Gender, Place and Culture, 14(3): 355–​70. Valentine, G. (1989) ‘The Geography of Women’s Fear’, Area, 21(4): 385–​90. Wattis, L., Green, E. and Radford, J. (2011) ‘Women Students’ Perceptions of Crime and Safety: Negotiating Fear and Risk in an English Post-​Industrial Landscape’, Gender, Place and Culture, 18(6): 749–​67. Young, I.M. (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

36

3

The Puʻu We Planted: (Re)birthing Refuge at Mauna Kea1 Māhealani Ahia and Kahala Johnson

Introduction Puʻu are raised grounds where the seeds of our survival are planted; honua is the unflinching earth beneath us, the enduring Papahānaumoku who outlasts all upheaval. Puʻuhonua are sanctuaries grown in sheltered enclaves –​hills, cliffs, shorelines –​ritually consecrated to protect those within from peril. In the distant past, Kanaka Maoli fleeing the violence of war or escaping chiefly punishment could retreat to these places of refuge where they would be safe from execution. A traditional sanctum of care and security grown by our ancestors, puʻuhonua provide descendants today with an abiding legacy of practices for cultivating fortified, flourishing, restorative Hawaiian communities as we vigilantly confront the abusive colonial invasions of our lands. Puʻuhonua also recall cyclical conceptions of childbirth, germination and natality. Our ancestors felt a deep convergence between the growth of a child in their parent’s body and the rising of the land, unifying each in metaphorical harmony. Puʻuhonua are thus revered as a metonym for pregnancy, for lands and bodies protruding with the life teeming within. By recalling this bonded accord between Hawaiians and the ʻāina, even a person could be revered as a puʻuhonua and come to embody these sanctified aspects of care and protection. From Hawaiian ancestral wisdom, we therefore affirm that puʻuhonua are places of refuge on a continuum from land to bodies, and bodies to land. The cultivation of puʻuhonua has never ceased despite the ongoing colonisation and occupation of Hawaiʻi by the United States today. In fact, sanctuaries for the protection of land and people continue to be born in the present, with each (re)birth of the puʻuhonua lengthening the umbilical connection between our contemporary struggles for Hawaiian 37

Feminism and Protest Camps

Figure 3.1: Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu

Source: Authors’ photograph

interdependence and the ancestors of our past. The puʻuhonua grown at Mākua Valley in 1996 is a well-​documented example of this resurgent legacy where over 300 Kanaka Maoli reunited with the land and each other, raising a refuge in defiance of US military bombardment of the ʻāina. In 1994, sovereignty activist Bumpy Kanahele built Puʻuhonua o Waimānalo which has grown into a sustainable village on Oʻahu’s north shore. Likewise, Puʻuhonua o Waiʻanae on Oʻahu’s west side began with a group of unhoused Hawaiians who, under the leadership of Aunty Twinkle Borge, self-​organised to create a thriving village. As one of the youngest siblings nourished by this ancestral tradition, the emergence of Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu on Mauna Kea in 2019 regenerated and empowered the legacy of Hawaiian sanctuaries born since the late 20th century (see Figure 3.1). On 12 July 2019, more than a dozen kiaʻi gathered at Puʻuhuluhulu on Mauna Kea to raise a puʻuhonua for Hawaiians striving to protect our mountain from desecration by the proposed development of a Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). Ritually blessed by members of the Royal Order of Kamehameha I, the rise of the refuge was followed closely by the events of 15 July 2019 when eight Kanaka Maoli chained themselves to a cattle guard for 12 hours at the base of Mauna Kea access road to halt the advancement of telescope construction vehicles up the mountain. Two days later, 33 kūpuna elders were arrested in a similar blockade after which over 100 young wāhine and māhū joined arms to brace the frontline resulting in 38

The Pu‘u We Planted

an eight-​hour standoff against armed military and police forces. Together, these unyielding stances to defend Mauna Kea from the occupying settler state and TMT allowed the emergent puʻuhonua to germinate into an internationally recognised encampment not only to protect Mauna Kea, but also to demonstrate the camaraderie, ingenuity and resurgence of Indigenous peoples as self-​determining collectives. The story of Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu is thus more than just an episode of sustained, adamant, frontline resistance against police, military and settler state violence: in the shelter of the mauna, we planted the seeds for (re)growing interdependent, decolonised futures for the lāhui. Grounded in this genealogy of refuge, we invoke the puʻuhonua as a feminist, abolitionist space where wāhine and māhū nourished cultures of care at Puʻuhuluhulu, the piko we collectively birthed to protect Mauna Kea. Significantly, our chapter explores the wāhine and māhū-​led interventions against gendered and sexual violence at Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu that both challenged and fortified us since the conception of the encampment. Storytelling from the sheltered spaces of the Hale Mauna Wahine, Hale Mauna Māhū and the ʻAha Kiaʻi Aloha, we share the joys and pains of sanctuary-​birthing in the face of settler colonial and patriarchal violence on the mountain. We conclude with love to our future descendants cradled in the aftercare of our liberation, tenderly promising them that the future we always hoped for is, was, and shall ever be, a puʻuhonua to come.

Securing the posts to the paia: mana wahine and mana māhū Only a minority of publications describing the gendered aspects of Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu have been written since the establishment of the sanctuary in 2019. In truth, documentation of the encampment has predominantly focused on the cultural, spiritual and strategic value of the puʻuhonua in relation to the Mauna Kea movement, Kanaka Maoli nation-​building and Hawaiian sovereignty. When gendered dynamics are emphasised, they are principally invoked to commemorate the blockades raised by wahine and māhū protectors on Mauna Kea access road against the US National Guard and police enforcement following the arrest of frontline kūpuna. Nevertheless, though the number of available materials focusing on gender and the puʻuhonua remains modest, they provide critical insights for us as we reflect upon our own work as protectors. In particular, we are drawn to how these sources conceive of the encampment as a fecund site where wāhine and māhū birthed Indigenous futurities beyond the brutality of the occupying settler state, the violence of the military-​police complex and the martial masculinities of patriarchal leadership.

39

Feminism and Protest Camps

In ‘Decolonize Feminism: Why Feminists Should Care About Mauna Kea’, transnational women of colour from AF3IRM Hawaiʻi (2019) criticise the settler state’s reckless deployment of gratuitous force against Hawaiian wāhine and kūpuna at the frontlines peacefully defending the sanctity of the mountain. Members of the organisation were among the first to denounce the criminalisation and arrest of kiaʻi as the vindictive extension of a gendered state violence aggressively wielded to eliminate wāhine and possess ʻāina. Acknowledging the AF3IRM Hawaiʻi analysis alongside the cultural, spiritual and strategic intentions of the encampment, we contend that the birth of Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu be recognised as a defiant intervention against the invasive, abusive, patriarchal desires at the heart of settler colonialism. The assertions of AF3IRM Hawaiʻi thus allow us to conceive of Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu as a strategic gendered response to the escalation of state violence against Hawaiian kiaʻi. The puʻuhonua was a place where Kanaka Maoli and our allies could refuse the onslaught of military and police brutality against our land and people by finding refuge in our bodies, in our relations and in our collective love for the mountain. A resurgence physically grounded in Hawaiian traditions of anti-​violence, the rise of the sanctuary became a place for growing abolitionist kinships where mutual care could emerge from beneath the cracks of settler patriarchy. Cultivating Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu as a raised ground to nourish and propagate such inclusive, loving relations beyond capitalist exploitation, patriarchal violence and colonial elimination, AF3IRM Hawaiʻi coordinator Yvonne Mahelona writes: This moment in history is powerful beyond imagination for our keiki (children), our ‘āina (land, environment), and our lāhui (people, nation), because while we resist desecration of Mauna a Wākea we are not only imagining but creating a new future at Pu‘uhonua o Pu‘uhuluhulu. Ka wā mamua, ka wā mahope. (The future is found in the past.) We are living here and now beyond the confines of capitalism and colonialism, where people of all genders, all ages, all abilities are loved, included and able to lead. (AF3IRM Hawai’i, 2019) Invoking Hawaiian temporalities of the past-​future and the future-​past, Mahelona reveals a germinal sense of continuity and innovation that flourished within the space of Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu, a rejuvenating vision that encouraged the lāhui to embody our ancestral love for the ʻāina as we collectively grew a thriving present for our people. Relations nourished within the sanctuary prefigured and postfigured cyclical traditions of aloha ʻāina, where pasts, presents and futures of care and healing could be (re)planted in revolution according to our needs as survivors of colonial assault and patriarchal abuse. 40

The Pu‘u We Planted

In her appreciation for the refuge of the puʻuhonua, Mahelona also suggests how decision-​making at the encampment reflected a distinctly Hawaiian approach to direct action and nation-​building that is strongly intergenerational, poly-​gendered and inclusive of the lāhui diverse abilities, skills and talents. Shortly after the release of ‘Decolonize Feminism’, she co-​wrote an editorial with Dr Noelani Goodyear-​Kaʻōpua titled ‘Protecting Maunakea Is a Mission Grounded in Tradition’ (2019), which names many of the wāhine and māhū kiaʻi involved in creating and sustaining Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu: Poliʻahu, Līlīnoe, Kahoupokāne, Maxine Kahaulelio, Hinaleimoana Wong-​Kalu, Dr Pualani Kanakaole Kanahele, Pua Case, Kekuhi Kealiikanakaoleohaililani, Ui Chong, Ruth Aloua, Ilima Long, Dr Marie Alohalani Brown, Presley Ah Mook Sang, Dr Kalama Niheu, Maile Wong, Noelani Ahia, Makanalani Gomes, Keano Davis and Tia Masaniai. Noting that wāhine and māhū leadership in the Hawaiian lāhui is traditionally unexceptional, both authors recall: What is happening at Maunakea is so much more than a struggle to stop the Thirty Meter Telescope from being built on our sacred summit. A non-​capitalist community grounded in living Hawaiian cultural practice is rising, like the kupukupu ferns that grow from cracks in the black lava rock and unfurl toward the sun. Sure, we still deal with the heteropatriarchal forces (both internal and external) that US occupation has solidified in our islands. But, in the beloved community that sits at the base of Mauna Kea Access Road, wāhine and māhū continue to be central to the life and leadership of our Hawaiian nation. (Goodyear-​ Kaʻōpua and Mahelona, 2019) For Goodyear-K ​ aʻōpua and Mahelona, the rise of Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu can be attributed to the labour of those wāhine and māhū leaders who worked to (re)grow a community of care and healing on Mauna Kea despite the traumatising threats posed by settler state enforcement to our protectors and our mountain. Both authors allow us to assess our own work as wāhine and māhū protectors whose hands helped raise the encampment from the beginning. To the analyses of AF3IRM Hawaiʻi, and Goodyear-​Kaʻōpua and Mahelona, we thus offer our own perspective on gendered dynamics within Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu from the standpoint of kiaʻi who cared for wāhine and māhū hurt by internalised settler patriarchal violence.

E nānā ʻia mai ka hale o kākou: kiaʻi ʻia, mālama ʻia, e pale aku For over eight months, we lived at Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu to defend our mountain and our people from the violence of settler patriarchy. As kiaʻi of 41

Feminism and Protest Camps

Figure 3.2: Hale Wahine and Hale Māhū at Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu

Source: Authors’ photograph

both Haleakalā and Mauna Kea, we each contributed an aspect of care culture to the puʻuhonua, working with other protectors to collectively establish the Hale Mauna Wahine and Hale Mauna Māhū at Puʻuhuluhulu University as spaces to empower wāhine and māhū through unapologetic defiance against cisheteropatriarchy at camp (see Figure 3.2). In companionship with kiaʻi of the Kapu Aloha crew and Mauna Medics team, we also cultivated a set of protocols to confront cases of gendered and sexual violence reported in the puʻuhonua. The protocols became the founding principles for the ʻAha Kiaʻi Aloha, an organisation tasked with preventing, identifying, addressing and healing the abuse, harm and trauma faced by survivors in camp. The ancestral basis for raising the Hale Mauna Wahine, the Hale Mauna Māhū and the ʻAha Kiaʻi Aloha at Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu emerges from our cosmogonic chant, He Kumulipo (see Liliuokalani, 1978). According to the chant, the progenitors of humanity were, in birth order: the first wāhine named Laʻilaʻi, Kiʻi (a māhū) and Kāne (a kāne). Laʻilaʻi takes Kiʻi as her initial consort, giving rise to the first generation of humans by a wāhine and māhū pairing. She later partners with Kāne, giving birth to the second generation of humans whose rank and station became subordinate to the children of Laʻilaʻi and Kiʻi. The decisions of Laʻilaʻi were by no means coincidental, for through her actions a state of pono was established between humans and divinity –​and between wahine, māhū and kāne –​where relations between their children and the land, if carefully tended to, could proceed in balance and prosperity or imbalance and destruction. He Kumulipo thus 42

The Pu‘u We Planted

awakens us to genders, sexualities and relations that have been abundantly non-​ binary and polyamorous since the beginning of humanity, urging Hawaiians to reclaim ourselves from the colonial desolations of cisheteropatriarchy. The story of our progenitor wahine, māhū and kāne ancestors in He Kumulipo is remembered through their material inscription in the structure of the Hawaiian hale which supplies guidance to our practice of relational camaraderie in the pursuit of: O mai la o Lailai ka paia O Kane a ka Pokinikini ka pou O Kii ka mahu (Kalakaua) Endure, Laʻilaʻi, the walls of the house Endure, Kāne of the countless nights, the posts of the house Endure, Kiʻi, the māhū securing them together (Authors’ translation; see also Kalakaua, 1972) Whereas Laʻilaʻi provides the protective walls of the house, and Kāne the sheltering support of the posts, it is Kiʻi who fastens them together in solidarity as the ʻaha or sennit cordage of the kiʻihei: the lashings, kinks and knots that secure the paia to the pou, and the pou to the paia, through topological mechanics of friction and tension. Together, the structure of the hale and the function of the ʻaha provided us with an indigenous and material framework for defending against the gendered and sexual violence at camp.

Placed in the middle of patriarchal insecurity Having studied various social justice struggles in the past, we realised that the prevalence of gendered and sexual violence, abuse, harm and re/​ traumatisation in activist movements is a harrowing reality, and the struggle to protect Mauna Kea is no exception. For us, the problem was uniquely difficult to confront and effectively address at Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu for several complicated reasons, beginning with the amount of labour needed to oppose external patriarchal violence wielded by the settler state. The overwhelming presence of militarised police forces armed with the same anti-​r ioting technology used on Standing Rock, Black Lives Matter and Palestinian activists –​sound cannons, pepper spray, rubber bullets, tear gas, tasers and so on –​simply posed too much of an immediate threat, one that demanded constant attention from kiaʻi and leaders. In this context, the practice of Kapu Aloha and the rise of Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu as a refuge were largely implemented to dissuade the external use of deadly settler patriarchal violence against protectors. Supplementing these plans were the efforts of pro-​mauna media to counter negative narratives of kiaʻi that could be misconstrued in the news and social media to legitimate the 43

Feminism and Protest Camps

escalation of police and military tactics. The strategies decided upon by kiaʻi and leadership at Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu were thus instrumental in creating an activist security culture at the encampment complete with anti-​surveillance, anti-​infiltration and de-​escalation measures against the military and police. Although necessary, the initial focus of camp security culture on the most apparent dangers posed by state enforcement would nonetheless produce the unintended effect of characterising settler patriarchal violence as a primarily external problem. So when a pattern of internal gendered and sexual violence against wāhine and māhū began to surface in camp, the reports were initially met with disbelief and, at times, outright dismissal by leaders. Sadly, this poor response to gendered and sexual harm in activist organising is much too common (see Chapter 2 by Montoya in this volume), calling into question the limitations of security strategies that lack a trauma-​informed approach to the spectrum of settler patriarchal violence that can penetrate even spaces like Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu. Indeed, our reports of the harm happening in the camp were both minimised as a distraction to the protection of Mauna Kea and hyperbolised as a threat to the safety of the movement, placing our attempts to centre survivors and hold perpetrators accountable in tension with keeping the puʻuhonua and the movement secure from police and military surveillance. Our chapter rejects this state of insecurity that arose at Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu, where the anti-​violence of the camp security culture became entangled with patriarchal cultures of silence, creating a dual dilemma in our struggle to protect Mauna Kea. Breaking the silence of this insecurity, we chronicle how our experiences in the Hale Mauna Wahine, the Hale Mauna Māhū and the ʻAha Kiaʻi Aloha struggled with the need to support wāhine and māhū survivors of patriarchal abuse, hostility and trauma as an expression of our role to defend our mountain and our people. We hope that activists reading these accounts will understand the particular harms of this violence and begin to develop the skills necessary for addressing its occurrence in our movements for liberation. As survivors of gendered and sexual violence ourselves, we are familiar with settler patriarchal trauma and cultures of silence given our personal experiences and the intergenerational histories of abuse our ancestors have faced for centuries within our ʻohana and our lāhui. As kiaʻi of Haleakalā and Mauna Kea, and as survivors of settler patriarchy, we therefore refuse the false dilemma of choosing between protecting the movement or supporting the harmed. Instead, we decide to narrate our experiences with gendered and sexual violence in camp as part of a trauma-​informed approach to advise all future Hawaiian struggles and puʻuhonua to come. While we are aware from experience that sharing our story is unsettling to our lāhui, we nonetheless encourage our nation and allies to reflect on how patriarchal cultures of 44

The Pu‘u We Planted

silence recruit us all to interrogate and police the words of survivors and their supporters rather than surrounding them with a puʻuhonua of committed care and support. In this spirit, we adamantly argue that telling our stories of violence at camp is how we create the culture of security and care we hope to prefigure for our collective liberation. A trauma-​informed approach to activism recognises that harm is both pervasive and repetitive, a legacy of the violent structures we seek to dismantle, including within our organising spaces. To identify, break, and replace these cycles of trauma with cultures of care is to skilfully practise decolonisation and abolition with our bodies and relations. In doing so, our trauma transforms into story, stories we repeat to inform our aloha for the land and each other. In the following case studies, we share our stories and experiences to inform future movements of the need to practise a culture of care, consent and healing at the core of activist security protocols. We begin by recounting our experiences in the Hale Mauna Wahine, illustrating reactions to classes taught in the house about Wākea, Hawaiian and Haole patriarchy, and consent culture, topics that challenged the mainstream narratives of the Mauna Kea movement. Then, we provide stories from the Hale Mauna Māhū and the internalisation of anti-​māhū and anti-​LGBTQIA+​hostility expressed by Hawaiian māhū and kāne towards the house and its members. Finally, we discuss the creation of the ʻAha Kiaʻi Aloha, a set of protocols we designed to centre the needs of survivors who experienced gendered and sexual violence in the puʻuhonua.

He Hale Mauna Wahine: o maila ʻo Laiʻilaʻi ka paia Hale Mauna Wahine was created as a brave space for woman-​identified kiaʻi to gather and connect through shared experiences, to discuss our history of colonialism and heteropatriarchal violence, and to imagine futures of collective care. Built with the helping wāhine hands of Kainani and Keahinui Johnson, this donated four-​pole open tent with mismatched blue and grey tarp walls held stories of resilience and an unwavering commitment to the mauna, ʻohana and lāhui. Hale walls covered with photos donated by kiaʻi honoured our wahine chiefs, leaders, activists, educators, storytellers and grandmothers, enlivening their names and storied memories. Although wahine held many leadership positions, the initial prevalence of movement male speakers somewhat overshadowed their female counterparts. A notable pattern of horizontal female labour upholding day-​to-​day operations remained unseen when countered with heroic male voices elevated on cameras, microphones, ritual drums or religious protocols. Although a balance of front-​facing female leadership eventually emerged, 45

Feminism and Protest Camps

the initial impetus for the Hale Wahine was due to this dissonance. As I documented previously: The Hale Wāhine was my response to continued male dominance. As I approached the Ala Hulu Kupuna road, I looked down to find a chalk drawing: a block figure with names of the four male akua (gods) Kāne, Kū, Lono, and Kanaloa. Why were the male gods drawn here? The majority of akua associated with Mauna Kea are female! Although the name of the mountain is Mauna Kea, the Mauna is in fact the body of Papa (our Mother Earth). Hawaiʻi island kiaʻi call her ʻMama Mauna’ and the lava itself is Pele! So why was masculinity marking territory here? (Ahia, 2020: 610, emphasis in original) Hale Wahine allowed us to openly discuss this visual symbolism. One wahine generously offered an excuse that perhaps kāne were bringing power and mana of the four most revered male gods with them to remind us of their constant protection. Another laughed at the thought that Pele, the volcanic fire goddess still erupting and creating new land at that very moment, needed anyone’s help, for she could level us all with one searing red flow. Still, we were troubled that akuahine from Mauna Kea such as Poliʻahu, Moʻoinanea, Waiau and Līlīnoe have historically been comparatively understudied. Mauna Kea summit is considered Wao Akua, or realm of the gods, and was not intended for permanent human residence. Kanaka only purposely visited, without dwelling long due to its sacred value and inaccessible elevation of 13,800 feet. At 6,600 feet, Hale Wahine became a place of solace from the elements, including elevation, midday sun and unpredictable rain showers. Our bodies already carry inherited intergenerational trauma that is triggered and compounded by the shock, fear and exhaustion induced by frontline action. So providing a station of rest was crucial to our well-​ being: sitting quietly, listening to nēnē birds at dawn or ʻōpeʻapeʻa bats at dusk, watching Līlīnoe mist encircle the mountain every afternoon, or admiring flexible ʻaʻaliʻi pink bushes bending in the harsh winds sweeping the puʻu. Through our plantcestors and animal relations, we learned lessons of strength, resilience, regularity and rest as a form of resistance in the cycles of action and recovery. Puʻuhuluhulu University offered classes on topics pertinent to wahine in the spirit of collective education and empowerment. Hale Wahine hosted speakers on mana wahine, women writers, birthing practices, women’s menstrual rituals, domestic abuse, healing trauma through writing and women’s circles. Art and activism are often paired, yet art is also a tool for deep reflection and healing, so Hale Wahine provided workshops, art supplies and free journals. Storytelling, from formal oratory to casual ‘talk-​story’ 46

The Pu‘u We Planted

sessions, are integral cultural carriers; ancestral knowledge held within frames our world views. To examine gendered abuses of power located within our ancestral Hawaiian stories, we presented research challenging assumptions that harm comes primarily from outside our community. While levels of violence from imperialism, colonialism, heteropatriarchy, military and toxic masculinity are undeniable, unacknowledged power imbalances within our culture can be just as insidious. It is certainly easier to see and accept colonial state violence from foreigners than to admit oppression or imbalances of power exist within our own community. Therefore, we focused on one of our most cherished stories of the origins of Kanaka Maoli related to Mauna Kea, a story of Papahānaumoku or Papa for short (Mother Earth) and Wākea (Sky Father). The importance of the story of Papa and Wākea as the progenitors of Kanaka Maoli cannot be overstated in its value to Hawaiian identity. Papa and Wākea mated and had a daughter Hoʻohōkūkalani, the expanse of the stars. As Hoʻohōkūkalani matured, Wākea desired her as a mate. But instead of asking for Papa’s consent, he called upon his priest Komoʻawa to arrange a way for him to sleep with her. His priest created a new ritual calendar where during certain nights of the month, men and women would eat, sleep and worship separately, allowing Wākea private access to his daughter. This event became the origin of the ‘Ai Kapu state religion. The story continues as it tells how the first child of Hoʻohōkūkalani and Wākea named Hāloanakalaukapalili was stillborn and after being planted, sprouted into the kalo (taro) plant, providing food for the second child, a male also named Hāloa. As the siblings grew, the younger cared for the elder in a reciprocal bond, thus ensuring our cultural relational kuleana to nature as our family elder. In our class entitled, ‘Papa, Wākea, Consent and Kuleana’, we exposed a form of native Hawaiian patriarchy engendered when a male ruler and a male priest conspired to deceive the women of their true intentions. We read this sacred moʻolelo as a lack of consent and a legacy of non-​ accountability. With the rise of the #MeToo movement and calls from kiaʻi of ‘No Consent!’ to the desecration of Mauna Kea, it resonated when we demanded the same sacredness be applied to our bodies. We noted how the TMT builders were re-​enacting the desire to gaze at Hoʻohōkūkalani through their telescope like a voyeur in order to capture her starry mysteries for themselves and search for life on other planets while destroying sacred sites on the earth we inhabit. We discussed the meaning of consent as well as our personal kuleana: our responsibilities, accountability, privileges and rights depending on our positionality and in relation to our personal connections to the mauna. We endeavoured to create brave spaces, as I do not believe a space can be truly safe, especially while under frontline action surveillance and state violence. We bravely tried to build relational pilina 47

Feminism and Protest Camps

strong enough to hold our vulnerability and truth-​telling. Because this sacred moʻolelo is so often retold and considered untouchable, it can be unsettling to listeners when we reveal many details overlooked or ignored by previous generations of storytellers. It required a fierce aloha to hold this new information. Responses of listeners varied during our multiple presentations: scepticism, silent pondering, curiosity and dismay in acknowledging this legacy. Several wahine apologists tried to defend or excuse Wākea’s behaviour and one tried to gaslight my answers to her pointed questions. It is difficult for survivors of sexual violence like ourselves to experience a culture of silence. Wākea being the ultimate father figure in this extensive mauna family reunion only served to reveal a history of dysfunction so many native families endure. #MeToo reminded us not to remain silent. Dismissal, distraction and misdirection were the most common responses. One kāne tried to divert attention by centring Wākea and his kahuna and completely ignoring the wāhine within the story. Some tried to dismiss the story as simply mythology and not real. Others applied a particular cultural reading that reduces characters to their elemental natures in a move to elevate their natural and spiritual value over their symbolic human persona. While we recognise there are many ways to read a story, to ignore the fact that sacred narratives transform collectively according to the historic needs of each generation, is to erase our ancestors’ desires to pass on this important wisdom. A surprisingly hopeful response to the story came from a father of a young daughter, who had listened intently and showed genuine concern as he asked how he could learn more and support his daughter better. As the class gained word of mouth attention, we noticed it was also surveilled by those suspicious that we might upset the status quo. A culture of silence and backlash as evidenced in the #MeToo movement was readily apparent. Hale Wahine provided care and conversation surrounding various forms of trauma experienced within and without the puʻuhonua. We hosted the Mauna Medics Lokahi Team circle discussions called Hale Kūkākūkā, which centred talk-​story, personal experiences and tools to relieve the stress of intergenerational cultural trauma in a frontline action context. As a hale, we collaborated and supported protocols and initiatives to care for our communities. Through our praxis of care culture, we created brave spaces to increase the mana of our kiaʻi wāhine. Together, we recognised the power of our collectivity to dream new ways of being into reality. We shared an unbreakable resilience like the ʻaʻaliʻi plant bending in the shifting winds. We danced, sang, made art, wrote journals, told stories, laughed, cried and joyfully resisted the oppressions intent on silencing our voices.

48

The Pu‘u We Planted

He Hale Mauna Māhū: heia ka pou, heia ka paia Like all things Kanaka Maoli, the Hale Mauna Māhū has a polyamorous parentage. The house was birthed and raised by my sister Dr Kalaniopua Young, who once resided at Puʻuhonua o Waiʻanae –​the houseless and housefree refuge at West Oʻahu that is our mother sanctuary. While living there, she worked with community leaders Aunty Twinkle and Aunty Loke to create a ‘puʻuhonua within a puʻuhonua’ for houseless and housefree māhū, trans, non-​binary and queered residents at the encampment. At Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu, Dr Young applied her experience organising at Puʻuhonua o Waiʻanae to (re)grow yet another space for māhū and LGBTQIA+​as we protected Mauna Kea. The care culture of the Hale Mauna Māhū also drew from Hawaiian, Black and Latinx drag ball genealogies such as those portrayed in Moses Goods’s Lovey Lee or Janet Mock’s award-​winning Netflix series Pose. Like the alternative ʻohana and support provided by traditional drag houses, our hale became a puʻuhonua within the puʻuhonua for houseless, māhū, LGBTQIA+​, Black Kanaka and allies who felt marginalised in camp or who needed a place to stay while protecting the mauna. The hale became a home where we were able to fall in love with the mountain and each other, to spill shady-​ass tea and hold campy kikis, to teach decolonial sex education classes on aikāne and punalua relations, to talk about Hawaiian māhū transcestors and cosmologies, to discuss HIV/​AIDS queer history, to provide PrEP information, to supply contraceptives and lube for folks at camp, to gossip on Grindr and to witness māhū transition with the change of seasons during Ke Ala a Kāne me Kanaloa –​Hawaiian solstice and equinox phenomena. For many of us, the hale became the home and nation we always desired but were constantly thrown out of, a lāhui situated between Mauna Kea and Puʻuhuluhulu where our relations as Hawaiians, wāhine, māhū and kāne, could coincide in powerful, pleasurable ways as we stood together to protect our mountain. With such a multi-​p arent genealogy intersecting across traditions and activisms from Hawaiian, Indigenous, Oceanic, Black, Latinx and LGBTQIA+​communities of colour, it came as an unexpected and traumatic disappointment when the construction of the hale was opposed by off-​mauna māhū from our own lāhui, including a Mauna Kea advocate and māhū leader from Oʻahu whom we respect but who nonetheless demanded that we deconstruct and deplatform. Accusations against the hale were diverse: we were told that the house was a distraction from our duties as protectors, that our space was unnecessary since māhū are already accepted in Hawaiian society and the Mauna Kea movement, and even that we were colonising the mountain with White queer ideologies. These off-​mauna māhū also demanded that we remove our LGBTQIA+​flags and threatened to invade 49

Feminism and Protest Camps

the puʻuhonua to dismantle the structures themselves if we refused to do so, seemingly forgetting that Puʻuhuluhulu was a sanctuary protected by the non-​violence of Kapu Aloha. The criticisms were confusing from our on-​mauna perspective. The first accusation, that we were distracted or distracting, was simply untrue: all of our house members were volunteering full-​time at Hale Hoʻolako, Puʻuhuluhulu University, Mauna Medics, Kapu Aloha Crew, the camp kitchen, ritual ceremony, direct-​action drills, night watch, waste disposal and sanitation. Indeed, the hale actually enhanced participation in the sanctuary precisely because on-​mauna māhū and LGBTQIA+​kiaʻi were able to create a communal space to gather after working all day, a place to reaffirm our relationships with each other and the mountain, a place to just be māhū. No, we were not distracted, we were planted. If there was any distraction to our efforts at Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu, it was off-​mauna māhū attempting to dictate and challenge our decisions as self-​determining organisers. The second accusation –​that māhū and LGBTQIA+​kiaʻi do not need a hale since we are already an accepted part of Kanaka Maoli communities and the Mauna Kea movement –​is an unfortunately common refrain often repeated in our lāhui to disavow its ongoing complicity with cisheteropatriarchy. The danger of this mistaken conviction is that it ends up closeting, gaslighting and silencing māhū experiences of oppression today by appealing to the supposed purity and diversity of an idyllic Hawaiian past untainted by colonisation or patriarchy. The belief ends up weaponising native kinship and time against māhū, alleviating the lāhui of any responsibility to confront cisheteropatriarchy by offering indigeneity as an alibi. Sure enough, these romanticised claims of inclusion were refuted outright when we invited drag queens to the sanctuary to read books to children at the Hale Mauna Māhū. Our guests were met with hostility from a few of the Hawaiian brothers in camp who were fearful that the queens would endanger the youth and upset that we would let queer folx anywhere near children. Oddly, these same kāne seemed to forget that they themselves were bringing their own children to a direct-​action standoff on Mauna Kea against armed police and military forces. Curiously, our brothers were not the only protectors who challenged drag queen presence at the puʻuhonua. The same off-​mauna māhū who told us that the Hale Mauna Māhū was unnecessary since we were already loved and accepted by the movement, also opposed the drag queen reading event. Ostensibly, our māhū siblings were afraid the queens would indecently expose themselves to Hawaiian children by coming under-​dressed to a camp located in a 30°F alpine desert environment at 13,000-​foot elevation in the middle of a violent standoff against the occupying settler state. Lack of faith in drag queen fashion sense notwithstanding, none of these off-​mauna māhū seemed worried about children or indecent exposure whenever Hawaiian men frequented the 50

The Pu‘u We Planted

sanctuary wearing nothing but traditional loincloth exposing their buttocks and bulging crotches to plain view. Nevertheless, the joint opposition from our kāne brothers and māhū siblings resulted in a self-​defeating, unorthodox, negative solidarity between them that simultaneously invalidated the argument that māhū are accepted by our lāhui while confirming the need for a space like the Hale Mauna Māhū at the puʻuhonua. Setting aside these initial critiques and contradictions, the last accusation –​ that on-​mauna māhū were colonising the Mauna Kea movement with haole LGBTQIA+​agendas and ideologies –​is slightly more worthy of contemplation. The targets of this criticism were the multiple LGBTQIA+​ flags being displayed in the Hale Mauna Māhū as a sign of queer solidarity with the movement. Our off-​mauna siblings claimed that we did not need LGBTQIA+​flags at the puʻuhonua because the Hawaiian flag was already representative of all māhū. After being warned to take them down, we were told we were being surveilled, and that if we continued to fly the flags, our hale would be dismantled to prevent the Mauna Kea movement from being colonised by White queer politics. Strangely, the criticism against flying LGBTQIA+​flags gifted in solidarity to the Mauna Kea movement did not seem to apply to the national flags donated by our allies from the Native and Black Americas, Africa, Oceania, Palestine and Asia that were publicly displayed along the Ala Kūpuna. Furthermore, the standard was not adopted toward blatantly imperialist countries like Britain and France, whose flags were flown at the entrance of the puʻuhonua as a reminder of Hawaiian Kingdom treaties made with those countries in the 1840s. For some reason, the LGBTQIA+​flag was singled out by these off-​mauna māhū as dangerous and distracting to our stand against TMT. When we informed camp leadership that the Hale Mauna Māhū was being targeted for dismantling in a sanctuary where Kapu Aloha was the rule, we were told that the issue was minor and of brief consequence, that our conflict was causing distractions for the māhū who were sent to surveil us. Assessing the situation, the anti-​māhū hostility we were confronting from off-​mauna māhū and on-​mauna kāne was the result of an internalised cisheteropatriarchy and military-​police state complex that resulted in the colonial closeting of māhū in the name of safety and indigeneity. Off-​mauna māhū and on-​mauna kāne turned the security culture of the puʻuhonua against us, targeting us as colonial, deviant threats to the camp and the movement. The counterintuitive, self-​defeating, negative solidarity that arose between off-​mauna māhū and on-​mauna kāne ended up participating in the attempted elimination of māhū and LGBTQIA+​kanaka from the space of an indigenous sanctuary, violating the security principles of Kapu Aloha and Hawaiian puʻuhonua traditions. At the same time, the expression of this horizontal and internal elimination varied for the on-​mauna kāne and off-​mauna māhū according to differential 51

Feminism and Protest Camps

gendered logics that nonetheless converged with settler colonialism and cisheteropatriarchy. Our on-​mauna brothers who wanted to expel the drag queens away from their children acted according to a māhūphobic fear of queer transmission that is complicit with the ongoing colonial and patriarchal expulsion of māhū and LGBTQIA+​from Hawaiian land, family, nation, culture, history and activism. While painful and inexcusable, such behaviour is unfortunately anticipated given the proximity of Hawaiian cis men to the gendered hierarchies of colonisation that condition them to surveil, police and protect the norms of cisheteropatriarchal settler society. When juxtaposed with the strong representation of Hawaiian kāne in the militarised state forces sent to remove protectors from the mountain, we see how patriarchy engenders violent complicity between kāne protectors and kāne police against their own people. In comparison, the horizontal hostility stirred by off-​mauna māhū against us, their on-​mauna siblings, emerged in response to a perceived threat that White queer agendas might co-​opt the movement. While the caution was understandable, the actions taken by our siblings to address this potential problem were ultimately self-​defeating: in their attempt to resist settler colonialism and White queerness, they ended up reinforcing the cisheteropatriarchal violence that structurally targets all māhū –​on-​mauna and off-​mauna –​for removal from our lands, families and communities. Moreover, their decisions failed to contemplate the symbiotic relation between cisheteropatriarchy and settler colonialism, both of which reinforce ongoing gendered and sexual violence enacted against Hawaiian māhū and LGBTQIA+​communities. Most disappointing was that their obsessive focus on White queers distracted them from recognising our shared history with queer Black and Indigenous People of Colour who showed up to protect Mauna Kea. This recognition might have helped us all grieve, celebrate and empower our mutual survival, sanctuary and solidarity in ways that decentred Whiteness as we struggled together to protect the land. While I mourn this missed opportunity for alliance, I nevertheless affirm that the Hale Mauna Māhū was a defiant continuation of that solidarity at Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu. By remaining planted in our protection of both mauna and māhū, we refused the cisheteropatriarchal binaries that would cleave and closet our movements through a self-​defeating politics of rejection. Furthermore, while the examples of our kāne brothers and māhū siblings’ complicity given earlier were disappointing, I love them nonetheless. Despite the internal struggles we faced, our difficulties did not eclipse our aloha, nor did it cause us to ignore all the symbolic and material support we received from our people both on and off the mauna. We were able to endure the indignities of our own people turning on us because we felt truly cared for and deeply cherished by our lāhui.

52

The Pu‘u We Planted

To (re)grow the solidarities we experienced at the Hale Mauna Māhū, we encourage all future Hawaiian activists –​wahine, māhū, kāne –​to plant this culture of care in our movements from the inception by centring māhū and LGBTQIA+​approaches to security in its most abundant sense: the relational trust that no matter how complex and difficult the problems may seem, we will not sacrifice either the movement or māhū in the name of safety and indigeneity. A way to skilfully achieve this goal is to first recognise that cisheteropatriarchy and settler colonialism are always trying to remove māhū and LGBTQIA+​from the spaces, structures and processes of Hawaiian movements. A security culture that does not account for these intersections or that attempts to flatten their complexities by focusing solely on indigeneity or coloniality will inevitably be co-​opted and turned against itself, forcing organisers into a false binary where we must choose between either the movement or māhū. Refuse this sacrifice with all your aloha, bind yourselves around this refusal and trust that our māhū ancestors will be there to secure us in that place in the middle.

Ka ʻaha kiaʻi aloha: bound in the middle The Hale Wahine and Hale Māhū provided sanctuary within Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu for wahine, māhū and kāne seeking recognition and belonging at the encampment. However, none of us could foretell how the birth of the hale would also prove auspicious for organising against gendered and sexual harm that would occur at the refuge during the height of the struggle against TMT and the police state. In this section, we share our story of the ʻAha Kiaʻi Aloha, a group of protectors who undertook the physical and emotional labour of protecting the protectors who were harmed by this violence. Indeed, less than two weeks after we raised the Hale Wahine and Hale Māhū, we began to receive our first reports of gendered and sexual trauma at the puʻuhonua from kiaʻi who came to the houses seeking secure places to disclose their experiences. Complaints ranged from unwanted verbal attention to stalking, harassment, inappropriate touch, genital exposure and rape. At the time, there was no official organisation or protocol dedicated to addressing the specific challenges of this violence, including the multiple complications posed by a threatening police state, the sensationalism of pro-​ TMT settler media, and even negative reactions from camp insecurity culture. Fortunately, we had allies at the refuge to advise us from other Indigenous movements like Standing Rock and Ihumatao in Aotearoa. We also referred to our own activist libraries at the Hale which included Haunani-​Kay Trask’s ‘Double Colonization’ (1984), Kalaniopua Young’s ‘From a Native Trans Daughter’ (2015), Sarah Deer’s The Beginning and End of Rape (2015) and Elaine Brown’s A Taste of Power (1992).

53

Feminism and Protest Camps

Most importantly, we collaborated with Noelani Ahia –​co-​founder with Dr Kalama Niheu of the Mauna Medics –​to establish the ʻAha Kiaʻi Aloha, a set of protocols drafted to centre the safety and needs of those harmed by gendered and sexual violence in camp. In the ʻAha Kiaʻi Aloha’s founding document –​written by wahine and māhū –​we developed guiding questions and actions to advise us on how we might approach reports of violence in the sanctuary. We agreed that Mauna Medics should assume responsibility for initial responses, but that all of us would centre the harmed kiaʻi needs and consent regarding how to care for them, their safety and healing. Working with the Medics, we also assembled a support network of medical doctors, mental health practitioners, psychologists specialising in sexual abuse, social workers and healers, all of whom offered their services to the harmed kiaʻi while they were at the puʻuhonua and when they returned to their communities. In addition, we gathered a mauna council of wāhine who could offer advice for the harmed kiaʻi if they desired help determining what they needed as well as a team of supporting kāne who could help enforce the latter’s decisions in camp. Lastly, we appointed members of the ʻAha to educate kāne who came to the puʻuhonua about cisheteropatriarchy so they could hold each other accountable, not only on the frontlines with police but also with other kāne protectors. After following protocol of reporting instances to Mauna Medic and Kiaʻi Aloha leaders, we asked the following types of questions, as appropriate:Would you consent to giving your name or prefer to remain anonymous? Do you need immediate medical care or somewhere safe to sleep tonight? Would you like to talk directly with a trained professional? Or would you just like someone here to listen and witness your experience? Would you be more comfortable talking with someone of a particular gender/​​sexuality? How far would you like to pursue this (with our assistance)? Would you like us to talk with the perpetrator and have them removed, file a police report or seek a temporary restraining order? Would you like aftercare resources in your community? As a whole, the ʻAha protocols attempted to prefigure trauma-​informed cultures of care that would centre those harmed by patriarchal violence in camp as piko of self-​determination. We hoped that such practices would be adopted in future movements, including nationalist movements for Hawaiian sovereignty, which often centre patriarchal states over the wahine and māhū hurt by them. The implementation of these guiding protocols for the defence of harmed kiaʻi would always be imperfect, even though ʻAha members performed their roles above and beyond all expectations. The challenge came from our being bound in the middle of two discordant struggles: protecting harmed kiaʻi at the encampment and remaining silent about the occurrence 54

The Pu‘u We Planted

of that harm for the sake of the movement. This ascetic duality meant that members of the ‘Aha often found ourselves isolated between two parallel movements –​standing to protect the mountain while guarding against our own people. Bound in the middle of this situation, some of the wāhine and māhū traumatised by this internal harm would rationalise their silence as the fulfilment of Kapu Aloha, as a justified and necessary self-​sacrifice to protect Mauna Kea and the lāhui. As members of the ‘Aha, we often asked ourselves why Kapu Aloha and camp security culture did not explicitly centre the prevention of gendered and sexual violence in the puʻuhonua, even when that violence was recognised as a cause of the TMT proponents’ desire for Mauna Kea and rejected with collective shouts of ‘No Consent!’ At minimum, our task as an ʻAha might have been mitigated by a collective effort to confront gendered and sexual violence from the conception of the camp. Kapu Aloha and Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu might have been offered as responsive practices and spaces where this oppression could be abolished and replaced with restorative, transformative, prefigurative cultures of care. Strategically speaking, a movement’s beliefs can be scattered and seeded most effectively when it can claim the moral high ground, which might have been accomplished had we lignified the masses to oppose settler patriarchy as the reason that Mauna Kea and Hawaiians –​especially wāhine and māhū –​were under assault. At the same time, the Wākea-​centred narrative at the heart of the Mauna Kea movement would have made a unified stance against systemic gendered and sexual violence hypocritical. For many kiaʻi, the conviction to protect Mauna Kea remains deeply rooted in a reverence for the moʻolelo of Wākea which uncritically venerates the creation of the ʻAi Kapu as a Hawaiian institution of patriarchy, even when that moʻolelo provides Kanaka Maoli nationalists with an origin story to fight the colonial violence of TMT. Such a tale, with all its complicity and contradiction, could hardly present the enchanting narrative required to assure the mass protection of Mauna Kea. Or could it? As an ʻAha bound in the middle of the struggle to protect both the mountain and her protectors from gendered and sexual violence, we were compelled by our experience at camp to restory our reasons for defending Mauna Kea. Following our ʻAha protocol, we centred Papahānaumoku and Hoʻohōkūkalani as wāhine who were targeted by the patriarchal and hierarchical manipulations of Wākea and his priest Komoʻawa, drawing attention to the ways this control is marginalised in both the moʻolelo and the mauna movement. We then named Papa and Hoʻohōkūkalani trauma in the ongoing struggle to protect the mountain, taking care to illuminate how TMT and its militarised police were willing to colonise our earth mother (Papa, the mauna in Mauna Kea) in order to gaze at our sky mother (Hoʻohōkūkalani, the stars). Finally, we extended 55

Feminism and Protest Camps

this continuum of patriarchal violence to the wāhine and māhū harmed at the refuge, centring and raising them as piko and puʻuhonua. Fearlessly reckoning with past and present expressions of patriarchy from Wākea to TMT to Puʻuhuluhulu allowed us to outgrow the duality binding us in the middle of our fight to care for each other and the mauna. By shifting our principles for defending the mountain to centre those most harmed by patriarchal violence, we cradled an umbilical bond from Papahānaumoku and Hoʻohōkūkalani to the mauna and the survivors of the puʻuhonua. As ʻAha protectors, we provided evidence in action that a collective struggle against gendered and sexual violence in our movement was not only possible but practised. What we needed as ʻAha survivors was a collective willingness to organise around this survivor-​centred, trauma-​informed, restorative, transformative approach to self-​determination and sovereignty, which we insist must always be at the piko of our movements. We call on all kiaʻi to carry this kuleana with us into our future movements so that we can end the violence of settler patriarchy binding us all.

Conclusion On 12 July 2020, a year after the rise of our beloved puʻuhonua, we finally ascended the slopes of Puʻuhuluhulu for the first time together with our hānai, Kanealii Williams, who was part of our hale ʻohana. We had flown back to Hawaiʻi island after leaving camp in March due to COVID-​19, returning for a few days to visit with Alika Kinimaka, Lena Pahia, Alfonso Kekuku, Titus Matthews, Uncle Sam and the rest of Nā Kiaʻi Paʻa –​the remaining protectors of Mauna Kea, still standing strong. We were there to celebrate the rededication of the sanctuary by the Royal Order of Kamehameha I, who attested that the puʻuhonua has never been closed. The parking lot and the plateau where Puʻuhuluhulu University, the Hale Mauna Wahine and the Hale Mauna Māhū once stood were completely vacant, like the rest of the camp that once grew there. As we exchanged bittersweet memories, we absorbed the surreal feeling of climbing the puʻu when the sounds of kūpuna wailing, police shouting orders, celebrities singing, crowds chanting, drums beating, could no longer be heard. As we reached the top of Puʻuhuluhulu, the silence we sensed as we ascended was interrupted by a fluttering in the wind: the Hae Hawaiʻi, still standing strong (see Figure 3.3). But our attention was elsewhere, somewhere beyond nationalist dreams, and states, and kingdoms. Deeper. In the soil beneath us, rising. We had done well in keeping Puʻuhuluhulu safe, protected. For the mound is a seed bank, a puʻu that will give birth to countless Hawaiian plants, some found nowhere else in the world. From the seeds of the puʻu, life will one day (re)grow on the scorched lava surrounding us, restoring and regenerating 56

The Pu‘u We Planted

Figure 3.3: Authors at Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu during the 2020 camp reunion

Source: Authors’ photograph

the landscape, the mauna. And in that vision of a world emerging, it is our hope that the wāhine, māhū and kāne in our lāhui will breathe life into the relations of care and healing we will collectively need. Our future is a puʻuhonua: a trauma-​informed space-​time to come that is born and raised beneath and beyond settled desires for sovereignty, ownership, states, markets, prisons and patriarchy. Our future is a puʻuhonua, where the labour of liberation carried by wāhine and māhū can retire as we engage in revolutionary rest, where our needs as survivors and visionaries are centred. Our future is a puʻuhonua: the puʻu we grew, the puʻu we planted. Glossary Aikāne Akua Akuahine Ala Kupuna Aloha ʻĀina

Intimate, often sexual and polyamorous relations between kāne and kāne, wahine and wahine, māhū and māhū Deity or god Wahine deity or god The road to Mauna Kea summit reoccupied and reclaimed by elders during the 2019 direct action to stop TMT from desecrating our mountain The deep love of Hawaiians for our land, people and nation articulated as an embodied desire for justice and liberation 57

Feminism and Protest Camps

Hānai Hae Hawaiʻi Hale Kāne Kahuna Kalo Kanaka Maoli Kapu Aloha

Kiaʻi

Kiʻihei Kūpuna Kuleana Lāhui Māhū Mana Mauna Moʻolelo Paia Piko Pilina Pou Punalua

To raise, nourish and feed; a foster or adopted child One of the nationalist flags of the Hawaiian Kingdom House, home, ancestor, person Hawaiian non-​binary identity and relation that shelters and houses all men Knowledgeable expert or skilled professional The taro plant. Kanaka Maoli trace our ancestry to Hāloa, a kalo plant born to Papahānaumoku and Hoʻohōkūkalani who is considered our elder sibling Hawaiian people descended from Papahānaumoku through Hoʻohōkūkalani and Hāloa Sacred prohibitions for living at Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu and Mauna Kea that promoted non-​ violent direct action. Kapu Aloha was also the name of an organisation at the sanctuary responsible for maintaining the prohibition of violence A relation of mutual protection established by the prehuman ancestors of Hawaiians and continued by their descendants today. The term is the preferred name for activists protecting Mauna Kea X-​shaped sennit cord lashing used to secure the walls and posts of Hawaiian hale together, associated with the first māhū named Kiʻi Elder, ancestor Genealogical privilege and responsibility to land and people Nation, species Hawaiian non-​binary identity and relation that shelters and houses intersex, trans, queer folx Power, the branching and differentiating phenomena observed in plants, rivers, lightning Mountain, mountain regions, adze stone Genealogical succession of stories Wall of a Hawaiian hale, associated with the first wahine, named Laʻilaʻi Umbilical cord, navel, fontanel, genitalia, summit of mountains Relations, connections, kinship Posts of a Hawaiian hale, associated with the first kāne named Kāne Multiple springs of water, polyamorous relations

58

The Pu‘u We Planted

Puʻu Puʻuhonua Wahine

Wao Akua ʻĀina ʻAha ʻAi Kapu ʻOhana

Hill, raised ground, pregnancy Refuge, sanctuary, asylum. Puʻuhonua were places of safety during times of war Hawaiian non-​binary identity and relation that shelters and houses all women. The spelling changes in Hawaiian between ‘wahine’ and ‘wāhine’. The former is singular, the latter is plural but this grammatical feature is not usually apparent when the word appears in English contexts Sacred regions where deities dwell. Human presence and habitation is prohibited Land, that which feeds and is fed, that which is burned or ignited Sennit cord, a meeting or assembly, a ritual gathering for recitation of prayers System of rules and restrictions created by the chief Wākea and his priest Komoʻawa to deceive and control Papahānaumoku Asexually birthed offspring of kalo, a term for family that shelters and houses all Hawaiian relations

Note 1

This chapter does not italicise Hawaiian language terms due to language revitalisation protocols. A glossary is provided above.

References AF3IRM Hawaiʻi (2019) ‘Decolonize Feminism: Why Feminists Should Care About Mauna Kea’, 22 July. Available from: https://​haw​aii-​78988. med​ium.com/​dec​olon​ize-​femin​ism-​why-​femini​sts-​sho​uld-​care-​about-​ mauna-​kea-​3e0ff​5b5f​ab4 [Accessed 30 June 2021]. Ahia, M. (2020) ‘Mālama Mauna: An Ethics of Care Culture and Kuleana’, Biography: An Interdisciplinary Journal –​We Are Maunakea, 43(3): 607–​12. Brown, E. (1992) A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story, New York: Pantheon Books. Deer, S. (2015) The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Goodyear-​Kaʻōpua, N. and Mahelona, Y. (2019) ‘Protecting Maunakea Is a Mission Grounded in Tradition’, Zora, 5 September. Available ​ issi​ on-g​ roun​ from: https://​zora.med​ium.com/​pro​tect​ing-​maunak​ ea-i​ s-a​ -m ded-​in-​tradit​ion-​38a62​df57​086 [Accessed 30 June 2021].

59

Feminism and Protest Camps

Kalakaua (1972) ‘The Kalakaua Text’, in M.W. Beckwith (transl and ed) The Kumulipo: A Hawaiian Creation Chant, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Liliuokalani (1978) The Kumulipo: An Hawaiian Creation Myth, Kentfield, CA: Pueo Press. Trask, H.-​K . (1984) Fighting the Battle of Double Colonization: The View of a Hawaiian Feminist, East Lansing, MI: Office of Women in International Development. Young, K. (2015) ‘From a Native Trans Daughter: Carceral Refusal, Settler Colonialism, Re-​routing the Roots of an Indigenous Abolitionist Imaginary’, in E.A. Stanley and N. Smith (eds) Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, 2nd edn, Oakland, CA: AK Press, pp 83–​96.

60

4

‘You Can’t Kill the Spirit’ (But You Can Try): Gendered Contestations and Contradictions at Menwith Hill Women’s Peace Camp Finn Mackay

Introduction First beginning operations in the 1960s, Menwith Hill is a satellite communications listening station run by the US National Security Agency (NSA). It is situated on the North Yorkshire moors in the UK, approximately seven miles west of Harrogate, on the A59 Harrogate to Skipton road. The NSA base is the largest known spy base in the world, consisting of giant white radomes, which resemble golf balls, covering over 600 acres of countryside (see Figure 4.1). The first two domes were built in 1974; in 2021, at the time of writing, they number 37. These radomes are weatherproof, protective covers for huge satellite dishes beneath, which point this way and that, allegedly internally and externally; listening in to all telecommunications in the northern hemisphere (Campbell and Melvern, 1980). The United States has another corresponding base, although smaller, covering telecommunications in the southern hemisphere, which is located at Pine Gap in Australia (Bartlett, 2013 –​and see Chapter 12 by Bartlett in this volume), and both bases also link directly with NSA’s US headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland. The role of the base is the gathering of military, political and economic information advantageous to the interests of the United States; it is also part of the US Ballistic Missile Defence system and is central to US military operations around the world, providing intelligence for warfare, such as real-​time information for drone operations (Schofield, 2012). The base is effectively foreign soil, using 61

Feminism and Protest Camps

Figure 4.1: Radomes at Menwith Hill, Yorkshire, November 2005

Source: Matt Crypto, https://​comm​ons.wikime​dia.org/​wiki/​File:Menw​ith-​hill-​rado​mes.jpg, Creative Commons

dollars on site, shipping in all supplies and consumer items; drivers drive on the right-​hand side of the roads while inside the base. Despite this, responsibility for securing the area sits with British Ministry of Defence (MoD) police, who patrol regularly around the perimeter fences and work from a police station at the gatehouse of the main entrance. A women’s peace camp was established outside Menwith Hill from 1993 at weekends, and –​following an appeal from prison (for convictions due to non-​violent direct action or NVDA) by founding and influential Greenham peacewoman, the late, great, Helen John –​ran permanently from 1994 for around five years. (On the enduring influence of John, see the mention of her in Chapter 15 by Kerrow et al in this volume, and also the documentary ‘Disarming Grandmothers’; Pope, 2012.) The camp was wo-​manned from the start by peace activist and researcher Anne Lee, among many others over the years (FFVC, 1996). Prior to this there had been temporary mixed peace camps, regular protests and events organised by groups like the local Yorkshire Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), national CND and the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases or CAAB.1 Women-​ only peace camps obviously follow the legacy of the camp at Greenham Common, though that initially started out as mixed. There are both practical and feminist political reasons for the prioritising of women; as Helen John would always say to me, it is not about excluding men, it is about including 62

‘You Can’t Kill The Spirit’ (But You Can Try)

women. Many problems of exclusion and violence towards women can arise in mixed protest camps, as several chapters in this volume attest. For example, Chapter 7 by Emma Gómez Nicolau points to issues at a mixed protest in Spain in 2011, where safety concerns for women, lesbians and LGBTQ participants became apparent, culminating in an incident where a banner proclaiming feminist revolution was torn down by a male protestor to applause from others. This chapter retells personal stories of my time at Menwith Hill Women’s Peace Camp in the light of subsequent developments in British feminism and protest culture, and in feminist and queer theory. I am reflecting here on events from over 20 years ago now, and weaving my own tales from the memories I have; always partial, always from my own standpoint on the land. As Claire Hemmings (2011) insists, feminist storytelling, and storytelling about feminism, matters –​such narratives construct images and imaginaries at the same time as they seek to describe them. Recounting personal experiences of cultural and political events that then become the subject of study as ‘history’, or are analysed and critiqued as institutions –​in many cases by those who were not there –​can be a discombobulating process. A personal experience that was a marginal one, shared only by particular insiders, becomes known to wider culture and so one’s own memories and stories are brought to life again, and can be compared to what is presented in the current discourse. In this chapter I reflect on experiences related to two topics, both of which have gone from being arguably niche concerns within feminist activism to mainstays of public interest and commentary: first, the recently highlighted scandal of undercover police in protest movements in the UK, including the peace movement and the camp I lived at myself; and, second, the so-​ called ‘gender wars’ and the construction and expression of gender and gender identities at women’s peace camps. In both these instances, I watch stories unfolding in mainstream news outlets and political channels in ways that do not always reflect my own understanding of those sites and events. This is particularly the case with common misconceptions and framings of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, and by implication the whole of the women’s peace movement, as essentialist, retrograde and transphobic. This was certainly not my experience, as I shall argue later. I begin with an account of my journey to Menwith Hill before turning to police efforts at infiltration.

The road out: my journey to Menwith Hill I first visited the permanent women’s peace camp in the summer of 1994 when I left school and was waiting to start college later that year. I was 17 years old and had been inspired by Greenham since the age of 63

Feminism and Protest Camps

seven. Coming from a largely poor, farming community in rural south-​ west Scotland I was perhaps not the usual demographic, but had grown up with political parents who made up for in culture what they missed economically. Family friends in the next village happened to be two women who visited Greenham and brought me back bits of snipped fence and cassette tapes of peace songs. When I finished secondary school at the local mixed comprehensive in the nearest town, I broke a household rule by using the phone on my own. Using the phone was not allowed, due to the cost, as my parents were often unemployed and money was tight. I waited until my parents were out, and rang the old operator number to find the contact for national CND based in London. I then rang CND to ask if there were any women’s peace camps in the country and was given the name and number of someone called Betty in Otley, who was a contact for a peace camp at an American base near there. In conversation with Betty I found out the nearest train station and arranged to visit for the summer holidays. I was met at the station by a woman called Jo, who was wearing an LA Raiders black beanie hat and a silver bomber jacket. Escorted to a little blue van I met Helen John and her partner at the time. The women had stopped off to collect some new printed flyers about Menwith Hill and the role of the base; I was given one to read in the back of the van. This was useful as I did not know the first thing about the base or what it did. Although much of my motivation was getting involved in political direct action, perhaps a stronger motivation was getting away from a difficult home life, and from the isolated rural location I had felt trapped in for a long time. After setting up my tent I was shown round Moonbow Corner, which was, at that time, on the edge of the A59, at the corner of a turnoff down one of the roads to the base entrance (see Figure 4.2). There was a toilet tent, a couple of caravans and a firepit area with a tarpaulin roof on a metal frame. All the food had to be kept in tins or jars because of the rats, and water was in large plastic containers that had to be driven back and forth to the small town of Otley a few miles away, where local supporters refilled them and peacewomen could wash clothes and take showers. Around the fire on the first night I remember everyone laughing at me because I knew all the words to Greenham songs, even though I had never been there. As it happened I had arrived at Menwith just before the start of the Women on the Road for Peace tour, which was set to go back up towards where I had just come from, to the nuclear processing plant at Sellafield in Cumbria, and then from there, down to the Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment, and then Greenham Common in Newbury, Berkshire, in the south of England. I was absolutely beside myself that I was finally going to make it to Greenham, and, when asked by the women in a circle of consensus decision-​making about my view on the best day to head off there, I replied 64

‘You Can’t Kill The Spirit’ (But You Can Try)

Figure 4.2: Moonbow Corner camp as it was when I first visited

Source: Still from documentary, ‘Don’t Trust Men with Balls’, online at https://​www.yout​ube. com/​watch?v=​K2e8​98z9​OGY&t=​5s. The documentary was made collectively by and with camp inhabitants, including the author. The end credits attribute it to ‘Vera and All the Women at Camp’. It is not copyrighted and can be freely distributed.

that I had been waiting to go to Greenham for ten years, so one more day wouldn’t make a difference. That summer I got arrested for the first time, on suspicion of criminal damage after being found inside the base at Menwith with my friend TJ. Peacewomen came in a battered old camp car to meet us at the main gate and brought chocolate and sweets to honour this rite of passage. I got to Greenham Common at last, staying at Green Gate, while the site was still being used by NATO forces for training exercises, although the US military had long gone. Several of us sneaked in, between security patrols, and explored one of the famous bunkers, almost getting lost in the tunnels on the way out. A peacewoman called Jane taught me how to cut chain link fence with bolt cutters and then gathered up the snippings, saying: ‘don’t feel obliged to keep those’. Of course, I did, and made them into a mobile which I still have, currently hanging in my kitchen window. It was a truly magical time and I decided to return to Menwith permanently once I completed my course at the local agricultural college to which I had applied. I was at Womenwith Hill, as we called it, for all holidays, including Christmas, and then moved to live at camp in early 1995, staying for around a year and a 65

Feminism and Protest Camps

half. As a permanent resident I got my own caravan, a tiny one-​person van. I was involved in all parts of camp life: I took part in and organised NVDA, defended myself in court, wrote newsletters and articles, managed the mailing list and donations and did media work. It is the definition of empowerment, not the now overhyped, neoliberal media construct of that word, but that term in its real sense, to take politics into your own hands. To be in a group committed to a certain political vision and then taking your struggle to the very gates of the institution you seek to change, and together starting to take it apart, literally and metaphorically, is an irreplaceable experience that I carry with me every day.

Watching the web My time at peace camp has given me insight into how the state works or, rather, who it works for and who it works against. The first times I was arrested on blockades, we were confronted sometimes with armed police, and once police outriders in militarised black leather and opaque visors on their helmets. We were thrown into the caged backs of dog-​handler vans while police waited for riot vans to arrive. Sometimes we were left in the tiny cells in riot vans for several hours while the local police station struggled to process us all. I can still feel the emotion of sitting in the road with a handful of protestors, singing peace songs, while being physically dragged away by police who looked like soldiers; it was overwhelming, the injustice of it, the upside-​down unfairness of mistreating us for protesting against war and war-​making. It was certainly a political education to go through the criminal justice system, to experience police harassment and violence, to witness first-​hand how the police as an institution can and do use lies and cover-​ups to protect their own and attack others. Long before the current spycops scandal came to light in the UK around 2011 (COPS, nd), those of us involved in NVDA knew only too well that undercover police were possible, present and to be expected and managed. Now it has been publicly exposed, of course, that undercover police had key roles in many of the most influential direct-​action campaigns in the UK through the 1990s, in anti-​roads occupations, in animal rights groups and the peace movement. Undercover male officers engaged in non-​consensual relationships with women protestors, even having children with those women, all under false pretences (Police Spies Out of Lives, nd). Peacewomen share stories of undercover police at Greenham and other protests too, including the anti-​roads protests of the 1990s and against the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994. I see many parallels with such mobilisations then and the more recent uprisings against the UK Policing, Sentencing and Courts Bill, even down to the familiar placard slogans such as ‘Kill The Bill’. I note with despair the lack of political awareness and 66

‘You Can’t Kill The Spirit’ (But You Can Try)

political history, even among the Left, that leads to common misconceptions that such phrasing refers to attacking or killing police, as in the English slang for the police force ‘the Old Bill’ or ‘the Bill’. Being alert to the potential of undercover police, in my activist experience, peacewomen used to warn of anyone who went off at the same time every day because they had to make a call, and to look out for those who were always at the front of demonstrations urging violent disruption against property or police, but who then disappeared whenever conflict arose; to notice who always seemed to just miss a sweep of arrests or who was always conveniently away when there was an eviction. There are also many insider clichés about shoes –​polished shoes, shoes that are too clean, or police issue safety shoes! At Menwith we had a police infiltrator who herself was manipulated by the police. The policy of inclusion at peace camp, common to all as I understand, was that unless a woman was violent, she would not be denied entry or inclusion. This meant that while we had our suspicions about this individual, and raised them with her, we would always conclude that she was welcome regardless. Our Menwith infiltrator was a young woman who had desperately wanted to join the police, she had tried to become a special constable and somewhere along the line had been persuaded that if she gathered information on us, she would be rewarded by a job in the MoD police. It later emerged that there was never any intention of giving her such a job, and her specific vulnerabilities had been exploited. One night while we were round the fire, an MoD police patrol, who we knew as a regular, pulled into our lay-​by and came over to talk to us. The officer told us that they had been doing their usual patrols around the roads that surround the base, and had noticed a young woman sleeping in her car, parked up in a lay-​by further down the main road. We were told that this young woman had a difficult home life, and we were asked if, for her safety, she would be welcome to park up in our lay-​by and sleep in her car there instead. Of course, we said yes, and Justine joined our camp. We became friends with her and she generously used her car to ferry campers to court visits, or for signing on in the nearest town and for shopping trips. Justine did not like the camp vegan food, she did not like cold, muddy tents or communal caravans so she slept in her car in the lay-​by, going home to her parents to shower and for clean clothes. While Justine was with us we noticed our camp diaries would go missing, then reappear, as did the camp address book. Many suspected she was working with the police, but we didn’t realise until it all came out just how used by them she had been. We were all sorry about the episode, not because we were endangered in any way by it, or our security invaded –​as we were living outside the world’s largest military spy base we always assumed that everything we said and did was monitored somehow. We were sorry because Justine then lost a network and, I think, people who had been real friends to her, and who had included 67

Feminism and Protest Camps

her as an equal, non-​judgementally. The police were the ones who emerged as the worst party in the whole business. Justine broke the story herself in the end, in the local press, when she realised that the police were never going to deliver on all the false promises they had made her. We reached out to her and told her she was still welcome, but we never saw her again.

Pitching up: feminist tendencies at peace camp As I have always been a queer boi with transgender tendencies, a women’s peace camp may not seem initially, to the reader, to be my natural home. Much scholarship has addressed the essentialist assumptions, stereotypes and activist tropes often attached to Cold War women’s peace movements, not least to the camp at Greenham Common (Roseneil, 1995; Managhan, 2007). As Catherine Eschle (2013) notes, discursive constructions of peacewomen include earth-​mothers and Goddess-​worshippers. Indeed, these were a focus of criticism of those protests, at the time, from within the feminist movement. My own research on UK feminist activism from the second wave to the resurgence in the 2000s encountered Radical Feminists, lesbian feminists and revolutionary feminists who reported doubts about the women’s peace movement (Mackay, 2015). Some had resisted visits to protest at Greenham, put off by the maternal imagery of baby booties tied to the fence along with teddy bears or photos of children (Griffiths, 1995), and an uncomfortable suspicion that women were being called to activism on the grounds of being natural protectors of human and all life. Many rejected this biological essentialism (see also Chapter 15 by Kerrow et al in this volume). These differences speak to broader differences in feminism itself, between lesbian feminism and other strands (Campbell, 1980), and perhaps particularly between cultural feminism and Radical Feminism (Banerjea et al, 2019). Cultural feminism is generally understood as motivated by a belief in a natural female superiority and naturally superior female values, the aim being to celebrate and adopt these superior values for all, and for the sake of all humankind, regardless of sex. These female values emerge from an ability to create life in pregnancy and motherhood, whether or not an individual chooses to do so (Alpert, 1973). Radical Feminism, meanwhile, emerged from the New Left, from anti-​war and anti-​racist organising. Radical Feminist theory is characterised by a commitment to anti-​essentialism and a clarity that unjust systems of social organisation under patriarchy can be changed because women and men are not, in fact, different species, nor genetically programmed to either make peace or make war (Millett, 1972). Writing of early second-​wave feminism, Alice Echols emphasises that cultural feminism may have emerged from Radical Feminism, but was not widely accepted in the feminist movement as a whole. ‘This nascent cultural feminism within radical feminism, which was sometimes termed “female 68

‘You Can’t Kill The Spirit’ (But You Can Try)

cultural nationalism” by its critics, was assailed by radical and Left feminists alike’ (Echols, 1989: 243). Because feminism as a social movement is simplified and misrepresented, these two very different schools of feminism –​Radical and cultural –​are often conflated. ‘Though cultural feminism came out of the radical feminist movement, the premises of the two tendencies are antithetical. Yet on the Left and elsewhere the distinction is rarely made’ (Willis, 1984: 91). It is often wrongly suggested that Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp was some sort of essentialist red tent: transphobic, classist, heterosexual and conservative. For example, writing in the New York Times in 2019, Sophie Lewis maps the roots of anti-​trans feminism as beginning at Greenham. ‘The movement crossed over to Britain in the 1980s, when cultural feminism was among the lesbian-​separatist elements of antinuclear protest groups who saw themselves as part of a “feminist resistance” to patriarchal science, taking a stand against nuclear weapons, test-​tube babies and male-​to-​female transexual surgery alike’ (Lewis, 2019). This is an outrageous generalisation and accusation, not least because queer and genderqueer campers were certainly present at Greenham. For example, overdue attention to the creative subculture from the Rebel Dykes of London in the 1980s –​a punky, intersectional and inclusive feminism –​reveals that many of those pioneering dyke activists and creatives first met at Greenham (Lloyd, 2017). In addition, it should be noted that biological essentialism was often ridiculed, deconstructed, weaponised and rejected by Greenham campers themselves, as can be seen in the queering of pop songs, hymns and folk music at Greenham (Feigenbaum, 2010). In the earlier quote from the New York Times, Lewis argues that Greenham politics were a regressive feminist resistance to science and technology. Ecofeminism was indeed visible in the politics of Greenham, but I would argue that ecofeminism is a valid school of feminism, and should not be used as an insult; it is not against science and technology but against what humans often choose to do with that knowledge and potential (Shiva, 1993). Far from being anti-​progress, ecofeminism is an intersectional, multidisciplinary feminist approach which contains pertinent and arguably increasingly relevant critiques of the deadly legacy of masculinist Enlightenment theory, or what we could call EnWhitenment theory (see Chapter 8 by Haran and Chapter 13 by Moore in this volume). This is not to deny that essentialist or maternalist strands were influential at Greenham, or at any other women’s peace camp to this day. Arguably, a Daly-​esque (Daly, 1973) version of ecofeminism can be read in the protest throughout, ‘through songs that sang of the spirit and mother earth, poetry and prose about witches and the Goddess’ (Welch, 2010: 230). Plus, the herstory of the Greenham camp is that it grew out of a march proudly advertising itself as made up of mothers for peace. Over the years, however, the camp included multitudes of motivations and inspirations. 69

Feminism and Protest Camps

Peacewomen were aware of their image in the media and among much of mainstream society; this image was reclaimed and directed back out. Mainstream society certainly did not always see Greenham women as maternal mothers protecting their children from nuclear death, quite the opposite. Thus the songs and chants often included references to hating men, abandoning children and practising witchcraft. Tampons were tied to the fence. Loud and raucous references to lesbianism and lesbian sex were made at every opportunity, when in courtrooms or on shopping trips for example, whether or not the women involved were lesbians (see again Chapter 15 by Kerrow et al, this volume). Goddess images and women’s symbols became representative of being a ‘Greenham Woman’, rather than of sign-​up to any strand of feminism: ‘ironic, self-​mocking gestures –​in songs, on banners, badges and leaflets, spray-​painted on road signs and walls all over Berkshire and beyond –​made a clear statement about where Greenham women were locating themselves in relation to “regimes of the normal” ’ (Roseneil, 2000: 6). Within feminism as a broader movement at that time, there was also a strong political rejection of maternalism and cultural feminism, which no doubt influenced Greenham campers too as the wider Women’s Liberation Movement was in many ways the web that helped the camp to function, communicate messages, promote events, and receive practical and financial support. While the rainbow colour-​coded camps at the gates around Greenham were understood to have different characteristics, from ecofeminist spiritual to anarchist, all arguably made use of the slogans, chants, symbols and songs that came to represent Greenham and the women’s peace movement, whether in an irreverent or more arcane way. Such collective rituals contribute to collective identity (Taylor, 1989; Reger, 2002). Shared language and practices can foster solidarity and maintain morale: ‘the daily, intimate communications that shape (and make possible) activist communities demand, at least momentarily, a common language’ (Feigenbaum, 2010: 385). This could be seen as almost spiritual, or ritualistic, or be experienced as such, in their effect. Used for ‘collective creation’, such practices served to bring together a diverse community often of differing political standpoints (Steans, 2013: 218). For example, campers at Greenham and Menwith Hill frequently took up terms previously used as slurs for independent women, such as ‘hags’, or ‘witches’. For some this was a significant part of a much wider aim of changing language and culture to a more woman-​centric one, a commendable aim. For others it was an element of peace camp culture, but did not come with a requirement of adherence to ecofeminism, women’s spirituality movements nor cultural feminism. Therefore, the presence of a shit-​pit dug into a crude women’s symbol cannot and should not be taken as proof of a wedding to biological essentialism, nor does the claiming of everything as ‘cosmic’ suggest a universal worship of Goddess entities. 70

‘You Can’t Kill The Spirit’ (But You Can Try)

Camp as a row of tents: gender at peace camp My memories of living at peace camp are of a period in my life noteworthy by the absence of gender or, rather, the absence of gendered pressures. This was partly because we were, practically speaking, living outside of the scrutinising glare of capitalism’s body beautiful industry (Lury, 1996). I simply did not see billboard adverts, film trailers or shop window displays. These images did not assault me on the daily basis they do in mainstream life. For me, as someone who has identified with masculinity for as long as I can remember, this meant that I was blissfully free of the mid-​1990s expanding explosion of visibility and use of the male body and hyper-​ masculine tropes in media and advertising (Bocock, 1993; Brod and Kaufman, 1994). In terms of gender presentation, the models I had with which to compare and contrast my own identity and presentation were all female-​bodied, and ranged from what would stereotypically be seen as more masculine to more feminine. At peace camp I was able to breathe out a sigh of tensely held self-​consciousness and see and know other female-​ bodied masculine people (Halberstam, 1998). I met women who had spent years living and passing as men in different environments, including working as men to secure jobs. There were women who flamboyantly grew full beards or manicured moustaches. I was friends with women who were expert in men’s fashion and tailoring, women who had not worn an item of ‘women’s clothing’ for decades. This was not some lesbian feminist rejection of femininity on political grounds; it was an expression of gender, be that gender identity or gender preference, and many of us shared experience of long-​held identification with masculinity that we understood to feel natural (Levitt and Hiestand, 2004), while having an intellectual and political critique of any born-​this-​way concept of gender. While there was obviously a diversity of body shape and size, it was a relief to shop in clothing stores with people who also had to accommodate hips in trousers from the men’s department, or who also wore sports tops to flatten their chests to straighten the appearance of shirts. This became normal, rather than abnormal and thus I felt normal, rather than abnormal. In a Butlerian sense, camp was a place where gender, as in masculinity or femininity, was more easily and seamlessly separated from and independent of sexed bodies. ‘There is no “proper” gender, a gender proper to one sex rather than another, which is in some sense that sex’s cultural property’ (Butler, 1993: 312). I was no longer only limited to looking for resonating images of selfhood in male-​bodied people, and therefore was no longer having to compare my own presentation to bodies with flat chests, narrow hips or broader shoulders. Gender did not disappear at camp, into some externally prevalent stereotypical vision of a homogenous wood pallet of women in unisex dungarees. It was present as an expression, style and preference and 71

Feminism and Protest Camps

definitely visible; but at the same time completely different from gender ‘outside’ in the world. Most campers wore practical clothes of course, for living outdoors in all weathers, but this was mainly the case for permanent residents. Hairstyles varied, buzz cuts were not the norm as these actually require more maintenance, having to be cut more regularly. Women often cut their own hair, or shaved the sides to sport a mullet style. Many had long hair, which they would often say was less labour-​intensive as it did not require cutting as often and could be tied back when it got too long. For some women, longer hairstyles were an expression of femininity; some more cosmic witchy campers who identified with the ‘Earth-​Mother’ (Eschle, 2013: 721) or ecofeminist identity wore their hair long as part of that; for others it was not by design but simply practical. Weekenders and visitors were often in civvies. I recall 1990s ‘lesbian chic’ styles (Cottingham, 1996), and of course this overlapped sometimes with the grunge aesthetic of the time, or what Laura Cottingham critiques as the Tank-​Girl effect. This included ‘the donning of laced boots, including Doc Martens, Timberland work boots and heavy combats; short and buzzed hair without feminised bangs or feathered fringe; loose-​fitting plaid flannel shirts; and minimal or no jewellery or make-​up’ (Cottingham, 1996: 51). There were also the subcultural styles that went with the New Age Travellers of the time, as well as goths, femme styles and clubber trends. What was different in the peace camp context, especially for those living there permanently, was that gender did not have so many rules or expectations. Styles, cultural codes and expressions could be taken on, taken off, wilfully ignored, blended and disrupted; or stolen and displayed on the types of physical bodies they were never intended for.

Making a home in women-​only space It is perhaps counterintuitive that a women-​only setting such as a women’s peace camp could include masculine individuals, but this has always been the case throughout the whole of the Women’s Liberation Movement (Noble, 2004). It is not always an easy relationship: phenomena such as the so-​ called lesbian ‘sex wars’ and the forceful influx of lesbian feminist theory on femme-​butch identities and relationships made many cautious about entering women-only spaces (Carter and Noble, 1996; Mackay, 2019). Reflecting on this now bears extra weight, due to the contemporary context of the manufactured culture-​wars in the UK and the rise of trans-​exclusionary campaigns against the increased visibility of the trans rights movement and the lives of trans individuals themselves (Mackay, 2021; see also Chapter 7 by Gómez Nicolau, this volume). Often called Gender-​Critical or GC activism, such a stance seeks to prevent any expansion of trans inclusion, limit or even remove legislative gains and protections, limit or remove access to 72

‘You Can’t Kill The Spirit’ (But You Can Try)

therapeutic and/​or medical interventions for trans adults (particularly those who are young), and secure the borders of any women’s spaces so that they are closed to trans women (Hines, 2020; Greenesmith and Moore, 2021). It may seem ironic, perhaps, that my experience of masculine gender was so expansive at Womenwith, but my point is that irony, contradiction and juxtaposition were commonplace in the women’s peace movement, at and since Greenham, and perhaps are a foundational aspect or tactic of a Greenham-​style collective identity. There are parallels here with understandings of ‘camp’, that is, camp as respectful, immersive parody, usually from the margins and usually about critiquing mainstream power relationships. As Esther Newton states in her famous work, camp is about: ‘incongruity (subject matter), theatricality (style), and humor (strategy)’ (1972: 107). We all sang Goddess songs at camp, because that is what we did; we all declared ‘ask and the Goddess sends’ whenever a visitor dropped by spontaneously with something we desperately needed; we howled at the full moon and made triangle vagina symbols with our hands held together; we recited that we were the witches who could not be burned. It did not mean we actually believed any of that, it meant we believed in each other, it meant we believed in a shared political purpose and a necessary shared solidarity, not least because living outdoors is hard, maintaining a full-​time women’s peace camp is hard, NVDA is hard. We honoured that, and we honoured each other; including nodding our respects to those who were believers. As Jill Liddington noted of life at Greenham and the role of ritual and shared traditions: ‘such mumbo-​jumbo might seem irrelevant to stopping Cruise missiles. But extraordinary times call for extraordinary responses; and ritual, symbol and incantations soon assumed a vital role in sustaining such an unlikely being as a woman’s peace camp outside a nuclear base’ (Liddington, 1989: 236). Humour was essential, therefore, but womanhood of any particular type at all was not.

Conclusion The title of this chapter is inspired by a friend who was a fabulous singer, and who would always add cheeky extra verses to peace songs, in a different but complementary key –​particularly with the song ‘You Can’t Kill the Spirit’, which Anna Feigenbaum (2010) calls a Greenham anthem. Illustrating the internationalism and diverse spiritual influences of Greenham, this song comes from a feminist musician, North American Chicana Indian, Naomi Littlebear Morena. Into this song, my friend would add: ‘but you can try’, in the pause between the two lines, ‘You can’t kill the spirit’ and ‘She is like a mountain’ –​to much hilarity from all. Being ‘too cosmic’ was a commonly understood critique of campers who were a bit too witchy. Womenwith was not a cosmic camp in that sense. In the movement at the time, when 73

Feminism and Protest Camps

it came to our discerning characteristics, we were known as the ‘Menwith Hill Maddies’: not because we were wild, but because the weather was wild. We were frequently snowed in, isolated on a high point of the Yorkshire Dales; all winter everything froze, from kettles to the hot water bottles in our sleeping bags. The peace campers in the south of England, at places like Aldermaston, for example, told horror stories of Menwith trips, of gales stripping away shelters and rocking static caravans. While I was living there, Anne Lee was the primary person wo-​manning the camp. For much of the time she and I were the only ones there, and when the weather got bad we would walk down the verge of the A59 to the nearest pub and play dominoes in the corner by the fire. Anne arguably did not have much truck with cosmic witchyness, yet joined in, as all of us did, with songs that would suggest the contrary. It was a soundtrack to our lives, a cultural reference and insider tradition that brought us all together. We accepted that some women may hold such references dear, but that did not stop the overwhelming recitation of such practices being predominantly humorous, self-​deprecating and irreverent. ‘Women sought to demonstrate that their involvement with Greenham was anything but self-​sacrificial and altruistic. Living at Greenham was, much of the time, great fun. Humour was an important part of life there and often took the form of self-​mockery, irony and parody’ (Roseneil, 2000: 134). In this vein, I suggest, why wouldn’t masculinity be present at a women’s peace camp, why wouldn’t butch lesbians and transmasculine, transgender individuals flourish there; such contradiction, or queering as Sasha Roseneil would call it (2000), is what peace camps are made of. Note 1

A founding member of CAAB, Lindis Percy, is a renowned local peace activist from Yorkshire who is still very much an active protestor at 80 years old (as at 2022), with a record of over 30 years of activism so far (Morning Star, 2020).

References Alpert, J. (1973) ‘Mother Right: A New Feminist Theory’, Ms, 2(2): 52–​5, 88–​94. Banerjea, N., Browne, K., Ferreira, E., Olasik, M. and Podmore, J. (2019) Lesbian Feminism: Essays Opposing Global Heteropatriarchies, London: Zed Books. Bartlett, A. (2013) ‘Feminist Protest in the Desert’, Gender, Place and Culture, 20(7): 914–​26. Bocock, R. (1993) Consumption, London: Routledge. Brod, H. and Kaufman, M. (eds) (1994) Theorizing Masculinities, London: Sage. Butler, J. (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’, London: Routledge. 74

‘You Can’t Kill The Spirit’ (But You Can Try)

Campbell, B. (1980) ‘A Feminist Sexual Politics: Now You See It, Now You Don’t’, Feminist Review, 5: 1–​18. Campbell, D. and Melvern, L. (1980) ‘America’s Big Ear on Europe’, The New Statesman, 18 July, pp 10–​14. Available from: https://​www.dun​canc​ ampb​ell.org/​PDF/A ​ meri​ ca’s%20Big%20Ear%20on%20Euro ​ pe%2018%20J​ uly%201​980.pdf [Accessed 12 April 2021]. Carter, C. and Noble, J.B. (1996) ‘Butch, Femme, and the Woman-​ Identified-​Woman: Ménage-​a-​Trois of the 90s?’ Canadian Woman Studies, 16(2): 24–​9. COPS (Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance) (nd) Homepage. Available from: http://​campaig​nopp​osin​gpol​ices​urve​illa​nce.com/​ [Accessed 24 November 2021]. Cottingham, L. (1996) Lesbians Are So Chic, London: Continuum International. Daly, M. (1973) Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Echols, A. (1989) Daring To Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–​1975, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Eschle, C. (2013) ‘Gender and the Subject of (Anti)Nuclear Politics: Revisiting Women’s Campaigning Against the Bomb’, International Studies Quarterly, 57(4): 713–​24. Feigenbaum, A. (2010) ‘Now I’m a Happy Dyke! Creating Collective Identity and Queer Community in Greenham Women’s Songs’, Journal of Popular Music Studies, 22(4): 367–​88. FFVC (Flying Focus Video Collective) (1996) ‘Womenwith Hill Women’s Peace Camp’, filmed April 1995. Available from: https://​arch​ive.org/​deta​ ils/​vid​eore​cord​ing0​544 [Accessed 10 May 2021]. Greenesmith, H. and Moore, M. (2021) ‘Health Care for Trans Youth Is Under Attack in the UK and It’s Impacting the US’, Truthout, 28 February. Available from: https://​truth​out.org/​artic​les/​hea​lth-​care-​for-​trans-​youth-​ is-u ​ nder-a​ tta​ ck-i​ n-u ​ k-a​ nd-i​ ts-i​ mpacti​ ng-t​ he-u ​ s/​ [Accessed 30 June 2022]. Griffiths, M. (1995) Feminisms and the Self: The Web of Identity, London: Routledge. Halberstam, J. (1998) Female Masculinity, London: Duke University Press. Hines, S. (2020) ‘Sex Wars and (Trans) Gender Panics: Identity and Body Politics in Contemporary UK Feminism’, Sociological Review, 68(4): 699–​717. Hemmings, C. (2011) Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Levitt, H.M. and Hiestand, K.R. (2004) ‘Gender Within Lesbian Sexuality: Butch and Femme Perspectives’, Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 18(1): 39–​51.

75

Feminism and Protest Camps

Lewis, S. (2019) ‘How British Feminism Became Anti-​Trans’, New York Times, 7 February. Available from: https://​www.nyti​mes.com/​2019/​02/​ 07/​opin​ion/​terf-​trans-​women-​brit​ain.html [Accessed 13 August 2022]. Liddington, J. (1989) The Long Road to Greenham: Feminism and Anti-​ Militarism in Britain Since 1820, London: Virago. Lloyd, K. (2017) ‘Meet the Lesbian Punks Who’ve Been Written Out of London’s History’, Time Out, 25 April. Available from: https://​www.time​ out.com/​lon​don/​blog/​meet-​the-​lesb​ian-​punks-w ​ hove-b​ een-w ​ ritt​ en-o ​ ut-​ of-​lond​ons-​hist​ory-​042​517 [Accessed 24 November 2021]. Lury, C. (1996) Consumer Culture, Cambridge: Polity Press. Mackay, F. (2015) Radical Feminism: Feminist Activism in Movement, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mackay, F. (2019) ‘No Woman’s Land? Revisiting Border Zone Denizens’, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 23(3): 397–​409. Mackay, F. (2021) Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars: The Politics of Sex, London: IB Tauris. Managhan, T. (2007) ‘Shifting the Gaze from Hysterical Mothers to ‘Deadly Dads’: Spectacle and the Anti-​Nuclear Movement’, Review of International Studies, 33(4): 637–​54. Millett, K. (1972) Sexual Politics, London: Abacus. Morning Star (2020) ‘Police Arrest 78-​Year-​Old Peace Protestor Again’, Morning Star Online, 13 February. Available from: https://​mornin​gsta​ronl​ ine.co.uk/​arti​cle/​b/​pol​ice-​arr​est-​78-​year-​old-​peace-​cam​paig​ner-​again [Accessed 30 June 2022]. Newton, E. (1972) Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Noble, J.B. (2004) ‘Sons of the Movement: Feminism, Female Masculinity and Female to Male (FTM) Transexual Men’, Atlantis, 29(1): 21–​8. Police Spies Out of Lives (nd) Homepage. Available from: https://​police​ spie​sout​ofli​ves.org.uk/​ [Accessed 30 June 2022]. Pope, C. (2012) ‘Disarming Grandmothers’, online documentary series. Available from: https://​disarm​ingg ​rand​moth​ers.wordpr​ess.com/​about/​ [Accessed 24 November 2021]. Reger, J. (2002) ‘More Than One Feminism: Organisational Structure and the Construction of Collective Identity’, in D.S. Meyer, N. Whittier and B. Robnett (eds) Social Movements: Identity, Culture and the State, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 171–​84. Roseneil, S. (1995) Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham, Buckingham: Open University Press. Roseneil, S. (2000) Common Women, Uncommon Practices: The Queer Feminisms of Greenham, London: Cassell.

76

‘You Can’t Kill The Spirit’ (But You Can Try)

Schofield, S. (2012) Lifting the Lid on Menwith Hill: The Strategic Roles and Economic Impact of the US Spy Base in Yorkshire, Yorkshire CND Report. Available from: https://​cnduk.org/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2018/​02/​liftin​ gthe​lid.pdf [Accessed 30 June 2022]. Shiva, V. (1993) Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development, London: Zed Books. Steans, J. (2013) Gender and International Relations, Cambridge: Polity Press. Taylor, V. (1989) ‘Sisterhood, Solidarity, and Modern Feminism’ (Review Essay), Gender and Society, 3(2): 277–​86. Welch, C. (2010) ‘The Spirituality of, and at, Greenham Common Peace Camp’, Feminist Theology, 18(2): 230–​48. Willis, E. (1984) ‘Radical Feminism and Feminist Radicalism’, Social Text, 9/​10: 91–​118.

77

5

Women Activists, Gendered Power and Postfeminism in Taiwan’s ‘Sunflower Movement’ Chia-​Ling Yang

Introduction On 18 March 2014, outraged students, university faculty, and workers from nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) marched on the Legislative Yuan –​ Taiwan’s unicameral parliament –​to protest the Cross-​Strait Service Trade Agreement, a free trade pact with China that protesters believed would harm the economy and leave Taiwan vulnerable to political pressure from Beijing. Some 300 activists occupied the legislative chamber, while hundreds more gathered outside. This unprecedented occupation lasted for 24 days and there was also a demonstration on 30 March when about 500,000 people surrounded parliament. The media dubbed the action the ‘Sunflower Movement’ when a florist sent bunches of sunflowers to the protesters at the parliament building, but this name was not accepted by many of the activists. All of my research participants for this chapter prefer to call it the ‘3/​18 Parliament Occupation Movement’, or the 3/​18 Movement for short. This term is used throughout the chapter. The movement opposing the free trade pact was one of a string of protests against President Ying-​Jeou Ma’s embrace of China since taking office in 2008. For example, there was an anti–​Media Monopoly Campaign in 2012, fuelled by widespread worry that China intended to use the mass media to spread its political propaganda and control Taiwan. Since 2008, citizens of Taiwan have formed many NGOs, including Taiwan Democracy Watch and the Democratic Front Against the Cross-​Strait Service Trade Agreement, to put pressure on Taiwan’s government to sustain democracy and national sovereignty. 78

Women Activists, Gendered Power and Postfeminism

The 3/​18 Movement’s parliamentary occupation was planned secretly by a small group of activists –​students and professionals –​in an informal network based on their cooperation in a series of social movements and protests in previous years (Hsu et al, 2019). According to my research participants, no one had expected that the occupation would last for more than three weeks. After several unsuccessful forced eviction attempts by the police, the activists occupied several areas: the Main Chamber of the parliament, the yard of the parliament (separated from the Main Chamber and the yard by some police officers) and the streets surrounding the parliament building. The division of labour in the 3/​18 Movement saw students in the Main Chamber divided into various working groups with the decision-​ making dominated by a few heterosexual men. Students within the Main Chamber formed pickets at the two entrances to decide who could enter, with additional pickets on the streets maintaining order. Outside the Main Chamber, stages were set up at two crossroads around the parliament building and NGO staff took turns hosting on the stage. Various groups also formed their own discussions, on themes including ‘democratic classrooms’, and there were also Indigenous people’s meetings and tents for parents with young children. On the street there was a ‘cursing-​stage’, where people expressed negative feelings and critiques, many using sexist curse words; this phenomenon was criticised by the Awakening Foundation (2014), the first women’s organisation in Taiwan.1 Every day there were gatherings inside the Main Chamber, including meetings within the working groups and meetings between working groups and the decision-​makers. Outside the Main Chamber, the NGOs also had daily assemblies. Additionally, there were meetings between the students inside the Main Chamber and the NGOs outside the parliament. At a later stage of the movement, a nine-​person decision-​making group (comprising key members from among the students and NGOs) was formed. Nevertheless, many decisions were made in the Main Chamber by a small set of decision-​makers. In this chapter, I will employ the key concepts of ‘gendered power’ (Bradley, 1999) and ‘informal network’ (Kanter, 1977; Bjarnegård and Kenny, 2015) to discuss how gender hierarchy was perpetuated in the 3/​18 Movement. Moreover, I will refer to elements of postfeminism that highlight individualism and regard gender equality as already achieved to argue that specific political and social contexts in Taiwan led young women activists to respond with postfeminist, individualised strategies. First, however, I will explain the theory and methodology used to frame my research.

Theoretical framework and research methods This chapter draws on a long tradition of feminist work on gendered divisions and hierarchies in organisations (for example, Acker, 1990). One early study 79

Feminism and Protest Camps

depicts informal power games in the workplace, such as gendered informal networks and homosocial reproduction (Kanter, 1977). More recent work continues to explore gendered power and informal networks in the academy (Yarrow, 2021) or in politics (McDonald, 2011; Stockemer et al, 2020). Although most of this research focuses on gendered hierarchy and gendered power structures in workplaces or in politics, Verta Taylor (1999: 18) asserts that ‘there is no reason to expect social movements to be any different’. In addition, the chapter employs the lens of postfeminism to analyse young women activists’ response to gendered power in the 3/​18 Movement. Although there are different treatments of postfeminism in related studies, I identify individualism, perfect femininity (McRobbie, 2015; Gill and Orgad, 2017), dis-​identification with the label of feminist (McRobbie, 2004), and the allocation of gender inequalities to the past (Gill et al, 2017) as the key postfeminist elements in my analysis. Although previous studies into the dynamics of postfeminism emphasise how it discourages ‘a more active form of political participation’ (McRobbie, 2011: 182) and masks ‘both structural inequalities and cultural influence’ (Gill and Orgad, 2017: 28), my research findings differ in two ways: first, my interviewees participate actively in various kinds of social movements (excepting the women’s movement, which they think of as irrelevant to them); second, they criticise masculine dominance and male power in the 3/​18 Movement and in Taiwan’s social and cultural contexts, and fight for structural equality (excepting equality between women and men, which they see as an outdated issue). Examining the views of these politically active young women can facilitate deeper reflection on postfeminism in Taiwan, and in other activist contexts. My previously published study of women in the ‘Sunflower Movement’ centred on the experiences of women new to activism in social movements (Yang, 2017). For this chapter, I conducted an entirely new set of interviews. I employed purposive sampling and snowball methods to interview 19 women who were key activists in the 3/​18 Movement, including students, NGO staff and scholars (who are often also NGO board members). Among these 19 women, two identify as bisexual and two as lesbian. I also interviewed a young gay man for an additional perspective, as sexuality was one of the social differences ignored within the 3/​18 Movement. These interviewees have been given pseudonyms which identify three groups of research participants as follows: ‘Yong’ as the first name indicates a student whose age in 2014 was 21–​36; ‘Chia’ as the first name indicates NGO staff whose age in 2014 was 28–​39; ‘Yi’ as the first name indicates a scholar whose age in 2014 was 42–​46 (see Table 5.1). The interviews lasted from one-​and-​a-​half to four hours, were conducted in Mandarin Chinese or Taiwanese, and were transcribed in Chinese. The English translation is mine. 80

Women Activists, Gendered Power and Postfeminism

Table 5.1: Interview participants Pseudonym

Identity

Age in 2014

Yi-​Chun

Scholar, NGO board member, lesbian

46–​50

Yi-​Fen

Scholar; NGO board member

41–​45

Yi-​Ru

Scholar; NGO board member

41–​45

Chia-​Chi

NGO staff

36–​40

Chia-​Hui

NGO staff, bisexual

36–​40

Chia-​Ping

NGO staff, bisexual

36–​40

Chia-​Ying

NGO staff

26–​30

Yong-​Chun

2008 student movement

36–​40

Yong-​Fen

2008 student movement

31–​35

Yong-​Lin

2008 student movement

31–​35

Yong-​En

Student, gay man

26–​30

Yong-​Hua

Student

26–​30

Yong-​Ru

Student

26–​30

Yong-​Yu

Student

26–​30

Yong-​An

Student

21–​25

Yong-​Chi

Student

21–​25

Yong-​Ching

Student

21–​25

Yong-​Han

Student, lesbian

21–​25

Yong-​Ping

Student

21–​25

Yong-​Yin

Student

21–​25

The fact that these interviews were conducted six years after the 3/​18 Movement enabled interviewees to develop a different attitude to their activism retrospectively. For example, some of them said that “I should have taken the power to speak” or “I was like a kid at that time”. The value of such retrospective interviews became clear as this study created a space for women to reflect on their experiences of the gendered power imbalances in the 3/​18 Movement in ways that may not have been possible for them at the time of the protest.

Gendered power in the 3/​18 Movement A single-​focus agenda The Awakening Foundation was the only women’s organisation among the seven NGOs that first protested the Cross-​Strait Service Trade Agreement in 2013. The Awakening Foundation asked the government to do a gender 81

Feminism and Protest Camps

impact evaluation before signing the Trade Agreement. This request was ignored, and a gender perspective was also sidelined by the rest of the movement. Instead, the Trade Agreement and opposition to it focused overwhelmingly on the relationship between China and Taiwan, which is the dominant issue in politics in Taiwan. Gender was not the only neglected dimension. Inequalities caused by free trade affect women, Indigenous people and LGBTQ groups in different ways. Interviewee Yong-​Yu, a member of one of Taiwan’s Indigenous groups, left the Main Chamber to join the Indigenous young people’s meetings on the street every evening. According to Yong-​Yu, although there is no trade agreement between the Indigenous people and the government –​ they don’t even have the opportunity to say no –​these Indigenous young people tried to relate their own experiences to the Trade Agreement and to compare relations between Indigenous tribes and the colonial government with relations between Taiwan and China. Their postcolonial analysis demonstrated how their economy is harmed heavily by the government and by entrepreneurs, but was largely ignored by non-​Indigenous groups. In another example, Yong-​En mentioned that on the first evening when students occupied the Main Chamber, some gay students took out the rainbow flag in the Main Chamber and posted photos of it on their social media. However, they were asked to take down the flag since some other students worried that this would blur the focus of the 3/​18 Movement. As Chia-​Hui said, “at such a critical moment, everyone focuses on a single issue … it seems that all other issues and people’s rights are excluded”. Other interviewees point out that when the 3/​18 Movement came under media scrutiny, it was even more difficult for activists to engage in nuanced discussion of the trade pact or to show differences within their movement. Perspectives informed by non-​normative gender, racial/​​ethnic, and sexual identities were ignored and these identities erased in order to provide the movement with a ‘single focus’. This issue should be situated within specific political contexts in Taiwan. First, Taiwan’s independence and national security are under continuous threat from China, and people in Taiwan are divided into two poles defined by their stance on China. During elections, relations between Taiwan and China always become the single focus for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Conservative Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT). Substantive debates about other issues in politics become impossible. In a similar vein, although it is well known that multiple, intersecting inequalities are caused by free trade agreements, most people in the 3/​18 Movement focused only on the undemocratic procedures of the KMT intending to sign the Trade Agreement, or on relations between Taiwan and China. Second, and relatedly, I would like to underline the ‘single focus’ nature of many social movements in Taiwan –​and beyond. On the 82

Women Activists, Gendered Power and Postfeminism

one hand, it is easier to mobilise people with a clear goal and to create solidarity behind a single identity. On the other hand, a single focus in social movements is open to criticism for generating serious exclusions. For example, the de facto assumption in much second wave western feminism that women were White, heterosexual and middle-​class has been much challenged (Carby, 1982) along with the neglect of gendered and sexualised racism in the Black liberation movement (Collins, 2004). In a similar vein, Shu-​Chun Li (2013) points out that the discourse in Taiwan’s democratic movement was masculine, with a focus on the public sphere. Accordingly, the ‘democratic’ movement ignored both ‘women’s issues’ and female politicians. Within such a legacy of debates on differences in feminist theories and social movements, my research participants indicate the importance of intersectionality in a complex analysis of social movement issues. In Yong-​ Yu’s words: ‘Identity is politics. … The identity of being a woman, LGBT, or an Indigenous person … there won’t be any moment that we are not related to our identities. … Therefore, it is important that we remind ourselves that we are in the struggle not only because of a certain issue, but also because we are women and Indigenous people, or sometimes even LGBT. … I think that in the 3/​18 Movement we were not intentionally trying to create inequality, but we gave up striving for equality unconsciously.’ Yong-​Yu’s words demonstrate her intersectional perspective and her emphasis on positioned knowledge. Although many of the participants intended to express their postcolonial and intersectional analysis of the Trade Agreement, the 3/​18 Movement as a whole fell back into the ‘single focus’ tradition of many social movements, which is particularly prevalent in Taiwan.

Informal networks in decision-​making Alongside the fact that the 3/​18 Movement ignored gender, race/​​ethnicity and sexuality in its analysis of the Trade Agreement, decision-​making and informal networking in the movement also sustained gendered power. During the 3/​18 Movement’s various meetings, members from the Awakening Foundation asked for a representative gender ratio in terms of who got to speak. According to Yong-​Chun’s observation, women made up one third of NGO representatives, but less than one third of student representatives in various meetings. Early on there was an attempt to implement more gender balance. Experienced student activists assigned a female as student spokesperson. On the main stage on the evening of the 83

Feminism and Protest Camps

30 May demonstration, one male NGO staff and one female student were assigned as hosts. However, this attempt to challenge the gender imbalance proved unsuccessful, for two reasons. One was the media focus on male students. The media represented the movement as a students’ movement with two male students as the ‘student leaders’; journalists tended to direct their questions at these two men while ignoring designated spokespersons (see Figure 5.1). The second reason was the hierarchical informal network in which decision-​ making took place. Yong-​Yu mentioned that although there were women in the meetings, it was usually men who talked –​especially those with more experience or with professional backgrounds, such as the male students and male scholars. Yong-​Yin further pointed out, “When the older women who are more experienced remained silent, I felt like, can I talk? But they [these older women] haven’t talked yet”. In other words, women were silent even when they were older or more experienced, while men with professional backgrounds who were older or more experienced spoke more often. Young women with less experience were the most silenced. Moreover, my research participants complained that most of the important decisions were actually taken outside of the meetings, when the dominant men in the Main Chamber gathered to smoke during break times. Consequently, some interviewees thought it meaningless to attend the meetings, because it was actually these smokers that had the final word and reported it to the media. Figure 5.1: Men centre stage in the Main Chamber during the 3/​18 Movement parliamentary occupation

Source: © Chih-​Nan Fu, reprinted with permission

84

Women Activists, Gendered Power and Postfeminism

This informal network should not be interpreted as a deliberate attempt to exclude women and others from decision-​making. Rather, it was established during participants’ previous work in other social movements, in a context where participants faced severe repression. Yong-​Han mentioned that “in previous years, we were lifted away by the police and fought against the police together. That built up mutual trust between us”. And since the parliament occupation was a secret action, this network functioned similarly to other informal networks that have been documented in politics, where the need for trust makes members wary of admitting outsiders who may reveal their activities to others (Stockemer et al, 2020: 317). Nevertheless, as studies on informal networks and relationships in the workplace and politics show, this informal, behind-​the-​scenes mode of decision-​making often reinforces gendered power and creates exclusion. For example, many of my research participants regarded a particular older male scholar as the real force behind the two male students involved in making decisions. Yong-​Han described this relationship between professor and students as a mentorship that guarantees power is passed on, while Yong-​Chi criticises the dominance of “middle-​aged heterosexual men who despise women”. In her own words: ‘It is difficult for women, they have to survive in the cracks, but this is not an issue for heterosexual men. … Women get squeezed out easily; they are just not told about the meeting time. … Accordingly, some women choose to cooperate with men and others don’t. Still others just become tough against men.’ The gendered exclusion created by informal networks is further refined by region, university and students’ clubs. Yong-​Hua says, “Unless you could enter that university [top universities in northern Taiwan], you won’t find a place in the students’ movement”. In Taiwan, students need to have higher grades in order to enter the top universities, and most of the top universities are in northern Taiwan. Many top universities have students’ clubs focusing on social issues and these clubs hold summer camps together. This creates opportunities for student activists to build informal relationships, but excludes those who cannot enter top universities or who do not have these kinds of students’ clubs to join. The impact of this informal network in the 3/​18 Movement resonates with previous studies on ‘old boys’ clubs’ in politics (McDonald, 2011). Daniel Stockemer, Michael Wigginton and Aksel Sundström (2020: 316) write that ‘ “male-​dominated networks” exhibit an in-​group bias and limit the admission of outsiders, such as women … informal rules make personal connections incredibly important’. Moreover, Elin Bjarnegård and Meryl Kenny’s (2015) research demonstrates that such informal networks benefit 85

Feminism and Protest Camps

not only older men, but also the ‘favoured sons’, since the inclusion of the younger men allows these networks to persist and survive, while Judith G. Oakley (2000: 328) points out that informal networks exclude less powerful men and all women. Similarly, my study indicates that, although they help to mobilise people efficiently, such informal personal associations not only sustain the ‘old boys’ network’ that reinforces normative male bonding and power, but also exclude women, less powerful men (such as gay activists) and those who cannot access the centre of the students’ movement circle.

The gendered division of labour In addition to the undemocratic, male-​centred decision-​making in the Main Chamber, there was also a gendered division of labour throughout the 3/​18 Movement. As Yong-​Ching put it, “Women tend to be set in the mother’s role, taking meeting notes and doing administrative work, and they must do everything well and clear up any mistakes the men make” (emphasis added). For Yong-​Ping, “Many women chose the work that ‘took care of the inside [of the movement]’ kind of like taking care of the family in order to sustain stability in the Main Chamber so that they [the men] could work outside” (emphasis added). Moreover, three women older than most of the students were regarded as ‘three mothers who teach the sons’, which is a Chinese idiom. Yi-​Fen further labelled NGOs as “babysitters” because “the so-​called house chores were done by those who were outside [the Main Chamber]”. In other words, women (and NGOs) were ‘backstage’ doing emotional labour to support the male ‘stars’ and taking care of the domestic chores that sustained the daily function of the movement. My research participants employed feminist perspectives to explain this front/​​backstage division of labour. In regard to media representation of the male leaders, Yong-​Han argued that “people expect … to see … the faces of these two male leaders. I think it started from the anti–​Media Monopoly Campaign that people expect to see young persons with capabilities. Somehow in people’s mind, these young persons must be male”. Referring to a social ideology that means men are more likely than women to be perceived as leaders, Yong-​Ru said, “He [the one who holds the microphone] has the power to speak and can be heard. … Their way of talking is masculine and it has passion that can stir people up”. Yong-​Yin added: ‘A supposed leader should have charisma and talk fluently with a lot of powerful nonsense. … Since most men are well valued when they grow up in Taiwan, they are too self-​confident. … But women know that this is only nonsense and slogans. So before we speak, we already experience self-​censorship and self-​critique so that we cannot act 86

Women Activists, Gendered Power and Postfeminism

dramatically. Such dramatic performance is based on a certain kind of narcissism, which is something that biological women lack.’ Such quotes demonstrate that these young women have a feminist analysis of how socially constructed gender roles and stereotypes underpin the prevalence of male political leaders (see also Holmes et al, 2011). A feminist perspective can also be found in their clear grasp of the kind of work often allocated to women in social movements. Their use of the terms ‘mother’s role’, ‘babysitter’ and ‘house chores’ corresponds to previous research on the gendered division of labour in society, wherein women tend to take on the jobs widely assumed to be socialised ‘women’s work’ as an extension of what they do in the private sphere –​the unglamorous routine activities that sustain daily life, and the communicative and emotional labour that sustain relationships (Kanter, 1977; Hochschild, 1983; see also Chapter 9 by Eschle in this volume). These women know well that their personal choices in relation to their activism are not solely based on their own preferences or abilities, but on how women and men are expected and socialised to behave. Moreover, in a society that tends to trust men more than women, they may make strategic choices to help gain public support for a social movement’s action. In short, agenda-​setting, informal networking and the division of labour in the 3/​18 Movement all demonstrate the workings of gendered power. Such gendered power intersects with age, ethnicity, professional background and experience in social movements. Accordingly, equitable gender ratios alone cannot guarantee that women get to participate in meetings and in decision-​making. In the next section, I will explore the different strategies employed by female activists in the 3/​18 Movement when dealing with these power imbalances.

Strategies responding to gendered hierarchies in the 3/​18 Movement I identify two main strategies that emerged in response to male-​centred decision-​making, informal networking and the gendered division of labour: the employment of ‘masculine’ ways to protest and fight within the social movement, and the identification of care ethics and feminine modes of protest in a revaluation of women’s work and re-imagining of women’s activism. To begin with the former: during the 3/​18 Movement, some women protested against the homosocial reproduction of the informal network directly. For example, Yong-​Chi, Yong-​Ching and Yong-​Han quarrelled with dominant men who took the male-​centred, informal decision-​ making process for granted, and brought the issue up in meetings. When this decision-​making process continued, however, some of my research 87

Feminism and Protest Camps

participants started smoking just so that they could join the informal network. This strategy had limited success, since not even those who gained access to the inner circle were included in its decision-​making. According to Yong-​ Ching, “Even though I learned to smoke in order to participate at the decision-​making level, I couldn’t influence their decisions”. Yong-​Ching’s experiences resonate with Yong-​Chi’s observation that “Those [women] who can survive at the decision-​making level usually depend on their personal relationship with the men”. When Yong-​Ching was unable to maintain a good relationship with the men, she was excluded from decision-​making, no matter her previous efforts. Nonetheless, Yong-​Ching became one of the few women students who participated in TV programmes during the 3/​18 Movement. She described herself as ‘masculine’, and by speaking up she intended to provide an alternative role model for other women students who were less experienced. Other women described how they sought to understand the informal practices and implicit ‘rules of the game’ in the 3/​18 Movement (see also Yarrow’s 2021 analysis of women in the academy). For example, Yong-​ Chun mentioned that “new activists want to get the power to talk and they are not like the women students in traditional students’ movements who tend to suppress themselves and fit themselves into a functional role”. Yong-​Han asserted that “women should be more active so that they can be seen”. Similarly, Yong-​Yu said that “we should be more conscious about [claiming] women’s power to speak”. Many of the younger women activists were leaders of students’ clubs at their universities. However, when they cooperated with other male students in the social movement, they often ended up in functional, ‘backstage’ roles. When the new activists failed to follow the rules of the game, they were labelled as disobedient, making ‘noise’, and were subtly excluded. Other women challenged the gendered division of labour where it was based on ‘paternalist sexism’ –​on those occasions when activists confronted the police, men tended to ask women to step back, but these interviewees refused. Yong-​Ping had tied herself with chains in the 2012 land justice protests; similarly, when Yong-​Hua participated in protests in front of the President’s House the same year alongside workers affected by factory closures, she too had experienced the police violence meted out to male workers. During the first night of the parliament occupation, Yong-​Chi, Yong-​Hua and other women were part of the frontline, guarding one of the doors of the Main Chamber. Using their bodies to fight, these women broke down the gendered division of labour in social movements. In contrast to those women who confronted sexism or who took on supposedly ‘men’s jobs’ in the 3/​18 Movement, some women sought instead to re-​evaluate ‘women’s work’. Although “women students were assigned to do less important things” (Yi-​Fen), reassessing those roles 88

Women Activists, Gendered Power and Postfeminism

and tasks could redefine their value. For example, Yong-​Ru mentioned that women’s jobs in the 3/​18 Movement were a “heavy burden”, while Yong-​Ping stated that they sustained “stability in the Main Chamber”. She further elaborated: ‘[One key male student] said, “Without Yong-​Ping, there won’t be a Sunflower Movement”, but what he continued saying was “without me, there won’t be a Sunflower Movement, either”. I find that, on the one hand, he did know the inner/​​outer division of labour and recognised the value of work inside … On the other hand, I feel upset since I didn’t mean to be his assistant or to play the role of taking care of the family for him.’ Yong-​Ping’s words demonstrate that what she criticised was not women doing the ‘unimportant’ work, but how this work was defined by the male leader as secondary. The strategy of these women resonates with Marxist-​feminist efforts to highlight the value of reproduction, and with the development of care ethics that reverse the meanings and values assigned to women’s caring labour (see, for example, Miller, 1986; see also Chapter 10 by Kavada in this volume). Moreover, some women overtly embraced femininity in order to challenge the stereotypical image of the heroic male social movement activist. For example, in contrast to those women students who imitated a masculine way of speaking, Yong-​Ru insisted, “I don’t want to talk in that way”. For Yong-​Ru, “women are not without agency. If we want to be a leader, we can do it, but we have to perform as men do … to be masculine”. Yong-​ Ru refused to be masculine and saw the rejection of a leadership role as an alternative way of demonstrating women’s agency. Others put on a performance of feminine beauty. For example, Yong-​ Chi said she would dress up for her involvement in the 3/​18 Movement, while Yong-​Ping put on a long skirt for even the toughest protest actions, since “I could climb up and down with my long skirt. It is not necessary that everyone should dress in short pants”. In a similar vein, Yong-​Han commented on how a blogger taught “waterproof makeup, so that even if the police intend to use water jet against you, you can still have makeup on”. For her, this was indicative of “a paradigm shift, since we begin to think about how to be ourselves … how to be a woman who knows how to do makeup and dress beautifully” even when protesting. With this strategy, activists followed the example of Pin-​Yu Lai,2 famous for participating in social movements in full ‘cosplay’, who was elected as the youngest member of parliament in 2019 (Wei, 2021). My research participants reported that when Lai was a new activist in the 2012 land justice protests, many of the more experienced activists privately criticised her dress 89

Feminism and Protest Camps

and make-​up, thus helping to normalise the image of activists in a social movement as masculine or asexual. Such imagery has also been perpetuated by the mainstream media in Taiwan. The media treated women and men very differently in the 3/​18 Movement, naming famous male students the ‘Five Tiger Generals’ and famous female students the ‘Five Flowers’. This cast the men as fighters or warriors and the women as fragile decorations. Moreover, the media focus on women’s appearance sexualised women activists and framed them as passive objects for the male gaze. Many of my research participants pointed out that the media liked to disseminate pictures of beautiful women activists in the 3/​18 Movement, focusing on what they were wearing instead of listening to what they said or thought. There was also an incident when a talk show from a pro-​China TV channel broadcast sexualised imagery of women participants who slept on the street surrounding the parliament. These women were effectively victims of sexual harassment by the male host.3 My interviewees mentioned earlier sought to challenge such representations. By combining frontline activism with feminine beauty, these women offered an alternative to the dominant symbolism of masculine heroes and their decorative female counterparts in social movements (see also Chapter 6 by Arat in this volume for a discussion of images of women in the Gezi Park protest). Nevertheless, as Rosalind Gill (2008) points out, it is important to pay careful attention to the postfeminist context in which these constructions of femininity as powerful and women as confident are circulated and understood. According to Gill, a postfeminist icon usually conforms to an upper-​class, young, White, heteronormative ideal. Drawing on Gill’s critique, I would like to point out that the strategy of feminine performance outlined earlier was only possible for those from the dominant ethnic group and not for the Indigenous woman in my sample. Moreover, because of its links to heterosexuality, the strategy was not open to lesbian women, especially those who present as butch. In the next section, I will discuss further how the activities of women in the 3/​18 Movement were shaped and limited by the postfeminist context in Taiwan.

Individualised strategy within a postfeminist context In this section, I argue that most of the women activists in my study employed individualised tactics against the gendered imbalance in the 3/​18 Movement, rather than participating in collective feminist struggle. This is despite the fact that women’s organisations were involved in the 3/​18 Movement. For example, the women subjected to sexualised representation in the TV programme turned to the Awakening Foundation for help. The Awakening Foundation and other women’s organisations issued a public declaration and asked women in society to report this TV programme to 90

Women Activists, Gendered Power and Postfeminism

the National Communication Committee, since the programme objectified and sexualised women’s bodies and this is discrimination against women. A lawyer, who was also an Awakening Foundation board member, joined the women to sue the TV channel for 460 billion NT dollars (Awakening Foundation, 2014).4 Furthermore, as previously mentioned, the Awakening Foundation not only asked the 3/​18 Movement to insert a gender perspective into discussions of the trade pact, but also insisted on an equal gender ratio in who got to speak at meetings and represent the movement. However, both requests were neglected in the wider movement. My interviews indicate that one reason for this is that feminist activists lack influence, with women’s organisations regarded among young people as relevant only to a narrow range of ‘women’s issues’. In Yi-​Ru’s words, “it is difficult for feminist activists to be influential in social movements … Gender issues are taken by gender NGOs. … It’s like it is women’s stuff”. Or take Yong-​Chun as an example, who stated, “I don’t want others to label me firstly as a feminist. Although I fight for gender equality … but as a feminist, people will think that what I only care about is women’s rights” (emphasis interviewee’s own). In parallel, when Yong-​Ping faced violence in her intimate relationship, she didn’t think about searching for help from women’s organisations. When I asked her why, she answered: “I felt distant from women’s organisations. Perhaps I felt closer to LGBTQ organisations. … Somehow I just felt women’s rights were distant from us”. Similarly, Yong-​Ching declared, ‘When we talked about gender issues at university, it was always LGBTQ. Somehow we just felt that women and men are equal. … Between 2012 to 2014, all social movements, environment, land, labour … all social movements have been suppressed. … in comparison, women’s problems were much smaller. Besides, I also felt that we have already gained a lot.’ These female students depicted the struggle for women’s rights as narrow and outdated, belonging to the previous generation. Younger women’s disconnect from women’s organisations in turn reinforced Yi-​Ru’s claim about the lack of feminist influence on current struggles. These women’s words correspond to Angela McRobbie’s (2004: 257) claim that young women feel a distance from feminism and to Sherry B. Ortner’s (2014) observation about the ambivalence of younger women towards the feminist label. However, such a phenomenon can only be fully understood if further situated within the Taiwanese context. Historically and politically, socialist theories and Left-​wing politics were suppressed in Taiwan, given the Cold War context in which the KMT fought against the Communist Party in China. Consequently, it is difficult 91

Feminism and Protest Camps

for people in Taiwan with a clear class consciousness to find solidarity. From the late 1980s into the 1990s, there were thriving workers’, farmers’ and women’s mobilisations; female university students formed a coalition and were active in various social movements. They had a strong connection with the Awakening Foundation and the Taiwan Feminist Scholars Association. In 1994, a series of sexual harassment cases on various university campuses led to Taiwan’s first demonstration against sexual harassment. Nevertheless, solidarity based on class and gender seemed to disappear afterwards,5 and the coalition of university women students no longer exists. In the absence of a strong socialist tradition in the political and social context specific to Taiwan, the women’s movement in Taiwan has focused on law reform and women’s education. Legal reforms have included the enhancement of women’s rights in the Civil Codes in the 1990s, the Sexual Assault Crime Prevention Act and Domestic Violence Prevention Act in 1997, the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act in 1998, the Act of Equality Between Women and Men in Employment in 2002 and the Gender Equity Education Act in 2004. It is this long list of reforms that makes young women like Yong-​Ching feel that women have already gained a lot. Nevertheless, legal revisions and the proposal of new laws rely on a small group of professional activists in certain women’s organisations (such as the Awakening Foundation), with a focus on freedom and equality for individuals that can be protected by the nation/​​state. The law-​reform network often centres in Taipei, where the parliament is located, while grassroots networks and connection between the women’s and labour movements, as well as solidarity among women, are neglected. Accordingly, such liberal feminist strategies can be criticised, for example, by Indigenous woman writer Liglave Awu (1997), for prioritising the interests of middle-​class and heterosexual women and the perspectives of those in Taipei. Following Awu’s critique, I would like to stress that the ideology of individualism in liberal feminism and postfeminism often reflects the interests of middle-​class, heterosexual women from the majority ethnic group. Moreover, the legal context has become more complex in the decades since. In the first place, there has been an increased recognition of differences among women. This can be seen in the shift from ‘equality between women and men’ to ‘gender equality’. For example, the Act of Equality Between Women and Men in Employment later became the Act of Gender Equality in Employment and previously ‘gender equity education’ was called ‘equality education between women and men’. The direction of law reform in Taiwan aims to broaden the concept of gender equality from two sexes to LGBTQ groups (see also Yang, 2020). In this context the ‘women’s movement’ can seem old-​fashioned since it is seen to care only about equality between women and men. In addition, 2014 saw heated debates on same-​sex marriage, and in that context many women students equated gender with the LGBTQ 92

Women Activists, Gendered Power and Postfeminism

movement. In other words, young women regard the LGBTQ movement as more relevant and more progressive on gender than the single focus on women in the women’s movement. I would argue that it is within these specific postfeminist contexts in Taiwan that the young women I interviewed feel distant from women’s organisations and the women’s movement. Consequently, the Awakening Foundation could not create connections with these activists, who instead resorted to individualised responses to gendered power in the 3/​18 Movement.

Conclusion This chapter has identified gendered power in the 3/​18 Movement, not only in the single-​focus agenda that ignored the unequal impacts of the Trade Agreement on different groups in society, but also in how older, professional father-​figures passed power to selected male students through informal networks that excluded women from decision-​making, and in the relegation of women to support work. The gendered division of labour in the 3/​18 Movement corresponds to previous studies of social movements and other political organisations, with women tending to work in the background in ways that functioned as an extension of a mothering role, crucial in sustaining the protest, while male activists took on the more celebrated leadership roles. The stereotyped and sexualised representation of female activists in the mainstream media, and the intimate violence some of them faced in their daily lives, also demonstrate that equality between women and men in Taiwan is an ongoing struggle. In general terms, these findings illustrate the persistence of what Ortner (2014) has described as patriarchal power in the figure of the authoritative ‘father’, which shapes both relations between men and relations between women and men. My research corresponds to previous studies that show gendered power is created through organisational practices, to which social movements are no exception. More specifically, I show that younger women activists in the 3/​18 Movement employed feminist perspectives to explain the gendered power they encountered, and pursued a range of strategies in response, from employing ‘masculine’ modes of protest to embracing and re-​evaluating women’s roles in social movements and developing a more feminine mode of activist presentation. Echoing Yeşim Arat’s analysis of the Gezi Park protest and its relation to the women’s movement in Turkey in Chapter 6 of this volume, I have discussed the strategies of women’s organisations and of individual female activists in the 3/​18 Movement within the context of Taiwan’s women’s movement. The achievements of Taiwan’s women’s movement mean that young women activists are armed with gender consciousness. This can be found in their acceptance of the need for a more equal ratio of women and 93

Feminism and Protest Camps

men speaking in movement meetings and to the media (even though this is not always a successful tactic on its own); in their feminist analysis of gendered phenomena in the movement; and in their embracing of differences among women, especially in relation to LGBTQ rights. However, mirroring Ortner’s (2014) argument about feminism in the neoliberal context of the United States, I have pointed out that Taiwan’s lack of socialist tradition, and the liberal feminist strategy which this has encouraged, has meant that debates on differences have led to a premature turn to postfeminism. This can be seen in the disconnect between women’s organisations and young women activists in the 3/​18 Movement, with women’s problems dismissed as belonging to the previous generation; in the misidentification of feminism in terms of a narrow focus only on ‘women’s issues’; and in an assumption that gender equality between women and men has been fully achieved. Moreover, women activists’ expressions of individual autonomous choice, powerful femininity and confident individualism resonate with postfeminist and neoliberal values that are classed, racialised and heteronormative. As Deborah Cameron (2020) asserts, while postfeminist attitudes have prospered since the 1990s, patriarchal social relations remain deeply embedded in many societies. In a similar vein, I suggest that gendered power still exists in most social movements, demanding a more careful reflection on the turn to a postfeminist stance among young female activists. Young women’s disconnection from the women’s movement presents a serious challenge for women’s organisations, and for mixed protest camps, and is in need of further research. Notes 1

2

3

4

5

The Awakening Foundation was first founded as the Awakening Publishing House in 1982, the only feminist magazine under martial law. After the lifting of martial law, the Awakening Foundation was established in 1987. For further information see Awakening Foundation, 2017. Lai is one of my research participants and her cosplay is well-​known in Taiwan society. I do not use her pseudonym here deliberately, in order to maintain her anonymity in the rest of this study. This incident is mentioned in Hioe and Liu, 2014. For TV coverage of the subsequent protest by women’s organisations (in Chinese), see https://​www.setn.com/​News. aspx?New​sID=​19052 [Accessed 5 November 2021]. This case ended in 2015 with the judgement that the TV channel was fined for 500,000 NT dollars, see https://​www.setn.com/​News.aspx?New​sID=​105​131 [Accessed 20 April 2021]. For discussions of Taiwan’s labour movement, see Ho, 2014; for the relationship between social movements and Taiwan’s political parties, see Wu, 2002.

References Acker, J. (1990) ‘Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations’, Gender and Society, 4(2): 139–​58. 94

Women Activists, Gendered Power and Postfeminism

Awakening Foundation (2014) ‘Gender Movement in Anti-​Trade Pact Movement’, Awakening Foundation Bulletin, 310: 4–​23. Awakening Foundation (2017) ‘About us’. Available from: https://​www. awaken​ing.org.tw/​engl​ish [Accessed 31 October 2021]. Awu, L. (1997) ‘Upstairs, Downstairs: Conflicts Between Urban Middle-​ Class Women’s Movement and Indigenous Women’s Movement’, Stir, 4: 4–​9. Bjarnegård, E. and Kenny, M. (2015) ‘Revealing the “Secret Garden”: The Informal Dimensions of Political Recruitment’, Politics and Gender, 11(4): 748–​53. Bradley, H. (1999) Gender and Power in the Workplace: Analysing the Impact of Economic Change, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Cameron, D. (2020) ‘Language and Gender: Mainstreaming and the Persistence of Patriarchy’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 200(263): 25–​30. Carby, H.V. (1982) ‘White Woman Listen! Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood’, in Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (ed) The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain, London: Hutchinson in association with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies University of Birmingham, pp 212–​35. Collins, P.H. (2004) Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism, New York: Routledge. Gill, R. (2008) ‘Culture and Subjectivity in Neoliberal and Postfeminist Times’, Subjectivity, 25(1): 432–​45. Gill, R. and Orgad, S. (2017) ‘Confidence Culture and the Remaking of Feminism’, New Formations, 91: 16–​34. Gill, R., Kelan, E.K. and Scharff, C.M. (2017) ‘A Postfeminist Sensibility at Work’, Gender, Work & Organization, 24(3): 226–​44. Hioe, B. and Liu, W. (2014) ‘A Sexualized Movement without Sexual Rights’, New Bloom, December. Available from: https://​newb​loom​ mag.net/​2014/​12/​30/​a-​sex​uali​zed-​movem​ent-​with​out-​sex​ual-​r ig​hts/ ​ [Accessed 5 November 2021]. Ho, M.-​S. (2014) Working Class Formation in Taiwan: Fractured Solidarity in State-​Owned Enterprises, 1945–​2012, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hochschild, A.R. (1983) The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, Berkeley: University of California Press. Holmes, J., Marra, M. and Vine, B. (2011) Leadership, Discourse, and Ethnicity, New York: Oxford University Press. Hsu, E.-​E., Wu, J.-​M., Lee, T.T. and Shih, I.L. (2019) ‘The Story of “We-​ NGO”: Explaining the Networks and Solidarity of the Sunflower Occupy Movement’, Taiwanese Sociology, 38: 1–​61. Kanter, R.M. (1977) Men and Women of the Corporation, New York: Basic Books.

95

Feminism and Protest Camps

Li, S.-​C. (2013) ‘Gender Democracy and Self-​Identity: Two Autobiographies by Women Participants in Taiwan’s Dang-​Wai Movement’, Modern Chinese History, 21: 120–​61. McDonald, S. (2011) ‘What’s in the “Old Boys” Network? Accessing Social Capital in Gendered and Racialized Networks’, Social Networks, 33(4): 317–​30. McRobbie, A. (2004) ‘Post-​Feminism and Popular Culture’, Feminist Media Studies, 4(3): 255–​64. McRobbie, A. (2011) ‘Beyond Post-​Feminism’, Public Policy Research, 18(3): 179–​84. McRobbie, A. (2015) ‘Notes on the Perfect: Competitive Femininity in Neoliberal Times’, Australian Feminist Studies, 30(83): 3–​20. Miller, J.B. (1986) Toward a New Psychology of Women, 2nd edn, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Oakley, J.G. (2000) ‘Gender-​Based Barriers to Senior Management Positions: Understanding the Scarcity of Female CEOs’, Journal of Business Ethics, 27(4): 321–​34. Ortner, S.B. (2014) ‘Too Soon for Post-​Feminism: The Ongoing Life of Patriarchy in Neoliberal America’, History of Anthropology, 25(4): 530–​49. Stockemer, D., Wigginton, M. and Sundström, A. (2020) ‘Boys’ Club or Good Ol’ Boys Club? Corruption and the Parliamentary Representation of Young and Old Men and Women’, Parliamentary Affairs, 74(2): 314–​32. Taylor, V. (1999) ‘Gender and Social Movements: Gender Processes in Women’s Self-​Help Movements’, Gender and Society, 13(1): 8–​33. Wei, C. (2021) ‘How a 29 Year Old Woman Cos-​Played Her Way into Taiwan’s Centre of Power’, Vice, 23 April. Available from: https://​ www.vice.com/​en/​arti​cle/​v7e​g9b/​tai​wan-​cosp​lay-​lawma​ker-​lai-​pin-​yu [Accessed 18 November 2021]. Wu, J.-​M. (2002) ‘To Dispel the Clausewitzian Enchantment: An Analysis of the Difficulties Faced by Social Movement’, Taiwanese Sociology, 4: 159–​98. Yang, C.-​L. (2017) ‘The Political Is the Personal: Women’s Participation in Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement’, Social Movement Studies, 16(6): 660–​71. Yang, C.-​L. (2020) ‘Challenges to LGBTQI Inclusive Education and Queer Activism in Taiwan’, in D.A. Francis, J.I. Kjaran and J. Lehtonen (eds) Queer Social Movements and Outreach Work in Schools: A Global Perspective, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 65–​92. Yarrow, E. (2021) ‘Knowledge Hustlers: Gendered Micro-​Politics and Networking in UK Universities’, British Educational Research Journal, 47(3): 579–​98.

96

PART II

Feminist Politics in and through Protest Camps

6

The Feminist Movement in Turkey and the Women of the Gezi Park Protests Yeşim Arat

Introduction Sheldon Wolin defines democracy as a ‘fugitive project’ concerned with the possibilities for ordinary citizens to ‘becom[e]‌political beings through the self-​discovery of common concerns and of modes of action for realizing them’ (1994: 11). He reconceives democracy as ‘a mode of being that is conditioned by bitter experience, doomed to succeed only temporarily, but is a recurrent possibility as long as the memory of the political survives’ (1994: 23). The Gezi Park protest camp was such an occasion of fugitive democracy. In this chapter, I shall examine how the women’s movement in Turkey helped shape this rare occasion of fugitive democracy in the country, and was in turn reshaped by it. The Gezi Park protests of 2013, which took place in opposition to the increasingly authoritarian government of Turkey, were an unprecedented phenomenon in the country: the largest, most heterogeneous and spontaneous expression of dissent the country had ever witnessed. The Gezi graffiti and slogans sparkled with creative energy, wit and humour. The park in central Istanbul was occupied for two weeks between 1 and 15 June and the events that began on 27 May lasted until 23 June in and around the park (Kongar and Küçükkaya, 2013). After the police forcibly evacuated the park, the protests changed shape and continued through forums in different parks of Istanbul throughout the summer. According to information provided by the Ministry of Interior, the protests that began in Gezi Park in Istanbul spread to 79 of the 81 provinces in the country, and two and a half million people took part in them (T24, 2013). 99

Feminism and Protest Camps

The protestors in Gezi Park were mostly middle-​class youth of different political persuasions and identities (Konda, 2013). They included environmentalists, social democrats, Kemalists, socialists, nationalists and others who identified as Kurdish, Alevi (a religious group of unorthodox Muslims), LGBTIQ or feminist. Some 94 per cent of those who came to the park did so as ordinary citizens who represented neither a party nor an organisation. The average age of the protestors was 28 in a country with an average age of 30. Six out of ten of those in the park attended or had graduated from a university, in contrast to only 12 per cent of the wider Turkish population. Nine out of ten believed that they faced abuses of their human rights. Of the participants, 50.8 per cent were female and 49.2 per cent male. In a country where women’s representation in politics had long remained very low, reaching only 18 per cent in the parliament in 2015, the high rate of participation by women in the park was striking (Konda, 2013). The uprising was a costly one. Nearly five thousand people were detained during demonstrations throughout the country, and more than eight thousand were wounded (Özkırımlı, 2014: 143–​6). Eleven people died. Threatened by the implications of the protests, the government of the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, henceforth AKP), in power since 2002, escalated its illiberal measures against the opposition with a vengeance after the Gezi Park events subsided. Journalists and academics inspired by the revolt continue to write on who the protestors were, why they participated in the protests, how they protested and what the occupation meant (Aydın, 2013; Bölükbaşı, 2013; Göncü, 2013; Sancar, 2013; Karakayali and Yaka, 2014; Özkırımlı, 2014; Yörük, 2014; Baydar, 2015; Eslen-​Ziya and Erhart, 2015; Ertür, 2016; Çıdam, 2017, 2021; Yaka and Karakayali, 2018; Konya, 2021a, 2021b). Yet, despite the profusion of writing on the subject, there is scant research on the women who constituted more than half the protestors. In this chapter, I focus on feminist and other women who took part in the Gezi Park occupation or joined the protests. I argue that the feminist values, norms and modes of organising upheld by the women’s movement in Turkey left their imprint on the Gezi protests. The occupation of the park and its particular spatiality gave feminists the opportunity to prove that feminist values cultivated by the women’s movement had resonance among the protestors and to entrench those values in the fabric of opposition to authoritarianism. Thus feminists and other women who do not necessarily call themselves feminists expanded the reach and visibility of women’s values and empowered themselves in the process of opposition to authoritarianism. I first briefly contextualise Gezi, then introduce features of the women’s movement in Turkey that we can trace in the protests and, lastly, discuss how feminists and other women engaged in the occupation. My chapter is an interpretive venture based on secondary material, newspapers, journals, 100

THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN TURKEY

articles, books, pamphlets and informal talks with students who were in the park. I visited the park and strolled through the camp only once during  the  protests, and did not conduct research there, even though I followed the unfolding of events breathlessly and with admiration through the mainstream and social media. As such, I focus on women’s resistance as reflected in secondary sources, particularly women’s own testimonies about their Gezi experience.

The Gezi Park protests The Gezi protests began in response to the unilateral decision of the government to restructure Gezi Park in Istanbul’s central Taksim Square as a shopping plaza and a residential complex. The complex would be situated within a replica of a formerly demolished Ottoman artillery barracks that had once stood in place of the park. This urban development project would destroy one of the rare green spaces left in the city centre, privatise a public good to provide new resources for patronage for the ruling elite and fuel consumerism. The High Council for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage had decided against the project and there was also a court order against it. In outright defiance of these legal constraints, the government and the Istanbul municipality, both led by the religiously rooted AKP, decided to proceed with the project. The project would also allow the AKP to leave its imprint on Taksim Square that the founding elites of the secular Republic had shaped (Gül et al, 2014). The goal to protect the park from destruction initiated the protests. On 27 May, the watch to protect the park began when the Taksim Platform, the civil society organisation of professional architects and environmentalists that had come together to save the park, called for solidarity to prevent heavy machinery from tearing down the park walls and trees. A small group of protestors camped in the park even though it was not fully occupied. However, when the police tried to clear the protestors using excessive violence, people mobilised to come out and stay in the park. Thousands who watched the police spraying thick pepper gas on those in the park, burning tents and spraying water on those outside, flocked to the scene in a state of revolt. Underneath the desire to protect the park was the resentment of the increasingly authoritarian policies of the AKP. By 2013, the country was polarised and divided over the 12-​year AKP rule. Half the population was frustrated with the AKP’s majoritarian populism and exclusionary policies that aimed to transform the existing cultural codes and institutions, to replace them with religiously inspired conservative authoritarian ones. Women, LGBTIQ individuals, students, Alevis, Kurds and anti-​capitalist Muslims who came to the park had different grievances but the common denominator was 101

Feminism and Protest Camps

the anti-​democratic practices of the government. This opposition constituted the backbone of the diverse protestors in the park (Yörük, 2014). In this heterogeneous group of people, symbols of the protests emerged from the ranks of women who constituted half the protestors. ‘The woman in red’, a research assistant for the Department of City and Regional Planning in the Faculty of Architecture, Istanbul Technical University, was photographed, on 28 May, being sprayed with pepper gas from a very close distance, her feet solidly on the ground, her red summer dress and hair undulating under the wind the spray generated (Göncü, 2013: 19). Peacefully, she resisted. She represented the Gezi spirit where the ordinary citizen, notably a woman who traditionally belonged to the private realm, was using her right to protest against the state that encroached on her access to the city and moreover physically attacked her. Her photograph, which Reuters distributed, generated immediate solidarity across the globe. On 12 June 2013, eight women parliamentarians from the Italian Left Ecology and Freedom Party wore red suits in feminist solidarity with ‘the woman in red’ to attend the session on abortion rights in the Italian Council of Representatives (Göncü, 2013: 34). Then there was the iconic picture of ‘the woman in black’ standing in front of the police vehicle that was spraying pressured water towards her. An Australian exchange student, she was defying the police and the pain of pressured water from close up with open arms (Hamsici, 2013). Another image of a Gezi woman that circulated widely was that of the ‘aunt with a slingshot’ where an older woman was responding to disproportionate violence of the police with a slingshot. She was later identified as a member of an illegal Leftist organisation (TRT Haber, 2013). While these images of Gezi women circulated widely, there was more to women’s resistance than these pictures of protest. The women’s movement in Turkey had left its imprint on Gezi and the women of Gezi who identified themselves in various terms, including as feminists, LBGTIQ individuals, sex workers, ‘pious women’ or mothers, engaged in resistance in diverse ways.

The women’s movement in Turkey and the Gezi protests Social scientists have drawn attention to how social movements influence one another. David S. Meyer and Nancy Whittier, when introducing the concept of ‘movement spillover’, argue that feminist ideology has had an impact on the peace movement in the United States, specifically in terms of feminist egalitarian norms of participation and leadership (1994: 277–​ 89). They claim that the peace movement also benefited from the ‘tactical innovations’ of the women’s movement. The women’s movement in Turkey similarly had repercussions for the Gezi camp and protests. While causality is difficult to establish, we can observe the resonance of feminist ideology 102

THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN TURKEY

in the Gezi resistance, as evident in egalitarian norms of participation and leadership, and colourful, witty protest tactics. A women’s movement emerged in Turkey during the early 1980s and continues to thrive as it changes shape over the years (Tekeli, 1986, 2010; Bora and Günal, 2002; Arat, 2008; Çağlayan, 2012; Adak, 2019; Arat and Pamuk 2019). Feminist women led the women’s movement. In the context of a predominantly Muslim society with a strong state tradition that upheld a republican concept of the common good, feminists sought their rights to self-​expression and equality in their struggle to expand their opportunity space. They introduced the issue of domestic violence to political debate and prioritised the fight against it. They fought for amendments to the legal framework pertaining to women’s rights. Women had their civil rights recognised in 1926 with the Civil Code adopted from the Swiss Code, and they gained the right to vote and be elected to parliament in 1934. By the early 2000s, feminists succeeded in extending these legal rights through amendments of the Civil Code and the Penal Code in line with feminist priorities. The new Civil Code recognised the right to equal ownership of property acquired during marriage and thus acknowledged women’s labour at home. The new penal code recognised sexual crimes under the category of crimes committed against individual women rather than public morality, as was the case before. Punishments for gender-​based violence increased and extended in scope. These struggles formed the feminist values and norms that women brought to Gezi, and which protestors of different persuasions agreed to act by, as I will shortly discuss (Anıl et al, 2005). Within the women’s movement, feminists pursued their goals with new modes of organising and protest tactics that also had repercussions in shaping the playful, energising Gezi spirit. The esprit de corps of Gezi was quite unlike the violence-​prone ethos of the Leftist and nationalist movements of the 1970s in Turkey. Feminists of the 1980s and early 1990s took care to collaborate through horizontal ties working to downplay leadership, which turned out to be an important aspect of organising in Gezi Park (Eslen-​ Ziya and Erhart, 2015). They brought women’s culture in the private realm out into the public realm with humour and wit, introducing a mode of protest that first appeared on the public scene in Turkey with the women’s movement. Different women’s groups organised striking public spectacles to attract media attention, which resonated in the slogans and clever graffiti of the Gezi occupation. Feminists had held a colourful open air festival in 1987 in front of a Byzantine church in Istanbul, Kariye, to draw attention to women’s problems through music, art and food. According to the feminist Ayşe Düzkan, Gezi was most reminiscent of the Kariye festival (Düzkan, 2013). In 1988, feminists put together a temporary museum to exhibit the multiple chores women carried out as housewives. This was also a dramatic exposition of protest. 103

Feminism and Protest Camps

In 1989, feminists organised a purple needle campaign where they sold needles with purple ribbons for women to protect themselves against sexual harassment taking place in the streets and public transportation (Arat and Pamuk, 2019: 233). Needles women use to sew clothes in their traditional dependent roles as homemakers and housewives thus turned into a weapon to protect them from sexual harassment and expose its nature publicly. The tactic of using women’s utensils for purposes of protest had its echo in women banging pots and pans to support the Gezi resistance from their balconies during the protests. In 1990, a group of 30 feminists organised a daring mass divorce of their husbands to protest the sexist family-​oriented policies of the state (Berber, 2019). Individual marriages in the private realm were thus turned into a spectacle and politicised. The spirit of the mass divorce resonated in Gezi Park when protestors sleeping in tents on public ground brought the private act of sleeping to the realm of politics. There were also the evening ‘coffee shop raids’ where women would go to coffee shops that were customarily frequented only by men and as such were off-​limits for women. These women thus claimed their right to any public space, including at night when they could be harassed more easily because the assumption was that they should not be out. Women out at night were assumed to be sexually available and thus could be harassed. Occupation of the contested public space of Gezi Park similarly challenged the prevailing demarcations of public space and who should be where, when and how. Last but not least, feminists learned to collaborate with each other and with other women who thought differently from themselves within a women’s movement that was very heterogeneous. There were cleavages among feminists on ideological grounds. Socialist feminists, liberal feminists, Kemalist feminists1 and radical feminists disagreed with one another on numerous issues (Yöney, 1995). Then, there were the divisions along intersectional lines, most notably between pious women –​who practised Islam according to its orthodox interpretations and did not identify themselves as feminists, but sought to expand their religious freedoms, particularly their right to attend universities wearing headscarves prescribed by Islam –​and the Kemalist feminists who were against religious headscarves in public institutions (Eraslan, 2002). Another important intersectional cleavage was between Turkish feminists who dismissed issues of ethnic identity and Kurdish feminists who sought to expand their rights as ethnically separate but feminist women. Not all Kurdish women identified themselves primarily as feminists. Kurdish mothers politicised their maternal roles to fight for their rights (Göker, 2016; Karaman, 2016). The Saturday Mothers, on the one hand, had gathered in silence in Galatasaray Square in Istanbul since 1995 and sought their ‘disappeared’ relatives that were victims of state violence, in the war against the Kurds. The Peace Mothers, on the other hand, mostly 104

THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN TURKEY

mothers of the Kurdish guerrillas who died in the mountains, organised for peace. These different groups of women learned to accommodate one another and forged coalitions to promote their rights. This experience of standing side by side despite differences was also an important part of the Gezi spirit where participants bracketed their hostilities for a common cause.

Feminists and women in the Gezi protests Women, who constituted more than half of the protestors, came to the park with different reasons. For feminists, the key context was the increasingly patriarchal discourse of the conservative, religiously rooted AKP leaders, the familial policies and the traditional roles they promoted, and the feminist demands they dismissed (Coşar and Yeğenoğlu, 2011; Acar and Altunok, 2013; Güneş-​Ayata and Doğangün, 2017). Tayyip Erdoğan, the leader of the AKP and the prime minister at the time, had declared that he did not believe in gender equality. He urged women to have at least three children and claimed that abortion is murder (Korkman, 2016: 112–​13). In 2011, he replaced the Ministry of Women and Family Affairs with the Ministry of Family and Social Policy. The state ignored the laws and circulars on gender-​ based violence as well as the equality article of the constitution. Increased authoritarianism accompanied neoliberal transformation of the country. In this section, I examine how the feminists and other women in the park disseminated feminist values throughout the Gezi protests. These women promoted egalitarian norms as they took part in all aspects of life in the protest camp. Meanwhile, they upheld their sexual rights and defended a feminist concept of honour that was defined independently of control over their sexuality. Finally, they voiced their anti-​militarist and anti-​authoritarian feminist values in collaboration with other groups in the camp. Even though there were not very many women’s civil society organisations in the park, the Socialist Feminist Collective, Istanbul Feminist Collective and Women for Women’s Human Rights, New Ways, were all present. Feminists from the Socialist Feminist Collective put up their tent with a purple-​on-​white banner ‘Air Space Without Harassment, Without Tayyip’ (Çelebi and Kalkan, 2013: 9). Other banners included: ‘AKP take your hands off my body’, ‘We don’t want a misogynist prime minister’, ‘Budget for shelters not shopping malls’ (Feminist Politika, 2013: 8, 16) and ‘Tayyip I do have three children, not because you wanted, but because I had free sex’ (Aydın, 2013: 54). These banners voiced women’s protests and made feminist values visible. Women in the park participated in all activities that defined the Gezi resistance. Women were in the barricades against the police who fired tear gas capsules or plastic bullets. They were in front of police vehicles that sprayed pressured water. They were in the commune formed in the occupied 105

Feminism and Protest Camps

park, organising book-​reading sessions, working in the vegetable garden cultivated in the park territory, collecting rubbish, and taking turns to help in the makeshift infirmary and the kitchen. The occupants of the park, male and female, thus mostly shared chores, even though the egalitarian division of tasks was a contentious issue in the park, as elsewhere (see Chapter 5 by Yang and Chapter 9 by Eschle in this volume). However, women refused to abide by a sexist division of labour. As a participant put it, ‘we did not accept the attempt to assign ladies as cooks and dishwashers, gentlemen as load carriers and security guards. Women were in resistance within resistance’ (Çelebi and Kalkan, 2013: 9). Consequently, feminist norms and modes of organising resonated in the protests as feminists resisted within resistance. The 28-​year-​olds in the park had grown up with the feminist movement and were not deaf to its ideology. Feminists who were against a sexist distribution of tasks also organised against the use of sexist language in protests. Commonly used swear words, such as ‘fuck you’ or ‘child of a whore’ were a testimony to the prevalent concept of honour based on control of female sexuality by heterosexual men. The homophobic swear word ‘faggot’ aimed to preserve the supremacy of heteronormativity. Many men put up graffiti or banners to protest Erdoğan and those in power, using these swear words. This profane language denigrated women, men, sex and sexuality. Women organised a campaign to oppose homophobic and sexist language in the park. The Istanbul Feminist Collective invited the protestors to ‘fetch their paint box and come’ to erase or cover up the sexist and homophobic slogans on the walls (Rahte and Tokdoğan, 2014: 76). While women painted over the sexist language, they shouted their own slogans such as ‘resist with persistence not with swear words’, ‘swearing is harassment, resist with persistence’, and ‘Tayyip run run run, women are coming’. After the campaign to erase sexist swear words on walls or posters, feminists organised a workshop on swear words. They problematised how sexuality that everybody enjoyed could be turned into a means of degradation (Özkul, 2013: 65). Mehtap Doğan, a member of the Socialist Feminist Collective and the Istanbul Feminist Collective, explained in an interview that they debated how they could alter the relationship between women’s bodies, sexuality and swear words, whether or not there could be non-​sexist swear words, and how one could respond to offense without swear words (Rahte and Tokdoğan, 2014: 76). They created new slogans such as, ‘We are at the barricades, resisting’, ‘There is no place for harassment in Gezi’ and ‘Do not swear at women, sex workers and gays’. While some men reacted badly to these attempts, arguing that feminists were bossy and that young people had a right to express their anger as they wished, others were more responsive. As Buket Türkmen relates, a young man could be heard urging others that the prostitutes were resisting with them 106

THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN TURKEY

and that they should not be humiliating prostitutes with their swear words; another one called his friends who used sexist swear words homophobic; someone else inquired if it was all right to use the adjective ‘dishonourable’ –​ şerefsiz –​because honour was so intimately linked with female virginity and sexual prudence in Turkey (Türkmen, 2014: 26). A feminist protestor argued that whenever someone swore at gays and she responded that gays were with them, the response was always ‘apologies, you are right’. In solidarity with feminists and LGBTIQ individuals, and in reaction to slogans which referred to Erdoğan as son of a whore, sex workers put up their witty banner which read, ‘We, as sex workers, are quite certain that Erdoğan is not our son’. The feminist understanding of sexuality, which was not linked to the honour or disrepute of themselves or their families who were expected to control their sexuality, was thus articulated on the camp grounds. Because of the wit and starkness of the sex workers’ claim, it travelled beyond the park through various media, broadcasting a feminist conception of honour. Although we do not know how widely or deeply it was internalised by men who engaged with the feminists, the articulation of the sexist meaning of swear words provided an opportunity to raise the consciousness of those who used them without thinking about sexism. It reaffirmed women’s cause and left a feminist imprint on the Gezi protests. Anti-​militarist feminist language also resonated in the Gezi protests. The nationalists in the park shouted slogans that they were the soldiers of Mustafa Kemal, the founder of the Republic who had led the war of independence and initiated westernising reforms. The Kemalist legacy was contested by Islamists for its strict secularism and by Kurds for its exclusionary ethnic Turkish nationalism. The slogan suggested that those who used it were ready to kill or die as soldiers did for the strict secularist and ethnic nationalists aspirations of the Kemalists. Feminists in the park responded with a counter-​ slogan: ‘We will not kill, we will not die; we will not be anybody’s soldier’ (Kavaklı, 2013: 296). Feminists were able to raise their voices and make them heard among the diverse voices present. The feminist presence was also critical in generating solidarity with different groups of women in the Gezi Park. Prime Minister Erdoğan, angry with the protestors that he mostly referred to as terrorists, insisted that a group of Gezi participants who happened to be at Kabataş (a district by the shore, down from Taksim Square on the hill) had harassed a headscarved Muslim woman with a child in a pushchair. Even though the claim was proven to be false months later, it became a hotly divisive issue at the time, especially considering there were some pious women among the Gezi protesters. When the Muslims Against Violence Towards Women Initiative organised a walk to protest the incident and any type of harassment towards any women, the feminists and women of the park walked with them (Kavaklı, 2013: 296). They prepared a press release underlying the solidarity of pious and secular 107

Feminism and Protest Camps

women against gender-​based harassment –​even when staged to divide them through the intervention of the ruling elite. Women who identified themselves as mothers also came to Gezi in solidarity with the protestors. The governor of Istanbul, an AKP appointee, invited mothers of the protestors to come and get their children out of Gezi to ensure their security. The state, although responsible for the safety of its citizens, expected mothers to share responsibility for the physical safety of their children. The underlying assumption was that women reared and cared for their children, tended the elderly and the sick with no need for kindergartens or social welfare rights provided by the state. Mothers did come to the park. However, rather than take their children away, about a hundred mothers built a circular chain, joining hands with one another, symbolically protecting their children in the camp from the police. They shouted ‘Everywhere are mothers, everywhere resistance’, ‘Abdulllah Cömert (a 22-​year-​old who died because of head injuries after he was hit with a tear gas canister during the protests in Antakya province) is our son’, ‘resist my child, your mother is here’, ‘mothers are proud of you’ (Rahte and Tokdoğan, 2014: 83; see also Tarihi, 2013). Like the Saturday Mothers and Peace Mothers that preceded them, Gezi mothers politicised their traditional roles in order to seek rights and justice both for their children and themselves. Unlike the Saturday Mothers and Peace Mothers, the Gezi mothers swiftly became material for Gezi humour. Jokes were made about mothers urging their sons to wake up not to be late to protests, alluding to the traditional roles of mothers who wake up their children, urging them to be on time to school, where they are disciplined and socialised to conform. Gezi mothers were portrayed as urging their sons not to conform (Aydın, 2013: 129). Another aphorism was a son asking his mother where his gas mask was and the mother retorting ‘you are not the only one protesting’ (Aydın, 2013: 129). Mothers who protested rather than conformed were not what the state or even their sons expected them to be. After the evacuation of Gezi Park on 15 June, which terminated the protest camp, the Gezi feminists and women continued their protests through other means. They gave support to the so-​called ‘standing man’, when a performance artist began his protest of the government and the eviction from the park by standing still (Seymour, 2013). More than 50 feminists participated in the passive resistance act of the standing man, wearing different t-​shirts protesting Erdoğan in front of the steps of the Gezi Park (Yur, 2013). In response to Erdoğan’s advocacy that women have at least three children, the t-​shirts women wore on the occasion of their silent solidarity with the standing man read, ‘at least three trees’, ‘at least three tweets’, ‘at least three penguins’. The last one was intended to protest the CNN Türk television channel, which, fearing Erdoğan’s wrath, 108

THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN TURKEY

self-​censored and chose to show a documentary on penguins rather than the Gezi protests as the police were invading the park using tear gas and plastic bullets. While women protested, many men joined the women by standing still alongside them. Outside the Gezi Park area, protestors organised forums in different parks, to examine their Gezi experience and analyse the increasing government repression in the country. Yoğurtçu Park forum on the Anatolian side of the Bosphorus and Abbasağa on the European side were the most attended. Women who participated in these forums criticised men’s monopoly over speech both in the forums and in general. They insisted on limiting everyone’s talk in the public forum to three minutes, because men kept on talking and interrupted when others spoke (Türkmen, 2014: 27). This was a speech act reflecting the unequal power relations feminists had long protested and the problem persisted. In response, some women formed their own women’s forums to create an opportunity to discuss and empower themselves without the intervention of men. The forums did not merely allow women to critically evaluate the Gezi Park protests and the various experiences they had there, including issues of police harassment and the limits of egalitarian division of labour in the park (Bakırezer and Berber, 2013: 15). They also provided an opportunity to other women who had not been in Gezi but could attend the forums, to share a part of the Gezi experience and the Gezi spirit. Thus women’s voices in Gezi could reach a wider circle of women and relatively more apolitical women could find a means to engage with the women of Gezi Park.

Conclusion If Gezi was an instance of democracy as Wolin defined it, that is a ‘fugitive project’, feminists took part in this project ‘conditioned by bitter experience’ of state violence and sexism (Wolin, 1994: 23). They discovered common concerns beyond those that shaped their gender identity and they left their imprint both on what those common concerns were to be and on ‘modes of action for realizing them’ (Wolin, 1994: 11). By protesting against the increasingly authoritarian state that intervened in their lives and rejected their insistence for an egalitarian, non-​sexist community in the park, they recreated a democratic vision and modes of action for realising it, even though they succeeded only temporarily. Indeed, from a narrow perspective, the Gezi protests were a pyrrhic victory. The protestors were exposed to excessive police violence in and around the park and physically hurt. Women who were detained suffered further violence and harassment under police custody (Çelebi and Kalkan, 2013). They became victims of the sexism they were successfully fighting against in the occupation. 109

Feminism and Protest Camps

The park was not demolished to be rebuilt for commercial use. However, on the eighth anniversary of the protests, Erdoğan built a huge and controversial mosque in Taksim Square –​a project that secular groups had long opposed (McKernan, 2021). The Taksim Mosque was Erdoğan’s attempt to rewrite the secular heritage of the site. Meanwhile, instead of reconciling the various grievances protestors brought to Gezi, Erdoğan turned increasingly more authoritarian towards any kind of opposition. He prosecuted the Gezi protestors. A group of 16 were charged with organising the Gezi Park protests in order to overthrow the government, and brought to court in 2019 with an indictment that asked for life sentences without parole. In 2022 when judicial independence had eroded, one of the defendants in the case was sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment and seven others were given 18 years in prison (Adal and Durmaz, 2022). On the ninth anniversary of the protests, Erdoğan, filled with vengeance, called the Gezi protestors ‘sluts’ in a speech he made in parliament. So it may be true that the fugitive democracy the Gezi protests made possible was doomed to succeed only briefly. However, Erdoğan is still threatened by its memory and many women and men duly initiated law suits against him for denigrating female citizens in the country with the sexual insult ‘sluts’ (Duvar English, 2022). The memory of the occasion still thrives and its recurrence is still a possibility. It is a memory wrought with a feminist voice, and shared by a larger group of men and women beyond Gezi. The memory of Gezi gives the women’s movement in Turkey self-​ confidence. Gezi allowed the women’s movement to become more visible and reach more women and men. Women collaborated not only with other women, but with a plurality of men and women as they inscribed feminist values on the Gezi protests. They built barricades and shared domestic tasks in public space with men who believed in a traditional division of labour. Together with sex workers and LGBTIQ individuals, they fought against sexist language in the park and values shaped by that sexist language, such as honour. They protested nationalistic men with their anti-​militarist feminist slogans. Secular women walked in solidarity with pious women in defence of women’s religious rights and in defiance of the authorities who sought to drive a wedge between them. After Gezi, the women’s movement became larger than itself. It is now part of a political coalition opposed to authoritarianism in the country that includes political parties and many civil society associations that rush to contest any encroachment of women’s rights. Çiğdem Çıdam argues that Gezi demonstrated ‘another way of living and relating to others was possible’ (Çıdam, 2021: 185). Feminists and the women’s movement are now an intrinsic and indelible part of that alternative life and challenge. The feminist movement has thus been rearticulated through the language, organisation and spirit of the Gezi protests. 110

THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN TURKEY

Note 1

‘Kemalist feminist’ refers to egalitarian feminists who argue that the reforms undertaken by the founding fathers of the Turkish Republic, led by Mustafa Kemal, provide the necessary framework for women’s rights and freedoms.

References Acar, F. and Altunok, G. (2013) ‘The “Politics of Intimate” at the Intersection of Neo-​Liberalism and Neo-​Conservatism in Contemporary Turkey’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 41(1): 14–​23. Adak, S. (2019) ‘Gender and the Women’s Movement’, in A. Özerdem and M. Whiting (eds) Routledge Handbook of Turkish Politics, Abingdon: Routledge, pp 315–​27. Adal, H. and Durmaz, M. (2022) ‘Gezi Trial: Aggravated Life Sentence for Osman Kavala, 18 Years in Prison for Seven Others’, Bianet, April 25. Available from: https://​m.bia​net.org/​engl​ish/​law/​260​956-​gezi-​trial-​agg​ rava​ted-​life-​sente​nce-​for-​osman-​kav​ala-​18-​years-i​ n-p​ ris​ on-f​ or-s​ even-o ​ th​ ers [Accessed 3 June 2022]. Anıl, E. Arın, C., Hacımirzaoğlu, A.B., Bingöllü, M., İlkkaracan, P. and Amado, L.E. (2005) Turkish Civil and Penal Code Reforms from a Gender Perspective: The Success of Two Nationwide Campaigns, İstanbul: Women for Women’s Human Rights Publications. Arat, Y. (1997) ‘The Project of Modernity and Women in Turkey’, in S. Bozdoğan and R. Kasaba (eds) Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, Seattle: University of Washington Press, pp 95–​112. Arat, Y. (2008) ‘Contestation and Collaboration: Women’s Struggles for Empowerment in Turkey’, in R. Kasaba (ed) The Cambridge History of Turkey, Volume 4: Turkey in the Modern World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 388–​418. Arat, Y. and Pamuk, Ş. (2019) Turkey Between Democracy and Authoritarianism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aydın, E. (2013) Çapulcunun Gezi Rehberi, İstanbul: Oray Matbaacılık. Bakırezer, L. and Berber, N. (2013) ‘Neden Sevdik Gezi’yi’, Feminist Politika, 19: 14–​15. Available from: http://​www.sosyal​istf​emin​istk​olek​tif. org/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​Femini​st_​P​olit​ika/​fp_​sayi​_​19.pdf [Accessed 7 August 2021]. Baydar, G. (2015) ‘Embodied Spaces of Resistance’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 50: 11–​19. Berber, N. (2019) ‘Türkiye Kadın Hareketinin ‘En Radikal’ Anlarından Biri: Boşanma Eylemi’, in S. Uçan Çubukçu (ed) Türkiye’de Kadın ve Toplumsal Cinsiyet, Istanbul: Derlem, pp 63–​92. Bölükbaşı, M.D. (ed) (2013) Devrim Taksim’de Göz Kırptı, İstanbul: Kaldıraç. Bora, A. and Günal, A. (eds) (2002) 90’larda Türkiye’de Feminizm, İstanbul: İletişim. 111

Feminism and Protest Camps

Çağlayan, H. (2012) ‘From Kawa the Blacksmith to Ishtar the Goddess: Gender Constructions in Ideological-​Political Discourses of the Kurdish Movement in Post-​1980 Turkey’, European Journal of Turkish Studies, 14. Available from: https://​journ​als.open​edit​ion.org/​ejts/​4657 [Accessed 31 October 2021]. Çelebi, H. and Kalkan, S. (2013) ‘Ağaçtan Büyüyen İsyan’, Feminist Politika, 19: 9–​10. Available from: http://​www.sosyal​istf​emin​istk​olek​tif. org/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​Femini​st_​P​olit​ika/​fp_​sayi​_​19.pdf [Accessed 4 August 2021]. Çıdam, Ç. (2017) ‘Unruly Practices: Gezi Protests and the Politics of Friendship’, New Political Science, 39(3): 369–​92. Çıdam, Ç. (2021) In the Street: Democratic Action, Theatricality, and Political Friendship, New York: Oxford University Press. Coşar, S. and Yeğenoğlu, M. (2011) ‘New Grounds for Patriarchy in Turkey? Gender Policy in the Age of AKP’, South European Society and Politics, 16(4): 555–​73. Duvar English (2022) ‘Lawsuit Filed Against Erdoğan for Calling Gezi Protestors “Sluts”’, 2 June. Available from: https://​www.duvar​engl​ish.com/​ laws​uit-​filed-​agai​nst-​erdo​gan-​for-​call​ing-​gezi-​pro​test​ors-​sluts-​news-​60895 [Accessed 3 June 2022]. Düzkan, A. (2013) ‘Hareketimiz İlerlerken’, Feminist Politika, 19: 46–​7. Available from: http://​www.sosyal​istf​emin​istko ​ lekt​ if.org/w ​ p-c​ onte​ nt/u ​ plo​ ads/​Femini​st_​P​olit​ika/​fp_​sayi​_​19.pdf [Accessed 11 August 2021]. Eraslan, S. (2002) ‘Uğultular… Silüetler’, in A. Bora and A. Günal (eds) 90’larda Türkiye’de Feminizm, İstanbul: İletişim, pp 239–​77. Ertür, B. (2016) ‘Barricades: Resources and Residues of Resistance’, in J. Butler, Z. Gambetti and L. Sabsay (eds) Vulnerability in Resistance, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp 97–​121. Eslen-​Ziya, H. and Erhart, I. (2015) ‘Toward Postheroic Leadership: A Case Study of Gezi’s Collaborating Multiple Leaders’, Leadership, 11(4): 471–​88. Feminist Politika (2013) Issue 19. Available from: http://​www.sosyal​istf​emin​ istk​olek​tif.org/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​Femini​st_​P​olit​ika/​fp_​sayi​_​19.pdf [Accessed 4 August 2021]. Göker, Z.G. (2016) ‘The Mourning Mother: Rhetorical Figure or a Political Actor?’, in C. Özbay, M. Erol, A. Terzioğlu and Z.U. Türem (eds) The Making of Neoliberal Turkey, Abingdon: Routledge, pp 131–​48. Göncü, G. (2013) #Yaşarken Yazılan Tarih: Gezi direnişi ve halk hareketlerinin geçmişi, İstanbul: Metis. Gül, M., Dee, J. and Cünük, N. (2014) ‘Istanbul’s Taksim Square and Gezi Park: the Place of Protest and the Ideology of Place’, Journal of Architecture and Urbanism, 38(1): 63–​72.

112

THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN TURKEY

Güneş-​Ayata, A. and Doğangün, G. (2017) ‘Gender Politics of the AKP: Restoration of a Religio-​conservative Gender Climate’, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 19(6): 610–​27. Hamsici, M. (2013) ‘TOMA’nın Önüne Neden Geçtim?’, BBC News Türkce, 23 June. Available from: https://​www.bbc.com/​tur​kce/​haber​ler/​ 2013/​06/​13062​4_​si​yahl​i_​ka​din [Accessed 26 July 2021]. Karakayali, S. and Yaka, Ö. (2014) ‘The Spirit of Gezi: The Recomposition of Political Subjectivities in Turkey’, New Formations, 83: 117–​38. Karaman, E.R. (2016) ‘Remember, S/​he Was Here Once: Mothers Call for Justice and Peace in Turkey’, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 12(3): 382–​410. Kavaklı, B. (2013) ‘Direnişin Kadın Hali’, in N. Sancar (ed) Sıcak Haziran: Sonraki Direnişe Mektup, İstanbul: Evrensel, pp 293–​9. Konda Araştırma ve Danışmanlık (2013) ‘Gezi Parkı Araştırması’. Available from: https://​konda.com.tr/​duy​uru/​5/​gezi-​parki-​aras​tirm​asi [Accessed 16 September 2022]. Kongar, E. and Küçükkaya, A. (2013) Gezi Direnişi: Türkiye’yi Sarsan Otuz Gün, İstanbul: Yazın. Konya, N. (2021a) ‘Breaking Billboards: Protest and a Politics of Play’, Contemporary Political Theory, 20(2): 250–​71. Konya, N. (2021b) ‘Making a People: Turkey’s “Democracy Watches” and Gezi-​Envy’, Political Theory, 49(5): 828–​55. Korkman, Z.K. (2016) ‘Politics of Intimacy in Turkey: A Distraction from “Real” Politics?’ Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 12(1): 112–​21. McKernan, B. (2021) ‘Erdoğan Opens Controversial Mosques on Gezi Park ​ ww. Protest Anniversary’, The Guardian, 28 May. Available from: https://w theg​uard​ian.com/​world/​2021/​may/​28/​turk​ish-​presid​ent-​erdo​gan-​unve​ ils-​mos​que-​on-​tak​sim-​squ​are [Accessed 7 August 2021]. Meyer, D.S. and Whittier, N. (1994) ‘Social Movement Spillover’, Social Problems, 41(2): 277–​98. Özkul, B. (2013) ‘İktidarın da muhalefetin de burayla konuşacak bir dili yok’, Birikim, 2912–​92: 612–​70 Özkırımlı, U. (ed) (2014) The Making of a Protest Movement in Turkey: #occupygezi, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Rahte, E.C. and Tokdoğan, N. (2014) ‘Sokakta Kadın Olmak, Alanda ve Gezi’de, Gecede ve Gündüzde’, Moment Dergi, 1(1): 69–​86. Sancar, N. (2013) Sıcak Haziran: Sonraki Direnişe Mektup, İstanbul: Evrensel. Seymour, R. (2013) ‘Turkey’s “Standing Man” Shows How Passive Resistance Can Shake a State’, The Guardian, 18 June. Available from: https://​www. theg​uard​ian.com/​commen​tisf​ree/​2013/​jun/​18/​tur​key-​stand​ing-​man [Accessed 6 August 2021].

113

Feminism and Protest Camps

T24, Bağımsız Internet Gazetesi (2013) ‘Gezi Parkı Direnişine Hangi iller Katılmadı’, 23 June. Available from: https://​t24.com.tr/​haber/​gezi-​parki-​ dir​enis​ine-​hangi-​iller-​katilm​adi,232​564 [Accessed 25 July 2021]. Tarihi, G. (2013) ‘Anneler Gezi Parkı’nda’, Hürriyet, 14 June. Available from: https://​www.hurriy​ et.com.tr/g​ und​ em/​anne​ler-​gezi-​parki​nda-​23501​ 216 [Accessed 4 August 2021]. Tekeli, Ş. (1986) ‘Emergence of the Feminist Movement in Turkey’, in D. Dahlerup (ed) The New Women’s Movement: Feminism and Political Power in Europe and the USA, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, pp 179–​99. Tekeli, Ş. (2010) ‘The Turkish Women’s Movement: A Brief History of Success’, Quaderns de la Mediterrània, 14: 119–​23. TRT Haber (2013) ‘Sapanlı Teyze Bakın Kim Çıktı’, 14 June. Available from: https://​www.trtha​ber.com/​haber/​gun​dem/​sapa​nli-​teyze-​bakin-​ kim-​cikti-​89498.html [Accessed 31 July 2021]. Türkmen, B. (2014) ‘Gezi Direnişi ve Kadın Özneler’, Kültür ve İletişim, 17(2): 11–​35. Wolin, S.S. (1994) ‘Fugitive Democracy’, Constellations, 1(1): 11–​25. Yaka, Ö. and Karakayali, S. (2018) ‘Four Emergent Infrastructures: Solidarity, Spontaneity and Encounter at Istanbul’s Gezi Park Uprising’, in G. Brown, A. Feigenbaum, F. Frenzel and P. McCurdy (eds) Protest Camps in International Context: Spaces, Infrastructures and Media of Resistance, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 53–​69. Yöney, S. (1995) ‘Turkish Feminist Movement in the 1980s: A Study on Two Feminist Journals: Kaktüs and feminist’, MA thesis, Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Yörük, E. (2014) ‘The Long Summer of Turkey: The Gezi Uprising and Its Historical Roots’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 113(2): 419–​26. Yur, D. (2013) ‘Feminist Kadınların Üç İsteği’, Milliyet, 22 June. Available from: https://​www.milli​yet.com.tr/​gun​dem/​femin​ist-​kad​inla​r in-​uc-​ist​ egi-​1726​134 [Accessed 16 August 2022].

114

7

Feminism and Protest Camps in Spain: From the Indignados to Feminist Encampments Emma Gómez Nicolau

Introduction As a form of protest, encampments are places both where participants strive for horizontal organising and a different way of living outside the neoliberal order, and where the hierarchies, violence and inequalities of wider society are reproduced on a small scale. In my chapter, I focus on this tension as it was made visible in the anti-​austerity movement in May 2011 in Spain, when thousands of people took to the streets and camped in the squares of the country’s main cities, and when feminists and queer movements were also vocal critics of the encampments’ structure. In addition, I examine the phenomenon of no mixto [non-​mixed] protest camps from which men are excluded in order to build an alternative organisation governed by the logic of recognition of subaltern identities. Specifically, I analyse the feminist encampment organised in Valencia on 8 March 2020 as part of the activities commemorating International Women’s Day. The chapter aims thus to contribute to a better understanding of the boundaries of protest camps as sites of resistance and, at the same time, to explore the possibilities of ‘non-​ mixed’ camps as sites of recognition. To do so, I use Judith Butler’s work (Butler, 2009, 2011) in which recognition is seen as ambivalent. On the one hand, recognition is understood as a human need; therefore the lack of it generates violence and exclusion. On the other hand, recognition is experienced as constraining or oppressive by those recognised because it assumes a hierarchy in which one (inferior) group requires the recognition of another that, in addition, sets rigid specific parameters for the recognition to happen. In that sense, for Butler, 115

Feminism and Protest Camps

the process of intelligibility is infused with practices of violence, including ethical violence, inasmuch as the frames of understanding are imposed on others. Butler insists on the inability to offer a complete narrative about oneself. However, the recognition process is generally spurred by asking who you are. When the answer to this is not closed, when it is unfinished, contradictory or does not fit in the dominant narrative, we find a lack of recognition or of understanding of another’s point of view. In this chapter, I analyse non-​mixed protest camps as sites in which recognition is discussed collectively. Gender is not understood as some inner truth but discussed through an intersectional lens, favouring an articulation of identity that is not fixed. Non-​mixed spaces are thus positioned as potential sites to engender alliances through the recognition of differences. The chapter is structured as follows: first, I will give some background on the participation of women in different camps in Spain to indicate the relationship between the composition of the camp and the goals pursued. Second, I will explore the theoretical literature on the 2011–​14 surge of protest camps. Third, I will focus on the movement of Indignados [the outraged] in May 2011 across Spain and the key elements of the protest camps to which this gave rise: the dissolving of the border between public and private; the sexual division of labour; and the persistence of sexual harassment and sexual violence. Finally, I will approach the emergence of non-​mixed protest camps through the case study of the International Women’s Day encampment in Valencia on 8 March 2020. The reflections collected here are part of a broader analysis of feminist activism in contemporary Spain.1 My review of the intersections between the 15-​M and the feminist movement in Spain, and the challenges that result, is built primarily from secondary literature on the Indignados camps. I was not directly involved in the 15-​M encampments, though I visited the one established in Valencia a couple of times. As for the International Women’s Day Camp, I was more deeply involved as a participant, and I thus draw here on my observation data, together with informal interviews I carried out at the time. During 2021, I also conducted more formal retrospective interviews with six women members of the Valencia Feminist Assembly, which organised the camp, and some others who attended. My interest in understanding the logics of inclusion and exclusion in feminist activism is shaped by my involvement in feminist organisations and activities for the past decade.

From absence to centre stage: three scenarios for feminism in contemporary protest camps In 2001, for 187 days, workers at Sintel –​a subsidiary of Telefónica, the main telecom company in Spain –​occupied Paseo de la Castellana, the central 116

Feminism and Protest Camps in Spain

avenue of Madrid’s financial district. The Sintel protest camp was an example of union struggle that dug in to the streets until the government found a solution for workers who had been living for six months without being paid. The Employment Regulation Order was declared by the company in illegal conditions and heavily contested by unions. The Sintel protest is a paradigmatic example of a camp dominated by institutionalised organisations such as unions and political parties. More than a thousand workers built the Campamento de la Esperanza or Hope Encampment: all male. Women stayed at home and only took part in the weekly support demonstrations held every Friday during the six months the camp lasted. For a short while, a group of women also camped at Almudena Cathedral. In May 2011, the 15-​M movement occupied the largest squares of every main city in Spain and remained there until midsummer. Feminist and queer people’s critiques of these camps focused on how insecure they felt as women, lesbians and trans participants, as well as on the sexual division of labour and a tangible atmosphere of sexism that reached its peak when a banner reading the slogan ‘The revolution will be feminist or it won’t be at all’ was torn down by a man and the audience applauded him in response. There was obvious conflict in the squares between participants, and feminists and queer groups had to work hard to make themselves visible and to ensure their voices were heard. In 2020, the Valencia Feminist Assembly organised a no mixto /​ non-​mixed protest camp, from which men were excluded, at the very heart of Valencia, next to the Cathedral, as part of repertoires of action for International Women’s Day on 8 March. Almost a hundred people overnighted in the camp and many more were involved in associated activities in the square. The camp had three main objectives: give women, trans and non-​binary people their fair share of the streets and squares; condemn the sexual and gender aggressions that still happen so often in public spaces; and create a bond of sisterhood between diverse feminist collectives and individualities. Protesters would march together to the yearly demonstration called on the occasion of International Women’s Day. The air at the protest camp was festive and there were several artistic performances open to the general public. By picking these three remarkably different scenarios, I aim to highlight some core aspects of protest camps in Spain. First, we can see a shift from a repertoire of action focused on achieving specific, material, political goals, with deep roots in traditional Marxist and union movements and set within a collective bargaining process, to a repertoire of action used mainly to channel symbolic struggles. It seems that the more defined the goals of an encampment are, the less attention will be given to inequalities and exclusions within it. As goals become more diffused and symbolic, the focus shifts to the camp organisation itself. Indeed, feminist and queer groups became involved in the 15-​M protest camps because they were conceived as sites 117

Feminism and Protest Camps

of prefigurative politics, ‘where micro-​societies in city squares comprising complex divisions of labour and consensus-​based participation “prefigured” the alternatives sought’ (Yates, 2021: 1034). For feminist and queer activists, horizontality, or participatory forms of democratic organisation, and the recognition of differences, were key to this prefigurative potential of the camps. Second, we can see how the dynamics of exclusions and inclusions differ in each case. At the 2001 Sintel camp, women were not deliberately excluded. The issue was rather that Sintel’s workers were male, mostly White and working class. Women played a caring role –​a wife role, indeed, supporting the encampment from the outside. At the 15-​M protests in 2011, the political subject was not as monolithic: multiple and diverse subjectivities and experiences of inequality were gathered in the squares, but not all of them had the same visibility, and the fact that the movement did not face up to inequalities within it –​and indeed obscured them, within the indistinct category of ‘the 99%’ –​resulted inevitably in exclusions and violence. On International Women’s Day in 2020, a non-​mixed camp was established in which the exclusion was a point of principle (cis and heterosexual men were not permitted to stay overnight at the premises), in order to facilitate the inclusion of others by means of engaging substantial forms of recognition. Gendered bodies and subjectivities were discussed collectively, complicating notions of gender and the various oppressions associated with it and avoiding an essentialist understanding. Butler’s (2009) conceptualisation of recognition as a process by which the self encounters the subjectivity of another –​the Other –​only to find it shaped by language and normative structures beyond the self ’s control, shows us the difficulties we face in fully recognising others. Dialoguing with Butler’s approach, Kelly Oliver (2001, 2004) questions the epistemic position from which we articulate recognition. For Oliver, the dichotomy between self and Other and between subject and object is, in itself, a pathology of oppression, since it enables the dehumanisation inherent in oppression and domination (Oliver, 2001: 3). A more meaningful process of recognition implies, therefore, allowing space for the articulation of subjective experiences of violence, harm, pain and injury. In the last part of the chapter, we will discuss how non-​mixed spaces may function as a starting point for these more substantive and meaningful recognition processes.

The protest camp spring Protest camps were at the core of the 2011–​14 global wave of protests. The so-​called Arab Spring uprisings and the anti-​austerity movement in Europe and America crystallised in the Occupy movement, and the importance of camps across the board led commentators to talk of the ‘movements of 118

Feminism and Protest Camps in Spain

the squares’ (for example, Flesher Fominaya, 2017: 2). The encampment is not a new form of protest but has a rich history internationally, from anti-​apartheid to peace and anti-​war movements (McCurdy et al, 2016). In Spain, camps have been linked historically to labour struggles and their social demands. As in the Sintel example, and at many other social justice events, camps crystallised core aspects of the protest such as the symbolism of the place, the community created or reinforced by sharing space together, and everyday politics. What was new with the movements of the squares was the simultaneity of protest camps and its global form in the period 2011–​14, a fact that awoke interest in camps not only as a mode of protest, but also as ‘the focal point of a movement both organizationally and symbolically’ (Frenzel et al, 2014: 458; see also della Porta, 2015: 21). The moment a camp is set up, a new social organisation is temporarily constructed. This means that camps are especially useful as sites to experiment with prefigurative politics, as already mentioned. The political practices that a movement develops within camps are often part and parcel of its aims for change in the wider society (Maeckelbergh, 2012: 211; see also Maeckelbergh, 2011). Camps can be spaces of social innovation, where imaginative responses are developed in response to conflict and where non-​hierarchical or horizontal relationships are tested. To be sure, such an undertaking is never without difficulties, particularly in terms of the full inclusion of different subjectivities. As Butler explains, there is a ‘differential distribution of recognizability’ (cited in Willig, 2012: 140) and horizontal decision-​making structures do not in themselves ensure recognition. Some other key aspects of protest camps have been highlighted in the literature, chiefly the importance of the spatial, affective and autonomous dimensions of camps (Frenzel et al, 2014). Donatella della Porta points out the shift that camps represent compared to other forms of global justice protests like forums. She gives prominence to the site (an open space) and to the emphasis on direct democracy, in which every single person can participate (rather than a representative form based on spokespersons), as well as to the preoccupation with prefigurative politics and the construction of the commons (della Porta, 2015: 22). In addition, the affective aspects of protest, as explored in James M. Jasper’s work (1998, 2011), provide a rich area of study that can be applied to protest camps (see also Benski and Langman, 2013; Perugorría and Tejerina, 2013). Being present at the same time in a square and sharing that moment generates a social bond and a sense of belonging generated by and channelled through emotions. The interconnection between cognitive and affective mechanisms shapes social relationships in the camps. However, it is important to be attentive to the differential distribution of affects. The concept of ‘affective injustice’ (Kay and Banet-​Weiser, 2019: 605) helps us to understand ambivalences in the legitimation of affects. Rage and outrage have long been proscribed for 119

Feminism and Protest Camps

women and its expression can have serious consequences: women may be discredited and denigrated, pathologised as hysterical or paranoid, ridiculed or simply ignored (Orgad and Gill, 2019). The activist articulation of emotions in encampments is also shaped by the intersection of gender with class and ethnicity.

Outraged feminists and queers in the 15-​M camps In Spain, the movement of the Indignados [‘the outraged’] took to the squares on 15 May 2011, after an enormous demonstration against new austerity measures. Although it was an intergenerational protest, the slogan ‘We aren’t leaving, we’re being ejected’ condensed the feelings of a generation that was paying for the effects of the crisis: the youth unemployment rate (of those under 25 years) in the second quarter of 2011 was 45.7 per cent and it would continue to grow until reaching 56.92 per cent during the first quarter of 2013. The background to the 15-​M movement was a society in turmoil: a great many groups and initiatives –​like Juventud Sin Futuro [Youth Without a Future], Democracia Real ¡Ya! [Real Democracy, Now!], or No les Votes [Don’t Vote for Them] –​were reacting against social cutbacks, labour reform, unemployment and a general loss of quality of life (Subirats, 2011). There was a widespread feeling of malaise tightly connected to the way governments were tackling the financial crisis. The camps were often huge, and always settled in the main squares of a town or city. The leading examples were at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid followed by the Acampada Barcelona, but these were not alone. The 15-​M movement was reticular, and as it was promoted and disseminated thanks to social networks, it would materialise in many squares around the country: Seville, Bilbao, Valencia … almost every major city had its own camp. I will not delve here into the nature and composition of the 15-​M protest camps, but focus rather on the intersections and tensions between 15-​M and the feminist movement in Spain. By 2011, feminist and queer initiatives were diverse and growing in legitimacy in the Spanish context and it is no surprise they also found expression in the camps. According to activists and scholars (Various Authors, 2012; Cruells and Ezquerra, 2015; Gámez Fuentes, 2015; Galdón Corbella, 2018), feminist proposals were initially rejected by people gathered in camp assemblies. On one occasion, for example, one man’s veto was enough to overturn a proposal for free and universal abortion (Galdón Corbella, 2018). Feminist and queer groups had to make an extra effort if they wanted their voices to be heard. They were also faced with a sexual division of labour in the camps: women, trans and queer participants were more likely to be entrusted with care-​ related tasks, such as cleaning, while men occupied the deliberative and policy space, making interventions and proposals. And, of course, women 120

Feminism and Protest Camps in Spain

and other minoritised identities experienced episodes of gender violence, humiliation and disrespect. According to Gámez Fuentes, there were two key incidences in this regard: The first episode occurred on May 20th, 2011, when a banner bearing the slogan ‘The revolution will be feminist or it won’t be at all’ was torn down by a man in front of the enthusiastic clapping of the rest of the people witnessing. The second event was a reading by the Feminist Committee, in the General Assembly, of a statement announcing they would no longer spend the night in the camp after having suffered and been informed of ‘sexual, sexist and homophobic aggression’. (Gámez Fuentes, 2015: 360) The insecurity felt by feminist and queer protesters in a gender-​mixed square was not exclusive to the 15-​M movement. In Tahrir Square, in Cairo, gang rapes were reported (Langohr, 2013) as they were also in relation to several Occupy camps: feminist participants in Occupy Glasgow, for example, confronted problems like the ‘privileging of white, male voices and experiences in camps and online … the platform given to openly sexist and racist discourses, … and incidents of harassment and sexual violence’ (Eschle, 2018: 525; see also Chapter 2 by Montoya and Chapter 9 by Eschle in this volume). Camps are often far from being a utopian, horizontal and democratic space. If they have an uncomfortable atmosphere for feminist and queer people, and are sites of sexist, racist and homophobic violence, then they reproduce the violence prevailing in the external society and fail to live up to their potential to prefigure an alternative politics. In the 15-​M movement, feminist and queer groups worked a double shift: one against austerity measures, against evictions and in defence of public education, health and social services; and the other inside the movement, playing a pedagogical role and encouraging different (more inclusive) languages –​in short, implementing new repertoires of action and new forms of politics (Trujillo, 2016; see also Chapter 5 by Yang and Chapter 6 by Arat in this volume). To sum up, the 15-​M experience crystallises two realities for contemporary feminists. First, feminist demands continue to be met with reluctance within mixed social movements, treated as reflecting special interests rather than as universal, and as secondary, divisive and unreasonable. At the General Assembly of the Sol encampment in Madrid, there was even a proposal for the Sol Feminist Commission to eliminate the adjective ‘feminist’ from its name and put the word ‘equality’ instead (Galdón Corbella, 2018: 232), a sign of the degree of hostility the F-​word still provokes. In such a context, mixed protest camps will not be safe places for cis and heterosexual women, lesbians and trans people, and supposedly prefigurative practices will retain an androcentric bias. 121

Feminism and Protest Camps

Second, and connected, feminist and queer activists have to continue to work hard to integrate feminism into the practices and discourses of mixed movements. The 15-​M had been widely deemed an opportunity to reactivate feminist struggle (Gámez Fuentes, 2015) and a suitable place for interaction (Galdón Corbella, 2018) between feminisms and other social movements. Feminism in Spain is strongly intersectional and has a rich and diverse strand of transfeminism (Solá and Urko, 2013: 21). Indeed, in Spanish and Latin American contexts, the prefix trans-​includes transsexual and transgender subjects and the incorporation of intersectionality into analysis of oppression and vulnerabilities (Valencia, 2018). Feminist and queer ‘commissions’ set up within the 15-​M camps incorporated a gender perspective into their economic analysis –​what was dubbed the ‘she-​austerity approach’ (Alcañiz and Monteiro, 2016) –​and paid attention to specific intersectional issues such as migration, care work, gender violence and sexual and reproductive rights, among others. And despite its initial hostility to this approach, the 15-​M movement gradually included the feminist cognitive frames of ‘life’ and ‘precarity’ as it matured (Cruells and Ezquerra, 2015). Gracia Trujillo (2016) has assessed the capacity of the Asamblea Transmaricabollo2 Sol to ‘queerise’ the wider movement, in terms of how queer/​​cuir3 demands and repertoires of action were disseminated years after its creation (Trujillo, 2016: 4). Such accounts characterise the 15-​M camps as sites of movement convergence (Frenzel et al, 2014: 462). However, there are also more cautious scholars who warn of the ‘patriarchal drift’ in some local assemblies, defined by a masculinisation of deliberation and of militant action, a persistent sexual division of labour, and the over-​representation of ‘warrior capital’ (which involves a fascination with military feats and an effort to end the logic of care inside the assemblies) (Razquin, 2019: 83). Such analyses warns feminist and queer activists against complacency when working with other movements. Feminist movements are not spontaneous, but slow-​cooked. The presence of feminist and queer people in the movements of the squares was a consequence of the history of the feminist movement in Spain, stemming back to the fight against Francoism in the late 1960s and early 1970s and subsequently to the transition to democracy. In the 1980s, Spanish feminism underwent a period of institutionalisation, and correspondingly of ‘latency’ and low profile on the streets, until the appearance of the so-​called new feminism in the 1990s (Gill and Scharff, 2011). This has been characterised as emphasising recognition over redistribution and thus as a form of identity politics (Fraser, 2005). The global wave of protest from 2011 to 2014 revitalised social movements in general, with feminism in Spain no exception. Moreover, since that time there has been a well-​documented popularisation of feminism in the international arena (Banet-​Weiser, 2018) that has increased its attractiveness to the wider population, alongside the risk of neoliberal co-​optation (Medina-​Vicent, 2020). 122

Feminism and Protest Camps in Spain

It is thus unsurprising that Spanish feminists have continued to mobilise in the aftermath of the 15-​M movement. In 2014, the feminist movement hosted a huge demonstration called El tren de la libertad [the train of freedom] calling for the withdrawal of a preliminary draft of the new abortion law presented by the conservative People’s Party, which would replace the current model of access limited by gestational period with the more restricted model in place prior to 2010, in which abortion was legal only in cases of rape, and genetic and other medical problems. On 6 November 2016, the feminist movement called for the Marcha estatal contra las Violencias Machistas [State March Against Sexist Violence]. The first #HuelgaFeminista [#FeministStrike] –​encompassing paid labour, education and informal care work –​took place on 8 March 2018, and was very well received. On 26 April that same year, the streets were once again flooded with a feminist tide enraged by the relatively soft sentence passed against La Manada [The Wolfpack], found guilty of sexual abuse rather than gang rape during the festival of San Fermín in 2016. On 8 March 2019, a second #HuelgaFeminista was called, although some participants faced reprisals. This has all taken place alongside the proliferation of feminist and queer assemblies in neighbourhoods and medium-​sized cities across Spain. In sum, there is no doubt that Spanish feminism is alive and well since 15-​M. It is in this context that activists have adopted the tactic of establishing non-​mixed protest camps, such as the one discussed in the next section.

#OrditFeminista: the International Women’s Day feminist camp in Valencia After the historic demonstrations and strikes to commemorate International Women’s Day on 8 March 2018 and 2019, Spanish feminists decided to change tack in 2020. There was reasonable doubt that a third feminist strike would be effective, partly because that is what happens with recurrent acts: they become institutionalised and progressively decrease in impact. Further, striking had some negative consequences for workers losing that day’s wages. Another reason was that a labour strike was only possible for women holding regulated jobs and with some kind of job security; women working in the informal economy, with unregulated or precarious jobs, could not afford to go on strike. In the Valencian context, there was an additional and powerful disincentive, in that picketers and strikers had faced legal reprisals, some being heavily fined for their activities (at the time of writing, legal proceedings are still ongoing). With this in mind, the Valencia Feminist Assembly agreed not to go on strike and instead to hold a 24-​hour feminist protest camp as a part of the repertoire of action planned for International Women’s Day (see Figures 7.1 and 7.2). They nicknamed themselves the #OrditFeminista [#FeministPlot].4 In Catalan, 123

Feminism and Protest Camps

Figure 7.1: The #OrditFeminista encampment, Valencia, 8 March 2020

Source: Author’s photograph

the vernacular language spoken in the Valencian countryside –​an area with a long-​standing tradition in silk weaving that can be traced back to the Middle Ages –​ ordit refers to the set of long threads held in tension on a frame or loom. Ordit feminista means ‘a set of diverse women that constitute the basis for building a feminist, anti-​capitalist and anti-​racist world’.5 And certainly lesbians, trans women and non-​binary people were included in this understanding of the feminist subject. Preparation for the event was delicate because diverse subjectivities were looking for recognition, but the effort made by organisers undoubtedly had visible effects. The encampment achieved its symbolic objectives, in recognising the intersections and diversities among women.

Intersectionality and inclusivity in a ‘non-​mixed’ protest camp The theory and practice of women-​only spaces established by radical feminists in the 1970s has long faced criticism. Most recently, queer critiques of the overly tight delimitation of the subject of feminism and of separatist practice argue for the creation of spaces that include marginal, borderline and excluded points of view and amplify their voices and demands (Gámez Fuentes et al, 2016). As Pablo Pérez Navarro explains (2019: 156), the concept of ‘non-​mixed’ spaces allows feminists to do this. As ‘bodies in alliance’ (Butler, 2011), certain vulnerabilities based on the contemporary sex-​gender order can be given prominence when cis and heterosexual masculinities in particular are excluded. Such spaces are sometimes called safe spaces, because they are free from sexist, homophobic and transphobic violence. In such a context, participants feel safe to ‘engage in dialogue, 124

Feminism and Protest Camps in Spain

Figure 7.2: ‘Free abortion’ demand poster on a tent

Source: Author’s photograph

debate, disagree, challenge, learn, safe to express, to emote, safe to develop one’s consciousness, to demonstrate one’s creative talent, to fulfil one’s potential’ (Lewis et al, 2015: 108). Participants can express themselves more fully and thus encounter differences within the group. The truth is that eliminating cis-​male and hetero-​male subjectivities from a protest does not guarantee safety. Violence and inequalities can still occur in non-​mixed spaces along other axes of oppression, such as racism, fatphobia, ableism or ageism. The ‘safety’ discourse has also been criticised because of its neoliberal connotations regarding security and surveillance (Quinan, 2016), and for treating all women as victims and all men as perpetrators, with every identity at risk of being questioned or policed (Robles, 2018). However, in practice non-​mixed spaces do not treat participants as victims. Rather, they reinforce agency and responsiveness to vulnerabilities and intersected oppressions. Non-​mixed spaces have the potential to become sites for recognition provided that feminist strategies are developed: active listening, respectful and affirming exchanges, and honesty. Such spaces may be considered prefigurative, foreshadowing a ‘free, “safe” and alternative’ future (Yates, 2021: 1034; see also the discussions of ‘safer’ or ‘brave’ spaces in Chapter 2 by Montoya and Chapter 3 by Ahia and Johnson in this volume). At the #OrditFeminista protest camp, the organisers adopted an intersectional approach to contemplate every exclusion the camp might generate. Migrant members, for instance, drew to other participants’ attention that occupying a public space meant to them assuming a higher risk because of their often irregular and undocumented situation. Migrants thus highlighted how disobedience was a privilege for people with citizenship 125

Feminism and Protest Camps

rights. If the police intervened, migrants would be exposed to an extra risk. As interviewee Sara explained, “getting our colleagues to see that we are not in an equal situation when occupying a space was super important. We are at a disadvantage. ... If the other participants do not engage with this, then they are not taking enough care”. The fact that sleeping in a camp is not the most comfortable overnight experience and thus not inclusive for elderly activists and for those with physical and health problems was also discussed, and ways devised to make sure older participants would not feel left out. Generally speaking, the non-​mixed paradigm means working actively to ensure the recognition of otherness, as another interviewee insisted: ‘As long as you don’t speak with a colleague and put yourself in her shoes, and empathise with other realities, you can’t see it. And you can’t see that there is a lot of work to do ahead of us. ... As feminists, we can get very exclusionary because we want to defend positions that we believe to be true … instead of starting to open up to diversity and saying that we are here for everyone, we also end up putting up a fence and repeating the attitudes of an established system.’ (Carmen) Excluding men was a decision widely supported by the assembly. However, there was also a strategy for inclusion, and a significant role given to ‘male feminist allies’ of the camp: groups of men transported the required infrastructure to the square –​tables, sound equipment and an electricity generator –​and then dismantled the camp in order to allow feminists to go to the subsequent demonstration. Men also carried out surveillance, maintenance and took good care of the accessible toilets provided by an alternative theatre and located 350 metres from the campsite. It should also be noted that the non-​mixed requirement was in force exclusively for staying overnight, decision-​making and taking leading roles in artistic, cultural and recreational activities. Male spectators were welcomed (see Figure 7.3). It can be seen that dynamics of exclusion and inclusion in non-​mixed spaces depend on the specific context where they take place and the decisions taken about how they are to be run. Organisers of every non-​mixed event must not only define the exclusions that are required, but also work out how to make the event inclusive for participants if they do not want the space to become monolithic and homogeneous.

Space as an object of social, political and affective struggle One of the main reasons to occupy public squares is to regain space for the people. In the case of the #OrditFeminista camp, the occupied square was Plaza de la Virgen, next to the Cathedral and the Valencian Government headquarters: a symbol of both religious and political power from old, 126

Feminism and Protest Camps in Spain

Figure 7.3: Open activities in the camp

Source: Author’s photograph

progressively turned into a symbol of the thriving economy of the city as the zone has become a major tourist hub. Migrant, poor and racialised people do not normally walk through this area. Occupation asserts the right of participants to access the city and to live free of violence. Staying overnight at a square, with its specific temporal focus on the night, can be linked to other feminist struggles. The Valencia Feminist Assembly called for a non-​mixed march on 23 November 2019 –​following the Take Back the Night and SlutWalk global experiences (Kretschmer and Barber, 2016) –​to vindicate the freedom of women in public and private leisure spaces and condemn sexist aggressions perpetrated in recreational and festive contexts. In Valencia particularly, from 2010 up until the time of writing, there have been numerous marches to ‘Prenem la Nit’ [Take Back the Night] (García Saiz, 2021). In the Spanish context, La Manada and other gang-​ rape cases have generated a growing concern over sexual aggression and the social tendency to blame the victims. Popular responses to sexual violence and harassment in public spaces favour a patriarchal strategy that revictimise women, a perfect excuse to control their movements by means of reinforcing domesticated femininities. Sexual terror thus operates as a surveillance device (Barjola, 2018). Thanks to the Take Back the Night protests and marches, women and dissident sex-​gender identities assert their agency, escaping from victimhood through the exercise of body autonomy and through taking responsibility for the vulnerability of others. In Valencia, this sense of responsibility (Butler, 2014) fell partly on a security committee whose mission was to prevent the camp from suffering any type of external aggression, whether from the police, individuals or organised groups. The committee was especially concerned that Vox, the 127

Feminism and Protest Camps

far-​Right party, would show up to try and attack the camp. The deployment of bodies to face physical threats, linked by the symbolism of purple bracelets or violet spots (Blanco-​Fuente et al, 2018), is also a display of self-​defence and collective resistance –​an expression of empowerment which is not co-​opted by neoliberalism. A camper explained that “we were occupying a passageway where people pass through, drunk people … a space where we are often violated. And we were in the Plaza de la Virgen and nothing happened … we are super powerful” (Laura). Moreover, the work of the camp included care and reproductive labour to supply food and drinks for campers, as well as keeping the site clean, thus providing a ‘home place’ for protesters in which new social relationships could be created (Frenzel et al, 2014; see also Chapter 9 by Eschle in this volume). As another interviewee, Isabel, put it, “[camps] are spaces that mobilise a lot of things and build activist bonds. You share how you smell, I’m on my period, I can’t sleep, my back aches, you thrill, you cry … you organise your tent as a small house to be nice”. The camp was a context of shared intimacy and emotion, with affects created by staying, sleeping, eating and having fun together. As Isabel makes clear, affects are a bodily sensation that flows the moment perceptual interaction occurs. Following Butler (2011), ‘for politics to take place, the body must appear. I appear to others, and they appear to me, which means that some space between us allows each to appear’. Or as Jasper (2011: 286) puts it, ‘emotions can be means, they can be ends, and sometimes they can fuse the two. Emotion is in every part of the protest and collaborates in the maintenance of protests. And not just emotions as anger or fear, but others like friendship, belonging, joy and love’. In María Martínez’s (2019) analysis of the feminist movement, affects catalogued as positive have been crucial to develop and preserve mobilisation. However, other scholars (Jaggar, 1989) highlight that supposedly negative emotions like rage and anger may also be important in provoking and sustaining feminist struggle. In the case of the Valencia camp, the anger of migrant women was indeed very productive, ensuring the encampment was not uncritically (re)producing the violence of the dominant social structure: ‘It is true migrant women almost always act out of anger, which is a very important driving force for us. Because when you arrive in this territory you suffer violence that leaves a mark on you in such a way that your first mobilising step will be through anger and pain … I want you to understand. And if you don’t understand, ask me who I am, where I come from.’ (Carmen) All this indicates that the sharing of space is a necessary step to develop recognition strategies but that it is not by itself enough. The self and ‘the Other’ must be present, along with the difference between them (Butler, 128

Feminism and Protest Camps in Spain

2009; Gómez Nicolau, 2016), and to bridge that difference both must dig into the experiences that have caused pain, fear and rage in order to make it possible for new connections and for other emotions to surface.

Conclusion The global wave of uprisings that took place in the period 2011–​14 shed new light on the protest camp tactic as a key element in the repertoire of action of contemporary social movements. Protest camps have been linked historically to the achievement of specific political objectives, as was the case of the Sintel camp in 2001, which sought to negotiate a solution for affected workers through an exhibition of collective strength in the streets. The 15-​M movement of Indignados in 2011 did not have the same specific goal. Camps were established to express the enormous public unrest and frustration caused by the economic crisis and the failure of the democratic system. The means and aims of protest were given equal importance. In the struggle to intensify democratic processes within the camps, feminist and queer groups worked hard to integrate their demands for recognition and redistribution, reshaped through the lens of intersectionality. Their demands found their way into the everyday politics of the protests: in how democracy was performed in the assemblies, in how demonstrations were organised, and in the camps themselves. Yet feminists often came up against structural barriers to full acceptance and sometimes open hostility. The non-​mixed protest camp experience addressed in this chapter illustrates how prefigurative politics is possible when a space is simultaneously made both exclusive and inclusive in order that subordinated subjectivities may become ‘bodies in alliance’. The symbolic aspects of the protest take centre stage, meaning that being together becomes the main purpose of the camp. In this way, feminist mobilisation is strengthened and many other things happen too –​like sharing points of view and getting to know each other. Camps are symbolically resonant spaces; they make it easier to prefigure alternative ways of living and certainly feminist groups are going to take advantage of this capacity. However, successful prefiguration of other possible futures will only occur if an intersectional lens is fully embraced and the diverse inequalities among activists collectively addressed. This means taking shared responsibility for the precarity, insecurity, pain, fear and rage of all participants in the camp. The theoretical literature on protest camps that emerged after the global wave of protest between 2011 and 2014 is significantly more optimistic than the feminist critique of the 15-​M movement. More than this, as Catherine Eschle makes clear in Chapter 9 in this volume, the literature has overstated the extent to which protest camps are spaces of autonomy from or resistance to neoliberal capitalism. In my view, there is a lack 129

Feminism and Protest Camps

of reflection among social movement scholars regarding the ‘differential distribution of recognizability’ that makes it so difficult for marginalised subjects to fully participate in horizontal structures. Sexist, racist, homophobic, fatphobic, ableist structures are still operating at encampments and assemblies. In addition, the ‘affective injustice’ paradigm has not yet been incorporated into research on protest camps. Taking into account the importance given to the affective turn in social theory in general, and the prodigious and productive work on emotions in social movements in particular, the expression and legitimation of diverse emotions in camps definitely requires further attention. The case of the Valencia Feminist Assembly protest camp is useful when rethinking the role of women-​only spaces as sites in which a deeper process of recognition may emerge. When redefined as non-​mixed, these spaces can be as narrow or as expansive as is desired and their boundaries, far from being well-​defined and predetermined, are instead adjustable in accordance with the specific needs of their participants. In the Spanish context, then, women-​ only spaces are reconfigured by transfeminism as places where diversity and intersectionality can be addressed, mainly because trying to build a safe space obliges us to consider the whole range of oppressions that shape our lives and, what is more difficult, to identify and accept the privileges we hold. This strategy of inclusion across inevitable differences offers an important example of how we might together expand the subject of feminism and, in doing so, help to contest transphobic violence. Acknowledgements Thanks to Catherine Eschle and Alison Bartlett for putting this volume together and guiding me to improve the content of this chapter. I am extremely grateful to Catherine for her wonderful job making the chapter intelligible in English. Notes 1

2

3

4

5

‘Youth Resistances to Gender Order’ from the ‘Feminisms: Discourses and Practices’ project (UJI-​A2020-​13) financed by Universitat Jaume I; and ‘Mediatization of Women’s Rage: Intelligibility Frameworks and Communication Strategies of Politicizing Transformation’ project (PID2020-​113054GB-​I00) financed by the Spanish Government. Transmaricabollo is the most accurate translation of queer in Spanish as the word incorporates insults and offences such as marica (poofy) and bollo (dyke). The combined terminology ‘queer/​cuir’ is a Latin/​Southern re-​appropriation of the queer concept. Information available from: https://​www.fem​inis​tas.org/​8-​de-​marzo-​de-​2020-​valen​ cia.html A poster with this phrasing is available from: https://​www.fem​inis​tas.org/​8-​de-​marzo-​ de-​2020-​valen​cia.html

130

Feminism and Protest Camps in Spain

References Alcañiz, M. and Monteiro, R. (2016) ‘She-​austerity: Precariedad y Desigualdad Laboral de las Mujeres en el Sur de Europa’, Convergencia: Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 72: 39–​67. Banet-​Weiser, S. (2018) Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Barjola, N. (2018) Microfísica sexista del Poder: El Caso Alcàer y la Construcción del Terror Sexual, Barcelona: Virus. Benski, T. and Langman, L. (2013) ‘The Effects of Affects: The Place of Emotions in the Mobilizations of 2011’, Current Sociology, 61(4): 525–​40. Blanco-​Fuente, I., Blanco-​García, M.E., Martín-​Peláez, P., Peláez-​Orero, S. and Romero-​Bachiller, C. (2018) ‘Violet Spots Against Sexual Harassment in the University: An Activist Collective Response from Spain’, EASST Review, 37(3). Available from: https://​easst.net/​arti​cle/​vio​let-​spots-​agai​ nst-​sex​ual-​har​assm​ent-​in-​the-​uni​vers​ity-​an-​activ​ist-​col​lect​ive-​respo​nse-​ from-​spain/​ [Accessed 8 December 2021]. Butler, J. (2009) Dar Cuenta de sí Mismo: Violencia ética y Responsabilidad, Madrid: Amorrortu. Butler, J. (2011) ‘Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street’, lecture held in Venice, 7 September, in the framework of the series The State of Things, organized by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA). Available from: https://t​ rans​ vers​ al.at/t​ rans​ ver​sal/​1011/​but​ler/​en [Accessed 10 November 2021]. Butler, J. (2014) ‘Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance’, Madrid, June. Available from: http://​bib​acc.org/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2016/​07/​Ret​ hink​ing-​Vulner​abil​ity-​and-​Res​ista​nce-​Jud​ith-​But​ler.pdf [Accessed 10 November 2021]. Cruells, M. and Ezquerra, S. (2015) ‘Procesos de Voluntad Democratizadora: La Expresión Feminista en el 15-​M’, ACME: An International E-​Journal for Critical Geographies, 14(1): 42–​60. della Porta, D. (2015) ‘Prácticas democráticas en los movimientos antiausteridad: De Foros a campamentos, de América Latina a Europa’, in Fundación EU-​LAC (ed) Protestas Sociales y Capacidad de Respuesta de la Democracia: Evaluando Realidades en América Latina y el Caribe y la Unión Europea, Hamburg: Fundación EU-​LAC, pp 15–​38. Eschle, C. (2018) ‘Troubling Stories of the End of Occupy: Feminist Narratives of Betrayal at Occupy Glasgow’, Social Movement Studies, 17(5): 524–​40. Flesher Fominaya, C. (2017) ‘European Anti-​Austerity and Pro-​Democracy Protests in the Wake of the Global Financial Crisis’, Social Movement Studies, 16(1): 1–​20. Fraser, N. (2005) ‘Mapping the Feminist Imagination: From Redistribution to Recognition to Representation’, Constellations, 12(3): 295–​307. 131

Feminism and Protest Camps

Frenzel, F., Feigenbaum, A. and McCurdy, P. (2014) ‘Protest Camps: An Emerging Field of Social Movement Research’, Sociological Review, 62(3): 457–​74. Galdón Corbella, C. (2018) ‘Interacción entre los Movimientos Sociales y el Feminismo: Estrategias Feministas en la Acampada de la Puerta del Sol de Madrid’, in Comité Organizador Noviembre Feminista 2016 (ed) Hilos Violeta: Nuevas propuestas feministas –​Un dialogo abierto, Madrid: Instituto de Investigaciones Feministas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, pp 229–​40. Gámez Fuentes, M.J. (2015) ‘Feminisms and the 15M Movement in Spain: Between Frames of Recognition and Contexts of Action’, Social Movement Studies, 14(3): 359–​65. Gámez Fuentes, M.J., Gómez Nicolau, E. and Maseda García, R. (2016) ‘Celebrities, Violencia de Género y Derechos de las Mujeres: ¿Hacia una Transformación del Marco de Reconocimiento?’, Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 71: 833–​52. García Saiz, L. (2021) ‘Empoderamiento a través de las marchas nocturnas feministas: Estudio de caso para la recuperación de espacios públicos y de ocio en Valencia’, in E. Gómez Nicolau, M. Medina-​Vicent and M.J. Gámez Fuentes (eds) Mujeres y Resistencias en Tiempos de Manadas, Castelló: Universitat Jaume I, pp 23–​41. Gill, R. and Scharff, C. (2011) New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Gómez Nicolau, E. (2016) ‘Culpabilización de las víctimas y reconocimiento: Límites del discurso mediático sobre la violencia de género’, Feminismo/​s, 27: 197–​218. Jaggar, A.M. (1989) ‘Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology’, Inquiry, 32(2): 151–​76. Jasper, J.M. (1998) ‘The Emotions of Protest: Affective and Reactive Emotions in and around Social Movements’, Sociological Forum, 13(3): 397–​424. Jasper, J.M. (2011) ‘Emotions and Social Movements: Twenty Years of Theory and Research’, Annual Review of Sociology, 37: 285–​303. Kay, J.B. and Banet-​Weiser, S. (2019) ‘Feminist Anger and Feminist Respair’, Feminist Media Studies, 19(4): 603–​9. Kretschmer, K. and Barber, K. (2016) ‘Men at the March: Feminist Movement Boundaries and Men’s Participation in Take Back The Night and Slutwalk’, Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 21(3): 283–​300. Langohr, V. (2013) ‘ “This Is Our Square”: Fighting Sexual Assault at Cairo Protests’, Middle East Report, 268: 18–​25. Lewis, R., Sharp, E., Remnant, J. and Redpath, R. (2015) ‘ “Safe Spaces”: Experiences of Feminist Women Only Spaces’, Sociological Research Online, 20(4): 105–​18.

132

Feminism and Protest Camps in Spain

Maeckelbergh, M. (2011) ‘Doing is Believing: Prefiguration as Strategic Practice in the Alterglobalization Movement’, Social Movement Studies, 10(1): 1–​20. Maeckelbergh, M. (2012) ‘Hor izontal Democracy Now: From Alterglobalization to Occupation’, Interface: A Journal For and About Social Movements, 4(1): 207–​34. Martínez, M. (2019) Identidades en proceso: Una propuesta a partir del análisis de las movilizaciones feministas contemporáneas, Madrid: CIS. McCurdy, P., Feigenbaum, A. and Frenzel, F. (2016) ‘Protest Camps and Repertoires of Contention’, Social Movement Studies, 15(1): 97–​104. Medina-​Vicent, M. (2020) ‘Los Retos de los Feminismos en el Mundo Neoliberal’, Revista de Estudios Feministas, 28(1). Available from: https://​ doi.org/​10.1590/1​ 806-9​ 584-2​ 020​ v28n ​ 1572​ 12 [Accessed 17 August 2022]. Oliver, K. (2001) Witnessing: Beyond Recognition, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Oliver, K. (2004) ‘Witnessing and Testimony’, Parallax 10(1): 79–​88. Orgad, S. and Gill, R. (2019) ‘Safety Valves for Mediated Female Rage in the #MeToo Era’, Feminist Media Studies, 19(4): 596–​603. Pérez Navarro, P. (2019) ‘Transfeminismo y activismos queer: Emergencia y cohabitación en las fronteras de la coalición’, Recerca: Revista de Pensament i Anàlisi, 24(2): 151–​72. Perugorría, I. and Tejerina, B. (2013) ‘Politics of the Encounter: Cognition, Emotions, and Networks in the Spanish 15M’, Current Sociology, 61(4): 424–​42. Quinan, C. (2016) ‘Safe Space’, in N.M. Rodriguez, W.J. Martino, J.C. Ingrey and E. Brockenbrough (eds) Critical Concepts in Queer Studies and Education: An International Guide for the Twenty-​F irst Century, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 361–​69. Razquin, A. (2019) ‘Etnografía del impulso feminista y la deriva patriarcal en las asambleas del movimiento 15M’, in R. Díez García, and G. Betancor Nuez (eds) Movimientos Sociales, Acción Colectiva y Cambio Social en Perspectiva: Continuidades y Cambios en el Estudio de los Movimientos Sociales, Abadiño: Fundación Betiko, pp 73–​86. Robles, R. G. (2018) ‘Repensando los bloques no mixtos’, Orgullos Críticos do Sul. Available from: https://​orgul​losc​r iti​cos.wordpr​ess.com/​2018/​03/​ 04/​rep​ensa​ndo-​los-​bloq​ues-​no-​mix​tos/​ [Acces​sed 17 September 2022]. Solá, M. and Urko, E. (eds) (2013) Transfeminismos: Epistemes, fricciones y flujos, Navarra: Txalaparta. Subirats, J. (2011) Otra Sociedad, ¿Otra Política?: De ‘no nos Representan’ a la Democracia de lo Común, Barcelona: Icaria.

133

Feminism and Protest Camps

Trujillo, G. (2016) ‘La Protesta Dentro de la Protesta. Activismos Queer/​ Cuir y Feministas en el 15M’, Encrucijadas, Revista Crítica de Ciencias Sociales, 12: art a1202. Available from: https://​recyt.fecyt.es/​index.php/​encru​cija​ das/​arti​cle/​view/​79088/​48992 [Accessed 17 August 2022]. Valencia, S. (2018) ‘El transfeminismo no es un generismo’, Pléyade, 22: 27–​43. Var ious Authors (2012) Revolucionando: Feminismos en el 15-​M , Barcelona: Icaria. Willig, R. (2012) ‘Recognition and Critique: An Interview with Judith Butler’, Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, 13(1): 139–​44. Yates, L. (2021) ‘Prefigurative Politics and Social Movement Strategy: the Roles of Prefiguration in the Reproduction, Mobilisation and Coordination of Movements’, Political Studies, 69(4): 1033–​52.

134

8

‘Why the Compost Toilets?’: Ecofeminist (Re)Generations at the HoriZone Ecovillage Joan Haran

Introduction The HoriZone Ecovillage was a camp in place 1–​9 July 2005, to support protest actions at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, that ran 6–​8 July that year. This rural convergence site occupied two fields, totalling approximately 30 acres, behind the football stadium on the outskirts of Stirling. In this chapter I situate the creation of the Ecovillage in the context of a much longer history of social movement activism, as represented by the participant action and writing of Starhawk, the US ecofeminist1 activist and non-​violent direct action (NVDA) trainer. In an open letter to the people of Stirling, in part an apology for damage caused by other protesters associated with the camp, residents of the HoriZone Ecovillage (with Starhawk as their contact person) laid out the prefigurative dimensions of their contribution: We created and maintained the HoriZone Eco-​Village to demonstrate what we are working and struggling for, not just what we are against. We wanted to put our ideals into practice and live for even a short time in a space that was run by direct democracy, in which everyone could participate in the decisions that affect them. We wanted to demonstrate ecological solutions for many of our basic problems. And we wanted to provide shelter, food, health care, legal services, local transportation, and an organizing committee for people coming to protest the Gleneagles meetings. (Highlands/​Healing Barrio, 2005)

135

Feminism and Protest Camps

Participating in HoriZone was not Starhawk’s first experience of protest camps. She has written repeatedly about the transformative impact of her participation in the Abalone Alliance, whose 1981 encampment and blockade of Diablo Canyon, California, aimed to prevent the commissioning of the nuclear power plant sited there. According to Barbara Epstein: ‘The Abalone’s most important contribution to the direct action movement was the internal culture it created –​a commitment to non-​violence combined with a utopian vision of a radically democratic society in which everyone’s views would have equal weight and all relationships would be strictly egalitarian’. She calls this culture ‘the politics of prefigurative revolution’ (Epstein, 1991: 91–​3). According to Starhawk (2003: 13): ‘For everyone who took part, the blockade became a life-​changing event. Three weeks of collective decision-​making and shared leadership gave us a strong sense of our own personal and collective power’ (see also Starhawk, 1997: 112–​13; Starhawk and Valentine, 2000: xvii). Common to both these camps was a practice of daily living that was both critical of the status quo, and prefigurative in the sense that inhabitants attempted to live as if the other world they dreamed was possible had already arrived. In the earlier camp, this was largely limited to interpersonal relationships and political decision-​making, but in the later camp it also included modelling more environmentally friendly ways to deal with water and waste management.2 Starhawk’s ecofeminism –​expressed through her activist spirituality –​predated her involvement with the Diablo Canyon blockade, but she honed and developed skills at that action which she has continued to apply in the many groups and actions in which she has participated, adding and integrating further skills as her expertise expands. Almost a quarter of a century, and continual involvement in ecofeminist activism, separates these two camps. Starhawk’s writing career has paralleled her activism, making it possible to trace links through and across movements and elapsed time. When I was working on this chapter in 2021, Starhawk informed me that my correspondence with her about her article on permaculture at the G8 Summit had prompted her to forward the article to the camps in Minnesota that were protesting the Line 3 pipeline, as she had been advising them on some of the same issues.3 This reinforces my argument in this chapter that the trans-​spatial and trans-​temporal links between protest camps are material, not simply conceptual. Starhawk is not unique in the longevity of her commitment to social and environmental justice, but her publishing, pedagogical and archival activities make her contribution particularly accessible to interested outsiders. I trace a history of activism through Starhawk’s actions and writing, while recognising that social movement activism is much broader than one person, as Starhawk herself points out (for example, 1997: xxiii). In writing this chapter I was provoked by a remark made to Starhawk by a Stirling councillor, in planning meetings ahead of the 2005 summit: ‘I 136

ECOFEMINIST (RE)GENERATIONS

understand why you’d be involved in the political aspects of this. But what I don’t understand is, why the compost toilets?’ (Starhawk, 2008b).4 The short answer to this query is that the compost toilets are the political aspects of this, while the longer answer requires a little more unpacking. In what follows I tease out the assumptions that underpin the Stirling councillor’s attempt to make sense of Starhawk’s role in this encampment. I do so in part by exploring what is invisible(ised) and what is taken for granted about politics and toilets. Why focus on what is being refused or protested against –​or indeed the act of protesting –​and not on what is being affirmed or created? My exploration of these questions emerges from my own engagement with Starhawk’s work, initially as a reader and latterly as an ethnographer and archival researcher. My overarching interest has been in the multiple ways in which she works to bring a socially and environmentally just world into being. In the next section I trace some of the routes through which our work has come into contact and detail how my focus on the infrastructure of protest camps came about. An exploration of politics as action and infrastructure follows.

Background and approach This chapter emerges from a larger project in which I explore the entanglement of fictional cultural production with social justice activism. I am curious about how this entanglement contributes to the dissemination and endurance of commitments to social transformation. I coined the term ‘imaginactivism’ to name these processes of collectively imagining and working towards a longed-​ for future. I wanted to investigate the ways in which particular works of fiction might encourage their readers to become social justice activists, or sustain them in that activity. However, it became apparent in the course of my research that the texts I had selected in fact emerged from social movement contexts. The linear trajectory I was hoping to map from inspirational imaginative text to activist engagement revealed itself as a much more complex spiralling and iterative process in which the authors or editors of creative cultural production took inspiration from their engagement in direct action, as well as from the work of earlier writers. Instead of simply interviewing the readers of fictions such as Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993) or Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown’s Octavia’s Brood (2015), I have therefore been tracing the involvement of the authors and editors of those texts in social justice activism and other practices intended to refashion the world. In this chapter, I work with documents that I consulted in the material archive of Starhawk’s papers held at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, as well as the digital archive of contemporaneous accounts of Starhawk’s involvement with protests, particularly those at the 2005 G8 Summit in Gleneagles. I also trace references to her activism 137

Feminism and Protest Camps

through her books about feminist spirituality and politics published since 1979. I did not interview Starhawk about her participation in the protest camp, choosing instead to work with both the archives mentioned above, as well as another digital archive provided to support an Earth Activist Training (EAT) course in which I participated in January 2016. My interpretation of these materials is informed by my participation in EAT as well as my engagement with Starhawk as part of the larger Imaginactivism project.5 My account of Starhawk’s life and writing –​ focused through her involvement with the design and implementation of the HoriZone Ecovillage –​offers a way to think about how the lived experience of activism is passed on, and the ways that it emerges from and contributes to the practices of daily life. Both Jake Hodder (2017) and Rachel Corbman (2020) have written recently about the use of biography as method when working with social movement histories. Hodder suggests that following one figure across multiple geographically disparate archives provides some manageability in telling movement stories across space and time: ‘a life can be used “strategically, like a levee, to direct a story that might spill sideways into other areas, to direct it forward and more forcefully along the transnational course” … as well as through the archive’ (Gurterl cited in Hodder, 2017: 455–​6). Corbman’s challenge is slightly different as she deals with more limited references to a single activist, Seamoon House, but she also stresses the value of centring ‘the life of a minor movement figure as one strategy for following the transit of people and ideas between radical social movements in the late twentieth century’ (Corbman, 2020: 399). Arguably, Starhawk is a major rather than a minor movement figure, with her expertise as a veteran activist being sought out by global justice and environmental campaigners on several continents over decades, but like Seamoon House she has been involved with and translated ideas and practices across multiple radical social movements, both in the late 20th century and the early 21st. Following Starhawk through the archive, as well as ethnographically, allows us to consider HoriZone Ecovillage, not only as a discrete, time-​limited encampment, but also as an exemplar of the radical democratic culture envisioned in the late 1970s and early 1980s by eco/​ feminists and anti-​nuclear activists in both the United States and Europe. My engagement with Starhawk’s work began with my reading of her speculative fiction The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993). This book imagines a future –​albeit limited to the environs of San Francisco and the Bay Area –​in which nobody goes hungry or thirsty, everybody’s work is equally valued, everybody works to regenerate the damaged and polluted soil and water, and everybody participates in the governance of their city. In this imagined future, NVDA is celebrated as the foundation of this liberated city. Although Starhawk represents a society that is built explicitly on a philosophy –​and when called for –​a practice of non-​violence in this novel, it was not 138

ECOFEMINIST (RE)GENERATIONS

the first time that she had given narrative attention to the elimination of violence. I first read Starhawk’s book on Goddess religion, The Spiral Dance (1999, first published in 1979) –​some time after I had read The Fifth Sacred Thing –​and was surprised to discover a chapter section, parenthesised as ‘snatches of visions’ or ‘memories of future lives’ that is a clear precursor of the later novel. The chapter focuses on how a future Goddess religion might transform culture for the better and envisages changes to the infrastructure of an imagined future San Francisco; an embedded thanksgiving prayer alludes to the social and economic changes that (will) have taken place. In just two pages, aside from descriptions of public ritual, Starhawk envisions liberatory pedagogy that encompasses deep experiential knowledge of the natural world; sabbaticals for all workers; a no-​waste society; sun-​and wind-​ based energy systems; clean air and water; food and water for all; work for all and the elimination of interpersonal and military violence (1999: 227). In 1989, Starhawk wrote that in the ten years since the publication of its first edition she had moved from seeing ‘The Spiral Dance as a political book in the sense that it brought into question the underlying assumptions on which systems of domination were based’, to recognising that: ‘a more active political engagement seemed called for’ owing to the prevailing economic, social and environmental conditions (1999 [from 1989 tenth anniversary edition]: 18). With others in the Goddess community, she therefore participated in multiple NVDAs which were anti-​nuclear, anti-​ militarist and protective of the environment. These are the social movement contexts from which The Fifth Sacred Thing emerged and Starhawk’s other writing demonstrates that she had been enrolled in their shared vision since before the publication of her first book. In what follows, I draw out the ways in which Starhawk is an exemplar of a network of agents and movements whose participation in protest camps is just one expression of a commitment to living otherwise.

Earth Activist Training In 2016, as part of the participant observation element of the Imaginactivism project, I took part in an EAT course, with a cohort of about 30 people. I have been aware of these courses for many years, as my fascination with the imagined future of The Fifth Sacred Thing led me to research its author. I first read this novel in the late 1990s, when it was loaned to me by Niamh Moore who informed me that Starhawk had attended the Clayoquot Sound peace camp (for more on this camp see Chapter 13 by Moore in this volume). Subsequently l learnt about the Reclaiming tradition of activist witchcraft, co-​founded by Starhawk.6 The spiritual practices of this tradition included clearing the litter from the northern California beaches where the Reclaiming Collective was based and I was moved and inspired by this 139

Feminism and Protest Camps

concrete dedication to repair of the world. During these earlier periods, Starhawk’s face-​to-​face teaching and training –​beyond her participation in direct action –​took place at Reclaiming WitchCamps. According to its current website, Reclaiming WitchCamps are ‘intensive retreats for the study of magic and ritual, usually held in a campground setting’ (Reclaiming, 2016). They are held in North America, Europe and Australia and although diversity of practice is encouraged, all Reclaiming WitchCamps must adhere to ‘Principles of Unity’, which include the following: ‘We strive to teach and practice in ways that foster personal and collective empowerment, to model shared power and to open leadership roles to all. We make decisions by consensus, and balance individual autonomy with social responsibility’ (Reclaiming, 2021). I lack the space in this chapter to detail the commitment to healing the earth and creating a genuinely liberatory culture that underpins Reclaiming spiritual practice, but I want to draw attention to the models of pedagogy and leadership espoused that are the shared legacy of eco/​feminist social movements centred on spirituality and NVDA. Further, there is a lineage here of making camp together. Since 2001, Starhawk has co-​taught iterations of EAT –​developed to pass on the experience and expertise she had gathered over decades of activism, spirituality and care for the earth –​with a number of partners. The curriculum satisfies the required elements and contact hours for a Permaculture Design Course, but is delivered distinctively with a focus on spirituality and political organising. Permaculture is a practice, philosophy and methodology of regenerative ecological design which has also been applied to social relationships. Its three core ethics are care for the earth, care for the people and care for the future.7 These ethics resonate strongly with Starhawk’s ecofeminism/​​feminist earth-​based spirituality and with the collective politics worked out in the NVDA movement, which was strongly grounded in feminism. It is an ongoing challenge to write about Starhawk in an academic language that generally understands identity practices as discrete, or additive; Starhawk’s ecofeminism is her earth-​based spirituality is her permaculture practice. In 2016 the EAT format was a two-​week residential course combining classroom sessions and hands-​on experiential learning through which the principles of permaculture design, ritual and political organising were taught (see Figures 8.1 and 8.2). As course participants we shared bunk-​rooms and worked together to prepare and clean up after meals, practising the hands-​ on skills of living in community, including non-​violent communication. We were given access to the EAT Reader on completion of the residential course; an extensive pack of electronic resources which comprised, among (many) other things, designs for compost toilets and greywater systems, and plans for and reviews of lessons learnt from the design and maintenance of eco-​camps at a range of protests. The Reader included an article written 140

ECOFEMINIST (RE)GENERATIONS

Figure 8.1: Learning circle at the EAT residential course, 2016

Source: © Brooke Porter, reprinted with permission

Figure 8.2: Starhawk teaching at the EAT residential course, 2016

Source: © Brooke Porter, reprinted with permission

by Starhawk on HoriZone Ecovillage that details the ongoing process of international and local collaboration that brought this temporary zone of possibility into being. EAT’s mission – ‘To cross-​pollinate the political, environmental, and spiritual movements that seek peace, justice, and 141

Feminism and Protest Camps

resilience’ (Earth Activist Training, 2021) – was given practical expression in the work of Starhawk and other activists at HoriZone Ecovillage. The vision, design, building and experience of this camp were prefigured in previous peace camps, WitchCamps, direct actions and protest events, iterated and reiterated as political process throughout a history of eco/​feminist activism.

Passing on movement lessons The electronic resources we received following our participation in EAT were a living archive of the permacultural training that Starhawk has led since 2001, and the political work in which she has engaged all her adult life. I was fascinated by documents related to the infrastructural work with which Starhawk was involved at the 2005 G8 protest camp, because they provided a remarkably clear example of the ways in which she was drawing together and disseminating the learning of multiple social movements. I later consulted material documents at the archive in Berkeley which included flyers from the UK-​based Dissent! Network of Resistance against the G8 and from Cre8 Summit, ‘a group of people from Glasgow and beyond’ (Cre8 Summit, 2005) who planned to build a community garden and social space in an impoverished part of Glasgow as a positive alternative to the G8 Summit. Starhawk was an active participant in both Dissent! and Cre8. These flyers and the activism they describe and call for may be read as descendants of another publication from Starhawk’s archive: The Diablo Canyon Blockade/​Encampment Handbook. This richly detailed handbook combines action-​specific chapters including scenario pages and legal strategies for those camping at and blockading Diablo Canyon, and more historical and philosophical chapters about, for example, non-​violence, feminism and group process. Like the EAT Reader, The Diablo Canyon Handbook referenced print material produced for earlier actions, including the Seabrook May 24, 1980, Occupation/​​Blockade Handbook from which it reproduced a fragment of its feminist systems critique. More detail was available in the original pamphlet, as well as embodied in the activists who drew on it: As we act against the nuclear establishment, we are invariably struck by the common principles inherent in both feminism and direct action. The political and social reality of direct action extends far beyond specifically-​defined events –​it encompasses everything we do every day of our lives. It demands the liberation of all women and men through processes which encourage personal autonomy and freedom within the context of collective living and working. It is through feminism and direct action that we maintain the hope of destroying the social and economic inequalities rooted in the authoritarian power-​based relationships which foster sexism, nukes, etc. (Coalition of Direct Action, 1980: 8) 142

ECOFEMINIST (RE)GENERATIONS

This demonstrates definitively that peace, justice and resilience were already on the agenda for feminists –​like Starhawk –​taking part in direct action in the 1980s. Both the Diablo Canyon and Seabrook actions shared with the permaculture and global justice movements a systems-​based critique, and the claim above that the ‘political and social reality of direct action extends far beyond specifically-​defined events –​it encompasses everything we do every day of our lives’ can certainly be observed in the material practices of Starhawk’s life as well as in her visionary writing. She is diligent in acknowledging her debts to all of the activist groups in which she has participated; the material traces contained in the Berkeley archive further demonstrate that she is one node in a global, cross-​temporal iterative network. Indeed The Diablo Canyon Handbook suggested that its readers seek inspiration from Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance, as well as other feminist texts including Women and Nature, by Susan Griffin, another notable ecofeminist (Handbook Collective, 1980: 44). When I first read The Fifth Sacred Thing over 20 years ago, I was unaware that the compelling future Starhawk imagined was inspired in large part by her participation and leadership in NVDA like the Diablo Canyon blockade/​encampment. I (re)turn continually to these biographical elements to draw attention to the temporally and spatially extended reach of protest camps and other temporary cohabitations organised around living otherwise.

‘Movements are like waves, you have to catch them when they are rolling in’ Writing about her personal journey through ‘Earth Activism’, Starhawk began by discussing the month8 that she spent in Scotland 2005 doing preparatory work for the G8 Summit, explicitly linking her activism with her spirituality and a commitment to seizing opportunities for intervention: I’ve always been an activist –​for me, the understanding that the Goddess is immanent in nature and human beings means you can’t just sit back and let idiots destroy her without trying to do something about it. After the successful blockade of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999, I dove into a period of frenetic activism as the global justice movement grew –​in part because I had lived long enough to know that movements are like waves, you have to catch them when they are rolling in, and know that they don’t last forever. (Starhawk, 2008b) From this article, it is clear that Starhawk views the global justice movement as another opportunity to harness collective power to pursue social and environmental justice through ecofeminist NVDA, while permaculture provides ‘a helpful framework for learning the practical skills of earth healing 143

Feminism and Protest Camps

and for developing and implementing real solutions to our environmental problems’ (Starhawk, 2008b). Erik Ohlsen, Starhawk’s ‘permaculture teaching buddy’, who travelled to Scotland with Starhawk to work on both the Cre8 Summit and the design of the HoriZone Ecovillage, also contributed a primer on eco base-​camps to the EAT Reader.9 His definition of an eco base-​camp includes elements of both prefiguration and regeneration: An Eco base camp can be temporary or permanent. It provides ecological infrastructure for people to organize campaigns, actions, festivals, events, and healing centers or for practically any sort of camp. The goals of an eco base camp are to have a positive impact on the land while providing the needs of the people staying there. (Ohlsen, nd) The needs that Ohlsen identifies are: ‘clean water, food, wash water, heating and cooling, systems for defecation and urination, shelter, cooking, good access, sanitizing systems and social spaces’. He adds: ‘Working eco base camps also rely on effective decision-​making, and social organizing of tasks, communication, maintenance, and contingency plans’ (Ohlsen, nd). This reference to both material and social technologies draws attention to the ways that toilets are politics. Organising their construction and maintenance, and ensuring that the wastes are treated so that they can be understood as resources rather than something toxic to be disposed of, requires negotiating with multiple actors. As some of the residents of the G8 camp came to learn, the process of building an eco-​camp draws attention to the politics of infrastructure and public health that simply fade into the background for many inhabitants of G8 countries. Working as part of a collective that designs and maintains the compost loos and ensures the safe and secure treatment of humanure so that it can regenerate the land –​in the case of HoriZone, taking it off-​site to an organic farm –​empowers participants to prefigure social organisation that is socially and ecologically just, as well as to regenerate themselves and their surroundings.

‘We dreamed of doing a whole encampment’ The article included in the EAT Reader (Starhawk, 2005a) is substantially identical to an earlier one available on Starhawk’s website (2005b), but it provides additional context and notes that lessons learnt at HoriZone will be used in encampments of activists supporting the rebuilding efforts in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. This is pertinent to the way that Starhawk reiterates and repurposes learnings for different moments and different audiences. The longer version recounts several earlier attempts by 144

ECOFEMINIST (RE)GENERATIONS

a Green Bloc –​‘a group of enthusiastic young activist designers’ formed through EAT –​to use permaculture at other peace camps or protests in Canada, Mexico and the United States, where they could not apply permaculture principles to the entirety of the camps’ infrastructure, but were able to offer workshops or provide some resources. These resources included a prototype bicycle-​driven portable composting toilet at the protests against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement in Miami in November 2003. Starhawk writes that ever since delivering workshops at the 2002 meeting of the G8 in Calgary: we had dreamed of doing a whole encampment, an Eco-​village where we could demonstrate a whole range of ecological solutions. … Our chance came when local Scottish and British activists, through the Dissent! Network, decided to set up an encampment for the Gleneagles protests. A group of us came over to support their efforts and help create the HoriZone Eco-​village. (2005a) Alex Trocchi et al (2005) suggest that there were both principled and pragmatic reasons for the creation of the encampment. The Dissent! Network was formed ‘to loosely unite the various strands of British anti-​capitalism in the run-​up to the G8, a grab bag of everything from ecology and insurrection’ (Trocchi et al, 2005) and as such had to work hard to achieve consensus on any of its plans. Concerns for the vulnerability of organisers to prosecution led to Dissent! taking ‘as its prime duty the organising of infrastructure for protests and remain[ing] absolutely neutral towards action, except insofar as it would publicise them’ (2005). In addition, Trocchi et al note: ‘Tired of being seen as merely destructive, anarchists saw it as crucial to demonstrate how direct action was also ‘positive’ and constructive. It became a clear agenda for many anarchists not only to attack the existing system, but to begin to construct and demonstrate what the better world would look like’ (Trocchi et al, 2005). In Scotland for over a month before the actual summit, together with Erik Ohlsen, Starhawk offered a free training in ‘ “temporary permaculture” –​ setting up systems for encampments of all kind’ (Permaculture Association, 2005), as the central plank of a three-​part ten-​day training in Lanarkshire in late May 2005. The plan for this training had been hatched the previous year at an EAT course in Gloucestershire. She then stayed on to support local activist groups. In a webpost dated 8 June 2005, Starhawk reported that the rural convergence site the network had planned to rent from a local farmer –​and on which students from the permaculture training had based their analysis and design –​had fallen through with less than a month to go to the gathering and that they were waiting to hear if Stirling Council was able to provide an alternative. She wrote: 145

Feminism and Protest Camps

The Council, executive body of the nearest town, has become very supportive of our efforts. They can see the public health and safety advantages of having one campsite, with sanitary facilities certified and provided, instead of roving bands of protestors depositing their potential resource material willy nilly throughout the hills. I spoke to one of the Council members who sounded quite genuinely interested in all the features of greywater and especially the compost toilets. (Starhawk, 2005d: 2) Perhaps this was the same council member who asked the question that provoked this chapter. If so, it is ironic that he could not see the connection between what he called ‘the political aspects of this’ and the compost toilets, because, as Starhawk points out, gaining access to the campsite and developing a support infrastructure was a highly political issue, with pressure being brought to bear on individuals who proposed to make their land available to the protest network. In any event, the council did make a site available and Starhawk and Green Bloc activists, working with the Scottish and British activists who had been planning and training for the G8 Summit for over a year, adapted their plans for this new site. Starhawk (2005a) outlines the planning and labour that went into creating safe access routes to and through the site, laying out the site in ‘barrios’, and, of course designing the greywater system and compost toilets. Nine compost toilets were used in conjunction with pit toilets, ‘ “pee stations” (basically privacy screens over straw bales)’ and chemical toilets that the Council required to be emptied and cleaned each day. The article also notes that the burden of execution fell on a limited number of volunteers, including one, ‘Eileen from Aberdeen’, who in addition to transporting ‘the kitchen compost from thousands of people up to an allotment in Dunblane, the first all-​organic allotment in Scotland’, ‘rented and drove the truck that brought all the barrels of humanure up to the place where they will be used and stored’ (Starhawk, 2005a). This unequal labour and planning burden points to the challenges of empowering people to take responsibility for matters that they are content to delegate to institutional powers they might otherwise contest.

Permaculture at the G8 Summit Reflecting on her role at the G8 three years later, Starhawk teases out the threads of spirituality and activism from her entanglement with compost toilets: From trancing with the faeries to shoveling shit –​that sort of describes the trajectory of my life and work over the last few years. Why, indeed, 146

ECOFEMINIST (RE)GENERATIONS

would anyone take that path? For me, it’s a direct outgrowth of my deepest understanding of the Goddess –​that she is life itself, and that connection with the Goddess means embracing the sacredness of all of life. Moreover, that this world itself is the terrain of our spiritual journey, the place where our growth and development is enacted, where our challenges are faced and our truths are lived. (2008b) Although Starhawk goes on to discuss the ‘new kind of permaculture course’ (that is, Earth Activist Training) that she began to teach in 2001, while stepping back from teaching at WitchCamps, it is evident from both her publications and the materials in her archive that this trajectory is not a change in direction but rather a change in emphasis. As she says, From that point of view, taking responsibility for our own shit, on every level, is a spiritual necessity. There is no myth more fascinating, no realm of spirit or faerie more strange, exotic and entrancing, than the amazing creatures of the microbial world whose birth, growth, death and decay makes compost out of waste. For gardeners, soil builders and earth healers, there is no greater treasure than compost, with its recycled nutrients and complex colonies of microbial life. (2008b) Starhawk’s ecofeminism and her material(ist) spirituality are both expressed through a deep engagement with the cyclical and interconnected processes of all living systems. The construction and maintenance of toilets that minimise the wasteful use of clean water and repurpose human excrement to improve soil health is for her a spiritual practice as well as a practical expression of a commitment to social and ecological justice. It is literally and metaphorically regenerative. Working on such a project is also an opportunity to pass on the skills necessary to empower others to live out these commitments. Reflecting on the pitfalls and successes of this approach at the HoriZone Ecovillage, Starhawk identifies her most fulfilling moment: I was meeting with representatives for different barrios, explaining how to maintain their greywater systems and care for the composting toilets. Two young women were a little alarmed at the idea that they’d have to recruit their friends to change wheely-​bins or deal with shit. ‘We can’t get enough people to help in the kitchen’, they admitted. … But as we went on to talk about the greywater, one looked up at me. ‘I never really thought about where the water goes’. she said. ‘I guess we’re really privileged, most of the time, that we don’t have to think about it, or deal with our shit.’ And at that moment, I realized that with all its flaws, our project was a success. (2005b) 147

Feminism and Protest Camps

Starhawk was not alone in this assessment. Trocchi et al (2005) claim that: ‘In the Eco-​village, we came to understand that another world is not only possible, it can exist right now: thousands of people can organise their own lives, cook food for each other, and even literally handle their own shit without a single boss or policeman’. In Truth or Dare Starhawk reflected that newcomers to activism involved in direct action against nuclear weapons production at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1985 had a less empowering experience than those initiated at the 1981 Diablo Canyon blockade because of the way that experience and expertise had become embodied in returning protesters. She notes that: ‘We most successfully planned for succession by setting up trainings in skills we had learned and teaching strategies we had developed’ (Starhawk, 1990 [1987]: 225). This commitment to passing on skills and strategies is common to NVDA, the Reclaiming tradition of witchcraft and the permaculture community. Working at the intersections of these communities, Starhawk has had countless opportunities for learning and teaching over the decades. So compost toilets are ‘the politics’ in that they demonstrate a political philosophy of empowerment, skills-​building and the avoidance of the concentration of power in a select few or in black-​ boxed institutions. Not to mention that access to public toilet facilities has been used strategically to limit the occupation of public space by protesters, providing yet another opportunity to demonstrate the capacity of compost toilets to empower protest. Furthermore, Starhawk argues that permaculture has much to contribute to the common ground of an ideal society and economy while recognising that no one form of economy or social organisation could suit all situations. In Webs of Power she referred to permaculture design principles to argue for a diversity of immediate small-​scale experiments that could evolve and develop to shift global culture to a ‘life-​sustaining system of true freedom and abundance’ (Starhawk, 2008a: 256) and noted that such experimentation had already been going on for decades. The HoriZone Ecovillage was one attempt to model this life-​sustaining system of true freedom and abundance at the same time as its inhabitants protested the oil dependency and top-​down control of the G8. Starhawk is explicit about why this matters: Protest movements are often very clear about what’s wrong with the world, but not always as clear about their visions of what could be right. Permaculture offers visionary solutions, but the current power structure often stands in the way of putting them into place. When protest and permie practice meet, however, they create a dynamic ecozone, a fertile and creative place of change. (2005a)

148

ECOFEMINIST (RE)GENERATIONS

Mycelial networks, spiral dancing and cat’s cradle In this section, I lift my gaze from compost toilets to consider the wider influence of eco/​feminism in the spatial and temporal extension of anti-​ oppressive activism through protest camps. I search for a way to think through the complex trans-​spatial and trans-​temporal threads that crossed each other at the HoriZone Ecovillage. For example, Trocchi et al’s (2005) description of the Dissent! Network, formed ‘nearly two years before the G8 summit’ is of a coalition of anti-​capitalist and anti-​authoritarian activists whose emphasis on consensus and working groups and of flexible and informal leadership demonstrates that Dissent! embodied the same kind of feminist process as modelled at the Diablo Canyon Encampment and Blockade; the same governance model that Starhawk projected into her imagined future San Francisco in The Fifth Sacred Thing. The permaculture activists whose solutions were implemented at HoriZone are committed to learning from close observation of the patterns of the natural world, and mimicking them in their designs where appropriate. It is difficult to resist thinking about the global reach of eco/​feminism and permaculture as a mycelial network –​the fungal threads that ‘run through the top few inches of virtually all landmasses that support life’ (Stamets, 2005: 10), with protest camps representing their fruiting bodies that erupt through the soil. This is a metaphor –​or analogy –​that could probably be pushed even further, thinking about the ways that fungi decompose and recycle, remediate and regenerate, as activists like Starhawk and all her partners in the covens and affinity groups she has moved through take lessons about what was or was not effective in particular actions and group process and apply them in new times and spaces. The spiral dance is a ritual that has moved beyond its origin in feminist activist spirituality to be taken up more widely in social movements. In ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, Donna Haraway brings her most famous figure, the cyborg, into conversation with Starhawk’s spiral dance in her speculation that: ‘it might be the unnatural cyborg women making chips in Asia and spiral dancing in Santa Rita jail whose constructed unities will guide effective oppositional strategies’ (1991: 154). In Dreaming the Dark, first published in 1982, Starhawk theorises about group structures and the ways that function follows form: ‘In the circle, we all face each other. No one is exalted; no one’s face is hidden. No one is above –​no one is below. We are all equal in the circle’ (1997: 114). The spiral dance is a technique for raising energy in a large group, for coming together to commit that energy to a goal, but is also a way to ensure that everyone in a gathering that is too large to create a single circle can face everybody else during the movement of the dance, reinforcing this sense of equality and common

149

Feminism and Protest Camps

purpose.10 I am not claiming that spiral dances ensured the effectiveness of the compost toilets at or the actions emerging from HoriZone. Rather I want to draw attention to the cooperation, commitment and embodied action that is required to create this radical equality and to suggest that the skills necessary are embodied in and passed between activists of varying levels or experience in a way that cannot be reduced to sharing a political ideology. To conceptualise the ways in which eco/​feminist and permaculture pedagogy have travelled through time and across borders, I turn to Haraway’s ‘Cat’s Cradle’ figure, one of the many string figures with which she thinks, because it captures the ways in which activists who develop their practice in one moment or location offer what they learnt to other activists, who go on to do something similar. Haraway initially introduced the figure to help make sense of the knowledge production practices of a range of critical academic projects, but has since suggested that it is a way to think of a mode of engagement with the world (see also Chapter 13 by Moore, this volume). In an interview, Haraway (2013: 109) speaks about an artist whose paintings work with the figure of cat’s cradle: ‘as provocations to, not just connecting, but how to connect; how to relay patterns’. According to Isabelle Stengers, ‘[t]‌o do string figures, you have to somehow pass on patterns, take the risk of letting go, take the risk of your hands to be passive to receive a pattern. As well as to pass on some kind of knot or line that was not there before’ (quoted in Haraway, 2013: 109). Movement pedagogy is not a reproduction of the same. Becoming an activist requires an openness to learning how to be otherwise, in community, and passing on the lessons of activism in anti-​oppressive, anti-​ authoritarian movements is about empowering others through a sharing of embodied skills and practices, but accepting that they may be taken up in surprising ways. Haraway links the ‘witch-​weavings of the displaced and so unnatural women of the antinuclear Greenham Women’s Peace Camp’ (1991: 153) with the anti-​nuclear activists with whom Starhawk danced a spiral dance in Santa Rita jail following their arrest. Writing in 1991, Barbara Epstein describes what we might understand as a cat’s cradle of knowledge and practices being relayed among these feminist witches of the Matrix affinity group, other members of the Abalone Alliance who participated in the encampment and blockade of Diablo Canyon, and the Livermore Action Group (1991: 136-​38). She suggests that, by creating and leading group rituals, Matrix contributed greatly to movement cohesion. Like the building and maintenance of compost toilets at HoriZone, rituals are a kind of infrastructural labour that empowers their participants. Both types of infrastructure are political in their egalitarian practice and in that they make the ongoing labour of resisting oppression possible. 150

ECOFEMINIST (RE)GENERATIONS

Conclusion I could have focused on one of the other infrastructural elements on which Starhawk and the Green Bloc collaborated in Stirling, to demonstrate the ways that they had harnessed permaculture to a political project, but Starhawk herself saw the compost toilets as an earthy metaphor for her ecofeminist–​spiritual–​political praxis. The account of compost toilets as politics that I present in this chapter arises both from the provocative question of the councillor in 2005, that I encountered in 2016, and my reading of Starhawk’s novel about a quarter of a century before that. Although the novel follows the travails of a trio of protagonists, what fascinated me when I read it was the material and social infrastructure of the future world that she had built. I have followed this fascination through Starhawk’s non-​fiction books, EAT and her online accounts of participation in a wide range of direct actions, as well as the Berkeley archive that contains the traces of the many social movements in which she has participated. Starhawk’s communicative practices –​in addition to the hands-​on training in permaculture and NVDA she delivers –​empower others to build alternatives to the status quo, as she herself was empowered by feminism, the Goddess movement and anti-​nuclear NVDA. I have tried to demonstrate the ways in which her writing and practice are both prefigurative and (re)generative, showing both that another world is possible and that we can make it now. In so doing, I have also written an alternative account of the HoriZone Ecovillage, focused on its position in a trans-​temporal and trans-​spatial web of eco/​feminist activism rather than on its effectiveness as a launchpad for one particular attempt to disrupt global capitalism. There are many other threads that could be drawn from this web than the one attached to Starhawk, but I hope this chapter demonstrates that a single protest camp is never simply a single protest camp. Even this limited focus on Starhawk’s biography demonstrates the ways that a camp can be connected across time and space to multiple activist projects. Acknowledgements This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-​Curie Grant Agreement No. 661561. Revisions to the chapter were completed at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh. Notes 1

Although Starhawk calls herself an ecofeminist, not all of the feminists with whom she has collaborated would claim that identity. However, their activism would be recognised in those terms by those, like Starhawk, who do. Elsewhere in the chapter, when referring to a larger constituency than Starhawk alone, I use eco/​feminism to indicate this ambiguity.

151

Feminism and Protest Camps

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

See Moore, 2015, particularly p.4, for her introduction of the use of eco/​feminism: ‘Eco/​ feminism is both “of feminism” and simultaneously offers a critique of it’. Although I focus on the latter, the open letter points to the much more expansive nature of the infrastructural vision of HoriZone envisioned by its participants. The Minnesota camps to which Starhawk refers were part of resistance to the building of one of the largest crude oil pipelines in the world, posing enormous environmental risks. In a diary written while in residence in Scotland, the encounter is narrated slightly differently with the question framed less directly, but this version of the story makes the point more succinctly (Starhawk, 2005c). I have interviewed Starhawk several times, and I have also participated alongside her in two of the Reclaiming Spiral Dances held annually; in a Day of the Dead Procession; and in a San Francisco march against the Keystone XL Pipeline. In addition I have collaborated with her in several academic panel discussions about her activism and the ways in which she uses fiction to examine questions about non-​violence and social transformation. Reclaiming was originally based in San Francisco, but has spread across North America, Europe and Australia. The third ethic is expressed differently at different moments and in different accounts of permaculture –​other expressions include ‘return of the surplus’ or ‘fair share’, making it explicit that care for the future requires using resources wisely and equitably. I use ‘care for the future’ in this chapter, because it was the way that the third ethic was introduced to me and because it resonates with the future orientation of the speculative fictions I explore. Although Starhawk was only in Scotland for a month, she was involved in other preparatory work in the UK prior to this. It is undated, so it is unclear whether he wrote it prior to or following his participation in HoriZone. See ‘Bound in the Spiral Dance’ (Haran, 2019) for a more detailed description of the choreography of this.

References Coalition of Direct Action (1980) It Won’t Be Built! Seabrook May 24, 1980, Occupation/​​Blockade Handbook. Available from: http://​nonv​iole​nce.rutg​ ers.edu/​files/​origin ​ al/1​ 9dfadeb195436​ 1360​ 72d​4aac​8d8d​8ca2​bf1b​363.pdf [Accessed 14 December 2021]. Corbman, R. (2020) ‘Biography as Method: Lesbian Feminism, Disability Activism, and Anti-​Psychiatry in the Work of Seamoon House’, Histoire Sociale /​Social History, 53(108): 399–​416. Cre8 Summit (2005) ‘Cre8 Summit in Glasgow’s Southside’, one-​page flyer accessed from Starhawk’s papers held at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Earth Activist Training (2021) ‘About’. Available from: https://​eartha​ctiv​ istt​rain​ing.org/​about [Accessed 14 December 2021]. Epstein, B. (1991) Political Protest & Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Handbook Collective (1980) Diablo Canyon Blockade /​ Encampment Handbook, San Francisco, CA: Waller Press. Consulted at Special Collections, Graduate Theological Union Library, Berkeley, California. 152

ECOFEMINIST (RE)GENERATIONS

Haran, J. (2019) ‘Bound in the Spiral Dance: Haraway, Starhawk, and Writing ​ iography Studies, 34(3): 427–​43. Lives in Feminist Community’, a/b​ : Auto/B Haraway, D. (1991) ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-​Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century’, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, London: Free Association Books, pp 149–​81. Haraway, D. (2013) ‘Staying With the Trouble: Interview by Rick Dolphijn’, in I. Gevers (ed) Yes Naturally: How Art Saves the World, Rotterdam: Nai010, pp 108–​13. Highlands/​Healing Barrio (Neighborhood) HoriZone Ecovillage (2005) ‘An Open Letter to the People of Stirling, July 11 2005’, consulted at Special Collections, Graduate Theological Union Library, Berkeley, CA. Hodder, J. (2017) ‘On Absence and Abundance: Biography as Method in Archival Research’, Area, 49(4): 452–​9. Imarisha, W. and brown, a.m. (eds) (2015) Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, Oakland, CA: AK Press. Moore, N. (2015) The Changing Nature of Eco/​Feminism: Telling Stories from Clayoquot Sound, Vancouver: UBC Press. Ohlsen, E. (nd) ‘Ecological Base Camp Design’ –​electronic document in EAT Reader, provided following Earth Activist Training in January 2016. Permaculture Association (2005) ‘Calling all Gardeners, Permaculturalists, and Ecodesigners’. Available from: https://​www.perma​cult​ure.org.uk/​ notic​ eboa​ rd/n ​ ews/g​ 8-m ​ eeti​ ng-g​ len ​ eagl​ es-a​ nd-a​ ctivi​ st-t​ raini​ ng-2​ 00504​ 06 [Accessed 30 June 2022]. Reclaiming (2016) ‘Welcome to the Reclaiming WitchCamp Council Website’. Available from: https://​www.witchc​amp.org/​ [Accessed 30 June 2022]. Reclaiming (2021) ‘Principles of Unity’. Available from: https://​www. witchc​amp.org/​index.php/​recl​aimi​ngtr​adit​ion [Accessed 30 June 2022]. Stamets, P. (2005) Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press. Starhawk (1990 [1987]) Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery, New York: HarperOne. Starhawk (1993) The Fifth Sacred Thing, New York: Bantam Books. Starhawk (1997) Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics, 15th anniversary edn, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Starhawk (1999) The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess, 20th anniversary edn, New York: HarperSanFrancisco. Starhawk (2003) ‘Foreword’, in L. Hauser, Direct Action: An Historical Novel, San Francisco: GroundWork. pp 12-​15.

153

Feminism and Protest Camps

Starhawk (2005a) ‘Permaculture at the G8 Protests –​ the Horizone Ecovillage’, electronic document in EAT Reader provided following Earth Activist Training in January 2016. Starhawk (2005b) ‘Some Notes on Permaculture at the HoriZone Ecovillage’. Available from: https://​starh​awk.org/​perma​cult​ure/​horiz​ one-​eco-​vill​age/​ [Accessed 13 October 2021]. Starhawk (2005c) ‘Diary of a Compost Toilet Queen’, in D. Harvie, K. Milburn, B. Trott and D. Watts (eds) Shut Them Down! The G8, Gleneagles 2005 and the Movement of Movements, Leeds: Dissent! and Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, pp 185–​201. Starhawk (2005d) ‘2005 G8 Update #1: The Problem Is the Problem’, 8 ​ gs/​ June. Available from: https://​starh​awk.org/​Activi​ sm/a​ ctivi​ sm%20wr​ itin 2005-​July-​G8/S​ tarh ​ awk_​ G ​ 8%2020​ 05%20Upd​ate%20%231.pdf [Accessed 13 October 2021]. Starhawk (2008a) Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising, Gabriola Island, BC: New Catalyst Books. Starhawk (2008b) ‘Earth Activism: My Personal Journey’. Available from: https://s​ tarh​awk.org/​perma​cult​ure/​my-​perso​nal-​jour​ney/​ [Accessed 13 October 2021]. Starhawk and Valentine, H. (2000) The Twelve Wild Swans, New York: HarperOne. Trocchi, A., Redwolf, G. and Alamire, P. (2005) ‘Reinventing Dissent: The Story of Resistance against the G8 Summit’. Available from: https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/09/324061.html [Accessed 15 October 2022].

154

PART III

Feminist Theorising and Protest Camps

9

Protest Camps as ‘Homeplace’? Social Reproduction in and against Neoliberal Capitalism Catherine Eschle

Introduction From a feminist perspective, one of the most striking aspects of the protest camp as a political form is how it combines protest acts with the creation of activist living space. In this chapter, I shine a light on this distinctive dimension of camps. I am responding primarily to the magisterial overview of protest camps published in 2013 by Anna Feigenbaum, Fabian Frenzel and Patrick McCurdy. Feigenbaum and her colleagues broke new ground in their theorisation of camps as a social movement tactic, in part by underscoring how protest camps are ‘at once protest spaces and homeplaces’ (2013: 42, emphasis added), an evocative concept they take from Black feminist bell hooks (2001).1 Concerned more particularly with the work of African American women ‘to construct domestic households as spaces of care and nurturance in the face of the brutal harsh reality of racist oppression, of sexist domination’ (hooks, 2001: 384), hooks’s original reflection underlines how homeplace has enabled healing and renewal among Black communities while simultaneously fostering resistance to hegemonic norms. Feigenbaum et al use this as an analogy for how protest camps too can be nurturing communities of resistance, in which activists together engage in radical ‘acts of social reproduction’ in ways that subvert neoliberal capitalism (2013, 12: emphasis in original). I find Feigenbaum et al’s approach to be highly suggestive but frustratingly incomplete, because it largely sidesteps a rich and diverse feminist literature on social reproduction and ultimately underplays the implications of hooks’s claims. In the first part of this chapter, I explore Feigenbaum et al’s analysis 157

Feminism and Protest Camps

in more depth, before bringing Marxist and Black/​​anti-​racist feminist literature on social reproduction to centre stage. This literature informs the case study I develop in the second part of the chapter of two protest camps in my locality, Occupy Glasgow and Faslane Peace Camp, in which I draw out the differing strategies for social reproduction in the camps and their impacts. I conclude by returning to hooks’s argument about homeplace and its implications for the theorisation of protest camps. In effect, I argue that a critical feminist lens on social reproduction draws attention to the persistence of gendered, racialised and capitalist hierarchies within protest camps, and thus illuminates the structural limitations of the protest camp form in patriarchal, White-​dominated, neoliberal contexts.

Theorising protest camps as sites of social reproduction Feigenbaum et al’s insistence on the interconnection between acts of protest and acts of social reproduction as characteristic of protest camps is a key analytical insight. It is embedded in their very definition of encampment as a ‘place-​based social movement strategy that involves both acts of ongoing protest and acts of social reproduction needed to sustain daily life’ (Feigenbaum et al, 2013: 12, emphasis in original). As they write, Whether in the forests of Tasmania or the crowded streets of Thailand, to function at the most basic level as sites of ongoing protest and daily living, camps need to figure out how people will sleep, what they will eat, and where they will go to the bathroom. … Additionally, many protest camps contain spaces for well-​being. To create these spaces, protest campers bring together and develop particular infrastructures and practices. As campers build communal kitchens, libraries, education spaces and solar powered showers, they become entangled in experiments in alternative ways of living together. … This is perhaps what most makes protest camps distinct from other overt forms of protest. … They are at once protest spaces and homeplaces. (2013: 41–​2) The construction of an encampment in which people make their home, however temporarily, functions to provide support for political action, in the sense of allowing space for activists to plan and recover from action. But more than this, it ‘allow[s]‌for social reproduction and the re-​creation of everyday life in ways that contest the status quo’ (Feigenbaum et al, 2013: 10), exposing the shortcomings in social provision and democratic inclusion in wider society (2013: 44–​6, 184), and instantiating, however fleetingly, an alternative vision of how daily life might be led. Thus social reproduction in camps should be understood as intrinsic to their political aims and effects: 158

Protest Camps as ‘Homeplace’?

‘More than a mere backdrop or accessory to action, the people, objects and operations required to keep camps running are essential to the political life of the camp’ (2013: 58). To make sense of all this, Feigenbaum et al develop what they call an ‘infrastructural analysis’ that unpacks ‘how protest campers build interrelated, operational structures for daily living’ (2013: 27–​8; see also Frenzel et al, 2014). They identify several key protest camp infrastructures, centring on media and communication, governance, political action and, lastly, ‘re-​creation’, which includes ‘tents, mobile kitchens, toilets, border markers or defences, as well as childcare, facilities that cater for the disabled and other spaces and structures for well-​being’ (2013: 182). It is the re-​ creational infrastructures that are of particular concern to this chapter. For Feigenbaum et al, their political significance lies partly in their ‘bordering’ function, marking the camp as a space of ‘exception’ in which campers seek to carve out autonomy from mainstream society (2013: 187–​206), and partly in their facilitation of social reproduction (2013: 206–​7). In relation to the latter, re-​creational infrastructures allow for care and domestic-​related tasks in camps to be socialised and collectivised, in contrast to how these are ‘strongly gendered and rendered private’ in mainstream society (2013: 206). At this point of their analysis, however, a puzzle arises: Feigenbaum et al document how camps in fact often fail to provide adequate care for people with mental health difficulties, note widespread incidences of sexual violence in Occupy camps (2013: 207–​ 17), and conclude that questions of ‘safety’ remain acute for ‘women and minority groups’ on site, often becoming ‘the cause of tensions within camps’ (Frenzel et al, 2018: 281–​2). Why might this be? It seems to me that the framework developed by Feigenbaum et al does not give us the answers. Not only are the problems above characterised as failures of society at large rather than of camps per se, but there is little practical detail of what it looks like to remake the kitchen, the toilet and the crèche in transformative ways, and how or why this remaking might fail. I suggest this is in part a result of the displacement of feminist analysis in Feigenbaum et al’s account by gender-​blind conceptualisations. Their framework is drawn mostly from Marxist autonomism, a variant of Marxism that emerged in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, which developed a concept of ‘capitalism as a totalizing system that organizes all members of society (housewives, students, and the unemployed along with waged workers) in the production of wealth that it then appropriates’ (Ferguson, 2020: 122). Autonomy as an organisational strategy on this approach was conceived not as separation (as in the liberal tradition), but as collective ‘self-​determination and self-​management within capitalism, thus taking the form of a counterpower or “exodus” ’ (Cuninghame, 2010: 454). While Feigenbaum et al namecheck autonomist ‘Marxist feminist work on the 159

Feminism and Protest Camps

reproductive labour of homemaking and biopolitics’ (Feigenbaum et al, 2013: 42), they do not follow this feminist trail in their analysis, instead relying on degendered and relatively abstract concepts from Agamben (on exceptionality) and Foucault (on biopolitics) to supplement their formulation of camps as ‘spaces of exception’ (Feigenbaum et al, 2013: 189–​208). This theoretical direction is reinforced by a repudiation of the terminology of the ‘domestic’. As Feigenbaum et al explain, the ‘domestic sphere and its infrastructures are read as concerning women and as being private (and hence non-​political)’, whereas ‘in the case of protest camps, re-​creational infrastructures are employed in ways that signify a break from the norms of the everyday. … [T]‌hey are established and enacted explicitly as politics’ (2013: 183–​4). This implies that the historic association between women’s labour and the re-​creation infrastructures and activities necessary to daily life is dissolved in protest camps. But as Feigenbaum et al themselves acknowledge, activist practices in camps often disrupt or belie this putative transformation of the domestic: Whether intentionally or not, the re-​creation infrastructures protesters build together are frequently regarded as being outside the public sphere; they are seen as add-​ons to the real business of meetings and direct action. Sometimes coded as ‘women’s work’, the physical and affective or emotional labour –​as well as the material and spaces –​that go into caring for our bodies are often overlooked and undervalued. (Feigenbaum et al, 2013: 58) Empirically, this is an admission that social reproduction is often undertaken by activists in protest camps in line with dominant social norms of the ‘domestic’ –​and gendered accordingly. Conceptually, there is also a problem here. After all, hooks’s lyrical evocation of homeplace on which Feigenbaum et al draw meditates precisely on the ‘the primacy of domesticity as a site of subversion and resistance’ for African Americans (hooks, 2001: 389, emphasis added). In this context, the domestic (and women’s work within it) is both private and a site of political transformation. Moreover, it is a sine qua non of feminism more generally that all domestic relations are necessarily political, whether or not they take the consciously resistant form found in some African American homes, because they are shaped by structural power relations and by state policy. Feminists have exposed how the notion that the home is outside of the political is a foundational liberal fiction, one that historically justified the exclusion of women as citizens from the public sphere and continues to naturalise the gendered division of labour and mask the expropriation of domestic and care work on which capitalism depends. Feigenbaum et al’s theoretical framework seems in danger of reproducing this fiction, and of assuming what, from a feminist perspective, needs to 160

Protest Camps as ‘Homeplace’?

be investigated: to what degree and in what circumstances are camps able to become ‘spaces of exception’ from liberal norms about domesticity and associated gendered and racialised processes of social reproduction? To answer that question, I return to feminist scholarship –​particularly Marxist and Black/​​anti-​racist feminist work –​on the domestic sphere and social reproduction. Cindy Katz defines social reproduction as ‘the fleshy, messy, and indeterminate stuff of everyday life. It is also a set of structured practices that unfold in dialectical relation with production, with which it is mutually constitutive and in tension’ (2001: 710). Less abstractly, we can conceive of these practices as ‘directly involved in maintaining life, on a daily basis and intergenerationally. … Among other things, social reproduction includes how food, clothing and shelter are made available for immediate consumption, how the maintenance and socialization of children is accomplished, how care of the elderly and infirm is provided’ (Brenner and Laslett cited in Bhattacharaya, 2017: 6–​7). In this way, the myriad forms of labour that go into producing the workforce are brought to light. As Barbara Laslett and Johanna Brenner argue, ‘feminists who use the concept of social reproduction do so in order to understand the perpetuation and reproduction of systems of gender inequality, in relation to but different from the reproduction of systems of class inequality’ (1989: 383). Increasingly influenced by Black feminists, theories of social reproduction ‘address the relationship between exploitation (normally tethered to class) and oppression (normally understood through gender, race etc.)’ (Bhattacharaya, 2017: 3, emphasis in original; see also Ferguson, 2020: 107–​11). For my purposes, this literature is helpful in introducing four key points. First, it draws attention to the spatial dimensions of social reproduction, and specifically the mutual co-​constitution of the ‘private’ domestic sphere with the realms of production and exchange, and of the state. I acknowledge that research on social reproduction covers a wide range of institutions, from education to pensions. Yet I think it fair to say that feminist work has focused primarily ‘on the emergence, institutionalization, and reorganization of the male breadwinner/​​female housewife family’ under industrial capitalism (Laslett and Brenner, 1989: 385), and the persistent association of the domestic sphere with feminised, affective, and unpaid or low-​paid labour. Notably, feminist historians have charted how liberal ideology relied on a doctrine of separate spheres, in which a feminised domestic realm would be a sanctuary for White bourgeois families from the predations of capitalism and the state (for example, Steinbach, 2012). For women of colour and working-​class women, the boundaries between the home and work were always much more porous (for example, Davis, 1982: Chs 9 and 13; Collins, 2009: Ch. 3). The second critical point is the emphasis in feminist writing on the gendered division of labour and the persistent association of the responsibility 161

Feminism and Protest Camps

for social reproduction with women and particularly with women of colour. Feminist scholarship pays attention to both domestic (Teeple Hopkins, 2017) and affective labour (Fraser, 2017): in other words, it encompasses both the banal everyday toil of ‘housework’ –​cleaning the floor, washing the dishes, preparing food and so on –​and the care and emotional sustenance provided to family members (or the families of others), particularly the young and elderly. Feminists argue that such labour is essential to the reproduction of the workforce but has been systematically undervalued, privatised and feminised within capitalism (for example, Davis, 1982: Ch. 13). It is assumed to be the unpaid responsibility of women within their own homes and is allocated disproportionately to women of colour for low wages in other people’s houses (for example, Davis, 1982: 230–​2, 237–​8). Third, feminists argue that the association of women with domestic space and its accompanying labours has been violently enforced and continues to create substantial insecurity. With its roots stretching back to the murderous witch-​hunts of early modern Europe (Federici, 2014), as well as to the genocidal, sexualised abuses of slavery and the authority granted to male heads of household under capitalism, the continued vulnerability of women to violence in the home within a wider context of gendered subordination is well documented. Taking White supremacism into account, much Black and anti-​racist feminist work has insisted that women of colour face a more substantial risk of violence in the domestic spaces in which they undertake paid work, and in other White-​dominated spaces, than in their own homes (as documented in Ferguson 2020: 72–​3). Correspondingly, the smaller body of scholarship on gendered violence in Black homes underlines the compounding difficulties of wider violence: punitive state and police surveillance of communities of colour, endemic economic insecurity or poverty, the criminalisation of Black men, and insecurity of migration and citizenship status (Crenshaw, 1991; Collins, 1998) – Carrie Freshour (2017) calls ‘precarious work and life’. Finally, this literature shows how both domestic space and domestic/​​ affective labour, along with their violent constraints and penalties, have been restructured in the neoliberal era, ‘as states withdraw from public provisioning, with the result that capitalist market relations increasingly infiltrate social reproduction’ (Bakker, 2007: 541). This restructuring has produced new and intensified forms of gendered and racialised violence, insecurity and exploitation within the labour market, as domestic and care labour have been increasingly commodified and women of colour in particular have become its global providers (for example, Parreñas, 2015; Teeple Hopkins, 2017). The associated ‘enclosures’ of land and privatisation of public amenities in the Global South (Federici, 2014: 9–​10, 236–​9), and the more recent austerity programmes in the Global North (Bassel and Emejulu, 2017: Ch. 3) have intensified these domestic and care burdens on 162

Protest Camps as ‘Homeplace’?

women and particularly women of colour (for example, Freshour, 2017; Rai, Hoskyns and Thomas, 2004). As Feigenbaum et al make clear, the contemporary protest camp is often a form of resistance to such dynamics, a conscious effort to create a space of sanctuary from the exploitation and oppression integral to neoliberal capitalism and austerity policies. This is why there is some resonance with the African American homeplace as described by hooks (Feigenbaum et al, 2013: 42). But how can Marxist and Black feminist arguments about social reproduction be more fully integrated into thinking about protest camps? I suggest reverting from the label ‘re-​creational’ to ‘domestic’ infrastructures, precisely because of the debates about women’s work that this taps into, and then analysing the continuities as well as the ruptures between the camp and wider society in terms of the organisation of domestic space and of domestic and affective labour processes. This requires a more detailed examination of the material dimensions of, and practices associated with, domestic infrastructures in camps, as well as of the inequalities and insecurities these might generate. I will demonstrate this approach in the next half of the chapter, in an analysis of two protest camps in my locality: Occupy Glasgow (2011) and Faslane Peace Camp (1982–​present).

Constructing homeplace at Occupy Glasgow and Faslane Peace Camp In this discussion I draw on my previously published research that explores how activists in these two camps reproduce and contest both ‘the everyday’ and gendered identities (Eschle, 2016b, 2017, 2018a, 2018b). This research was conducted broadly from a stance of support for the camps and their goals, but it was not from an ‘insider’ vantage point: I visited both Occupy Glasgow and Faslane Peace Camp as a sympathetic citizen a few times before conducting any research, but my involvement was peripheral (and increasingly ambivalent in the case of Occupy) and I never stayed overnight. Nor did I conduct ethnographic research: specifically, my data consists of in-​depth, semi-​structured interviews conducted between 2014 and 2016, averaging between two and three hours each, with a total of 24 individuals, either campers who had lived on site or visitors with long-​term/​​repeated involvement, most reflecting retrospectively on their participation years earlier. Of these interviewees, 14 are women, 10 are men and all bar 2 are White. The interviews have been supplemented by an archive of campaigning ephemera and newsletters from Faslane peace camp, and online blogs and media coverage from and about both camps. The two camps have in common their location in or near Glasgow in Scotland and, to some extent, their composition, with both camps being 163

Feminism and Protest Camps

mixed-​gender, and largely White and middle class, albeit accommodating groups of working-​class protestors at times, and also some homeless and mentally ill individuals. The camps have some differences, however, not least in terms of their domestic infrastructure and approach to domestic and affective labour, and consequently in their gender relations.

Reproducing Occupy Glasgow Occupy Glasgow was established in mid-​October 2011 in George Square, on the fringes of the commercial centre of town, right outside the City Chambers (headquarters to the city’s council), and a couple of blocks away from the university where I work. This cluster of tents and banners (see Figure 9.1) expanded at the weekends into rallies that drew many local organisations campaigning against the role of banks and financial institutions in causing the economic crisis, the austerity policies initiated in response and the then-​Labour Council’s ongoing neoliberal development policies. The camp had a degree of support and interest from Glaswegians, exemplifying as it did a long tradition of protest in George Square and drawing on themes of economic disenfranchisement and political alienation with local appeal (Donnison and Middleton, 1987; STV Local, 2012). In early November, however, there was a gang rape on site (Miller, 2011). In the wake of the disarray that followed, and facing threats of eviction from the Council, campers moved to the greener surroundings of Kelvingrove Park in the West End of Glasgow, with a smaller group hiving off to also establish a shorter-​lived camp in Blythswood Square, closer to the financial heart of the city (STV News, 2011; Williams, 2011). The main camp voluntarily disbanded in December 2011 in the wake of storm damage. There was some domestic infrastructure at the Occupy Glasgow camps, although much of it appears to have been intermittent and fleeting, or provided through private homes or by the council. Thus Poppy2 described a kitchen tent in George Square through which food was collected and distributed rather than cooked: “Lots of people were coming with crockery or bags of stuff … bringing flasks of hot soups … [and] there were tables with … fruit and cereal bars.” Lindsay recollected some cooking taking place, at moments when the camp was better organised: “Usually they would make a soup or a stew.” Other interviewees told me they relied mostly on local shops and cafes for food and the use of bathrooms –​or went home, sometimes taking “the homeless folk … to eat and shower and change and do their laundry” (Elaine). In Kelvingrove, Poppy reported “more camp cooking” but Elaine thought the cooking tailed off. For bathrooms, Kelvingrove campers again went home, or relied on nearby public toilets then Portaloos provided by the Council. In all, infrastructural ‘autonomy’ at Occupy Glasgow was sharply circumscribed. 164

Protest Camps as ‘Homeplace’?

Figure 9.1: Occupy Glasgow tents in George Square

Source: © Tony Clerkson/​Alamy. Reprinted with permission.

There was, nonetheless, some restructuring of the boundary between public and private in the camp, albeit in ways that often created considerable anxiety. There was semi-​private space in the sleeping tents, which campers often shared with a friend, in part because of worry about others intruding uninvited. Elaine reported she had “tried to propose a women-​only tent … so the women could sleep together” only for this to be dismissed as “ridiculous” by other campers. Most interviewees slept on site only occasionally, if at all, because of these safety fears, and all agreed that few women ever stayed overnight. There was also some semi-​public, communal space, as “people brought or lent equipment so that tents got more like marquees, more formalised” (Bella) and this enabled campers to mingle with each other and, at least in George Square, with passers-​by. These communal spaces appear to have been rather ephemeral, however: for example, “a children’s tent which was full of toys and books … only lasted about a week. Someone threw a party in it and it … filled with cigarette smoke and we figured we couldn’t have it as a kids’ tent anymore” (Elaine). In Kelvingrove, interviewees indicated the camp became more cut-​off from and increasingly intimidating to visitors: “Particularly at night there was a lot of drinking and stuff going on” (Ryan). Several interviewees remarked on the spatial reorganisation of the camp after the gang rape, with sleeping tents clustered to provide greater privacy and security for sleepers and night watches instituted to self-​police camp and tent boundaries, albeit to limited effect. Elaine expressed great frustration that “security guys … sat drinking” and reported spending long 165

Feminism and Protest Camps

sleepless hours on security watch herself. It is clear that anxiety around the acute porousness between public and private spaces, and the consequent lack of privacy and security, were deeply gendered: the vulnerabilities thus constructed were generally felt more deeply, and taken more seriously, by the women on site. Connectedly, there seems to have been little coordinated effort to collectivise or redistribute domestic labour. The testimonies on this topic weren’t entirely negative: Bella reported that she was quite impressed with how young men at the George Square camp “just cleaned up after themselves”, and Elaine confirmed that there was “quite an equal balance” in jobs like washing up and waste disposal. However, Elaine also confirmed that initial rotas for the more equitable organisation of domestic tasks –​ and indeed any domestic organisation per se –​“fell by the wayside” as the numbers of women at the camp dwindled: “None of the organisational stuff got done because there wasn’t anyone to do it.” Both Elaine and Joanne asserted that the kitchen in George Square, when operational, was chiefly run by one woman and that they took on the occasional laundry runs themselves. The picture is even worse for affective labour. Those interviewees with children did not bring them on site and reported children as present only when larger events were organised. They also described a marked lack of care for each other among the campers –​indeed, “loads of instances of aggression, all the time” (Elaine), towards both men and women. Ryan declared that people who were “very visibly potentially dangerous were overwhelming it [the camp]”. Joanne agreed: “Some people were a terrible, terrible dark presence. …There were also a lot of young men … that were quite vulnerable and also dangerous with the wrong sort of guidance.” Interviewees talked of a dominant group of older and more politically experienced men who manipulated the group of younger homeless men in both George Square and Kelvingrove: “backing up the behaviour, shouting, rowing, drinking, talking drugs, all this sort of stuff” (Elaine). This was combined with an element of “predatory behaviour” towards women and particularly teenage girls on site, who were given alcohol and “encouraged to go into tents with men” (Lindsay). Overt hostility was shown towards feminists trying to discourage this, with both Elaine and Joanne reporting that they received sexist and also antisemitic abuse online from other campers. Moreover, Elaine described at length how her feminist-​derived interventions aimed at creating a safer environment, including not only the women’s tent mentioned earlier but a broader ‘safe spaces’ initiative and finally a collective proposal after the rape for a women-​only camp, were met with rage and physical intimidation. In sum, affective labour was marginalised in Occupy Glasgow, to the degree that the camp was actually a traumatic experience for some of its participants (Eschle, 2018b). 166

Protest Camps as ‘Homeplace’?

It is clear that Occupy Glasgow was far from being a space of ‘exception’ to the neoliberal capitalist society and austerity policies it sought to resist, instead reproducing much of their shadowy side. Why is this the case? Occupy ideology may be part of the reason. As Katrina suggested of the slogan ‘we are the 99%’, “anybody can come and anyone can project anything they want, [it] encompasses a whole bunch of subgroupings that … have interests that are at odds with other ninety-​niners’ interests”. That made it difficult for feminists to point out gender inequities and violence in the camp without being seen as undermining the unity of ‘the 99%’. Indeed, the evidence presented here reveals open hostility to feminism at the Glasgow camp, which brought with it active resistance to a more gender-​equal restructuring of social reproduction and indeed an openly misogynistic culture that facilitated violence against women. In this case, the broad ideology of Occupy appears to have accommodated anti-​feminism more easily than feminism. As I will discuss in the conclusion to this chapter, the same dynamic works to make it difficult to confront racialised hierarchies and open racism. In this connection, not only was there reportedly little or no discussion of the near exclusively White character of the camp, but several interviewees pointed to the fact the Glasgow camp was home to an antisemitic group that blamed the financial crisis on a Jewish conspiracy. There were also obvious structural difficulties. The location of the camp in the centre of a city with entrenched problems of homelessness, drinking and antisocial behaviour, and on physical sites on which it was highly challenging to develop autonomous domestic infrastructure to any great degree, clearly posed a major challenge. In this context, it was unsurprising to see the emergence of a divide on site between destitute individuals who had fallen through the cracks of the neoliberal capitalist system and who stayed in the camp because they had nowhere else to go, and activists, many of whom continued in their jobs and their studies, and went back to their homes when not on site, and who were thus still integrated into that system. In such circumstances, it is difficult to see how social reproduction could have been radically transformed.

Reproducing Faslane Peace Camp Faslane Peace Camp, which marked its 40th birthday in June 2022, claims the mantle of ‘the longest running permanent peace camp in the world’ (Faslane Peace Camp, 2013b). Shoehorned into a sliver of woodland originally owned by a sympathetic anti-​nuclear Labour council, the camp survived an abandoned eviction attempt initiated when council boundaries and composition changed in the mid-​1990s (BBC News Scotland, 2012). Although the camp is in a beautiful rural area within the Loch Lomond and Trossachs national park, it fronts the busy A814 road, on the other side of 167

Feminism and Protest Camps

Figure 9.2: Faslane Peace Camp

Source: Author’s photograph

which lies the sprawling bulk of Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde, housing the UK’s nuclear arsenal. While numbers at the camp have been low for some years now, the site remains crammed with ramshackle caravans and semi-​ permanent structures decorated in vibrant colours, interspersed with lush foliage (see Figure 9.2; also Faslane Peace Camp, 2013a). While it meets with an element of local hostility, the camp draws on a broader pool of support from an active Scottish peace movement and a Scottish population that remains largely opposed to nuclear weapons (Scottish CND, 2013; Eschle, 2016a). The domestic infrastructure at Faslane Peace Camp remains relatively extensive, especially when compared to Occupy Glasgow. The campers shifted from tents into more secure and weather-​resistant caravans very early on, various communal structures have since been erected and replaced over the decades, and nowadays ‘[t]‌here’s a bathroom with hot and cold water, flush and compost toilets, gas and wood-​fired cooking facilities, solar power, and telephone and internet’ (Faslane Peace Camp, 2015). The development of this considerable infrastructure has been accompanied by the deliberate reorganisation of domestic space, such that there is some privacy and security for sleeping, but washing and toilet facilities are shared and cooking, eating and relaxation is conducted in collective areas, usually centring on the camp fire. Consequently, the private sphere (and private property) is much reduced in the camp. Aside from instances when couples 168

Protest Camps as ‘Homeplace’?

with children have established separate family and cooking spaces, and the eviction period when the camp became much more closed-​off, much of life usually hidden away in family homes is carried out more or less in sight of other members of the camp and of the passing public. As one interviewee commented, the visibility of the domestic space ensures its politicisation: “if you’re at the side of the A814 hanging up the washing, everybody driving past knows you’re somebody, a woman hanging out washing who is opposed to nuclear weapons. … Just doing it there, visibly … meant everything you did was a protest” (Anna). The gendered division of labour has also been restructured. The considerable domestic labour required –​cooking, cleaning, repairing infrastructure and gathering wood –​has been organised either by rota or on a voluntary basis, sometimes through meetings or at communal mealtimes, often through self-​ selection. In this vein, Denise asserted that “we all take responsibility for it. … We all take turns … to do at least three things a day”. This restructuring has not always been entirely successful. Thus Toni described how in the mid-​1980s, “Anna and I had more of an organising role in terms of keeping the place clean, making sure there’s money for shopping … and we ended up running the kitchen”. She described this as a kind of ‘mother’ role. The point is underscored by the admission of her contemporary, Vince: “I don’t think I did my fair share of the cooking, or the washing up for that matter”. Describing the later eviction period, Andrew hinted at a collapse in the basic domestic processes of the camp as most women left. Nonetheless, interviewees generally insisted that a refusal to assume that domestic work is naturally the sphere of women has been part of the fabric of camp life, even if at some points wider socialisation processes have meant that women have assumed or been left with a larger responsibility for it. In parallel, campers have sought to reshape affective labour. For example, while parents at the camp acknowledged they still took on the primary carer role for their children, they also mentioned some sharing of responsibility. Anna put it thus: “‘How on earth can you manage to bring up a baby at the peace camp?’ … It’s easy ’cos there’s always somebody around.” Interviewee Andrew also emphasised the general participation in looking after campers’ children in the 1990s, before the eviction period, much to the surprise of visiting social workers. And campers have tried to look after each other. For Shirley, this worked well in the initial years of the camp: “There was caring things done for each other … by men and women”. Willa, who lived at Faslane in the early 1990s, stressed that the camp was like a family, albeit a family outside of the liberal capitalist model, in which everyone looked out for each other. Several interviewees underlined the challenges involved in extending this caring ethos to campers with serious mental health issues. Graham, for example, mentioned a woman who “barricaded herself in a caravan … and threw urine on people” and was generally disruptive to camp 169

Feminism and Protest Camps

life, which led to a protracted struggle to persuade her to leave. Quentin was blunter about personally evicting someone he felt was not pulling their weight on camp: “I grabbed [his] stuff and I took it up to the bus stop … went back, pulled his bed covers off him, said ‘your stuff’s at the bus stop, away you go’.” As Andrew pointedly concluded, life on camp “wasn’t this big love and hugs”. Nonetheless, it seems that the restructuring of domestic space and of domestic and affective labour at Faslane Peace Camp has been extensive. Again, we should acknowledge structural and site-​specific reasons for this, such as the rural location (though this has the drawback of removing it from proximity to the minority ethnic groups concentrated in Glasgow) and the camp’s unusual degree of security of land tenure. It helps to have access to relatively private caravans and other vehicles for sleeping and the space and time to build structures for collective living. There are also ideological factors, including the influence of feminist ideology on site, varying over the years (Eschle, 2017), and the campers’ shared, anarchist-​influenced critique of capitalist norms. As I have argued elsewhere (Eschle, 2016b), campers at Faslane frequently reject the institution of waged labour. In the early days of the camp, “we were all unemployed so we all had giros … people kept a certain amount for themselves and we … would just have a wee kitty and people could take money out of it” (Nick). The reliance on state benefit appears to have ended in recent years, in part because benefits have become harder to access. As Fiona explained, “when I moved there [in 2011] … we decided that we weren’t going to take any benefits and that we would try to live without money where possible … everyone contributed £5 a week [from savings and] … we ‘skipped’ most of our food”. In such ways, campers have sought to ensure relative autonomy from the capitalist economy and increasingly also from the state benefit system, as it transmuted from a welfare to a neoliberal version. There are questions about how sustainable this model may be in the longer term, particularly in the context of protracted austerity politics –​and how inviting it may be to those already facing structural economic precarity, who have good reason to fear confrontation with the police and state, and who may find peace movement goals relatively detached from their concerns about everyday survival (Brown, 1984). Yet it remains fair to say that campers have succeeded for much of the life of the camp in creating a relatively autonomous space in which the domestic sphere and social reproduction have been substantially reconfigured.

Conclusion Overall, the empirical analysis in this chapter indicates that scholars should approach the utopian possibilities of camps with more caution than is evident 170

Protest Camps as ‘Homeplace’?

in Feigenbaum et al’s framework. The two case studies reveal a fascinating paradox. Occupy Glasgow, set up to contest neoliberal capitalism, in the form of the financial crisis, austerity responses and local development policies, was the least autonomous from its structures and from its associated gendered inequities and insecurities. In contrast, Faslane Peace Camp, while primarily concerned with confronting the adjacent nuclear base, has been much more successful in establishing autonomy from economic and social structures, and with it a shift in gender roles and relations, even as camper efforts in this regard remain imperfect and incomplete. The case studies indicate that the creation of ‘a space of exception’ with radically transformed gender relations requires not only a site that is relatively physically separated and secure, along with a strong feminist influence, but also a self-​sufficiency that few can achieve and that is doubtless becoming more difficult as neoliberal orthodoxies are further entrenched in a time of austerity. Autonomy should thus be conceived as an increasingly challenging political struggle, rather than an integral, defining element of camps. The chapter has also shown that a feminist lens is crucial to a more critical reckoning of protest camps. Specifically, I have argued that Marxist and Black/​​anti-​racist feminist work on social reproduction can bring the domestic life of camps back into view, excavating its spatial dynamics and associated labour processes, the insecurities these create, and how these are connected to changing dynamics in capitalist societies. It is only by paying attention to these continuities between camps and the larger societies and spaces in which they are located, as much as to the ruptures, that we can expose and explain some of the difficulties in generating sustained caring relations and in eradicating sexual violence that continue to mar so many protest camps. After all, as hooks makes clear in her narrative that is the starting point for Feigenbaum et al’s analysis of social reproduction in camps, the homeplace she experienced was produced within unequal gendered, racialised and class relations –​including her mother’s long hours of labour in White homes and the family’s dangerous journeying through segregated spaces. These are the constraints within as well as against which the resistant qualities of Black homeplace emerge. By analogy, we are thus reminded that a protest camp is embedded within and produced by the hierarchical social relations that shape a particular context, even as activists seek to carve out a space of autonomy from such relations. The notion of homeplace, emerging as it does from the experience of Black families and communities, underscores also the racialised constraints that shape the protest camp form. This encourages us to ask whose homeplace is made in camps? It is evident from both the literature reviewed earlier and the case studies that there are multiple material impediments to the participation of women of colour in White-​dominated camps within White-​majority societies. These impediments include the economic challenges of entrenched 171

Feminism and Protest Camps

poverty and precarity, additional responsibilities for social reproduction in the home and the community, and the targeted violence that Black and migrant communities face from the state and police. Additional ideological barriers are not reducible to open racism (such as the antisemitism lurking in some quarters of Occupy Glasgow), but include the implicit lack of relevance for women of colour in camps like the ones studied here that have, on the one hand, a generalised ‘for the 99%’ focus that fails to recognise the structural divisions caused by racial as well as gender oppression and, on the other, a preoccupation with preventing future nuclear apocalypse that may seem out of touch with the daily struggle to survive ‘precarious work and life’. More generally, why would women of colour want to take on the labour of transforming social reproduction in White-​dominated activist spaces, when they face not only a history of exploitation and oppression in White homes as documented earlier, but also of marginalisation in Left-​wing spaces across Europe and the United States (Bassel and Emejulu, 2017)? Hooks is emphatically clear in her narrative that women of colour have chosen to critically re-​engage with social reproduction in other kinds of spaces, in their own families and communities (see also Emejulu and Bassel, 2018). The analogy that Feigenbaum et al draw between protest camps and homeplace runs up against its limits here. While this chapter has emphasised the continuities of social reproduction in protest camps with wider society, and the structural limitations of the protest camp form, I want to end on a more positive note. As this book as a whole attests, there is something worth holding on to in Feigenbaum et al’s notion that protest camps can be sites for transformative experimentation in collective, socialised forms of social reproduction, albeit this should be conceived as a political aspiration rather than an in-​built characteristic. Their intuition that hooks’s notion of homeplace illuminates how we get there is also well-​founded. For me, hooks’s fundamental concern is to ensure greater acknowledgement of the contribution of the domestic role of African American women to Black liberation struggle: to ‘honor this history of service, just as [we] … must critique the sexist definition of service as women’s “natural” role’ (hooks, 2001: 384). Extended to protest camps, this pushes analysts and activists alike to critically engage with the gendered and racialised history of domestic and affective labour, and with who has had to fulfil these roles, rather than assuming this is irrelevant to camps or can be stepped over in the pursuit of alternatives. Hooks also warns against a narrow, liberal feminist-​style solution to this historic association, one in which domestic and care labour is redistributed in order to fully integrate women of whatever racialised grouping into the more important business of political protest. Rather, hooks’s analysis of homeplace intimates that the key task –​ one pursued in this volume in the chapters by Māhealani Ahia and Kahala Johnson (Chapter 3), Anastasia Kavada (Chapter 10) and Sara Motta et al 172

Protest Camps as ‘Homeplace’?

(Chapter 11) –​is to give much greater value to the domestic and care work already undertaken in camps and in communities, most often by women, as crucial to the creation of other possible worlds. In this task, scholars of protest camps and activists can surely learn much from the distinctive ways in which women of colour have sought to remake domestic work and caring relationships, in often acutely hostile and precarious environments, in order to create spaces of flourishing and transformation. Notes 1

2

It was important to bell hooks that her pen name be written in lower case: see https://​ www.theg​uard​ian.com/​world/​2021/​dec/​17/​bell-​hooks-​obitu​ary All interviewee names are pseudonyms.

References Bakker, I. (2007) ‘Social Reproduction and the Constitution of a Gendered Political Economy’, New Political Economy, 12(4): 541–​56. Bassel, L. and Emejulu, A. (2017) Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain, Bristol: Policy Press. BBC News Scotland (2012) ‘Faslane Protesters Carry on Camping After 30 Years’, 28 May. Available from: http://​www.bbc.co.uk/​news/​uk-​scotl​ and-​18203​818 [Accessed 14 March 2014]. Bhattacharaya, T. (2017) ‘Introduction: Mapping Social Reproduction Theory’, in T. Bhattacharaya (ed) Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression, London: Pluto, pp 1–​20. Brown, W. (1984) Black Women and the Peace Movement, London: Falling Wall. Collins, P.H. (1998) ‘It’s All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation’, Hypatia, 13(3): 62–​82. Collins, P.H. (2009) Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Crenshaw, K. (1991) ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color’, Stanford Law Review, 43(6): 1241–​99. Cuninghame, P. (2010) ‘Autonomism as a Global Social Movement’, WorkingUSA, 13(4): 451–​64. Davis, A.Y. (1982) Women, Race and Class, London: Women’s Press. Donnison, D. and Middleton, A. (1987) Regenerating the Inner City: Glasgow’s Experience, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Emejulu, A. and Bassel, L. (2018) ‘Austerity and the Politics of Becoming’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 56(S1): 109–​19. Eschle, C. (2016a) ‘ “Bairns Not Bombs”: The Scottish Peace Movement and the British Nuclear State’, in A. Futter (ed) The United Kingdom and the Future of Nuclear Weapons, Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, pp 139–​51.

173

Feminism and Protest Camps

Eschle, C. (2016b) ‘Faslane Peace Camp and the Political Economy of the Everyday’, Globalizations, 13(6): 912–​14. Eschle, C. (2017) ‘Beyond Greenham Woman? Gender Identities and Anti-​ Nuclear Activism in Peace Camps’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 19(4): 471–​90. Eschle, C. (2018a) ‘Nuclear (In)Security in the Everyday: Peace Campers as Everyday Security Practitioners’, Security Dialogue, 49(4): 289–​305. Eschle, C. (2018b) ‘Troubling Stories of the End of Occupy: Feminist Narratives of Betrayal at Occupy Glasgow’, Social Movement Studies, 17(5): 524–​40. Faslane Peace Camp (2013a) ‘Faslane Peace Camp: New Strawbale Visitors Centre & Communal Space’, 21 June. Available from: http://​fasla​nepe​acec​ amp.wordpr​ess.com/​2013/​06/​21/​fasl​ane-​peace-​camp-​new-​strawb​ale-​visit​ ors-​cen​tre-​commu​nal-​space/​ [Accessed 20 March 2014]. Faslane Peace Camp (2013b) ‘The Phoenix Has Risen!’, 2 June. Available from: https://​f asla​nepe​acec​amp.wordpr​ess.com/​2013/​06/​02/​the-​pheo​ nix-​has-​r isen/​ [Accessed 14 March 2014]. Faslane Peace Camp (2015) ‘Support Your Local Peace Camp’, 19 April. Available from: https://​f asla​nepe​acec​amp.wordpr​ess.com/​2015/​04/​19/​ supp​ort-​your-​local-​peace-​camp/​ [Accessed 27 April 2015]. Federici, S. (2014) Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, 2nd edn, Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia. Feigenbaum, A., Frenzel, F. and McCurdy, P. (2013) Protest Camps, London: Zed Books. Ferguson, S. (2020) Women and Work: Feminism, Labour and Social Reproduction, London: Pluto. Fraser, N. (2017) ‘Crisis of Care? On the Social-​Reproductive Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism’, in T. Bhattacharaya (ed) Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentring Oppression, London: Pluto, pp 21–​36. Frenzel, F., Feigenbaum, A. and McCurdy, P. (2014) ‘Protest Camps: An Emerging Field of Social Movement Research’, Sociological Review, 62(3): 457–​74. Frenzel, F., Feigenbaum, A., McCurdy, P. and Brown, G. (2018) ‘Introduction: Reproducing and Re-​c reating’, in G. Brown, A. Feigenbaum, F. Frenzel and P. McCurdy (eds) Protest Camps in International Context: Spaces, Infrastructures and Media of Resistance, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 279–​87. Freshour, C. (2017) ‘ “Ain’t No Life for a Mother!” Racial Capitalism and the Crisis of Social Reproduction’, Society and Space, 7 November. Available from: https://​www.soci​etya​ndsp​ace.org/​artic​les/​aint-​no-​life-​for-​a-​mot​ her-​rac​ial-​cap​ital​ism-​and-​the-​cri​sis-​of-​soc​ial-​repro​duct​ion [Accessed 21 June 2022].

174

Protest Camps as ‘Homeplace’?

hooks, b. (2001) ‘ “Homeplace (a Site of Resistance)” (1990)’, in J. Ritchie and K. Ronald (eds) Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric(s), Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp 383–​90. Katz, C. (2001) ‘Vagabond Capitalism and the Necessity of Social Reproduction’, Antipode, 33(4): 709–​28. Laslett, B. and Brenner, J. (1989) ‘Gender and Social Reproduction: Historical Perspectives’, Annual Review of Sociology, 15: 381–​404. Miller, L. (2011) ‘Woman Raped in Tent at George Square Protest Camp’, ​ eb.archi​ ve.org/w ​ eb/2​ 01​ STV News, 26 October. Available from: https://w 40215​ 2106​ 54/​http://​news.stv.tv/​west-​cent​ral/​276​301-​woman-​raped-​at-​ glas​gow-​geo​rge-​squ​are-​prot​est-​camp/​ [Accessed 14 March 2014]. Parreñas, R.S. (2015) Servants of Globalization: Migration and Domestic Work, 2nd edn, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Rai, S.M., Hoskyns, C. and Thomas, D. (2014) ‘Depletion’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 16(1): 86–​105. Scottish CND (2013) ‘Trident and Scottish Independence’, 3 April. Formerly ​ ns/r​ epo​ available from: http://​www.ban​theb​omb.org/i​ ndex.php/p​ ublic​ atio rts/​1438-​trid​ent-​and-​indep​ende​nce [Accessed 1 December 2015]. Steinbach, S. (2012) ‘ “Can We Still Use ‘Separate Spheres’? British History 25 Years after Family Fortunes” ’, History Compass, 10(11): 826–​37. STV Local (2012) ‘On This Day in Glasgow’s History: 1919, the Battle of George Square’. Formerly available from: https://​stv.tv/​news/​west-​cent​ ral/​26164-​on-​this-​day-​in-​glasg​ows-​hist​ory-​1919-t​ he-b​ att​ le-o ​ f-g​ eor​ ge-s​ qu​ are/​[Accessed 17 February 2017]. STV News (2011) ‘Occupy Glasgow Protesters Agree to Move from George Square After Court Hearing’. Formerly available from: http://​news.stv.tv/​ west-​cent​ral/​277​560-​occ​upy-​glas​gow-​pro​teste​ rs-a​ gree-t​ o-m ​ ove-f​ rom-g​ eo​ rge-​squ​are-​after-​court-​hear​ing/​ [Accessed 14 March 2014]. Teeple Hopkins, C. (2017) ‘Mostly Work, Little Play: Social Reproduction, Migration, and Paid Domestic Work in Montreal’, in T. Bhattacharaya (ed) Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentring Oppression, London: Pluto, pp 131–​47. Williams, H. (2011) ‘Occupy Glasgow Campaigners Set Up New Protest Camp’, BBC News, 17 November. Available from: http://​www.bbc.co.uk/​ news/​uk-​scotl​and-​glas​gow-​west-​15772​274 [Accessed 14 March 2014].

175

10

Project Democracy in Protest Camps: Caring, the Commons and Feminist Democratic Theory Anastasia Kavada

Introduction Feminist scholarship has prompted a rethinking of liberal democracy and its underlying assumptions. Building on this rich tradition, this chapter discusses the insights offered by feminist thought into the democracy of protest camps and its normative underpinnings. It argues that theories of care and social reproduction, and feminist approaches to the notion of the commons, can revitalise our theorising of democracy. This is because they allow for the development of a more critical and all-​encompassing understanding of power and equality that goes beyond decision-​making practices. They also expand the conception of civic duties and responsibilities by including activities of care and social reproduction. They centre vulnerability and dependence as an integral part of the human condition to which democracies should attend. They further illuminate the effect of property relations on liberal democracy’s understanding of the citizen and pave the way for a notion of citizenship based on interdependence and communal sharing. They thus challenge some of the founding assumptions on which liberal representative democracy is based and present a different set of criteria with which to evaluate the operation of democratic systems. The theoretical discussion presented in this chapter is grounded in extensive fieldwork in the ‘movements of the squares’ from 2011 onwards, including in-​depth interviews with 91 participants in Occupy Wall Street (OWS), Seattle, Boston, Sacramento and London, as well as the Greek Indignant movement and Nuit Debout in France. The movements of the squares emerged with the Arab Spring protests in North Africa that inspired activists 176

Project Democracy in Protest Camps

in Europe, the United States and elsewhere to occupy squares and parks in city centres, protesting against a political and economic system that did not serve the people’s interests. In Spain, protesters gathered in Puerta del Sol in Madrid on 15 May 2011. Greece soon followed, with participants occupying Syntagma Square in Athens on 25 May 2011. It was a time when the economic crisis had hit the Greek economy hard and the country had been placed under strict measures by the ‘European Troika’: the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The Occupy movement emerged a few months afterwards, when OWS activists took over Zuccotti Park in New York on 17 September 2011. Occupy camps soon proliferated across the United States and the rest of the world. The camp in Seattle began on 26 September, while Boston quickly followed on 30 September, then Sacramento on 6 October and London on 16 October 2011. Nuit Debout erupted four and a half years later on 31 March 2016, sparked by opposition against a proposed law that was going to liberalise the labour market. However, the movement soon became a generalised protest against the country’s political and economic regime. Protesters started gathering in Place de la République in Paris to discuss issues ranging from the environment to the oppression of women to labour and the class system. It is worth noting that while all these movements established protest camps, some had ‘pop-​up’ rather than permanent occupations, where the camp would be put up and dismantled every day. This was the case for Occupy Sacramento, where activists found it difficult to occupy due to police repression, and for Nuit Debout, where, having learned the lessons from past movements like the 15-​M, protesters made the pragmatic decision to avoid the problems that arise from camping permanently in public space. The movements on which this chapter focuses all emerged in mature liberal representative democracies but with different characteristics. The United States operates with a federal system as opposed to Greece, the UK and France. Greece and France have a stronger presence of the state and more established and popular Left-​wing political parties and trade unions. Yet, while Occupy, the Greek Indignants and Nuit Debout were inflected by the particular characteristics of the national and even local context in which they emerged, they were all remarkably similar in their grievances and their understanding of democracy. They favoured a type of decision-​making based on open assemblies and consensus. They viewed equality in expansive terms, as equal power not only in decision-​making processes, but in every part of the movement. They were averse to central charismatic leadership in favour of leaderfulness, seeing the movement as a space where a wide range of participants can flourish into leaders. These characteristics of movement democracy are not entirely new, and have been thoroughly analysed in different contexts (for example, Polletta, 177

Feminism and Protest Camps

2002; Maeckelbergh, 2009). Yet, what seems to be missing from these writings is the emphasis that the squares movements placed on action, on empowering their participants to undertake the activities or projects they were interested in. My interviewee Mehdi, who was a member of TV Debout, a live TV station broadcasting from Place de la République, called this ‘democracy by project’. As he put it, ‘I really believe that democracy by project could work … it is in front of your eyes. People are coming to the general assembly, some people have ideas, they want to do stuff and they say “OK, I want to do something”, “I have a project, … so who wants to help me to do it?” ’. This emphasis on action, creativity and projects emerged again and again in my interviews. For instance, Vica from Occupy London thought that “what was beautiful about those first months was that anyone could have an idea and they would just do it. So, like ‘I want do a film’, and they would do it. ‘I want to do performance’, and they would do it” (emphasis added). C from Occupy Seattle noted that “what … we really had time for was hardly anything but coming in and saying ‘I’ve got this project, come and help me over here’ ”. Thus, the encampment was meant as a space of spontaneous creativity for those wishing to join. Of course, this is not to deny the careful planning that preceded the camps, it is simply to highlight one of their key functions once they were set up. ‘Project democracy’, with its emphasis on equality, inclusiveness and action, can be seen as an indictment of the political systems in which the movements of the squares arose. Protesters railed against the excesses of capitalism and the ineffectiveness of representative democracy in serving the people. They rebelled against the dominance of corrupt political and economic elites and the exploitation of minorities and the weak. But this emphasis on horizontality, direct action and participation was also a reaction against the vanguardism of the traditional Left. This was particularly the case in France and led to an internal struggle in the initial days of Nuit Debout. For many activists that I interviewed, the movements of the squares were putting forward a new type of politics that did not fit neatly into traditional Left structures and characteristics. Movement participants attempted to experiment with different ways of working and discussing and to attract a broader audience beyond the usual participants in Left politics. This ‘ideal type’ of democracy encountered various problems in its implementation, from interminable assembly meetings to the development of informal and unaccountable leaders. Some years later, these movements are often characterised as failures, having crumbled under the pressure of the authorities and of their own ambition. But their ideal type of democracy can be a source of inspiration, particularly at a time when the crisis of liberal democracy has given rise to a dangerously nationalist, exclusionary and macho authoritarianism. As I show in the remainder of this chapter, a feminist viewpoint can facilitate our understanding of these movements’ 178

Project Democracy in Protest Camps

democratic vision and of the existential challenge it presents to the liberal system of democracy.

Social reproduction and the expansion of civic duty Establishing a camp in the centre of the city blends the private and public as the space is used not only for political discussion but also for living –​for cooking, sleeping, eating and other needs (Feigenbaum et al, 2013; see also Chapter 8 by Haran and Chapter 9 by Eschle in this volume). In this section, I would like to consider what this mix between the public and the domestic means for the concept of democracy and particularly how it expands the notion of political participation and citizenship to incorporate duties around the caring of the civic body. In the movements of the squares, issues of social reproduction were also brought to the fore by the type of democracy they were attempting to practise. To ensure citizens’ direct participation and their ability to undertake the projects they are interested in, their basic needs have to be tended to. For participants to be ready for action, they first need to be fed and clothed, to take care of the practicalities of everyday life. Karen, who participated in several OWS committees and working groups, including general assembly facilitation, media relations, legal and communications, explains how the need to oversee the movement’s reproduction arose in New York for those who were camping in Zuccotti Park: ‘I learned what it’s like to live when you’re fighting for survival. It’s cold. It’s November. It’s New York. … So what are you gonna eat? … And if you want to try to keep things going, which we did, tell the world what happened, well, you’ve got to get roofs over people’s heads, you’ve got to find a place for them to use the bathroom, and you’ve got to feed them. … So the whole focus changed. Suddenly it was, how do you take care of the people that were part of this movement so the movement can continue?’ (emphasis added) Thus, care emerged as a central axis of these movements’ system of governance. Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto (1990: 40) define care as ‘a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our “world” so that we can live in it as well as possible’. Silvia Federici (in Haiven and Federici, 2011) also highlights the need for social movements to create ‘communities of care’, ‘collective forms of reproduction whereby we can address issues that “flow from our everyday life” ’.1 Such ‘communities of care’ are crucial for the movements’ self-​reproduction, particularly in times of crisis that make survival difficult. And they are absolutely vital in project democracy, where they serve as a precondition of action. 179

Feminism and Protest Camps

Therefore, some projects and activities undertaken by movement participants also aimed at creating an infrastructure of care that looked after people’s needs, both physical and emotional. In their excellent account of protest camps, Feigenbaum et al (2013) show that such ‘infrastructures of living or re-​creation’ are central to the activity of protest camps. While I agree with this view, I believe that calling them ‘infrastructures of care’ helps us to consider how these movements attempted to democratise processes of caring by placing care in a central position in the practice of democracy (see also the chapter by Eschle in this volume). Thus, alongside working groups that focused on developing policy and the movements’ vision on different issues, there were other groups that centred on caring for the civic body by cooking meals, growing fruit and vegetables in communal gardens, keeping the peace at the camp, running makeshift clinics, and ensuring the camp was cleaned regularly. For example, Karen reported that OWS developed a sophisticated kitchen operation that even did boxed lunches; it also had a full medical tent with nurses and doctors that treated several hundred New Yorkers who could not afford health insurance and/​or medical procedures. Similar systems emerged in other Occupy sites, including ‘pop-​up’ protest camps as well. For instance, in an interview with Darrell of Occupy Sacramento, he told me that the camp operated a kitchen that served “upwards to three hundred, four hundred meals a night” as well as cultivating an Occupy Garden “in a tent just growing organic … food for individuals who lived in the Sacramento downtown area”. For activists like Karen, it was this infrastructure of care that was most astounding about OWS: ‘To me the miracle was that we solved problems. When I was there, we had a soup kitchen, and by the time we were done, we had organic food coming in from farms in upstate New York and Pennsylvania, being brought in, ’cos we were trying to teach people about food and nutrition.’ Social reproduction includes not only people’s physical needs but also their emotional ones. It may involve socialising ‘experiences of grief, illness, pain, death, things that now are often relegated to the margins or the outside of our political work’ (Federici in Haiven and Federici, 2011: 2). As discussed in the next section on care ethics, social reproduction in the movements of the squares thus involved different emotional practices, such as having a ‘temperature checker’ oversee people’s physical and emotional state during the assemblies. For feminist scholars of social reproduction, like Federici, the political potential of movements also rests on this kind of capacity-​building. As she notes, the Occupy movement served as an example of how to scale up experiments in socialising reproduction that were undertaken on a local level, such as 180

Project Democracy in Protest Camps

community gardens, and linking them ‘up to confront the status quo’ (Federici in Haiven and Federici, 2011: 2). But I believe that viewing these infrastructures of care within the framework of labour, as scholars of social reproduction tend to do, disregards their implications from a democratic perspective. This is because infrastructures of care present a fundamental challenge to liberal democratic theories which view social reproduction as private and thus separate from democracy. Liberal representative democracy, Carole Pateman (1989) tells us, is based on the assumption of a patriarchal private sphere that is separate from the public sphere of democracy. This is how male domination can be maintained in the private space of the home within democratic systems that advocate for equality in public decision-​making. Yet, as Jane Mansbridge (1993: 369) notes, ‘it would be a mistake to make impermeable and mutually exclusive the categories of household and polis’. Indeed, taking social reproduction seriously as a part of democracy leads to two interrelated insights. First, it highlights how, in practice, the governance of social reproduction can be undertaken in a democratic way and the problems that might arise in this process. Tronto’s work on care and democracy (for example, 1995; 2013; 2015) is instructive in this respect. Together with Fisher (Fisher and Tronto, 1990), she has shown that the activity of caring is complex and encompasses different phases. These include ‘caring about’, the identification of needs that have to be met; ‘caring for’, assuming responsibility for the provision of care; as well ‘care-​g iving’, the actual work of caring. They also encompass ‘care-​receiving’, the response of care recipients that serves as useful feedback on the care process as it may highlight future improvements or other needs that require our attention (Tronto, 2015: 5–​7). Tronto (2013) added a fifth phase in later writings, that of ‘caring with’, where citizens can decide democratically about caring activities and undertake them together depending on their needs and skills. The infrastructures built by the squares movements endeavoured to address, with variable success, all these aspects of care, from monitoring needs to allocating responsibilities to facilitating the giving and receiving of care to generating feedback flows. But they also attempted to ensure that decisions about care were undertaken in a democratic manner through the development of common policies around how to handle these activities. Second, and even more importantly from a philosophical standpoint, incorporating social reproduction into our notion of democracy shows that activities of caring are democratic duties, that they are an integral part of democracy. For a system of governance to work, it needs to take care of its citizens. This expands our notion of democratic participation, which should now encompass not only activities focusing on the decision-​making process, but also caring activities centred around the civic body. What are often considered as ‘private activities’ –​rearing children, cleaning, cooking –​ can also be considered as political activities that are part of democracy. If 181

Feminism and Protest Camps

we attempt to resist the erasure of the private in classic democratic theory, then such projects should be recognised as civic duties and be included in our understanding of political participation. Yet this is not to suggest that in the movements of the squares such activities received adequate respect and attention. The sanitation, kitchen or serenity working groups were not exactly on a par with others. As Emma Gómez Nicolau suggests in her analysis of the Spanish 15-​M movement (Chapter 7 in this volume), the undertaking of such activities was gendered, with women assuming more caring responsibilities than men. Furthermore, the role of caring activities in the movement’s capacity-​building and system of governance were often rendered invisible. For instance, in my interview with Jonah from OWS, he mentioned how impressed he was when he met someone from the sanitation team, someone who worked to “support the infrastructures as opposed to … get a message out to the world”, since these activities were less visible within and outside the camp. For Jonah, this lack of visibility had an adverse effect on the public’s perception of the movement: “A lot of the misunderstanding of, you know, Occupy’s lack of effectiveness or impact has to do with the difference between that message communicated to the outside world versus the kind of capacity-​building and intra skill-​sharing and communications that happened within that space”. Thus, an expanded notion of political participation that includes activities of social reproduction can only work if such activities are not relegated to a lower position in our conception of democracy and civic duty.

Care ethics and project democracy Care and the moral and ethical qualities it is associated with have several implications for the ethical underpinnings of democracy. Care ethics revolve around dependency and vulnerability. These are not considered ‘as conditions to be overcome, but rather as ways of being for normal human subjects’ (Robinson, 2011: 847). What all citizens have in common, what should form the basis of our solidarity, is that everyone is vulnerable and potentially in need of help (Tronto, 2013). Thus, dependency and vulnerability are not perceived as weaknesses, something shameful to be concealed. They are instead foregrounded as a vital part of the human condition (Polletta, 2002). This is an understanding of citizenship that mounts a radical challenge to the conception of the rational individual on which representative democracy is based. It goes against ‘liberal views of equality and of justice that omit entirely the experiences of interdependency, cooperation, trust, and concern that are so much a part of women’s lives –​and of men’s lives, should they choose to recognize it’ (Polletta, 2002: 152). This emphasis on dependence and vulnerability was evident in the discourse ethics of the general assemblies that centred not only the inclusiveness 182

Project Democracy in Protest Camps

of different voices, but also the responsibility of listening attentively to everyone. Fiona Robinson (2011) contrasts this focus on listening with the Habermasian discourse ethics that emphasise voice and speaking. Listening was one way in which assembly participants would take care of each other. In this respect, C from Occupy Seattle related the following story where care and listening are intertwined: ‘We had a little lady who is, oh, I can’t tell ages, maybe forty-​five, fifty years old, who stood up early on, and faced around four hundred people in an assembly –​a very brave thing for a woman who was Indigenous and, chances were, impoverished. Her name was [xxx]. Undoubtedly she had been drinking. She had a look, a smile, that said she felt good to be among us and the crowd took care of her. We’re talking like four or five hundred people, mostly White, standing and listening to this lady … they so gently listened to her … this was an incredible thing to see because not only was it obvious this was a unique event for her but these many people were smiling back at her and wanting her to succeed.’ (emphasis added) As C highlights, speaking in an assembly can be a nerve-​wracking experience. Voicing your opinion in front of hundreds of people places the speaker in a vulnerable position as they can be mocked, disregarded or met with intense disagreement. This sense of vulnerability is intensified for people with limited experience in politics or for those whose structural position means that they rarely speak or are heard in public. C’s story also reveals the effort that more privileged participants had to make to take care of others in the assembly. They had to learn to step back, allow space for others and actively listen to them. Thus, listening can be conceived as a practice of caring for the others’ vulnerability, and one that both recognises and nourishes relationships of interdependence. This can constitute a transformative and empowering experience both for those being listened to and for those doing the listening. As Gary from OWS noted, “in the first couple of general assemblies, when someone participated, people got up and it was this beautiful thing to see … people actually feeling that they could talk about something they really cared about and that people were listening” (emphasis added). Mark from Occupy London concurred: ‘up until that point, I had never experienced a situation where large numbers of strangers would be in a space and taking each other very seriously and listening to each other. And … you know, talking about things as if they mattered. So that, just that, myself I think was extremely powerful. People walk away from that feeling a lot less despairing and isolated.’ (emphasis added) 183

Feminism and Protest Camps

The camps and the assemblies also became therapeutic spaces where people could share personal stories of oppression and failure, where they could express their feelings about what was going on. As Loukia from the Athens Indignants noted: ‘There was a diffuse desire for discussion, so particularly in the first two weeks they were discussing every day. It was also summer. … They were coming every day before the general assembly, they were discussing their most personal and innermost problems of the kind “I’m unemployed and I can’t stand it anymore”.’ C from Occupy Seattle remarked that in some cases, “[w]‌e’ve had people have breakdowns in the middle of the meeting, and the meeting became the place where the person was taken care of. And the people learned what it was to take care of a person with a breakdown” (emphasis added). This goes against conceptions of the citizen as a rational individual that draw a hard distinction between reason and emotion. As Iris Marion Young (2000: 39) argues, such interpretations of democratic deliberation ‘tend to falsely identify objectivity with calm and the absence of emotional expression. For those suspicious of emotion, expressions of anger, hurt, or passionate concern taint whatever claims and reasons they accompany’. Instead, the movements of the squares gave space to personal storytelling and the articulation of emotion, considering them as inherent to democracy. Caring for the physical and emotional needs of participants in the assemblies was also formalised in the role of the ‘temperature checker’. As Justin from OWS explained, this is a ‘person who kind of goes around, and takes people’s temperature, asks how they’re feeling, and then reports that back to the facilitators. Sometimes even speaks to say, “I think we’re all feeling a bit tired. You know, maybe we need to take a five-​minute break or do a dance or sing songs” ’. This emphasis on radical empathy referred not only to other participants in the movement, but also to the world as a whole. As Fisher and Tronto (1990: 40) suggest, ‘the world that our care revolves around includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-​sustaining web’. Thus, caring extends to all living beings, human and non-​human, which points to a radical notion of inclusivity in our understanding of care. The Care Collective (2020) calls this ‘promiscuous care’, care that is provided indiscriminately and across difference, including distinctions between different species. As Melanie from OWS put it,

184

Project Democracy in Protest Camps

‘until we see that empathy really is sort of the central goal of the revolution, there will be clashes … on kind of a metaphysical level, I feel like there are some of us who realize that all of us are part of the same “brain”; that we’re all part of the same organism.’ However, many of the positive feelings about the assemblies refer to the first few weeks of the camps. As people became more tired and with assembly meetings lasting longer and longer, participants could not maintain the same attentive listening or respect and patience for the others’ vulnerability. The pressurised atmosphere of protest camps, the increased police presence and threat of arrest also made it difficult for people to be in the right frame of mind for participating in the assemblies. There were therefore many instances when the process did not centre or take care of people’s vulnerability. Indeed, what some interviewees took away from their experience in the camps is the need to work on themselves in order to bring about the kind of society they are envisioning. Some interviewees thought that it is an obligation of radical activists to develop their capacity for empathy and compassion and to work on themselves, as well as the world around them. For Willow, this involves asking yourself “How can I be a better individual, more responsible, therefore I’m better for my community, therefore my community is stronger …?”. Gary put it even more emphatically: “radical activists need to be able to transform themselves if they have an expectation of trying to change the world”. This involves “understanding suffering and overcoming it, and so also compassion and listening, allowing people to hold suffering”. The crucial role of citizens’ emotional development tends to be disregarded in liberal views of democracy as rational deliberation. Yet, as Mansbridge (1993: 358–​9) notes and as many interviewees had discovered, such systems ‘will not work in practice without citizens’ emotional capacities to understand their own and others’ needs’. Still, placing dependency and vulnerability at the centre of democratic politics cannot escape issues of power. Although we are all vulnerable, some of us are more, or differently, vulnerable than others. Thus, important questions arise around which kinds of vulnerabilities and whose vulnerabilities are prioritised and centred. For instance, accounts of the Occupy movement by Catherine Eschle (2018) and Celeste Montoya (Chapter 2, this volume) have demonstrated that gender violence, to which women and LGBTQ individuals are more vulnerable, was not treated with the requisite seriousness and respect. Such accusations were sometimes concealed or dismissed as they would be harmful to the movement’s public image (see Chapter 2 by Montoya and Chapter 3 by Ahia and Johnson, this volume). And rarely did they lead to an expulsion of perpetrators from the camps. While this is partly due to the problematic accountability mechanisms of the occupations,

185

Feminism and Protest Camps

where it was difficult to impose sanctions for such behaviour, this issue still reveals the stratification of vulnerabilities within the camps. It is also worth acknowledging that care has a fraught relationship with democratic equality as it is often based on an asymmetric relationship between carers and the living beings that are being cared for. As Tronto (2013: 149) notes, many care relationships are not relationships of equality and therefore seem to be a threat to the very idea of democracy. … Historically, democratic theorists and democratic practices solved this problem by excluding those who were ‘dependent’ or not fully rational from being citizens. For the ancients, these exclusions extended to slaves and women. Yet this asymmetry can also go the other way as care work tends to be undertaken by the lower classes, by women and by people of colour, and it is not amply compensated. In the movements of the squares, this power asymmetry was addressed by combining the ethics of care with an orientation towards equality. In this respect, care took the meaning of ‘mutual aid’, denoting an equal and horizontal relationship where helping –​or caring for –​each other is a mutual practice. In contrast to charity, which points to an asymmetric and top-​ down relationship between charity givers and receivers, mutual aid attempts to erase the distinction between the providers and recipients of aid. This conception accords with the key tenets of care ethics, which stress that we are all vulnerable and dependent on each other. Peter Kropotkin (1902), the leading anarchist thinker on mutual aid, directly relates interdependence and collaboration with the ethic of mutual aid, arguing that ‘in the ethical progress of man [sic], mutual support not mutual struggle –​has had the leading part’. The ideas of mutual aid informed the provision of care in the camps, but also initiatives like Occupy Sandy, where Occupy activists used the infrastructure created by the movement to offer humanitarian relief after Hurricane Sandy landed on New York in October 2012. As Dana from Occupy Sandy noted, “one of the things that I liked so much was the mutual aid coming on board … there was a chance that people who really cared about the mutual aid component versus the protest component to show how amazing it could be”. Of course, looking at care through the framework of mutual aid does not automatically erase power differentials. Instead, it suggests that issues of power and equality within care processes should be continuously questioned and foregrounded in our everyday practice of care. Does care constitute a mutual, equal and horizontal relationship? Or does our practice of care create and 186

Project Democracy in Protest Camps

reinforce power asymmetries? Without this commitment to equality, care, as a value in and of itself, may result in a patronising and undemocratic system as it can be used to gloss over, or even prop up, fundamental inequalities.

Commons, interdependence and communal sharing The existential challenge presented by the ethics of care to liberal representative democracy also includes a different understanding of the economic relations that should underlie democracy. As this section shows, the movements of the squares attempted to prefigure an alternative to private property and economic relations that conforms with the principles of the commons. These place interdependence, as well as caring for each other and for shared resources, at the centre of democratic politics. The ethic of care confronts traditional conceptions of the citizen in ‘Anglo-​American democratic theory’ which ‘often portrays the polity as constructed by free and unencumbered individuals who associate to promote self-​interest’ (Mansbridge, 1993: 351). The liberal conception of the citizen, according to Pateman, is still based on the property and gender relations that underpinned the origins of liberal representative democracies. As she puts it in her critique of Locke, the apparently universal criteria governing civil society are actually those associated with the liberal conception of the male individual, a conception which is presented as that of the individual. The individual is the owner of property in his person, that is to say, he is in abstraction from his ascribed familial relations and those with his fellow men. He is a ‘private’ individual, but he needs a sphere in which he can exercise his rights and opportunities, pursue (his) private interests and protect and increase his property. (Pateman, 1989: loc 2952; original emphasis) This is a citizen who is considered distinct from the bonds of the private sphere that sustain and care for him. His interests in democratic participation are related to the property that he alone holds as an individual. This conception of the citizen thus erases the relationships of interdependence between citizens and obscures the care work undertaken in the private sphere for a person (historically, a man) to be able to function as an individual in the public sphere. ‘Such a theory cannot easily draw inspiration from or use metaphors derived from the typically “female” experiences of empathetic interdependence, compassion, and personal vulnerability’ (Mansbridge, 1993: 351). It is, therefore, an understanding of the citizen that contradicts the main tenets of citizenship based on care, where dependence and vulnerability take centre stage. 187

Feminism and Protest Camps

A feminist perspective illuminates the historical origins of this liberal conception of the individual citizen and its relation to private property. The emergence of liberal representative democracy occurred at a time when the subordination of women was partially based on their exclusion from property rights: not only did they lack the right to own property, but they were often considered as the property of their husbands and fathers. But this subordination extended to the political sphere. Early models of western liberal democracy excluded women and other parts of the population who did not or could not legally own property. Hence, the fight for women’s suffrage in the 19th century was intimately connected with ensuring property rights for women. In liberal democracies, the enlargement of suffrage progressed alongside the expansion of private property rights, to the point that such rights became (almost) universal. It was at this time that the effect of property relations on democracy was rendered invisible in liberal democratic theory. The theory often ‘assumes that property relations are not intrinsic to democratic practices’ (Devenney, 2011: 158), and thus relegates them to the outside of democracy. Yet, as Mark Devenney (2011: 158) reminds us, ‘[t]‌he legal regulation of property establishes rules in which lives are unequally lived, and freedom is but an ideal for those with little or no access to property of their own’. Within liberal democracy, this disregard for the impact of private property relations and other kinds of economic inequalities on the democratic system is effected through the adoption of a minimal conception of equality (Pateman, 1970) that is based on the ‘one-​person-​one vote system’, ‘The individualistic formula, “each counts for one and none for more than one” ’ (Mansbridge, 1993: 341). By contrast, the movements of the squares operated with a conception of property relations that accorded with the theory of the commons. This is an understanding of property that shifts away from perceiving the citizen as an individual who is separated from the private sphere and who operates in public to serve his private property interests. Instead, it views the citizen as immersed in relationships of interdependence and collaboration, thus emphasising care and dependence. At their most basic form, the ‘[c]‌ommons are collective forms of ownership’ (Wall, 2017: 1). However, in recent years scholars have shifted from an understanding of the ‘commons as resources’ to one that sees the commons ‘as relational social frameworks’ (Bollier and Helfrich cited in Ruivenkamp and Hilton, 2017: 1). This is ‘marked also by the evolution of the noun form of “common” into the verb “commoning” to denote the continuous making and remaking –​the (re)production –​of the commons through shared practices’ (Bresnihan in Ruivenkamp and Hilton, 2017: 1). Historically, the concept of the commons emerged in the struggle against the enclosure of common land and its transformation into private property. 188

Project Democracy in Protest Camps

This was a process that, according to Federici (2008), was particularly damaging for women and their role in the economy, as they were the main caretakers of common land. More recently, the concept has been ‘gaining popularity among the radical left, internationally and in the United States, appearing as a basis for convergence among anarchists, Marxists, socialists, ecologists, and eco-​feminists’ (Federici, 2008: 380). Viewed as a system beyond the market and the state, the rise of the commons can be attributed to ‘the demise of the statist model of revolution that for decades had sapped the efforts of radical movements to build an alternative to capitalism’ (Federici, 2008: 380). The notion of the commons has also been revitalised with the advent of the internet. The concept has been expanded and now refers not only to land or other material resources, but also to knowledge and skills. The commons have been at the heart of Open Knowledge movements advocating for knowledge as a common good that should be accessible to everyone. These overlap with free software movements which focus on the free use and development of software code, considering it as a common resource that should not obey the rules of the market. Within the movements of the squares, the framework of the commons served as a guarantee of equality by attempting to limit the power asymmetries arising from private property relations. In contrast to the minimal understanding of equality in liberal representative democracies, the movements of the squares operated with a maximal conception, considering political equality as ‘equal power in the making of decisions’ (Pateman, 1970: 14). Although interviewees did not often use the vocabulary of the commons, these key ideas were reflected in my interviews. Movement participants referred to resources as commonly shared rather than the private property of specific individuals. For example, people’s skills and knowledge were considered as a resource to be shared and developed by the movement. Talking about her involvement in OWS, Daphne noted how she served as a resource for the community: “these are the things that I have, I can offer these constantly, you know, new groups are forming because I want to do this action or they have this study group that I can contribute this one skill to … and I’m a resource in that community for that thing” (emphasis added). This logic extended to the movement’s digital properties, from websites to social movement accounts. It also informed the handling of the movement’s knowledge and guidelines, as well as the documentation of decisions that were openly circulated online and offline. This was partly because open knowledge and free software advocates were present in the movements of the squares, particularly in the tech teams. As Devin from OWS revealed, such activists were behind OWS’s statement in its Principles of Solidarity that it is an ‘open-​source movement’ committed to ‘Making technologies, 189

Feminism and Protest Camps

knowledge, and culture open to all to freely access, create, modify, and distribute’ (New York City General Assembly, 2011). In Nuit Debout as well, members of the Library Commission published theoretical texts reflecting on the movement’s library as a form of commons that challenged private property norms (Calimaq, 2016). The notion of the commons thus allows us to radically rethink democracy in ways that accord with the ethics of care and their emphasis on dependence and vulnerability. Instead of perceiving land and other resources as something that can be enclosed and appropriated by specific individuals, the concept of the commons suggests that we are dependent on each other for the creation and management of resources. These resources should be commonly shared, not only because it is the just thing to do, but also because interdependence and vulnerability demand cooperation. The commons are therefore connected with a feminist view of citizenship that foregrounds relationships of interdependence. Interests are not based on private property relations but on taking care of the needs of the collective in a manner that everyone involved both contributes to and benefits from common skills, knowledge, equipment and other capabilities. Interests thus go beyond property or simply economic aspects, and involve also emotional needs and interpersonal relationships of trust, support and love. Yet the commons are not only a precondition, but also a product of the democracy practised by the movements of the squares. For Elise Thorburn (2017: 70), the assemblies can be considered ‘as a political formation [that] can provide both the means for beginning to seriously engage with the production of the common and the organisational terrain for the common politics to come’. Donatella della Porta (2014) also has suggested that the construction of the common is a key orientation of these movements’ democratic model. This view of the movements was voiced in my interviews as well. For instance, Vica from Occupy London remarked that the movement’s democracy was based on “creating a space that people feel that they can do whatever they want and contribute in some way, and it was because it was a space that did not belong to anyone, it belonged to everyone” (emphasis added). The movement did not operate as someone’s private property, but as a shared space for the production of the common, for facilitating relationships of ‘commoning’ based on care and interdependence. However, in practice, the movements of the squares could rarely escape the power imbalances created by property relations. The conflicts over the movements’ social media pages are instructive in this respect. All of  the movements that I analysed set up social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms that commanded large followings, particularly at the height of the protests. And in every movement there were struggles over the control of these accounts. These conflicts often took the form of ‘password wars’, where activists changed the passwords on the account in order to bar 190

Project Democracy in Protest Camps

others from managing or posting on the page (Kavada, 2015; see also Treré, 2015). Such conflicts were facilitated by the design of social media platforms, which is based on the logic of private property, providing the ‘owner’ of the account with the power to control it (Gerbaudo, 2017). Thus, the private property logic of social media platforms made it easier for such conflicts to take hold with often destructive effects. Nonetheless, in the movements of the squares, the notions of democracy and the commons constituted each other in ways that accorded with the ethics of care and their emphasis on dependence and vulnerability. The commons served as a precondition for guaranteeing equality among participants in the movement, an equality understood in maximal rather than minimal terms. At the same time, the movements’ democratic model provided a framework of ‘commoning’, a system for producing the commons through the movements’ activities, from making decisions in the assembly to creating infrastructure.

Conclusion The movements of the squares discussed in this chapter emphasised direct participation in open assemblies and considered the protest camp as a space of creativity and experimentation, where participants could pursue projects they were interested in. While this ideal type of ‘project democracy’ met with problems in practice, it can still offer a guiding vision for progressive politics, particularly in an era when the crisis of liberal representative democracy has facilitated the rise of populist authoritarianism. This chapter traced how feminist thinking helps to uncover the normative underpinnings of project democracy and the challenge it presents to the founding assumptions of liberal democracy. First, project democracy expands the notion of political participation to include activities of social reproduction, of caring for the civic body, that tend to be considered private within liberal democratic theory and are thus relegated to the outside of the democratic system. Second, the squares movements emphasised an ethic of care that foregrounds dependence and vulnerability. It thus destabilises the notion of the rational, invulnerable and independent individual that is at the centre of liberal democratic theory. Finally, feminist thinking offers insights into the relationship between private property and democracy within the liberal system where the citizen is considered as separate from the private sphere that sustains him and as aiming to pursue his own private property interests (Pateman, 1989: loc 2952). By contrast, the commons point to relations of interdependence between citizens in the polity, in ways that accord with the characteristics of vulnerability and dependence that the concept of care brings to the fore. For the movements of the squares, the commons and democracy mutually constituted each other. The commons 191

Feminism and Protest Camps

act as a guarantee of equality within the democratic system, attempting to prevent the power asymmetries created by private property relations. At the same time, the movements’ democratic process is also the terrain through which the commons is produced. This points to a conception of the citizen that is immersed in relationships of interdependence and whose participation within the democratic system is oriented towards the caring of the collective rather than the pursuit of private property interests. These insights offer an additional set of normative criteria on which to judge the performance of democratic systems. Do they centre people’s vulnerability and dependence? Do they take care of their citizens’ physical and emotional needs? Do they accord an equal place to different types of and different people’s vulnerabilities? Do they organise caring activities in a democratic manner? Do they consider caring activities as part of citizens’ democratic duties? Do they accord the same value and visibility to these activities as to more traditional democratic duties, such as participating in decision-​making processes? Do they assume that citizens are interdependent and thus should be involved in processes of communal sharing of resources? Do they attempt to counter the power asymmetries generated by private property and economic relations in general or do they relegate such concerns to the outside of the political process? By offering a lucid critique of the separation between the private and the public within liberal conceptions of the citizen and the polity, feminist theory facilitates a renewal of theorisations of democracy and its normative underpinnings. Note 1

Federici refers here to Craig Hughes and Kevin Van Meter of the Team Colors Collective for the phrase ‘flow from everyday life’.

References Calimaq (2016) ‘En quoi la BiblioDebout constitue-​t-​elle un Commun?’, S.I. Lex blog, 11 May. Available from: https://​scinfo​lex.com/​2016/​05/​ 11/​en-​quoi-​la-​bibli​odeb​out-​consti​tue-​t-​elle-​un-​com​mun/​ [Accessed 20 September 2021]. della Porta, D. (2014) ‘Learning Democracy: Cross-​Time Adaptation in Organisational Repertoires’, in D. della Porta and A. Mattoni (eds) Spreading Protest: Social Movements in Times of Crisis, Colchester: ECPR, pp 43–​70. Devenney, M. (2011) ‘Property, Propriety and Democracy’, Studies in Social Justice, 5(2): 149–​65. Eschle, C. (2018) ‘Troubling Stories of the End of Occupy: Feminist Narratives of Betrayal at Occupy Glasgow’, Social Movement Studies, 17(5): 524–​40.

192

Project Democracy in Protest Camps

Federici, S. (2008) ‘Feminism and the Politics of the Commons’, in M. Hlavajova and S. Sheikh (eds) Former West: Art and the Contemporary After 1989, Utrecht: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016, pp 379–​90. Available from: https://​www.bakonl​ine.org/​ prosp​ecti​ons/​syl​via-​feder​ici-​femin​ism-​and-​the-​polit​ics-​of-​the-​comm​ons/​ [Accessed 20 May 2021]. Feigenbaum, A., Frenzel, F. and McCurdy, P. (2013) Protest Camps, London: Zed Books. Fisher, B. and Tronto, J.C. (1990) ‘Towards a Feminist Theory of Care’, in E. Abel and M. Nelson (eds) Circles of Care: Work and Identity in Women’s Lives, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, pp 36–​54. Gerbaudo, P. (2017) ‘Social Media Teams as Digital Vanguards: The Question of Leadership in the Management of Key Facebook and Twitter Accounts of Occupy Wall Street, Indignados and UK Uncut’, Information, Communication & Society, 20(2): 185–​202. Haiven, M. and Federici, S. (2011) ‘Feminism, Finance and the Future of #Occupy –​An Interview with Silvia Federici’, ZNet, 25 November. Available from: https://​is.muni.cz/​el/​1423/​pod​zim2​012/​GEN​148/​ um/​B4_​pov_​Haiven_​Fede​r ici​Inte​r vie​w_​ZN​et_​2​011.pdf [Accessed 20 May 2021]. Kavada, A. (2015) ‘Creating the Collective: Social Media, the Occupy Movement and its Constitution as a Collective Actor’, Information, Communication & Society, 18(8): 872–​86. Kropotkin, P. (1902) Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. Available from: https://​thea​narc​hist​libr​ary.org/​libr​ary/​petr-​kropot​kin-​mut​ual-​aid-​ a-​fac​tor-​of-​evolut​ion [Accessed 14 June 2022]. Maeckelbergh, M. (2009) The Will of the Many: How the Alterglobalisation Movement is Changing the Face of Democracy, London: Pluto. Mansbridge, J. (1993) ‘Feminism and Democratic Community’, Nomos, 35: 339–​95. New York City General Assembly (2011) ‘Principles of Solidarity’. Available from: https://​g it​hub.com/​Occup​yWal​lStr​eet/​New-​York-​City-​Gene​ral-​ Assem​bly-​Docume​nts/​blob/​mas​ter/​Pri​ncip​les%20of%20Sol​idar ​ity.txt [Accessed 19 September 2021]. Pateman, C. (1970) Participation and Democratic Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pateman, C. (1989) The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory, Kindle edn, Cambridge: Polity Press. Polletta, F. (2002) Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Robinson, F. (2011) ‘Stop Talking and Listen: Discourse Ethics and Feminist Care Ethics in International Political Theory’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 39(3): 845–​60. 193

Feminism and Protest Camps

Ruivenkamp, G. and Hilton, A. (2017) ‘Introduction’, in G. Ruivenkamp and A. Hilton (eds) Perspectives on Commoning: Autonomist Principles and Practices, London: Zed Books, pp 1–​24. The Care Collective (2020) The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence, London: Verso. Thorburn, E. (2017) ‘Realising the Common: The Assembly as an Organising Structure’, in G. Ruivenkamp and A. Hilton (eds) Perspectives on Commoning: Autonomist Principles and Practices, London: Zed Books, pp 65–​106. Treré, E. (2015) ‘The Struggle Within: Discord, Conflict and Paranoia in Social Media Protest’, in L. Dencik and O. Leistert (eds) Critical Perspectives on Social Media and Protest: Between Control and Emancipation, London: Rowman & Littlefield, pp 163–​80. Tronto, J.C. (2015) Who Cares? How to Reshape a Democratic Politics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Tronto, J.C. (2013) Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice, Kindle edn, New York: New York University Press. Tronto, J.C. (1995) ‘Care as a Basis for Radical Political Judgements’, Hypatia, 10(2): 141–​49. Wall, D. (2017) Elinor Ostrom’s Rules for Radicals: Cooperative Alternatives Beyond Markets and States, London: Pluto. Young, I.M. (2000) Inclusion and Democracy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

194

11

Feminised and Decolonising Reoccupations, Re-​existencias and Escrevivências: Learning from Women’s Movement Collectives in Northeast Brazil Sara C. Motta, Sandra Maria Gadelha de Carvalho, Claudiana Nogueira de Alencar and Mila Nayane da Silva

Introduction Our chapter intersects with and disrupts feminist scholarship in relation to understanding of and contributions to the praxis of (feminist) protest camps. We do this as revolutionary feminist popular-​educators, working with movements in the South (as geography and onto-​epistemic positioning to Power) and in the region of Ceará and city of Fortaleza, Brazil. We develop a decolonising feminist intersectional revolutionary conceptual lens, which exists in dialectical and dialogical relation with the women’s cooperative Mãos que Criam of the Zé Maria de Tomé Movimento Sem Terra (MST) settlement, along with three Afro-​Brazilian women’s poetry collectives of the periphery of Fortaleza (Elaspoemas, BaRRosas and Pretarau), and our own kinship-​making praxis as authors who have been collaborating for the last 14 years. In this chapter, we explore feminist/​feminised protest camps as embodiments of Black, campesino (peasant farmer) and Indigenous sovereignties and reoccupations of tierra as both body and land. We stretch our conceptualisation of protest to the feminisation of resistance, our conceptualisation of camp to tierras or territory as land and body, and our conceptualisation of occupation to onto-​epistemological reoccupations of raced and feminised southern subjects-​in-​relation, co-​weaving new languages 195

Feminism and Protest Camps

and literacies of the political-​epistemological. We explore what this looks like and means for both a feminist politics of protest camps and a feminist theorisation of forms of decolonising feminist revolutionary praxis, and how it calls for the decolonising of reason and epistemological enfleshment (Motta, 2016, 2022, forthcoming). Our work connects the territories of the rural and the urban to make visible plural spatio-​temporalities of both the temporary protest reoccupation of the urban periphery and/​as Black feminised bodies, and the more long-​standing occupations by rural campesino and Indigenous communities who are co-​weaving social economies that centre pluridiverse forms of agricultural production and relationship with tierra as body. Within these more long-​standing occupations are struggles of feminised resistances that seek to bring visibility and voice to the female revolutionary campesino, her experiences of exclusion and the wisdom that she brings to this revolutionary struggle. In this way, we map intersectional, decolonial and Black revolutionary feminised resistances and re-​existencias (new ways of being) as onto-​epistemological reoccupations of the territories of land and body, and disrupt reified and unidimensional framings of protest camps and of feminist theoretical-​political engagements. Our collaboration in this piece (and more broadly) is not separate from such an intersectional decolonial/​​Black revolutionary feminised resistance embodied as reoccupations and sovereignties over and as body and land. Rather, it is emergent from the feminised resistances and re-​existencias of its authors. Our everyday struggles, our everyday commitments, and the webs of connections with other raced and feminised women-​in-​movement reoccupy the territories of life, social reproduction and subjectivity through grammars of pain and joy, to produce a politics of dignity and sovereignty otherwise. Such feminised and decolonised anti-​capitalist reoccupations exist thus in complex temporalities that connect us to ancestors and abuelas (grandmothers), and to Madre Tierra (Mother Earth) herself, and that are both momentary and long term. Such reoccupations exist and emerge in multiple spatialities: the rural settlement of the MST, the women’s homes and social economy in an agroecological cooperative; the temporary decolonising and feminised occupied urban space by Afro-​Brazilian poets; and the Zoom windows connecting Fortaleza and Russas in Brazil and Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia. Such reoccupations emerge through registers of enfleshed thought, word and connection, through song and lamentation, through grief and inspiration, through mãos que criam (hands that create) (Motta, 2016, 2022; Gonzalez et al, forthcoming). Our work engages and dialogues with the practice and concept of protest camps through interlacing the concepts of territory (in the plural) and territories in dispute, and (re)occupations (in the multidimensional and epistemological). We do this work as women-​scholars in kinship with relationships to such praxis, and through centring the lens of raced and 196

LEARNING FROM COLLECTIVES IN NORTHEAST BRAZIL

feminised women on the margins of the urban periphery and at the frontlines between agribusiness and agroecology in the rural landscape. We weave our reflections and conceptualisation through the lens of feminisms in the plural, and in a dialogue between the Marxist and decolonial feminisms of the ‘feminisation of resistance’ concept developed by Sara C. Motta (one of the authors of this piece) (Motta, 2013, 2019, 2020, 2022, forthcoming; Motta and Seppälä, 2016); the concept of escrevivência (writing the life, or ‘livature’) developed in the work of Afro-​Brazilian theorist Maria da Conceição Evaristo (2020); and the writings of the feminist linguist Veena Das (2007) around the gramática da dor (the grammar of pain), along with our new emergent concept of the gramática da alegria (the grammar of joy). We raise questions about the reoccupation of the public by raced and feminised subjects who have historically been and continue to be on the exteriority of non-​being of civil society and the public and who thus present an onto-​epistemological challenge to the very framing of protest​​ camp or occupation, reason, (political) subjectivity and resistance. We engage with feminisms that problematise, politicise and collectivise social reproduction, and who develop social agroecological economies against and beyond heteropatriarchal capitalism. In this way we vision conceptually and politically pluridiverse reoccupations emergent from the epistemological undercommons. These are reoccupations of the terrains of (political) subjectivity, of the grammar of the possibility of (political) speech as a coming into knowing-​being otherwise, and they centre epistemology as a terrain in dispute. We thus disrupt any theoretical or political rendition and theoretical register of decipherability that forces a separation between being women and being Black/​​racialised or between struggles against and beyond heteropatriarchy and capitalist-​coloniality.

Reoccupying concepts and epistemology In this section, we explain our theoretical and conceptual framework in which we wrap tenderly the praxis of raced and feminised women-​in-​ movement within the settlement of Zé Maria do Tomé, the women’s cooperative collective Mãos que Criam, Ceará, and the Afro-​Brazilian poetry collectives of the periphery BaRRosas, Pretarau-​Sarau das pretas and Elaspoemas: escritas perifericas. This framework is emergent itself from layers, herstories and decades of militant prefigurative research. As a transdisciplinary collective of activist educator-​academic authors, we have been unlearning taken-​for-​granted forms of critical research practice (Motta, 2011) and instead embracing revolutionary, decolonising and feminist popular pedagogies that co-​construct territories of healing and liberation and cartographies of affirmative and enfleshed visions of Black/​​racialised and feminised futurities. 197

Feminism and Protest Camps

Conceptually, we begin in dialogue with the work by Sara in relation to the ‘feminisation of resistance’ mentioned earlier, which centres not only raced and feminised subjects in new forms of transformative politics but also how new patterns, rhythms and relationships of feminised politics are emergent in the landscapes of the political. These patterns include attention to horizontality, care, recognition, deep listening and knowledges of the flesh –​ancestral, cultural, embodied, spiritual –​the dark wisdoms of which Patricia Hill Collins (2009: 206) speaks in terms both deeply relational and also deeply epistemological. This is a feminised and prefigurative politics that actively rebels against a politics of demand solely coordinated around state power, against the relegation of utopia to an undetermined future point, and against a political subjecthood premised on mastery, Truth and the capacity to hegemonically determine popular struggles (Motta, 2013; Motta et al, 2020). Conceptually-​theoretically we thus actively resist any politics of knowledge-​making that is representational and reproduces a division of labour between thinkers and those thought about, between leaders and led, between politics and the everyday, between the public and intimacy, and between reason and emotion. From these feminised struggles (which are both political and epistemological) emerge new subjects of the political, in movements and in the academy. These subjects articulate new-​ ancient (political) languages including ceremony, dance, storytelling, music and art, which centre the recovery, healing, defence and nurturing of the territories of the land and social political-​economies, and those of the body and subjectivity. In the centre of the web of these feminised resistances are the intimacies of everyday life and the decolonisation of subjectivities/​bodies and lands from the systemic violences to which they have been subjected (Anzaldua, 1987; Cruz, 2001; Motta, 2020, 2021). We work with this concept of the feminisation of resistance as it enables us to stretch and disrupt unidimensional conceptualisations of territory, protest (resistance) and occupation and to bring to visibility ‘territories in dispute’. It also exposes the fault lines between the ongoing onto-​epistemological violences of a ferocious heteropatriarchal capitalist-​coloniality, reproduced at the time of writing by the necropolitics of the Bolsonaro Government in Brazil, and a politics of life and dignity that beckons lifeworlds already-​always prefiguratively present. We thus also extend this concept of territories in dispute to the epistemological territories of theoretical and conceptual co-​ production, refusing the hierarchal onto-​epistemological divisions between those that know and theorise and those that are known and theorised about and for. Rather, we embrace the encounters between feminist scholar activists from the South (in all its complex senses of geography and onto-​epistemic positionality to Power (Mohanty, 1988; Motta, 2013)) in which we suleá-​ los1 in and through our relationalities with the movements and collectives with which we write. 198

LEARNING FROM COLLECTIVES IN NORTHEAST BRAZIL

Our enfleshed voices in relation We thus also make visible as part of our methodological underpinnings the dialogical comadreando (co-​mothering) from which our collaboration as activist scholars from the South emerged. Together we have nearly a century’s worth of combined struggle as (feminist) popular educators committed to a politics of knowledge that is transformative in process and in outcome. Sara is an Indigenous-​mestiza travelling storyteller who has lived across lands and territories as a result of logics of both dispossession and desire/​​survivance. She has worked with Sandra and Claudiana for more than 15 years in collective epistemological-​praxis in Brazil with the MST and mother-​militants across movements in Fortaleza, in the UK in radical education collaborations, and now from Australia developing methodologies and pedagogies of decolonising and feminist transformation and relationships of co-​healing and kinship across borders. Claudiana is an activist, poet, popular educator and critical decolonial/​​feminist linguistics scholar. She is co-​founder of Viva a Palavra: an activist-​scholar collective that works with poets from the periphery of Fortaleza with the objective of strengthening their cultural grammar as onto-​epistemological projects of reoccupation in the face of systemic violations and denial of their knowing-​being. Sandra is a leader, activist-​scholar and popular educator. She has a decades-​long relationship with the MST and with the radical pedagogical project of the movement Educação do Campo as part of her co-​founding and ongoing coordinating role in the Laboratório de Estudos da Educação do Campo (LECAMPO) and its emergence and consolidation in the settlement of Zé Maria do Tomé. Her activist research has focused on the emergence of radical subjectivities in the settlement, the development of agroecology, the role of the pedagogical in the political, and the place and practices of women MST members. Finally, Mila studied in the master’s programme Popular Education, Social Movements and Political Change and with the supervision of Sandra developed a participant action research (PAR) activist project with the residents of the settlement to strengthen their transformative struggles. As part of her master’s research, she developed initial relationships with some of the women settlement residents and from this went on to develop her doctoral research Aprendizados e insurgências das mulheres na luta pela terra [Learnings and Insurgencies of Women in the Struggle for Land]. Through a PAR methodology, she explored with these women the emergence of distinct political subjectivities that combine a struggle against the capitalist system with that of patriarchy; a struggle that centres the everyday as a site of reoccupation and transformation. The words and reflections of the women residents of the settlement with whom we dialogue later in this chapter are emergent from this collective research process. 199

Feminism and Protest Camps

In building a relational and dialogical conceptual-​theoretical framework for our writing, we honour our situated places of enunciation and everyday struggles, fostering new encounters that enable us to fruitfully weave horizontal and dignified epistemological practices into our co-​creation of this piece. We thus have sought to bring into dialogue the travelling onto-​epistemological framework of the feminisation of resistance of Sara’s scholarship with Claudiana’s own situatedness within the territories in dispute and the Black theory of Afro-​Brazilian theorist Conceição Evaristo in relation to escrevivência. As Evaristo describes it, escrevivência is ‘a quest to enter the world with our stories, with our lives, which the world disregards. Writing is not for the abstraction of the world, but for existence, for the life-​world’ (2020: 35).2 Here writing from the place of feminised and racialised non-​being is not a process of abstract representation, but a calling into the flesh and (political) being through word, embodiment and expression of our existence. Evaristo’s concept holds to a vision of a society dedicated to life against and beyond the necropolitical-​epistemological logics and (ir)rationalities that seek to suffocate the present. It is similar to and in sisterhood with the notion of the feminisation of resistance in speaking from racialised and feminised non-​ being and the co-​weaving of other literacies of the political with which to (temporarily) reoccupy the territory-​body and prefigure other forms of sovereignty and healing justice. It includes the epistemological and/​as the ontological, as ways of inhabiting and creating the world/​​subject are also ways of knowing the world/​​subject. The attempted eradication and rendering to social death of Afro-​Brazilian women of the periphery is not only the attempted eradication of lifeworlds, herstories and subjects-​in-​relation, but also an epistemological denial of being-​knowing ‘otherwise’. As Maria Lugones (2010: 745) describes: The civilizing transformation justified the colonization of memory and thus of people’s sense of self, of intersubjective relation, of their relation to the spirit world, to land, to the very fabric of their conception of reality, identity and social, ecological and cosmological organisation … the normativity that connected gender and civilization became intent on erasing community ecological practices, knowledge of planting, of weaving, of the cosmos. Writing in this sense is existential; it is a coming into being, similar to the registers of coming into being through ceremony, dance, art and storytelling (de Alencar, 2019, 2021a). It is essential to the possibilities of a reoccupying and resistance in and through camps/​​territories that does not reproduce the elision and negation of the feminised and racialised women and her kin –​not just as bodies, but also as subjects at the heart of other onto-​epistemologies of life-​making. 200

LEARNING FROM COLLECTIVES IN NORTHEAST BRAZIL

It is thus that escrevivência as written and spoken embodiment is a placed form of the feminisation of resistance, placed in the Afro-​territories of body and land of Brazil. It necessarily ruptures the coordinates of representational and abstracting logics of the epistemological project of capitalist-​coloniality, which render the raced subaltern women as invisible, indecipherable and wretched. Thus, grammar works here in the broadest onto-​epistemological sense and underlies the terms of possibility of speech, decipherability and visibility as and through text. It too becomes a territory in dispute. It is here that the emergence of the possibility of our speech and writing as escrevivência (as a coming into being as sovereign peoples) is put into dialogue with its sister concept developed by Veena Das (2007) of the gramática da dor, a grammar of pain out of which our words/​​worlds as life emerge. In her ethnographic work, Das (2007) demonstrates how out of atrocious violences women reinscribe their pain and suffering in everyday forms of meaning-​making that constitute a cultural grammar. Such cultural grammars are often hidden from the gaze of power, and/​or actively misrepresented. Yet, for the co-​creators they are a way to recover meaning and reclaim historicity /​historical agency from systematic trauma (Motta, 2018) and thus enable the co-​production of other subjectivities in resistance (de Alencar, 2021b). However, in our dialogues that gestated the possibilities of the birth of these words, we also remembered something. In the sharing of our struggles, we also share our joys: our laughter at power that renders its violent growl somewhat mute; our energetic hugs and shared singing of Milton Nascimento’s songs that bring tender healing; and our sharing of the ancestral remembering and teaching of the dark wisdoms with our children that is our dignified recovery in which love and laughter reign (Motta et al, 2020; Gonzalez et al, forthcoming). These are also landscapes of the emergence of the possibility of our escrevivência (in body and written text), which we wished to give name. Hand in hand with a gramática da dor is a gramática da alegria (grammar of joy). For as Nini Rizzi (2020) writes in relation to the power of poetry, but which travels to the power of our word, ‘we can bring to words everything, that which we desire mostly deeply. A poem is magic, a weapon, a bomb!’3 It is from this tapestry in which we suleá-​los that we seek to bring dignified and relational visibility to the praxis of the racialised subaltern women-​in-​ movement in Northeast Brazil. It is to the women in the settlement of Zé Maria do Tomé, and particularly in the women’s cooperative collective Mãos que Criam, that we now turn.

Women of Zé Maria do Tomé and the Mãos que Criam Cooperative The Movement of Landless Rural Workers (O Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra or MST), was founded in 1984 in the city of Chapecó, in 201

Feminism and Protest Camps

Paraná State. At the time of writing, it has over a million participants across 16 Brazilian states. The question of gender was present in the movement’s initial struggles but the priority in its first years was the occupation of land. Women participated in occupations and the organisation of settlements when occupied and in the organisation of occupied land when legalised. However, they faced challenges and barriers to their role as organisers and militants due to their primary role as carers for children and responsibility for the tasks of domestic labour. From the movement’s first occupations, women began to bring these questions to debates and to organise and make demands, in particular to advocate for the need for childcare and schools so that MST mothers could both work on the land and in political organising. MST women accordingly had a central role in the struggle for Educação do Campo that is the distinctive critical education paradigm and programme of the movement (see de Carvalho, 2006, 2017; Motta and Cole, 2013). The continued organisation of women of the MST resulted in the creation of the Gender Sector in 2000 and regional women’s sectors have emerged throughout the 2000s. It is within this broader context of emergence and consolidation of the MST as an organisation that is anti-​capitalist and increasingly anti-​patriarchal as a result of women’s internal political struggles within the movement, that we can situate the reoccupations of the women of the Zé Maria do Tomé settlement. The settlement is to be found in the Chapada do Apodi, between Rio Grande Do Norte and Ceará, Brazil, in the municipalities of Limoeiro do Norte e Quixere. These lands are a territory in dispute between peasant-​led agroecology and neoliberal-​led agribusiness. Much has been written about the settlements of the MST and their pedagogical work in relation to Educação do Campo and its multiscalar efforts to form a popular anti-​capitalist (inter) national struggle premised on agroecology. Less has been written about the role of women in these territorial conflicts and how the MST’s struggle is also a struggle against patriarchal capitalism built upon everyday insurgencies and a praxis of de-​patriarchalisation around the figure of the female militant or activist. The women’s stories of the onto-​epistemological violences and harms of agribusiness highlight the impact of air and water pollution through the extensive use of agritoxins. These take a heavy toll on the health and well-​ being of mothers and children, and poison lands on which they might carry out family farming (de Carvalho and Motta, 2018; de Carvalho et al, 2020). This peasant/​​indigenised racialised and feminised place of enunciation and emergence centres immediately the territory of the home and family, and the role of women in the defence of family and responsibility for well-​being and health. The visibility of these women’s wisdoms and recognition of the intertwining of patriarchy and capitalism in the reproduction of peasant dispossession is a result of women organising in the settlement. Women both take up positions on the frontline when the settlement is threatened by government and militarised interventions, and nurture alternative social 202

LEARNING FROM COLLECTIVES IN NORTHEAST BRAZIL

economies, as we will address later. As Monica, a member of the Zé Maria do Tomé settlement, describes: ‘I came from the Tomé community but now I am from the community Zé Maria do Tomé. I cannot envision my life outside of our community. My experience here has been beautiful, we struggle daily to create a different model, for the reintegration of the land which the government is trying to destroy. They might throw stones at us. They might try to destroy us but what we are building here, we will pick up the stones and rebuild a step so that we rise up day by day.’ (da Silva interview, 2019) Defending the settlement’s existence and nurturing an alternative model of social economy, social relationships and subjectivity is a deeply pedagogical process in which women’s participation in all instances of movement and settlement activity is central (de Carvalho et al, 2020). Recognition of the connections between patriarchy and capitalism depends on this participation. As has become acknowledged within the MST as a result of women’s internal struggles, ‘there is a link between the inherent patriarchal logic of private ownership of land, the agribusiness model supported by capitalism and the organisation of the patriarchal family based on the oppression of rural women’ (de Carvalho el al, 2020). Politically and pedagogically centring the inherent connections between capitalism and patriarchy necessitates paying attention to how the organisation of the hegemonic family and a gendered division of labour and power is premised not only upon the exploitation of workers-​peasants, but also on the super-​exploitation and subordination of female subjects in the private sphere. In this way, the labours of social reproduction remain unrecognised and devalued. Rectifying this has relied on women of the settlements organising to bring visibility and value to the labour of social reproduction, and to ensure the reproduction of the more visible acts of resistance of the movement (Esmeraldo, 2013). It has also involved the struggle for a more egalitarian division of labour between social reproduction (in the private) and the public labour of (socialised) production and militancy. Importantly women have played a key role in remembering ancestral knowledges that are fundamental to the co-​construction of social economies based in agroecological models in which relationships of care between community and land are centred, and in which devalued methods of cultivation, seed protection and restoration and use of land are revalued. This has often occurred in relation to the ability to farm plots of land. In these moments of planting and remembering there are informal pedagogical processes of learning and unlearning: unlearning the devaluation and subordination of their roles and knowledges through a gramática da dor, and relearning wisdoms and a sacred place in community survivance 203

Feminism and Protest Camps

through a gramática da alegria. The recovery and strengthening of women’s agroecological knowledges are linked to other forms of social relationships based in equality and participation that contest capitalism and patriarchy. Since the formation of the settlement, its inhabitants have pursued the strategy of an agroecological transition. The social economy practices of the women of the community intersect and undergird this strategy. One example is the formation of the women’s cooperative Mãos que Criam (Hands that Create) in the settlement, which began to produce goods and, in this process, enhanced the visibility of women in the space of the settlement and its politics of resistance. The initial objective of the cooperative was to commercialise their products and improve the families’ socio-​economic situation. However, through praxis and their informal pedagogical (un)learnings of patriarchal capitalist forms of social reproduction and production, the women began to foster the participation of the entire family in all production activities and in all sites of struggles around the social-​economic organisation of the women. As Luiza Costa, one of the participants in the cooperative, describes: “We decided to form a women’s group to show society that this was a myth [that women in the settlements didn’t work], and that women do organise [politically] and also work/​​labour” (da Silva interview, 2019). From this process of creating new socio-​economic relationships, recovering and recognising women’s knowledges as well as learning more deeply about agroecology, the women began to question their position as outside of or secondary in the frontlines of struggle, production and local community commercialisation, in public-​facing seminars in relation to agroecology, and in decision-​making instances of the movement. These processes of self/​other learning strengthen the capacity of women to undertake everyday insurgencies within the private space of their family relationships and foreground a feminised politics of dignity and well-​being. As Heloise, a settlement member explains: ‘I can’t imagine my life without the settlement and without my home here. If you would have had told me “ah Heloise I will give your own house there in Limoeiro and you won’t have to do anything more than live in the settlement, and you won’t have to experience all the things you have experienced like humiliation discrimination, challenges”, I would have said no because I couldn’t have imagined this for my children … and each week as folks come to live here they have this similar feeling, that they couldn’t have imagined living here … My life now, living here in the settlements, I can sincerely say that I have began to live.’ (da Silva interview, 2019) These everyday acts of insurgency involve recognition that the labour of social reproduction and domestic work are not merely women’s responsibility, 204

LEARNING FROM COLLECTIVES IN NORTHEAST BRAZIL

and contesting these gendered divisions of labour in the home. They involve the creation of not only collective farming, but also collective kitchens in which cooking and eating is socialised, and which nurture collaborative and dialogical forms of relationship and organisation. New forms of egalitarian sociability and the collectivising of labours of social reproduction resignify motherhood, away from an individualised and fragmenting experience of relegation to the home toward a collective mothering in the public, rooted in socialised labours of production and social production. The layers of informal (un/​re)learning involved in this process can be viewed as feminised/​ ist pedagogies in defence of territory, including the territory and integrity of the settlement and new forms of social-​economic relationships, and the territory and integrity of their knowing-​being as (political) women of the MST (Korol, 2007, 2015; Motta, 2021). As de Carvalho et al (2020: 1833) argue, developing the work of Korol (2007), such feminist pedagogies recognise ‘not only the right of women to an education but also their recognition as pedagogical subjects that contribute knowledges with which it is possible to elaborate … the overcoming of patriarchy [and capitalism] as a social relation’. However, as noted in other work in relation to the feminisation of resistance (Motta, 2013), these struggles over the terrain of social economies and social reproduction that centre care and defence of territories in the pluridiverse are emergent processes. Such processes necessarily navigate how hierarchal constraints and separations fracture our feminised revolutionary subjectivities and social relationships. It is thus the case that many of these women find themselves taking on the triple burden of social economy productive work, social reproduction labour and political organising. As Monica continues to describe: ‘At home, right at the beginning, I worked hard at the coordination, I had to manage the house and I still worked on the flower beds, on things in the community, and on top of this that not everyone knows, I had to go out selling vegetables. There were days when I arrived home, everything was turned upside down, there was a day I made a big fuss, when I arrived he was alone at home, he locked the door, said he had washed the dishes, there was nothing dirty for me to tidy up. … I know what the path is now.’ (da Silva interview, 2019)

Afro-​Brazilian women’s poetry collectives of the periphery:​BaRRosas, Pretarau and Elaspoemas As part of the Viva a Palavra (Long Live the Word) activist-​research collective, women artists and poets began to express and explore how the machismo

205

Feminism and Protest Camps

and racisms of the capitalist, colonial and patriarchal system also criss-​crossed their own communities and poetry nights and events. These poets situate the dispossessions co-​constitutive of these logics and (ir)rationalities as causing dispossession of territories: both of land and home and of kin and body (Motta, 2021). For them, these are onto-​epistemological logics that deny the possibility of other lifeworlds and epistemological grounds of becoming. They therefore centre literacies not as languages in isolation, but as the embodied structuration of subjectivity, social relationships and ways of life; and the recovery of voice as necessarily outside the logics of representation and recognition of heteropatriarchal capitalist-​coloniality (Lugones, 2010; Motta, 2018). In dialoguing with these collectives, we seek to bring to thought how their praxis of occupation, while temporary, is not merely physical or social and economic or ecological, but epistemological and/​as embodied. Their praxis decolonises the logics of the thinkable, sayable and liveable, co-​weaving escrevivências and re-​existencias and the possibility of Black life. Their struggles for space-​time of their own led these Afro-​Brazilian artists and creators to self-​organise as poets and Black women to confront not only the logics of patriarchy and racisms in the broader city, but also how these criss-​crossed the counter-​cultural space of poetry collectives in the periphery. From this emerged the Ellas poemas: escritas perifericas in 2020 with the intention to challenge structural capitalist-​colonial patriarchy in the poets’ lives. Ellas poemas went on to collaborate with BaRRosas, also formed in 2020 with 11 Black women from diverse creative areas. In their work, BaRRosas seek to confront structural issues such as racism, transphobia and machismo. The collective came into being after Slam Violeta, a poetry slam battle in which there were no female/​​feminised participants, when it was decided that is was necessary to create a women-​only space in the community. The final collective is called Pretarau, also known as O Sarau das Pretas, which formed in 2019 and is made up of 13 Black female/​​feminised poets and slam poets. Their main aim is to strengthen Black female/​​feminised poets of the periphery. All three groups formed to combat and name the structural and everyday violences that Black women and feminised peoples on the periphery experience, and to form networks of mutual aid in and beyond the formal and temporary reoccupations of urban space in the poetry readings and writing groups they organise. Themes emergent from their work include the power of the Black women of the periphery, the ongoing violence of racism and/​as a gramática da dor, and the singularities of Black women as opposed to homogenising and pathologising dominant discourses. The cartographies remapped are forms of escrevivência in which are produced other (political) subjectivities in relation, and in which the sacred feminine and ancestral form a central part in struggles for self-​recognition and emergence as (political) 206

LEARNING FROM COLLECTIVES IN NORTHEAST BRAZIL

subjects on their own terms. The cultural grammar these collectives create through their reoccupations of place and body can thus be understood as co-​creating ‘discourse and subjectivities … in new forms of life’ (de Alencar, 2021b: 616–​17; see also Rizzi, 2020). The three Afro-​Brazilian women’s poetry collectives take us deeply into the territories of the racialised and feminised self in her struggle for survivance and life in the urban peripheries. They show us how, for Afro-​ Brazilian women, the struggle for knowing-​being is a feminised resistance that necessarily stretches the coordinates, logics and (ir)rationalities of heteropatriarchal capitalist-​coloniality in its onto-​epistemological project of death of the racialised body. Her turning into flesh denied reason, safety, nurturing and care is the space from which Black women develop a cultural grammar that contests the very boundaries of territory itself and takes this struggle to the epistemological territories of reason, knowing, voice and political being and its conditions of possibility. The praxis of these poets embodies a cultural-​epistemological gramática da dor e alegria that announces a society without domination and that rebels against a logic of binary hierarchical structurings and subjectivities. This is a placed feminisation of resistance that reoccupies the invisibilised urban periphery and Black female subjectivity. These three collectives name and speak the unspeakable trauma to the racialised and feminised body (Motta, 2018) that is constitutive of the modern city of Fortaleza. They map with their embodied words and narratives the social relationships of cruelty and territories of violence in which Black and poor populations are left for dead and actively exterminated. They speak this as something that criss-​ crosses and colonises their very communities, and thus they have had to carve out, organise and occupy spaces in the periphery of their own, away from the slams and poetry salons that often reproduce their silence/​ing (de Alencar, 2021b). Through their words, these poets come into presence from invisibility and denaturalise by speaking and contesting systematic suffering and exclusions. Becoming authors of their own narratives, they reoccupy language/​​ representation/​​voice as territories in dispute. They mark and map new grammatical territories, not only through narratives that expose and speak the unspeakable, thus rupturing the false claims to democratic equality of modern Brazil, but by changing language as an act of possession and ownership of an individual into a collective form of poetry-​making. They also validate oral languages and slang, developing antipoemas (anti-​poems) against the canon of colonial-​patriarchal Poetry that continues to reproduce the pathologisation and elision of the knowing-​being of Black feminised subjects. They thus decolonise and feminise otherwise masculine terms such as ‘o colectivo cultural’ to ‘a colectiva cultural’ or ‘o poema’ to ‘a poema’, bringing into life their own being-​knowing. This resonates with Gloria Anzaldúa’s 207

Feminism and Protest Camps

reflection on why she was compelled to write: because it enabled her ‘[t]‌o become more intimate with myself and you. To discover myself, to preserve myself, to make myself, to achieve self-​autonomy’ (1987: 169). We see this coming into knowing-​being and self-​autonomy, despite and beyond the violences that contextualise her life, including those articulated through the canon of colonial-​patriarchal capitalist Poetry, in the poem by Nina Rizzi (2020): by the cross by the sword by the disease and through language came domination … the language of a father of a rapist of a church of a police of a state of a genocide from a past that is present and is fascist racist misogynist homophobic life-phobic and colonial not fit into totalising particles of White power males drop the binds the language, the language call her: she and whoever wants to: desire A poem is an original dialect and a pretugues4 and a slang This coming into being and speech, making visible and denouncing racialised and gendered class violences, ruptures enforced silence and builds collective courage to overcome the fear of speaking. Poetic life in this way is not merely a representative act or performance, it is a way in which the entire corporality of the poets, a Black feminised flesh, comes into being, rupturing the registers of visibility of the hegemonic script of the politicalepistemological. This is how escrevivência is enfleshed on the peripheries of the territories of the city by feminised and racialised subjects-​in-​relation. As the Pretarau collective declare, ‘we cry out poems … for the fundamental and inexorable revolution of our bodies, of the pack that bathes in the brave sea of courage to defend its own’ (2021: 5). Their escrevivência ‘prefigures a different form of life from that of the global patriarchal capitalist-​colonial system’ (de Alencar, 2021a: 4). It is not merely therefore a resistance or reoccupation of the urban periphery that articulates its critique of the present, rather it is a rich and multidimensional praxis that announces another political, subjective and material relationality and/​as the emergent possibility of Black feminised life and/​as political subjectivity. Here a gramática da dor combines necessarily with a gramática da alegria, of pain with joy and laughter, of desire, and love. As Ma Njanu (Andrade, 2020) expresses-​enfleshes: 208

LEARNING FROM COLLECTIVES IN NORTHEAST BRAZIL

eyes the walls kiss your lick The one I love: let’s change the world This affirmative enfleshment of Black feminised reason and being otherwise is held by and nurtured through connection to Ancestrality and traditions of African diasporic spirituality such as Candomblé. Here the magical ancestral power of convocation and intention enables the calling into being of other Black worlds. This is a shamanic poetic expression, an ofô, or enchantment, which is enfleshed ‘through words but it is much more than this: an ofô is a magical spell, capable of deeply transforming the world’ (Pretarau, 2020: 5). As the Pretarau collective continues, ‘For us Black women poets, an ofô is the becoming of the history we want and dare to build, undermining the colonial silencing of racism, LGBT phobia and machismo with the sharpness of our voices’. Reoccupations of being and knowing thus rupture the coordinates of non-​being and denial of the Prophetic subject of knowing of capitalist-​ coloniality through the dark wisdoms of these women-​in-​movement and/​ as reoccupations of the territories of the body and city (Motta, 2018; Motta and Bermudez, 2019).

Conclusion The years 2010–​12 have been heralded as the start of a global wave of mobilisation centred around the occupation of public space. This chapter has contributed to feminist analysis of such (re)occupations by tracing an intersectional decolonising revolutionary feminist story of raced and feminised subjects on the margins of theoretical production and political power. Our focus has been on the reoccupations of territories as land and body or subjectivity co-​created through new languages of the political-​ epistemological by campesino and Indigenous women of the MST and Afro-​ Brazilian women and feminised poets of the periphery of the urban metropolis of Fortaleza. To engage with dignity and integrity with these collective enfleshments otherwise has implied relationship-​building over many years between the authors, and between the authors and the movements/​​collectives honoured in this chapter. It also necessitates conceptual work to decolonise and feminise taken-​for-​g ranted (feminist) framings of protest and resistance, territory and space/​​place, and the multilayered onto-​epistemological nature of reoccupation itself. The work we have pieced together in these pages has threads of (dis) connection and resonance/​​dissonance with that of other contributors to this volume. Bringing to text and thought these (dis)connections and resonances/​​dissonances allows us to distinguish more clearly the distinctiveness of this chapter and identify its potential gifts for feminist 209

Feminism and Protest Camps

struggles for emancipation and reoccupation more broadly, to ensure they do not reproduce in theory or practice the elision and negation of raced and feminised subjects and communities. Echoing Emma Gómez Nicolau (in Chapter 7 in this volume) on the development in Spanish protest camps of women-​only spaces that are transversal and do not reify or essentialise the category ‘woman’, the Afro-​Brazilian women on the urban peripheries of Fortaleza also found themselves in a situation in which they needed their own spaces, to articulate their own voice, to enable onto-​epistemological emergence, co-​creation and decolonisation. The lines of gendered, raced and class exclusions criss-​cross also the subcultural spaces of the underside of the modern/​​colonial city. Like their transversal sisters in Spain, the Black women poets of Fortaleza developed a politics of reoccupation based on horizontality, intimacy and collective kinship. However, they develop these along decolonising lines of enfleshed emergence through a gramática da dor e alegria and the birthing of escrevivência that ushers in the emergence of new-​ancient political subjectivities, voices and Black reason from the margins of non-​being. As the chapters in this volume by Chia-​Ling Yang (Chapter 5), Joan Haran (Chapter 8), Catherine Eschle (Chapter 9) and Anastasia Kavada (Chapter 10) indicate, the women and feminised subjects of the MST and the Zé Maria de Tomé Settlement are not alone in politicising social reproduction and the invisibilised and devalued labours of care as the font and source of another politics and of other political subjectivities. The women of the MST, however, in their longer-​term reoccupation of the territories of land and economy, enable the prefigurative emergence through feminist informal pedagogies of social economies embedded within agroecological principles and practices. Moreover, the onto-​epistemological logics of non-​being bring for the Afro-​Brazilian poetry collectives further depth to the enfleshed and to territory as body and self, which undergirds the very possibility of (political) speech, reason and knowing-​being: this is the gramática da dor e alegria. Finally, our archiving-​of-​sorts raises sister questions to those raised by several chapters in this volume –​by Haran (Chapter 8), Alison Bartlett (Chapter 12), Niamh Moore (Chapter 13), Heather Hurwitz and Anne Kumer (Chapter 14) and Kate Kerrow et al (Chapter 15) –​about the relationship of the protest camp to the archive. These chapters explore how camps do not end at the gate and are not only physical sites: they are also sites of feminist imagining that make other activism and ways of being a possibility. We would add to this how feminised and racialised reoccupations of urban and rural territories do not only provide the grounds of possibility for feminised cultural imaginations, but also prefiguratively and horizontally enflesh multiple grounds of knowing-​being beyond the confinements, codifications and violent separations of heteropatriarchal capitalist-​coloniality. 210

LEARNING FROM COLLECTIVES IN NORTHEAST BRAZIL

These reoccupations make visible the complexities of territories in dispute and herald new-​ancient grammars of the flesh/political being and the commons upon which to nurture and tend social-​spiritual-​epistemological territories dedicated to life, our lives well-​lived. Notes 1

2 3

4

This is a neologism coined by the Brazilian scholar of popular education Paolo Freire. It means to navigate or guide oneself but drops the reference to the North in the original word in Portuguese to root this process of discovery within the South. All translations of published and poetry texts originally in Portuguese are the authors’ own. All the quotations in this chapter from the poets Nina Rizzi, Ma Njanu and the Pretarau collective are from poems that are ‘open source’; that is, they are not copyrighted and instead are made available on websites or online blogs for free distribution. This term is used to emphasise the African influences on the language and culture of Brazil (for example, Rios, 2019).

References de Alencar, C.N. (2019) ‘“Tudo Aqui é Poesia”: A Pragmática Cultural como Pesquisa Participante com Movimentos Sociais e Coletivos Juvenis em Territórios de Violência Urbana’, Interdisciplinar, 31: 237–​56. de Alencar, C.N. (2021a) ‘O Amor de Todo Mundo, Palavras-​Sementes para Mudar o Mundo: Gramáticas de Resistência e Práticas Terapêuticas de uso Social da Linguagem por Coletivos Culturais da Periferia em Tempos de Crise Sanitaria’, DELTA, 37(4). Available from: https://​www.sci​elo.br/​j/​ delta/​a/​cLhv​KFyQ​GVdD​sN4W​xkgp​HDm/​abstr​act/​?lang=​pt [Accessed 20 December 2021]. de Alencar, C.N. (2021b) ‘“Writing. Experience. Invention. Poem”: Performance and Decoloniality in Cultural Grammars Written by Poets’ Collectives from the Outskirts’, Trabalhos em Linguística Aplicada, 60(3): 612–​25. Andrade, M. (2020) ‘Como se Faz o Poema de Ma Njanu’, 23 September. Available from: https://​www.liter​atur​abr.com/​2020/​09/​23/​como-​se-​faz-​ o-​poema-​de-​ma-​njanu [Accessed 26 September 2020]. Anzaldúa, G. (1987) Borderlands/​La Frontera: The New Mestiza, San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. de Carvalho, S.M.G. (2006) Educação do Campo: Pronera, uma Política Pública em Construção, PhD thesis, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil. Available from: https://​repo​sito​r io.ufc.br/​han​dle/​r iufc/​ 3506 [Accessed 20 August 2022]. de Carvalho, S.M.G. (2017) ‘Resistência, Discurso e Identidade: Extensão e Educação Popular no Acampamento José Maria do Tomé, Ceará, Brasil’, in C.N. de Alencar, M.F.V. da Costa and N.B. da Costa (eds) Discursos, Fronteiras e Hibridismo, Fortaleza: Expressão Gráfica e Editora, pp 129–​47.

211

Feminism and Protest Camps

de Carvalho, S.M.G. and Motta, S.C. (2018) ‘Educação do Campo, Movimentos Sociais e Feminismo: Resistências e Aprendizados em Contexto Neoliberal’, in S.M.G. de Carvalho, J.E. Mendes, and M.D.M. Segundo (eds) Política Educacional, Docência e Movimentos Sociais no Contexto Neoliberal, Fortaleza, Ed: UECE, pp 195–​206. de Carvalho, S.M.G., da Silva, M.N. and Barbosa, L.P. (2020) ‘Enfrentamentos e Aprendizados: a Insurgência Feminina no Acampamento Zé Maria do Tomé, Chapada do Apodi-​CE [Confrontations and Lessons: The Feminine Insurgency in the Zé Maria do Tomé Encampment, Chapada do Apodi-​ CE]’, Revista Diálogo Educacional, 20(67): 1808–​36. Collins, P.H. (2009) Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Cruz, C. (2001) ‘Toward an Epistemology of a Brown Body’, Qualitative Studies in Education, 14(5): 657–​69. Das, V. (2007) Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary, Berkeley: University of California Press. Esmeraldo, G.G. (2013) ‘O Protagonismo Político de Mulheres Rurais por seu Reconhecimento Econômico e Social’, in D.P. Neves, and L.S. de Medeiros (eds) Mulheres Camponesas: Trabalho Produtivo e Engajamentos Políticos, Niterói: Alternativa, pp.237–​56. Evaristo, C. (2020) ‘A Escrevivência e Seus Subtextos’, in C. Duarte and I. Nunes (eds) Escrevivência: A Escrita de Nós –​Reflexões Sobre a Obra de Conceição Evaristo, Rio de Janeiro: Mina Comunicação e Arte, pp 25–​46. Gonzalez, Y.T., Motta, S.C. and Sepällä, T. (forthcoming) ‘Decolonising Feminist Solidarity’, in S. Meriläinen, S. Katila and E. Bell (eds) Handbook of Feminist Methodology in Management and Organization Studies, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Korol, C. (2007) Hacia una Pedagogía Feminista: Géneros y Educación Popular, Buenos Aires: Pañuelos en Rebeldía (Colección Cuadernos de Educación Popular). Korol, C. (2015) ‘La Educación Popular Como Creación Colectiva de Saberes y de Haceres’, Polifonías Revista de Educación, 4(7): 132–​53. Lugones, M. (2010) ‘Towards a Decolonial Feminism’, Hypatia, 25(4): 742–​59. Mohanty, C. (1988) ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’, Feminist Review, 30(1): 61–​88. Motta, S, C. (2011) ‘Notes Towards Prefigurative Epistemologies’, in S.C. Motta and A.G. Nilsen (eds) Social Movements in the Global South, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 178–​99. Motta, S.C. (2013) ‘ “We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For”: The Feminization of Resistance in Venezuela’, Latin American Perspectives, 40(4): 35–​54.

212

LEARNING FROM COLLECTIVES IN NORTHEAST BRAZIL

Motta, S.C. (2016) ‘Decolonising Critique: From Prophetic Negation to Prefigurative Affirmation’, in A.C. Dinerstein (ed) Social Sciences for an Other Politics: Women Theorizing Without Parachutes, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 33–​48. Motta, S.C. (2018) Liminal Subjects: Weaving (Our) Liberation, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Motta, S.C. (2019) ‘Feminising our Revolutions’, Soundings, 71: 15–​27. Motta, S.C. (2020) ‘Territories of Decolonizing Feminist/​ised Struggles’, in S.A.H. Hosseini, J. Goodman, S.C. Motta and B.K. Gills (eds) Routledge Handbook of Global Transformative Studies, Abingdon: Routledge, pp 472–​85. Motta, S.C. (2021) ‘Decolonizing Our Feminist/​ized Revolutions: Enfleshed Praxis from Southwest Colombia’, Latin American Perspectives, 239(48): 124–​42. Motta, S.C. (2022) ‘Decolonising (Critical) Social Theory: Enfleshing Post-​ Covid Futurities’, Thesis, 170(1): 58–​77. Motta, S.C. (forthcoming) ‘Decolonising Feminist Methodologies: An Epistemological Politics of the Raced and Feminised Flesh’, in V. Stead, C. Elliott and S. Mavin (eds) Handbook of Feminist Methodology in Management and Organization Studies, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Motta, S.C. and Cole, M. (eds) (2013) Education and Social Change in the Americas, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Motta, S.C. and Seppälä, T. (2016) ‘Feminized Resistances’, Journal of Resistance Studies, 2(2): 5–​32. Motta S.C. and Bermudez Gomez, N., (2019) ‘Enfleshing Temporal Insurgencies and Decolonial Times’, Globalizations, 16(4): 424–​40. Motta S.C., Bermudez Gomez, N., Valenzuela Fuentes, K. and Simone, E. (2020) ‘Student Movements in Latin America: Decolonizing and Feminizing Education and/​as Life’, in H.E. Vanden and G. Provost (eds) Oxford Encyclopedia of Latin American Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 1–​28 Pretarau (2020) Ofò: Antologia Poética Pretarau. Available from: https://​preta​ rau.files.wordpr​ess.com/​2020/​08/​ofo-​antolo​g ia-​poet​ica-​preta​rau-​1.pdf [Accessed 20 December 2021]. Rios, F. (2019) ‘Améfrica Ladina: The Conceptual Legacy of Lélia Gonzalez (1935–​1994)’, LASA Forum, 50(3): 75–​9. Rizzi, N. (2020) ‘A Poema, Caminho para Alcançar a Própria voz e Tantas Outras’, Suplemento Pernambuco, November. Available from: https://​suple​ ment​oper​namb​uco.com.br/​edi%C3%A7%C3%B5es-​ant​erio​res/​71-​ens​ aio/​2579-​nina-​r izzi-​a-​poema,-​%20cami​nho-​para-​alcan%C3%A7ar-​a-​ pr%C3%B3p​r ia-​voz-​e-​tan​tas-​out​ras.html [Accessed 10 December 2020].

213

PART IV

The Feminist Afterlives of Protest Camps

12

Feminism on Aboriginal Land: The 1983 Pine Gap Women’s Peace Camp, Central Australia Alison Bartlett

Introduction This research is generated on Whadjuk country, the unceded lands of Noongar people on what is commonly known as the city of Perth in the south-​west corner of Western Australia. This acknowledgement of country positions this chapter in a particular political time and context. This recent practice of acknowledging the Indigenous land on which we live and work acts as a symbolic reminder of the violent colonial history of Australia. It registers the ongoing colonising relations as both historic and insistently present today. It is now common to see such phrases on email signatures, before public talks and ceremonies, at openings of meetings and festivals, and Australia Post now has a formal place for Indigenous country on postal addresses. This chapter is predicated on the continuing valency of political and theoretical contexts, both historical and in the present. As a White Anglo-​ Australian researcher, I think through some of the entanglements between feminist ideas and practice as they take place on a colonised land, paying attention to the language and politics circulating in the 1980s and their relation to contemporary feminist discourses through which we now speak and write. It is a complicated and often subjective set of engagements that might be characterised as fractious, confusing, awkward and awe-​ inspiring: both conservative and radical. In the 1980s Donna Haraway suggested that we are always in the process of constructing ‘situated knowledge’, rather than revealing truths, and can only ever attain a partial perspective (1988). Striving for objectivity, Haraway argued, is misguided, 217

Feminism and Protest Camps

because we are all the products of our social experiences and inevitably work from these premises, which form our epistemological foundations. This argument might also be applied to the legacies of feminist theory and philosophy through which we work, and which complicate the way we can remember and narrate feminism and its histories. More specifically, this chapter focuses on a women-​only protest camp held at Pine Gap/​​Quiurnpa in central Australia in 1983 and reads it as an encounter of feminism on Aboriginal land. Since that event, the chant ‘Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land’ is often heard at protests of all kind; however, feminist engagement with what was then known as Aboriginal ‘land rights’ is rarely remembered or included in feminist histories. While feminism in Australia is largely anchored to the subject position of White middle-​class woman, as Goenpul woman Professor Aileen Moreton-​ Robinson argues (2000), this chapter uses the Pine Gap protest camp to seek out scenes that complicate and transect Black–​White relations and feminisms. These entanglements and engagements involve reorienting how the event is remembered, and also perhaps the forms in which it can be narrated.

Background: Pine Gap Women’s Peace Camp, 1983 The Pine Gap protest was conceived as part of the extended campaign around the ‘knot’ that was Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp (see Chapter 13 by Moore and Chapter 15 by Kerrow et al in this volume), coinciding with the imminent arrival of the US Pershing missiles onto the commons, but also to draw attention to the little-​known US military satellite facility at Pine Gap whose lease was about to be renegotiated. Pine Gap/​​ Quiurnpa describes a feature of the landscape, about 30 kilometres from the township of Alice Springs/​​Mparntwe, but the most extraordinary aspect is still the sight of an ever-​increasing number of massive white radomes sitting under the MacDonnell Ranges/​​Tjoritja amid military grade mesh fence and sentry boxes. The protest camp was proposed at Easter at a meeting in Ngunnawal country/​​Canberra, Australia, when the umbrella organisation Women for Survival was established. It took place in November 1983 when hundreds of women arrived in the small outback town of Alice Springs/​​Mparntwe from all over Australia and other parts of the world, including Pitjantjatjara women who travelled from their homelands (James, 1984) which cover large tracts of central and the north-​western section of southern Australia (known as APY –​Arrernte, Pitjantjatjara, Yankuntatjara –​ homelands). The non-​Indigenous women gathered initially at nearby Roe Creek to form affinity groups and to undertake training in media, collective decision-​making, nonviolent direct action, legal rights and racism. They then proceeded to the gates of the Pine Gap military base to camp for two weeks on the side of the bitumen road in the red dirt. 218

Feminism on Aboriginal Land

Participants were mostly White women from a range of occupations, ages and political positions, and taking part in this women-​only protest was for many an introduction to protest culture, to feminist thinking, to women-​ only spaces, and their first contact with Indigenous people and culture. For others it was part of an activist life of protests, of feminism, women-​centrism and working with Indigenous people and organisations. The protest camp was widely reported and criticised (see Murray, 2009; Bartlett, 2011) but also supported by unions and politicians as evidenced by the collection of telegrams and scrapbooks in the Jesse Street National Women’s Library (in Ultimo, NSW) and the Melbourne University Archives, the two largest collections of material from this protest camp. Located in the desert at the start of summer, temperatures were hot during the day reaching 40 degrees Celsius and still quite cold during the night dropping to near freezing. The women were sleeping on the side of the road in tents and swags, they set up kitchen areas and latrines and sometimes went to Alice Springs for supplies and a shower or a swim in the local pool. Akin to Greenham there were plenty of actions carried out largely for the media: there was an initial march to the gates of the military facility, street theatre, community singing, and a tea party planned on the manicured green grass inside the facility after a demonstration of how to climb over the fence. Donning hyperfeminised dresses and sun hats, and with rugs and food to replicate a satirical ‘Boston Tea Party’, this was the day that 111 women were arrested for trespass and all of them gave their names as Karen Silkwood after the US anti-​nuclear campaigner. All 111 Karen Silkwoods spent the night in the Alice Springs Watchhouse and went to court the next day. While the protest camp was the central locus of actions, protestors came and went over the two weeks, as did media, police and local aggressors (Kelham, 2010). There were two women’s peace camps held in Australia: one in November 1983 on Arrernte country at the Pine Gap Joint (US/​Australian) Defence Facility in central Australia, 20 miles from Alice Springs/​​Mparntwe; and the other in 1984 on Whadjuk Noongar land known as Cockburn Sound just south of the city of Perth in Western Australia, opposite a naval base on the adjacent Garden Island/​Meandup. My research interest in the first event is partly due to my childhood lived in Alice Springs/​​Mparntwe; unlike most of the authors in this volume who were part of protest camps, my primary interest is with the site of protest, which was then a small remote town where I remember nothing feminist ever happened. Indeed, I moved away from the town around the time of the protest, without any awareness that it was going on. There is, however, substantial archival material available, and the iconic landscape of the ‘heart of Australia’ made the event globally newsworthy. The sight of women protesting in the desert inverts enduring colonial mythologies (Bartlett, 2013) as it continues to erase the continued presence 219

Feminism and Protest Camps

of Indigenous desert women. One of the local camp organisers, Jane Lloyd, went on to write a thesis about how peace, Aboriginal and women’s politics intersected at the protest camp, noting ‘the inadequacy of existing theorising on the topics of the relationship of race and gender’ (Lloyd, 1988: 1). Since then protestor Megg Kelham has stated there were ‘intense debates about the relationship between the Aboriginal and women’s movements sparked by the protest’s location’ (2010: 182). This chapter aims to reinvoke some of those relationships as scenes of feminism on Aboriginal land.

Approach: critical theory, sources, scenes Arguably, feminist protest camps were a different way of doing things, not just of putting bodies on the line but of insisting on a continued presence until change happened. This had fascinating consequences: of turning military installations into places of domesticity and everyday life; of challenging male-​ dominated domains and aesthetics, for example by decorating military fences with symbolic objects of protest; of challenging heteronormative sexuality and the connections between family violence and nationalist militarism by women-​only and openly lesbian safe spaces; and engagement with police and judicial forces including going to prison in the service of voicing protest. Contesting ideological social structures was a fundamental plank of women’s liberation in the 1970s so its application in women’s anti-​nuclear and peace protests in the 1980s was symptomatic of broader contestations of form that involved play, carnival, upending logics and reinventing templates. This was apparent in the kinds of publications and activist events carried out, and the adoption and remaking of commonly understood slurs for women like witches, hags, gossips. Indeed, the remaking of language was understood by some to be necessary for new understandings of a non-​patriarchal world. In this spirit, the entanglements and engagements I contend with here are proposed as a series of scenes, put together without a desire to hide the messy bits but to highlight them. As writers we are trained to produce neat narratives to account for the past, even if this means ignoring the frayed encounters, the unholy affiliations and the radical pleasures of solidarity. As Claire Hemmings reminds us in Why Stories Matter, accounts of feminist history are often told as ‘a series of interlocking narratives of progress, loss, and return that oversimplify [its] complex history’ (2011: 3). In this chapter I present a series of ‘scenes’ that are taken mostly verbatim from the archives and which focus on Indigenous–​White relations, the feminist vectors produced and transgressed, and the structural relations of feminism with colonisation. This is undoubtedly another selective account of the protest camp which, on reflection, seeks to find a more complex history of Indigenous and non-​Indigenous women through feminism and protest camps. 220

Feminism on Aboriginal Land

As a researcher who was not at the protest camp I research, my sources for this chapter are based on public archives and published texts. Kate Eichhorn notes in her book The Archival Turn in Feminism a dialogic relation between archives and neoliberalism as a form of ordering ‘outrage’ that repositions historical activism as the past, and also limits everyday access to that past in its complexity (2013: 6). She advocates for archival activism as ‘a reorientation to the past’ in order to understand the present, a process that ‘defamiliarizes the very order of things’ (2013: 7) in ‘an attempt to regain agency in an era when the ability to collectively imagine and enact other ways of being in the world has become deeply eroded’ (2013: 9). Using archives in this project is both agentic and also limiting, as only some social actors have a place in it: those who write or are written about. Indigenous women who participated in the peace camp appear only through the writing of non-​Indigenous women. This already partial material, then, is part of the entanglement of this chapter, and foregrounds what Moreton-​Robinson calls ‘the possessive logics of white patriarchal sovereignty’ (2015: xi): ‘possessive logics are operationalised within discourses to circulate sets of meanings about ownership of the nation, as part of commonsense knowledge, decision-​making, and socially produced conventions’ (2015: xii). Possessive logics also determine what is collected and preserved in archives (Janke and Iacovino, 2012). In partial reparation, this chapter introduces Indigenous feminist theorists and commentators as identifiable through their preferred kinship with particular First Nations lands (Martin and Mirraboopa, 2003: 204), while non-​Indigenous sources lack this identifier. It also refers to place names (that is, to ‘country’), through both the Anglo and First Language name. This chapter is not what Karen Martin and Booran Mirraboopa name Indigenist research, which centralises an Indigenous ontology as its standpoint, but more akin to critical Whiteness theory in its attention to the construction of assumed dominant colonial values that continue to frame scholarship and governance. In Australia, Indigenous women have mounted exemplary critiques of feminism arguing that it often runs counter to the interests of Indigenous women. Writing in the feminist magazine Refractory Girl in 1976 Kunjandji woman and Sydney magistrate Pat O’Shane asks in her essay title, ‘Is there any relevance in the Women’s Movement for Aboriginal Women?’, reminding readers that sexism ‘did not wipe out whole tribes of our people’ and therefore ‘our major fight is against racism’ (1976: 33). O’Shane was writing after the 1975 Women and Politics Conference at which a Black Women’s meeting was held which ‘focused firmly on issues affecting the whole Aboriginal community, on behalf of land rights, on the improvement in welfare policies, asserting Aboriginal self-​determination’, as historian Patricia Grimshaw records (1981: 88). Grimshaw cites two points regarding women that are reported in Aboriginal and Islander Identity from those meetings: ‘Helping stop forced sterilization on our black women in Australia 221

Feminism and Protest Camps

while white women campaign for the right to abortion, and Coalescing and joining us as women to work together on all issues’ (quoted in Grimshaw, 1981: 88). Clearly there are counterproductive goals at work when White women are agitating to limit their fertility while Indigenous women want agency to have and keep their children within a regulatory social structure that sees them as ‘bad mothers’ (Huggins, 1998; Bartlett, 2004), but these accounts also register an interface between White feminists and Black women around this time. Grimshaw cites another (unnamed) Indigenous woman from the conference proceedings who explains that: ‘We do not have a nuclear family system. We are an extended family system. In feminist theory there are theories such as the romantic idealisation of women, Juliet Mitchell talks about dilemmas and drop-​ outs. This is not at all relevant to us because in our traditional culture and in our contemporary culture we are equal with our men.’ (Quoted in Grimshaw, 1981: 88) In her touchstone text, Talkin’ Up to the White Woman (2000), Moreton-​ Robinson takes ‘an Indigenous standpoint within Australian feminism’ (2000: xvi), stressing that ‘an Indigenous woman’s standpoint is informed by social worlds imbued with meaning grounded in knowledges of different realities from those of white women’ (2000: xvi). Using ‘the concept “subject position” to denote a socially constructed position whereby one’s behaviour is significantly shaped by what is expected of that position rather than by conscious intention’ (2000: xvii), Moreton-​Robinson’s critique of the subject position ‘white middle-​class woman’ demonstrates the ways in which ‘white middle-​class women’s privilege is tied to colonization and the dispossession of Indigenous people’ and ‘feminists’ knowledge of systemic racism is easily abstracted from their embodied experience as white middle-​ class women’ (2000: xx). Moreton-​Robinson’s call for ‘new ways of thinking about racialized inter-​subjective relations’ (2000: xxv) as a critical approach inspired much theoretical work on the complicity of White women in violent Indigenous histories in Australia (see Paisley, 2000; Haggis, 2003; Haskins, 2006) and the development of critical Whiteness theory. In the dominant academic and popular imaginations, however, the concept that all White feminists were racist tends to prevail as an overdetermined historical position; this can also act to ameliorate White privilege in feminism today by placing racism in the past. This is observed by a new generation of writers like Arrernte woman Celeste Liddle (2014) and Darumbal/​​South Sea Islander Amy McQuire (2018) who name themselves as Aboriginal feminists developing Aboriginal feminism, and who are notable for their work in public and journalistic domains rather than in academic publications. Research into events like the Pine Gap women’s protest demonstrates the 222

Feminism on Aboriginal Land

complexities of intersectionality and tentatively engages with the narrative that second wave feminism is remembered as an exclusively White women’s movement in the Australian context.

Women for Survival: nuclear politics, land rights and women Women for Survival was the name of the umbrella organisation created in 1983 specifically to organise this protest camp, and their values are evidence of the complex and intersecting politics of the 1980s. The organisation brought together numerous established groups whose politics were variously focused on feminist, anti-​nuclear or peace movement politics. As listed in a 1983 feminist publication Grapevine, their aims were: first, to draw attention to the little-​known military intelligence facility at Pine Gap and the existence of US military operations in Australia; and second, to fully support Aboriginal land rights, autonomy and self-​determination, noting the links between uranium mining and the nuclear arms race and their direct denial of Indigenous sacred sites. The aims continue to list global violence and its impact on women and children, nuclear violence and the Pacific, and demands for defence spending to be redirected to protect the environment (1983: 10). It is instructional that the organisation links Indigenous land rights to surviving the nuclear arms race; this was an urgent threat in the 1980s, upheld by patriarchal systems of conflict through militarisation and war which are replicated, in microcosm, in family violence. Indeed, one of the reasons for some of the Aboriginal women supporting the Pine Gap women’s protest was their living memory of Maralinga, land which was used as a nuclear test site by the British government in the 1950s and 1960s (Lloyd, 1988). Reporting on Aboriginal women’s responses in the magazine Chain Reaction, Diana James quotes one of the ‘hundred or so Pitjantjatjara women [who] travelled long distances to be part of the women’s peace demonstration at Pine Gap’: ‘We want the Americans to take their war and instruments of war back to their own country; their fight is nothing to do with us. We want this land and to look after it well. We want to smell the clean fresh air blowing over our land, not like at Maralinga where we smelt the black dust from their bombs. Many of our relatives died after the Maralinga bombs were dropped and the black dust blew over our country.’ (Quoted in James, 1984: 17) Land selected for mining and military operations is often not visible to the high density of coastal and city dwellers, but constitutes an ongoing form of colonisation, violence and erasure for Indigenous inhabitants. The 223

Feminism and Protest Camps

links between uranium mining, military nuclear testing and nuclear waste sites that underpin the resources for nuclear power and nuclear war were recognised by the organisers of Pine Gap protest camp, some of whom had recently protested the proposed Jabiluka uranium mine on Mirarr country near Kakadu National Park. A decade earlier, arguably the most famous Australian protest camp –​the Aboriginal Tent Embassy –​was established on the grounds of Parliament House in Canberra in 1972 to dispute the priority given to commercial mining leases over recognition of Aboriginal rights to the land. Ironically the site is now heritage-​listed as a landmark of national significance and, while the terms of protest change, the site is still active in its focus on Indigenous alienation (hence the need for an embassy). As Moreton-​Robinson reminds us, ‘Indigenous subjects … have a connection to the land that is not based on white conceptualisations of property’ (2000: 163), but rather on custodianship and care. Keeping in mind this constellation of critical issues, the protest camp at Pine Gap/​​Quiurnpa offers a compelling example of broad-​based peace politics and feminism played out in the Australian desert on Arrernte land. Many commentators note that it was fortunate that some Women for Survival volunteers were employed by Aboriginal women’s organisations in central Australia; their working relationships and knowledge were vital for following protocol, and being able to speak ‘language’ to directly communicate with the Indigenous language groups in central Australia. Nevertheless, there were differences between the way they worked with stakeholders and how women from other places imagined they ought to have been consulting, as well as between urban Indigenous women and those living on country. Before the camp in November 1983, there was a crucial weekend of meetings in the small township of Alice Springs/​​Mparntwe in July which will set the first scene for this chapter. Mostly quoted directly from various published/​​archival sources, the selection and sequence nevertheless construct a tangled narrative.

Three scenes Scene one: racism, July 1983 A number of local European women who had spent years working closely with the Aboriginal community as lawyers, interpreters, anthropologists and teachers … believed that any protest action had to obtain the consent of traditional land owners before it could take place, a complex process which could not be guaranteed to fit a pre-​ determined European time-​line. (Kelham, 2010: 176) Additionally, there was a newly established Indigenous women-​only camp protesting a proposed dam at Werlatye-​Therre, a women’s sacred site close 224

Feminism on Aboriginal Land

to Alice Springs (Lloyd, 1988; Kelham, 2010). Proposals to join with this protest were met with horror by local European women … it also angered a group of non-​Aboriginal women from Brisbane who interpreted it as a classic example of Europeans taking over Aboriginal issues to promote their own cause and hence a continuation of mainstream colonial politics. (Kelham, 2010: 176) The discussion about the Werlatye-Therre protest foreground ideological rifts according to Kelham (2010) and Lloyd (1988): Werlatye-​Therre was not only a site of struggle between Aborigines and the Northern Territory government but became a site of ideological struggle between the groups of women participating in the weekend of meetings. (Lloyd, 1988: 40) Attempts to reach consensus became deeply emotionally painful when European women began accusing each other of racism. Many of the city women present, who observed local European women speaking out whilst local Aboriginal women remained silent, judged the local European-​Aboriginal relationship as old-​fashioned paternalistic colonialism. Local women’s explanation that the Aboriginal women spoke little English, were shy of public speaking, and were telling the European women what to say and do behind the scenes … went either unsaid, unheard or unbelieved. (Kelham, 2010: 176) The disparity between the southern women’s and central Australian women’s notion and understanding of consultation and the dynamics of such issues as Aboriginal land rights emerged during the initial stages of organization. (Lloyd, 1988: 35) Condemning the protest as racist, the Brisbane women, along with some Alice Springs locals and Adelaide FANG [Feminist Anti-​Nuclear Group], withdrew their support for the action. (Kelham, 2010: 178) Some of the condemnations were published in the anti-​nuclear magazine Chain Reaction, by the Brisbane Women’s Land Rights Solidarity Group: Pine Gap is located on Aboriginal land, support actions are situated on Aboriginal land, where we live is on Aboriginal land, meeting places for Women for Survival are on Aboriginal land … all the land in Australia has been colonised and a commitment to land rights should not be time 225

Feminism and Protest Camps

and place specific. … It is easier to support via fund-​raising and it is easier to support something away from home. We kid ourselves we are doing something, without risking our white privileges. … There is a difference between encouraging black women to attend ‘our’ events by extending invitations, and challenging our organization of events so that they are not ethnocentric and colonialist. … Whites who support land rights must constantly assess, analyse and redefine our actions and the basis from which we act, including how we define our political priorities. (1984) The emotional dynamics at work in these accounts are writ large. Reports by White women of these meetings include registers of shame, guilt, anger, outrage. This is a scene of White women negotiating their own racism, that sets up hierarchies of authority and confusion between local and interstate participants, rural and urban culture, Black and White women, land rights and feminist and peace politics. It evidences vast differences in language, cultural ways of speaking and not speaking, conceptions and commitments to anti-​racism, and the ever-​present history and ongoing structures that colonising cultures constantly re-​enact. As Moreton-​Robinson reminds us, ‘inter-​subjective relations reflect the structural relationship between white society and Indigenous society’ (2000: xxv).

Scene two: men, November 1983 On the first day of the protest, 11 November 1983, the women march to the military installation led by Aboriginal women with a banner saying ‘Women For Survival. Close Pine Gap’. Striding at the very front is well-​ known Wiradjuri activist Mum Shirl from Gadigal country, Sydney. Behind the banner are local APY land women then the rest of the 800 women and banners marching to the base. Mum Shirl has the job of introducing the speakers, and she produces one unscheduled one … Shorty O’Neill, male Aboriginal land rights campaigner, out of the back of a truck. He is heard politely but it is the wrong time and place. (Poussard, 1984: 28) [U]rban Aboriginal women had chosen a man as first speaker at the march. (Somerville, 1999: 39) There was no open objection, but many of us were furious. (Merrilees, 1984: 5) An ongoing debate in the women’s movement was and continues, about the right of women to women’s-​only spaces. (Somerville, 1999: 39) 226

Feminism on Aboriginal Land

General agreement that the protest should show support for Aboriginal rights tripped over some women’s passionate views that if the camp refused to allow traditional land owners the right to access their own lands simply because they were men, then the women’s support for Aboriginal rights would be nothing more than an empty tokenistic gesture. (Kelham, 2010: 180) The allegiance of Indigenous women to Black men before White women is an ongoing anathema to many White feminists. Professor Jackie Huggins, a Bidjara and Birri-​Gubba Juru woman from Queensland, has argued that, ‘In asking Aboriginal women to stand apart from Aboriginal men, the white women’s movement was, perhaps unconsciously, repeating the attempts made over decades by welfare administrations to separate Aboriginal women and use them against their communities’ (1998: 27). Referring to the practice of taking Aboriginal girls into service as domestics, and taking children away from their families to be ‘assimilated’ into White foster care, Huggins outlines a litany of ways Aboriginal women’s political needs were/​​are at odds with White feminist demands of the 20th century: The white women’s movement argued, for example, that compared with men, women in Australia were poorly educated and worked in poorly paid jobs yet Aboriginal women were better educated than Aboriginal men, and when they were able to be employed, they worked in better status jobs than Aboriginal men. The white women’s movement was at that time concerned with sexuality and the right to say ‘yes’, to be sexually active without condemnation. For Aboriginal women who are fighting denigratory sexual stereotypes and exploitation by white men, the issue is more often the right to say ‘no’. Where white women’s demands to control their fertility were related to contraception and abortion, Aboriginal women were subject to unwanted sterilisation and continued to struggle against the loss of their children to interventionist welfare agencies. (1998: 27) Women-​only space was a crucial part of the politics of this protest so that all women felt safe to create a living campsite, but Lloyd suggests that ‘where feminist separatism was the ideology underpinning particular women’s practice links were assumed with Aboriginal women’s notions of gender separation’ (1988: 83). In other words, knowledge that Aboriginal women practice gender segregation led to an assumption by some that it would be observed at this event. An extension of the ideology of women-​only space for White feminists meant lesbian-​safe space, which similarly found little support among Aboriginal women. Kelham notes Indigenous disapproval of ‘open

227

Feminism and Protest Camps

displays of same-​sex affection from those “women with women husbands” as one local Aboriginal anti-​Pine Gap activist described the lesbian protestors’ (2010: 181). Some White women were also unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the lesbian-​safe space or even women-​only spaces. Encounters with unfamiliar epistemologies and ideologies were not restricted to being Black or White. In reality, Lloyd argues that Aboriginal women’s responses to the protest, both in general and to specific aspects, were as diverse as White women’s responses and from both ends of the political spectrum (1988: 83).

Scene three: police, November 1983 ‘We tried to make the protest a joint Aboriginal/​women protest. But it wasn’t really successful. The Aboriginal people are so afraid of the police that they think it’s stupid to put yourself in an arrestable position.’ (Zethoven, 1984: 4) The arrestable action was the day protestors practise making human pyramids next to the military mesh fence keeping civilians out of the military installation. At the given signal, they went over the fence and conducted a tea party on the green lawns only if they were prepared to be arrested. This is the moment that 111 women were arrested, each giving their name as Karen Silkwood. Jenny Green, an Alice Springs White woman who worked with Aboriginal organisations, talked to Indigenous women (who did not want to be identified) about their responses for Chain Reaction (1984): ‘I think it was a real peaceful march, I was real happy when there was no trouble.’ ‘Anwerne lheke arrweketye mape aretyeke, marchirreke anwerne, itne marchirrenheke … Police mape tenetyame. Itne dancirreke, sing songirreke, mperlkere mape.’ [We went to see all the women. We marched, they marched on. … The police were standing there. They danced and sang, the white women.]’ ‘I think it is very frightening for Aboriginal women to go through the fence. I wouldn’t go through the fence ’cos I’d be scared. I think those women were very brave to go through the fence and get arrested –​they probably just wanted to show the newspapers what they do. But I’d be only too scared to go through that fence ’cos I know I’ll be the first one to get arrested. I know that for sure –​for an Aboriginal person, you’d be the first one to get arrested.’ 228

Feminism on Aboriginal Land

‘The itelareke anwernenhe lyete atyerretyine. The wrong way akwete iterlareke. Ateriremel yenge tywekwenye akweteaneke. Alpmileke arrenthere itye anwwerne aterireme. Mwerre kwete anwerne aneke. [I thought they would shoot us today. I thought wrong. Being frightened I was quiet. Someone said to us you mob, we’re not frightened. We were still all right.]’ ‘Mpelkere itne mwarre nthurre, anwerne lngkerrinyeke. Meetup irreme mwarre nthurre parikenge jumpirretyeke? Itneke wrong aneke. Anwerne kangke ken aremel, anwere iltye atwelheke itnenhe aremele. [The white people, they were really good, for all of us. It was good to meet up with them. But why did they think they had to go over the fence? It made trouble for them. We were happy to see it, we clapped our hands seeing them.]’ Indigenous people in Australia have much to fear from policing and judicial institutions, are still ‘disproportionately arrested, remanded, and jailed’ with vastly increased likelihood of police violence and neglect and deaths in custody often prior to any charges laid (Allam et al, 2021). This is an example of what Moreton-​Robinson names as ‘white race privilege, [which] in Australia and elsewhere, is structurally located and it determines the life chances of white and non-​white people every day’ (2000: 52).

Entanglements and engagements Scenes like these three suggest encounters between Indigenous and non-​ Indigenous women that challenge individual and collective perceptions. As Green notes, ‘for many it was the first time that they [White protesters] had travelled to Central Australia, camped in relatively extreme climatic conditions, met Aboriginal people, seen the inside of the Alice Springs watch house’ (1984: 14). Lloyd also observes that the peace camp ‘was possibly the first experience that most of the visiting women had of facing issues such as racism and land rights as real dilemmas and not as an abstract or distant intellectual and political issue’ (1988: 53), recalling Moreton-​Robinson’s point that ‘knowledge of systemic racism is easily abstracted from their embodied experience as white middle-​class women’ (2000: xx). Biff Ward and Liz O’Brien call this ‘a “first-​contact” encounter for many city-​based white women, which led to a deepened exploration of racism and its attendant issues within the women’s movement’ (nd: 2). The idea of first contact is usually used to denote the moment when Indigenous inhabitants first encounter White culture, but in this instance is being used to denote White 229

Feminism and Protest Camps

activists first encountering Indigenous people. Australian social movement historian Verity Burgmann notes that ‘women’s movement activists were expressly anti-​racist, yet contact with Indigenous women was very limited’ (2003: 145). Moreton-​Robinson insists that, from an Indigenous standpoint, ‘we have become extremely knowledgeable about white women in ways that are unknown to most of them’ (2000: xvi), her point being that the inverse is not so. This was recognised by protestor Margaret Somerville who notes ‘the white women not even able to begin to understand the complex layers of meaning about relation to land conveyed in the Two-​Women dreaming dance which was performed at our first contact’ (1999: 43) at Roe Creek: The women dance at dusk by the light of flickering fires and there is the same gesture of warm skin and touch; the beat of the dance seems to travel up through the ground into the body. They laugh and fall about as they negotiate their performance which is short, and then they are gone. It was said to be a Two-​Women dreaming story which travels through Pitjantjatjara and Arrente country and includes the land where Pine Gap is now. … We have no means to interpret this dance, or the songline they are offering us, in terms of reading the landscape or sharing mutual concerns. (Somerville, 1999: 24) Lloyd later argues that ‘performance of awulye and inma, women’s songs and dances, can be read as Aboriginal women’s response to the dynamics of the women’s camp and the debates over issues of race and gender’ (in Somerville, 1999: 42; see also Lloyd, 1988: 76), suggesting the dynamic itself produced this dance. The extent to which Indigenous and non-​Indigenous women can engage with each other is always limited by continuing structures of colonisation, as these scenes demonstrate. An unexpected presence of Christianity provided another entanglement of Indigenous and White missionary histories. While there were White Quakers and nuns in the protest camp, protestor Wendy Poussard wryly notes ‘Mum Shirl, the Sydney Aboriginal activist, talks about the Virgin Mary … “I’m a mad Roman Catholic and I’m black and don’t you forget it” she says’ (Poussard, 1984: 28). Poussard also remembers when ‘We go to a meeting with a big mob of Pitjantjatjara women who sing hymns and a welcoming song, moving around the circle and holding hands with each woman. They ask us to join them in a prayer for the land’ (Poussard, 1984: 34). Lloyd writes about the arrival of Pitjantjatjara women at the Alice Springs Courthouse the morning the 111 ‘Karen Silkwoods’ were to appear, where a group prayer was held: ‘The reality of Christian Aboriginal women did not fit the image that many of the women participating in the protest had constructed of Aboriginal women and central Australia as the site of women’s spirituality’ (1988: 77). As with feminism, and White 230

Feminism on Aboriginal Land

culture, Lloyd argues that ‘the range of interests and political practices held by central Australian Aborigines … do not fit neatly into any one political theory and practice’ (Lloyd, 1988: 67). It is interesting that the Aboriginal women’s Christianity is mentioned in accounts of the event, and yet it is not considered notable that some of the organisers were active members of Ananda Marga, a spiritual organisation with an Indian guru, particularly controversial in Australia at the time due to some members’ links with the Sydney Hilton Hotel bombing in 1978. Lloyd identifies a disjuncture between theory and practice, between ideology and lived relations (1988: 61) contributing to the encounters at this protest camp, and yet the sheer volume of reflection and critique published after the camp also suggests that it heralded much interrogation of feminist theory for White Australia. The expectations and encounters in the scenes around the Pine Gap protest camp were perhaps symptomatic of fractures in theory and practice in Australian feminism at the time. These are often remembered as coming to a head the next year in 1984 when the legendary Women and Labour conference was held in Brisbane/​​ Meanjin with ‘Racism’ as its major theme. These conferences have been considered ‘the central conferences of the Australian women’s movement’ (Levy, 1984: 105), and yet the 1984 conference was so riven that it was the last of its kind. Routinely figured as ‘a turning point –​not only in the feminist politicisation of immigrant and Aboriginal women, but also in the politicization of all feminists about race and ethnic divisions’, Adele Murdolo (1996: 69) suggests that this historical feminist narrative is itself ‘partial and mediated by the lived, embodied experiences of anglo women’. Once again orientation and sources frame the historical narrative.

Conclusion This chapter seeks to reorientate the way the Pine Gap Women’s Peace Camp is remembered and narrated, from its derivative association with the English countryside through Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp to a protest event on Aboriginal land with ensuing expectations, negotiations and confrontations for White Australian feminism. I have argued that these vectors involved scenes of encounter between Indigenous and non-​Indigenous women that were never simply dialectically racist or anti-​racist, but complex and disruptive in exposing the intrinsic connections between, for example, colonisation and arrest, land rights and nuclear war, and even dance and prayer. The scenes from this protest camp indicate a language and conceptual framework of anti-​racist feminism in the 1980s that continue to inform White feminism, as the same structures of power continue to impact Aboriginal women’s lives. Reorienting the story of this protest camp as taking place on Aboriginal land tentatively proposes a renewed attention to sites of protest, colonial legacies and 231

Feminism and Protest Camps

remembering of historical events and discourses of feminism. This might have significance for future feminist archival work on protest camps in colonised landscapes: for example where land-​names and language and relationships are routinely Anglicised, when Indigenous voices are not immediately apparent, and when ideological entanglements are too messy to narrate into a coherent linear plotline. In such work there are always limitations in writing from a White settler perspective but also an onus to ‘defamiliarize the very order of things’, as Eichhorn (2013: 7) characterises the work of archival activists, and an opportunity to undo the ‘possessive logics’ Moreton-​Robinson refers to (2015: xi). In this way much richer and complex feminist histories can be remembered as engaging with the issues that still matter. References Allam, L., Wahlquist, C., Evershed, N. and Herbert, M. (2021) ‘The 474 Deaths Inside: Tragic Toll of Indigenous Deaths in Custody Revealed’, The Guardian (Australia), 9 April. Available from: https://​www.theg​uard​ian. com/​austra​lia-​news/​2021/​apr/​09/​the-​474-​deat​ hs-i​ nsi​ de-r​ isi​ ng-n ​ umb​ er-​ of-​ind​igen​ous-​dea​ths-​in-​cust​ody-​revea​led [Accessed 14 October 2021]. Bartlett, A. (2004) ‘Black Breasts, White Milk? Ways of Representing Breastfeeding and Race in Australia’, Australian Feminist Studies, 19(45): 341–​55. Bartlett, A. (2011) ‘Feminist Protest and Maternity at Pine Gap Women’s Peace Camp, Australia 1983’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 34(1): 31–​8. Bartlett, A. (2013) ‘Feminist Protest in the Desert: Researching the 1983 Pine Gap Women’s Peace Camp’, Gender, Place and Culture, 20(7): 914–​26. Brisbane Women’s Land Rights Solidarity Group (1984) ‘Responses to Women for Survival Campaign’, Chain Reaction, 36: 12–​13. Burgmann, V. (2003) Power, Profit, and Protest: Australian Social Movements and Globalisation, Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Eichhorn, K. (2013) The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Grapevine (1983) October/​November issue, Lespar Library, GALAWA Collection, Murdoch University Library Archives [Accessed May 2007]. Green, J. (1984) ‘Central Australian Aboriginal Women and Pine Gap’, Chain Reaction, 36: 14–​16. Grimshaw, P. (1981) ‘Aboriginal Women: A Study of Culture Contact’, in N. Grieve and P. Grimshaw (eds) Australian Women: Feminist Perspectives, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 86–​94. Haggis, J. (2003) ‘White Women and Colonialism: Towards a Non-​ recuperative History’, in R. Lewis and S. Mills (eds) Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, New York: Routledge, pp 161–​89.

232

Feminism on Aboriginal Land

Haraway, D. (1988) ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspectives’, Feminist Studies, 14(3): 575–​99. Haskins, V. (2006) ‘Beyond Complicity: Questions and issues for White Women in Aboriginal History’, Australian Humanities Review, 39/​40. Available from: http://​aus​tral​ianh​uman​itie​srev​iew.org/​2006/​09/​01/​bey​ ond-​com​plic​ity-​questi​ons-​and-​iss​ues-​for-​white-​women-​in-​abo​r igi​nal-​hist​ ory/​[Accessed October 2021]. Hemmings, C. (2011) Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Huggins, J. (1998) Sister Girl: The Writings of Aboriginal Activist and Historian Jackie Huggins, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. James, D. (1984) ‘Pitjantjatjara Women and Pine Gap’, Chain Reaction, 36: 17. Janke, T. and Iacovino, L. (2012) ‘Keeping Cultures Alive: Archives and Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights’, Archival Science, 12(2): 151–​71. Kelham, M. (2010) ‘Waltz in P-​Flat: The Pine Gap Women’s Peace Protest 1983’, Hecate, 36(1/​2): 171–​85. Levy, B. (1984) ‘Sisterhood in Trouble: The Fourth Women & Labour Conference, Brisbane, 1984’, Hecate, 10(2): 105–​9. Liddle, C. (2014) ‘Intersectionality and Indigenous Feminism: An Aboriginal Woman’s Perspective’, The Postcolonialist, 25 June. Available from: http://​ post​colo​nial​ist.com/​civil-​discou​r se/​inters​ecti​onal​ity-​ind​igen​ous-​femin​ ism-​abo​r igi​nal-​wom​ans-​pers​pect​ive/​ [Accessed October 2021]. Lloyd, J. (1988) ‘Politics at Pine Gap: Women, Aborigines and Peace’, Honours thesis, Deakin University. Personal collection. Martin, K. and Mirraboopa, B. (2003) ‘Ways of Knowing, Being and Doing: A Theoretical Framework and Methods for Indigenous and Indigenist Re-​search’, Journal of Australian Studies, 27(76): 203–​14. McQuire, A. (2018) ‘Mainstream Feminism Still Blind to Its Racism’, IndigenousX, 6 March. Available from: https://​indi​geno​usx.com.au/​ amy-​mcqu​ire-​mai​nstr​eam-​femin​ism-​still-​blind-​to-​its-​rac​ism/​ [Accessed October 2021]. Merrilees, M. (1984) ‘Peacing It Together’, Liberation, 97: 5. Moreton-​Robinson, A. (2000) Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Moreton-​Robinson, A. (2015) The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Murdolo, A. (1996) ‘Warmth and Unity with All Women? Historicizing Racism in the Australian Women’s Movement’, Feminist Review, 52: 69–​86.

233

Feminism and Protest Camps

Murray, S. (2009) ‘Mixed Messages: Gender, Peace, and the Mainstream Media in Australia 1983–​1984’, in M. Abbenhuis and S. Buttsworth (eds) Restaging War in the Western World: Noncombatant Experiences 1890–​Today, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 170–​202. O’Shane, P. (1976) ‘Is There Any Relevance in the Women’s Movement for Aboriginal Women?’, Refractory Girl, 12: 31–​4. Paisley, F. (2000) Loving Protection? Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women’s Rights 1919–​1939, Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press. Poussard, W. (1984) Outbreak of Peace: Poems and Notes from Pine Gap, East St Kilda, VIC: Billabong Press. Somerville, M. (1999) Body/ ​ L andscape Journals, North Melbourne, VIC: Spinifex Press. Ward, B. and O’Brien, L. (nd) ‘Pine Gap: Women’s Peace Camp, November 1983’, Biff Ward Papers, Jessie Street National Women’s Library, Sydney. Zethoven, I. (1984) ‘Pine Gap: Four Impressions’, WRAP: Women Raging and Protesting, 1(3): 3–​5.

234

13

Remembering an Eco/​Feminist Peace Camp Niamh Moore

Introduction In the summer of 1993, local environmental organisation, the Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS), set up a peace camp to support blockades of a logging road into an area of coastal temperate rainforest (Figure 13.1). Clayoquot Sound (pronounced ‘klak-​wat’) is part of the traditional territory of the Nuu-​chah-​nulth First Nations. Though more commonly known as the West Coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in Canada, this is land which is unceded territory and has never been the subject of any treaties with the Canadian government. Hence it is land over which the Canadian state has no rightful or even legal jurisdiction, but where the logics of settler colonialism enable dispossession of Indigenous peoples from land and the ongoing extractive industry of deforestation.1 In this complex context, activists created a peace camp in a site named as ‘the black hole’, as a ‘moonscape’ (Figure 13.2), a reference to the fact that the land had been clear-​cut, and that the practice of tree-​planting clear-​cut areas had not been successful. The camp was in a bleak landscape, tents pitched wherever a relatively flat and even piece of ground could be found, between the stumps of trees, and along the side of a rough logging road. New arrivals at the camp were offered workshops teaching consensus decision-​making and the practice of non-​ violence to support the protest of civil disobedience in the early morning blockades of the logging road. Over the course of the summer of 1993 over 12,000 people passed through the camp and over 800 people were arrested, in one of the largest acts of non-​violent civil disobedience in Canadian history. The camp offered a creative and inspiring site of the kind of prefigurative politics to which many chapters in this volume 235

Feminism and Protest Camps

Figure 13.1: Temperate rainforest with moss growing on branches

Source: Clayoquot Lives archive: https://​cla​yoqu​otli​ves.sps.ed.ac.uk/​items/​show/​124, Creative Commons Attribution-​ShareAlike 4.0 International License: https://​crea​tive​comm​ons.org/​ licen​ses/​by-​sa/​4.0/​

testify, intervening in forest policy and creating an alternative way of living and working together, complete with compost toilets (see also Chapter 8 by Haran in this volume) and a fine view over the devastation of the clear-​cut. I spent a few weeks at the camp in 1993, and was arrested there during the daily blockades of logging roads. This was a place where the politics of race, class and gender in the context of settler colonialism (to name just some of the most salient issues) were tightly bound up in controversies over logging. The setting up of an ecofeminist peace camp, and the scale of politics and arrests, was compelling and inspirational to participate in –​and offered a 236

Remembering an Eco/Feminist Peace Camp

Figure 13.2: Moonscape

Source: Clayoquot Lives archive, https://​cla​yoqu​otli​ves.sps.ed.ac.uk/​items/​show/​88, Creative Commons Attribution-​ShareAlike 4.0 International License: https://​crea​tive​comm​ons.org/​ licen​ses/​by-​sa/​4.0/​

profound contrast with dominant narratives of the end of feminism at the time, to which I will return later. The immediate impetus for the camp was the announcement that logging company MacMillan Bloedel had been granted permission to log up to 70 per cent of the land in Clayoquot, site of one of the last remaining contiguous coastal temperate rainforests in the world. At a time when many environmental groups were focused on deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, this campaign was a crucial attempt to hold a country in the Global North to account for hiding the extent of logging in its own backyard (Figure 13.3). Three years later, in 1996, I returned to carry out oral history interviews with activists, alongside ethnographic and documentary research, as part of my PhD (see Moore, 2015), and I continue to reflect on the ongoing significance of the camp. The chapter draws on the experience of researching an ecofeminist peace camp and gathering oral histories of activists in the mid-​1990s, writing an academic book and then, more recently, creating an open access digital archive of these oral history interviews.2 By thinking through these different moments of creating and remembering ecofeminism, in the broader context of feminist histories, the chapter explores the fragility of traces of certain moments and movements of feminism, and particular instantiations of activism, especially activism that aims to enact alternative worlds. The chapter 237

Feminism and Protest Camps

Figure 13.3: Logging truck

Source: Clayoquot Lives archive, https://​cla​yoqu​otli​ves.sps.ed.ac.uk/​items/​show/​97, Creative Commons Attribution-​ShareAlike 4.0 International License: https://​crea​tive​comm​ons.org/​ licen​ses/​by-​sa/​4.0/​

asks: how and why do we remember, or forget, peace camps as part of our story of feminist activism and what are the political consequences of these acts of memory or forgetting? It considers what feminism would look like if told through histories of feminist peace camps.

Before Clayoquot: Greenham as cultural memory Before I ever set foot in the Clayoquot Sound Peace Camp, I had heard of Greenham, Seneca, Puget Sound and other feminist peace camps. Clayoquot made sense and was recognisable to me because of Greenham. I have never been to Greenham, but Greenham has come to me: through stories from people I met who have been there; through songs I learned and sang at other protests, like around the Newbury bypass in the UK; through newspapers, books, banners, film, badges, pamphlets, blogs, academic articles, websites; through symbols, through other protests, through interviews with women who mentioned Greenham; and through archives, both physical and digital. These media are crucial documentation of experiences, stories and research on Greenham, putting into circulation accounts of feminist peace camps, passing on knowledge and learning to other activists, and inspiring further feminist activism. Greenham and other feminist peace camps are part of my ‘cultural memory’ of feminist activism –​memories of events and places I have not directly experienced, where I have no ‘personal memory’, but 238

Remembering an Eco/Feminist Peace Camp

rather a resonant awareness of these stories, which comes through the circulation and remediation of feminist cultures of activism (Reading and Katriel, 2015: 5). Greenham was one source of inspiration for activists at Clayoquot. I was excited but not surprised to hear references to Greenham at Clayoquot and to meet feminists at the camp who had been to Greenham. Memories of Greenham are reactivated, reanimated and remade time and time again in subsequent camps like Clayoquot. Greenham is part of my version of feminist history but, crucially, Greenham is also part of my imaginary of feminist futures –​my sense of what a feminist might be and do, my sense of what has been possible and what is possible, what another world might be and how it might be made. Yet cultural memory, can be, like other memories, fickle, fragile, partial –​ Greenham came to me because I sought it out. For all of the huge significance of Greenham to me and many others, it is not actually a touchstone event in mainstream UK feminism, or feminist academia.3 By now, shouldn’t I be bored by endless familiar tales of Greenham, of Greenham hagiography, rather than still hungry for every crumb? In a book on feminist peace camps, Greenham is a touchstone –​but it is necessary to make the point here about how unusual this is, how long it has taken for a book where Greenham almost, just almost, needs to be knocked off its pedestal. Greenham should be done to death, but it is not. Stories of Greenham remain a site of feminist archive fever for some of us, because we are so far from the endless repetition of Greenham that we might expect. There is still so much more to be told and learned and passed on from Greenham. How then does a feminist, or even ecofeminist, peace camp enter –​or fail to enter –​cultural memory? Anna Reading and Tamar Katriel (2015: 5) point to the crucial importance of personal memory in contributing to different forms of cultural production, an example of which we see in Catherine Eschle’s and Rebecca Mordan’s accounts of their memories of Greenham as a child motivating their current work (Chapter 15 by Kerrow et al, in this volume). My own experience of Clayoquot motivates my ongoing work. The persistence and circulation of cultural artefacts tells of the strength of feeling around the importance of remediating stories of feminist activism. In her work on DIY feminist cultures that remediate feminist histories, Red Chidgey (2012: 87) argues that these forms of cultural production ‘enact an archival function: they move feminist memory out of the realm of the institutional and create grassroots memory texts that are mobile, shared and networked’. There is a certain power in the ways that cultural memory is not institutionalised, but rather is ad hoc, and this is hailed as crucial to the possibility of history and memory being made and remade over time (Reading and Katriel, 2015). However, what becomes apparent is that much cultural production relies on happenstance, passion, creativity, skills, 239

Feminism and Protest Camps

connections and the complex privileges of enough time and resources. The recognition and celebration of cultures of making, remaking and passing on feminist activism is important, but also not always enough; cultural memory does not always become collective memory, or even in this case a feminist collective memory. I want to resist any easy romanticisation of the creativity of feminist cultural production in the transmission of feminist memory; such memories are also vulnerable to intentional forgetting. In The Feminist Memoir Project, Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Anne Snitow (1998: 23) make the important point that ‘amnesia about political movements is not only an innocent effect of general forgetfulness, but is socially produced, packaged, promulgated, and perpetuated’. While they are talking about the role of the state and mainstream media in the intentional forgetting of social movement activism, I want to extend this argument to make the point that feminists are also implicated in and non-​innocent in the (failure of) transmission of feminism. Feminists produce some memories and not others, some archives and not others. Greenham is remembered by some feminists, but not all. Arguably it is intentionally forgotten by some. Greenham was, and continues to be, contentious for some feminists in the UK. (How) will Clayoquot be remembered? The traces of peace camps and the wider movements they are part of are uneven –​the role of personal memory and motivations to produce and circulate creative artefacts is both intensely generative and also part of this unevenness. The often embodied and tacit nature of feminist movements also contributes to the unevenness of traces. In this context, feminists have complemented modes of documenting and materialising traces of activism, and creative acts of remediation, with the creation of specifically feminist archives to gather together and make available histories of feminism. Against the complexities of memory, archives can appear as sites of evidence, offering tangible documentation and material traces of history. However, many theorists undermine any sharp distinction between archives and memory. In arguing that cultural memory performs an archival function, Chidgey refuses any clear demarcation of memory and archive, or ephemera and evidence. Similarly, Jennifer Lapp argues that feminist archives, ‘rather than positioning evidence and memory as distinct or separate –​understands them as inextricably entangled in the maintenances and circulation of feminist knowledges’ (2020: 4). Archives do not offer any straightforward site of truth or evidence. Archives are not simply sites for depositing cultural artefacts, but can also be approached as themselves artefacts of cultural production, cultural remediation and meaning-​making. This is the useful premise of the ‘archival turn’ –​a shift from approaching archives as sources, sites of the accumulation of documents and records, to taking archives themselves as subjects, understanding archives as also cultural products –​cultural processes 240

Remembering an Eco/Feminist Peace Camp

even (Stoler, 2002). For archivist and archival theorist Eric Ketelaar, ‘cultural practices of historical remembrance are not a substitute for archival memory, but rather are a complement to the archive’. He argues that ‘archives are not the cultural or social memory of a community’, rather, he sees archives as ‘among countless different devices used in the process of transforming individual memories into collective remembering’ (2017: 255). Thus while media and other forms of cultural production have been identified as key parts of camp infrastructures (see Chapter 9 by Eschle, in this volume), here I approach archives as another part of the distributed media infrastructure of peace camps, not only as repositories for other materials. This chapter thus also aims to extend consideration of peace camps and their infrastructures to stories about camps, to cultural production, including the work of creating archives. In making this feminist archival turn, the chapter also takes up the importance of the web as feminist method, bringing this work of webbing, weaving, interconnecting, materialising, to our understanding of feminist peace camps, arguing we need a diversity of tactics for the creation and circulation of memories of camps, for remaking feminist histories and futures. The web has been a creative metaphor for Greenham (for example, Feigenbaum, 2015), yet it can do much further work. The web is a feminist method. Against the dusty cobweb view of archives, Greenham’s active, crafting, creative web suggests a lively account of the world-​making work of archival webs. I turn to Donna Haraway’s account of the string game of cat’s cradle (1994) as a generative account of the work of webs (see also Moore, 2018; Chapter 8 by Haran, this volume). It is no accident that Haraway, with her penchant for cyborgs rather than goddesses, coyote tricksters rather than spider woman, turns to the cat’s cradle rather than the web, which may seem an overdetermined metaphor for her. Nonetheless Haraway’s cat’s cradle is really a feminist web (see also Moore, 2017) and her account of playing cat’s cradle is generative for thinking through the worlding work of archiving and storytelling. In an account that echoes the Greenham chant ‘we are the weavers, we are the web’, for Haraway (2013 [2011]: 18) cat’s cradle is: a game of relaying patterns, of one hand, or pair of hands, or mouths and feet, or other sorts of tentacular things, holding still to receive something from another, and then relaying by adding something new, by proposing another knot, another web, or better, it is not the hands that give and receive exactly, but the patterns, the patterning. The metaphor of cat’s cradle is well suited to passing on stories of feminist peace camps, through movements back and forth, creating new patterns, new knots. Haraway (1994: 70) insists that:

241

Feminism and Protest Camps

If we do not learn how to play cat’s cradle well, we can just make a tangled mess. But if we attend to scholarly, as well as technoscientific, cat’s cradle with as much loving attention as has been lavished on high-​status war games, we might learn something about what worlds get made and unmade, and for whom. Here Haraway offers crucial insights for telling stories of feminist peace camps, and for working through their uneven remembering and forgetting. Seeking alternatives to an over-​reliance on metaphors of reflection, Haraway also takes up diffraction as a promising metaphor. She find diffraction useful because, drawing on the process of diffracting light, she notes that the resulting image is not a reflection, not a mirror or a copy of the same, but rather a record that shows the history of the passage of the light. For Haraway, then, diffraction offers a method for ‘making a difference in the world’, rather than merely copying or reflecting the world as it is (Haraway, 1994: 63). Diffraction creates interference, which might ‘make a difference in how meanings are made and lived’ (Haraway, 1997: 14). What then did it mean to describe Clayoquot as ‘ecofeminist’?

Clayoquot as an ecofeminist peace camp The Clayoquot Peace Camp was often explicitly described as ecofeminist. Even the main provincial newspaper, the Vancouver Sun, ran a story ‘Eco-​ feminists Run “Peace Camp” at Clayoquot Sound’ (Bell, 1993), and the success of the camp was often attributed to the influence of ecofeminism. Ecofeminism is what initially drew my attention. I had been reading the emerging literature on ecofeminism in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and found this to offer a compelling articulation of feminism. At the centre of ecofeminism’s analytic was a critique of dualisms in western philosophy, of binary and hierarchical thinking about women and men, nature and culture, emotion and reason, to name just some key dualisms, as central in the separation of humans from nature that enabled the devaluing and destruction of the environment. This identification of a logic of dualism, explicated by Val Plumwood (1993) in particular, demonstrated how dualisms did not exist in isolation, but rather were bound together in an interlocking relationship where terms on different sides of dualisms mapped on to each other –​thus women being associated with nature and emotion; men with culture and reason. For Plumwood dualistic logics were also central to other oppressions, including racism, colonialism and speciesism. This attention to dualistic logics, and relationships across dualisms, has also been articulated as an intersectional ecofeminism (see also Gaard, 2017; Kings, 2017). Against dualisms, ecofeminism’s vision of a world of/​as webs and interconnections, 242

Remembering an Eco/Feminist Peace Camp

bound together in a feminist ethic of care, offered a glimpse of an alternative way of being in the world. These dualistic logics played out through settler colonialism in Canada, in seeing territory as a tabula rasa, available for occupation, while dispossessing Indigenous communities of land. The ongoing logics of settler colonialism allow forests to be understood as assets to be exploited for commercial gain, in a forest industry where most jobs are men’s jobs; where technological change leads to decreasing employment replacing workers with machines; where the often well-​paid work in the logging industry is disappearing rapidly; where women’s jobs are often in the service sector, in the seasonal tourism industry, which relies on the persistence of forests; and where First Nations communities live with the grim consequences of settler colonialism, on family life, education, health, employment and everyday well-​being. While the Vancouver Sun thought the camp was ecofeminist because women were ‘running’ it, they misrecognised the role of women as leaders at the camp and the nature of feminist organising. Women were not so much ‘running’ the camp; rather, ecofeminism at the camp was most commonly articulated as a commitment to the philosophy and practice of non-​violence and consensus decision-​making, and certainly women at the camp were facilitating these processes. The naming of the camp as a peace camp, rather than a protest camp, is significant here in revealing genealogies and connections, and philosophy and practice, connected with other women’s peace camps such as Greenham (see Moore, 2015). Yet while the visibility of women as key facilitators of the camp was perhaps the most tangible manifestation of ecofeminism, there were other, perhaps less visible ways in which ecofeminism informed the camp. While my cultural memories of Greenham made an ecofeminist peace camp as a form of activism make sense to me, I turn to the Women’s Environmental Network (WEN), an ecofeminist organisation based in London, for my understanding that the ecofeminist politics of a peace camp far extended beyond the site of a scrubby clear-​cut. I first heard about Clayoquot Sound through WEN. At a time when most environmental organisations were focused on deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, WEN was the only group in Europe with a campaign around destruction of temperate rainforests, like the forest in Clayoquot. WEN linked the consumption of disposable sanitary protection, period products, and other disposable paper products such as toilet roll and newsprint, to the logging of forests in Canada. The UK was a major importer of wood pulp from British Columbia in the early 1990s, and the FOCS contacted WEN when, realising some of the limits of campaigning locally, they wished to develop an international campaign that targeted governments, companies and consumers directly implicated in the logging of old-​growth forest. While many of the commonly cited instances of ecofeminist activism in the early 243

Feminism and Protest Camps

1990s were coming from the Global South, WEN’s campaigning was an important instance of an organisation in the Global North, one that grasped the ways in which women in the UK were both unwittingly complicit in logging of temperate rainforest and also at risk through the use of period products such as pads and tampons. These were often bleached with dioxins, causing harm to the environment, to the workers involved in pulp processing and to the women who used the products. The FOCS followed the trail of wood pulp to the UK and other European countries, and brought their campaign directly to the public through direct action and media campaigns. In such ways, activism was diffracted through a range of connected sites, tracing patterns in the travel of activists4 and trees, and tying new knots of intensities into the project of opposing clear-​cut logging (Figure 13.4). In this light, the tendency to refer to camps through their locations –​Greenham, Seneca, Puget Sound –​might best be understood as synecdoche, where the site of the camp is but one knot in an extended campaign web that traces and ties a range of places, politics and issues together.

Researching an ecofeminist peace camp during the end of feminism I was captivated by what I had seen and experienced and learned at the peace camp, and in 1996 I returned to Clayoquot as part of PhD research, and carried out oral history interviews with activists, drawing also on my own recollections of my time at the peace camp. I spent time with the FOCS, worked through some of their own records and documents, and I travelled around Vancouver and Vancouver Island to follow up activists. Recording oral history interviews was a way of documenting the ecofeminism of the camp, that is, a way of materialising the ecofeminist politics there, which otherwise left few traces in the records of the camp. While some might (mis)understand oral history as creating heroes, individual figures plucked out and made special in the process, this would be to mistake the radical potentials of oral history, and of feminist activism and its commitment to collectivities. However, the time of the research, from the mid-​1990s onwards, was a paradoxical time, a time of the end of feminism and a time when ecofeminism was flourishing (Moore, 2011). This complex web of ecofeminist activism across and with the world was ‘successfully’ reduced to less than feminism, through critiques of essentialism. In this context, it took some time to write and publish a book from the research, and when The Changing Nature of Eco/​Feminism: Telling Stories from Clayoquot Sound (Moore, 2015) was published in the mid-​2010s, it necessarily also recounted a story about how feminist histories are narrated, extending Clare Hemmings’s account of feminist historiography in her book Why Stories Matter (2011; see also 244

Remembering an Eco/Feminist Peace Camp

Figure 13.4: Woman standing beside a tree in the forest

Source: Clayoquot Lives archive, https://​cla​yoqu​otli​ves.sps.ed.ac.uk/​items/​show/​117, Creative Commons Attribution-​ShareAlike 4.0 International License: https://​crea​tive​comm​ons.org/​ licen​ses/​by-​sa/​4.0/​

2005). Hemmings recounts how feminist decades are reduced to particular versions of feminism –​the 1970s a time of flourishing feminist activism; the 1980s a time of conflicts in feminism, sex wars and conflicts over race; the 1990s an era of post-​structuralist feminism. Hemmings traces how different accounts of feminism are produced depending on how these decades are 245

Feminism and Protest Camps

narrated. She identifies a narrative of loss when a vibrant feminist activism in the 1970s is seen as fragmented by conflicts and superseded by the ‘success’ of post-​structuralism and feminist theory in the academy. Accounts that present the 1970s as a time of naive activism, which then erupts in conflicts, to be worked through in post-​structuralist theory, produce a progress narrative of feminism. Arguably the activism of feminist peace camps such as Greenham have been relegated to a long feminist 1970s. In the book I recounted how, while many critical accounts of ecofeminism commonly relegate it to a distant feminist past of the 1970s, instead I sought to intervene in these narratives to argue that Clayoquot disrupted stories of progress and failure, and the encapsulation of particular modes of feminism in decades. Through documenting the persistence of ecofeminist activism in Clayoquot in the 1990s, the book aimed to make it harder to maintain the fiction of ecofeminism’s essentialism, thus undermining claims that ecofeminism could be relegated to the past. Rather, the book situated the camp in Clayoquot as evidence of a vibrant, abundant more-​than-​feminist activism. It tried to tell another story of an ecofeminist peace camp as a site where, through living together and engaging in collective activism, women re-imagined themselves and their genealogies and wove new connections, imagining, envisioning and enacting new worlds and new understandings of what it means to be more-​than-​feminist.

Archiving an ecofeminist peace camp: creating the Clayoquot Lives archive In the mid-​2010s, almost two decades after I had carried out the original interviews, I developed a new project to create a digital archive of my research materials. Clayoquot Lives: An Ecofeminist Story Web is an online archive that centres on 30 in-​depth oral history interviews with activists involved in the 1993 peace camp, in the form of both audio and transcripts, as well as a small selection of photographs and other historical documents related to the camp.5 Clayoquot Lives offers only a sliver of the stories of the camp, through which over 12,000 people passed that summer. The archive represents a ‘modest intervention’ (Heath, 1997), but it gains a significance beyond that, as an effort to make sure that some of the ecofeminist dimensions of the campaign are documented. The archive is my way of making stories of Clayoquot available for projects for cultural memory, stories that would not be available through other means. Clayoquot Lives aims to open up the Clayoquot peace camp to become cultural memory for those who do not remember 1993 (for example, Hofman, 2021). The digital archive also allows for an ongoing process of contributions and development. The archive is open to new stories, which can be 246

Remembering an Eco/Feminist Peace Camp

added through a ‘contribute’ button on the site. Materials can be added by people beyond the original interviewees, or these activists could add updated reflections on their involvement in Clayoquot. Contributions could come in a range of formats –​written notes, audio, photos or video, scanned documents, drawings –​stories and materials that are not necessarily framed through my original research interests. The archive is not finished –​ Clayoquot lives. The archive may grow and change. For me, the book and academic articles are not enough. While these kinds of publications draw a range of voices together to tell a multifaceted story of ecofeminism at the camp, there are clearly many more stories to tell about Clayoquot. The archive is my commitment to sharing these stories. The stories I heard far exceeded what I could write in a book and a few articles. Academic articles and books draw on selected quotes from research interviews and are framed by arguments that are important for the researcher, and perhaps also by consideration of what arguments are intelligible, and may find an audience, in a particular historical moment. Different historical moments and/​or different researchers could afford alternative, legitimate, narrative interpretations drawing from the same sources. Clayoquot Lives provides access to extended interview transcripts as well as audio files, meaning readers and listeners can engage with the longer interview and the wider context of the excerpts, listening to stories that would not fit in other publications, and those that exceeded the focus of the original research. The book and articles allow me to tell stories and create narratives that matter to me. The interviews could do more work in the world. The archive opens up the interviews to engagement beyond my own interpretation and storying, to new storytelling possibilities. The archive is intended to open up possibilities for engagement with different audiences to academic publications, to the book and articles I have written, multiplying opportunities for the creation, transmission and remediation of cultural memories of Clayoquot. Ecofeminism’s essentialism is usually established without much evidence –​arguably through the erasure of evidence of ecofeminism. For me, documenting the persistence of ecofeminist activism in the 1990s offers a counter to stories of the end of feminism, and an account of how radical, ecofeminist politics and activism persisted, despite these stories. Archiving ecofeminism offers an opportunity to ‘stay with the trouble’ of complex, conflicting, knotty, entangled histories. It means creating traces for the future and the now, to build diffractive histories that interfere in the present and make other worlds possible. Archives are sites for reactivating feminist histories and futures. Kate Eichhorn has argued that archives’ power come from how they can be ‘deployed in the present’ (2013: 160) in the imagination, fabulation and circulation of new knowledges. I take the academic book, the articles and the digital archive as forms of cultural production, as remediations of Clayoquot, intended as 247

Feminism and Protest Camps

counter-​memories and counter-​archives, offering modest interventions in narratives of mainstream feminism. The book and archive remain in conversation with each other, kin, related, knotted together through the oral histories that generated the book and are now published and put into circulation through the archive. Perhaps the archive also recirculates the book –​both ‘bound in the spiral dance’ (Haraway, 1985; see also Haran, 2019). While the archive, with its extended oral histories, risks the illusion of authenticity and transparency, against a book with selected extracts from interviews and an explicit overarching academic narrative, the archive is necessarily also shaped by all the decisions that went into generating research materials for the book (see Moore, 2015). As Marianne Hirsch notes, the archive ‘produces the very history it is archiving’ (2018: 174). Both book and archive are motivated outputs, where I insist on the importance of the ecofeminist politics of the Clayoquot Sound peace camp against its erasure. We can add making histories and archives to the infrastructures of peace camps. Clayoquot Lives is a cat’s cradle of activist stories, an ecofeminist story web, which can open up the possibility of many patterns, stories, knots. Invoking Haraway, I suggest it matters what archives we use to weave new stories, ‘it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with’ (Haraway, 2016: 12), and if those archives don’t exist we must create them. The mid-​2010s offered a different moment in which to dust off these cassettes and to imagine and create an archive of ecofeminist activism, as ‘climate change’ became a rallying cry for a mainstreamed attention to the ‘environment’. Who would listen to, even welcome, these stories? The mid-​2010s brought the emergence of a new materialist feminism, a self-​declared successor project to post-​structuralist feminism, carrying in its very name a powerful claim about feminist history. Yet arguably new materialism is not so much new (Ahmed, 2008), but rather comes after, in the wake of, other materialisms; arguably it comes late to the matter of matter, or nature. Drawing attention to ecofeminist genealogies challenges the newness of this materialism and poses some demanding questions.6 The erasure of ecofeminism’s complexity creates a tabula rasa for building new materialist feminisms. Indeed it creates the need to do the work of reinventing materiality later. To take just one example, renowned feminist scholar Elizabeth Grosz, in her book, Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power, while insisting on the need for ‘positivities’ against critique (2005: 2), proceeded, with barely contained disgust, to relegate her only reference to ecofeminism in a book on feminism and nature to a footnote: ‘With the exception of the ecology movement, with its ecofeminist and eco-​ philosophy offshoots, with which I am loathe to be identified, virtually all forms of contemporary political and social analysis continue this tradition of ignorance of, indeed, contempt for, the natural, which today remains either passivity or inertia’ (2005: 34). 248

Remembering an Eco/Feminist Peace Camp

In relegating ecofeminism to a branch of the ecology movement, excluding it from feminism altogether, Grosz betrayed a ‘willful ignorance’ (Pohlhaus, 2012) of ecofeminist texts, of ecofeminists’ efforts to intervene in deep ecology’s misogyny, of ecofeminism’s careful, intersectional, anti-​ dualistic analysis of the world and how it might have usefully informed her own work.7 On the basis of no evidence at all, ecofeminism is discarded. And with its restatement of matter, new materialist feminisms appear to risk reinstating the dualisms that ecofeminism seeks to undermine. What is new materialism’s version of passing on feminism? What is its citational politics and what is in its archive? Would new materialists build a feminist peace camp, or even write about them? These questions matter as feminism confronts, that is, continues to confront, the challenge of a climate crisis that faces all women, if some much more pressingly than others. Returning to marginalised histories of ecofeminism, and of feminist peace camps, offers resources that could support mainstream feminism in imagining inclusive flourishing worlds, and articulating a visionary engagement with social justice, racial justice and climate justice. Attention to the emergence and development of ecofeminism reveals the lack of nuance in common versions of feminist history. Feminists have long worked with the doubled burden of making history –​not only having to do activism in order to change the world, but also needing to do the work of documenting this activism. Ecofeminists have long had to reckon with the inability, or perhaps refusal, of mainstream feminism to listen carefully to the complexity of ecofeminist stories, or to appreciate the polyvocal nature of much ecofeminist work. Writing academic articles and a book, and creating a digital archive, are my interventions, my efforts to make academic research, personal memory and stories of an ecofeminist peace camp open to enduring cultural memory. These interventions materialise and make ecofeminist activism matter against those who would render ecofeminism in/​essential, im/​material.

Clayoquot as cultural memory Clayoquot will be remembered. In 1993 it was already positioned as a major historical event –​as the biggest act of non-​violent civil disobedience in Canadian history (even if this was contested later). But the question of whether it will be remembered as an ecofeminist peace camp is less sure.8 Two other academic texts focused on Clayoquot politics vary in their recognition of the significance of ecofeminism. Bruce Braun’s (2002) critique of how wilderness imagery is invoked on the West Coast does include some selected artefacts related to the broader campaign against logging. But while the text draws on many feminist theorists, attention does not extend to a recognition of ecofeminist activism and the difference that might make to his analysis of 249

Feminism and Protest Camps

West Coast politics. Warren Magnusson and Karena Shaw’s collection (2003), A Political Space: Reading the Global Through Clayoquot Sound, demonstrates a more far-​reaching appreciation, including chapters by ecofeminist Cate Sandilands, and acknowledgements throughout of gender, race and class in forest politics, although ecofeminism is not a central focus of the collection. Writing this just before the 30th anniversary of the camp in 2023, I am considering the possibility of returning to Clayoquot to see how the peace camp of 1993 is remembered, perhaps to reinterview original participants, and/​or to gather new interviews, or new materials related to the camp, or find new activists, animated by new cultural memories of the peace camp. New material can continue to be added to the Clayoquot Lives archive. And inspired by Greenham Women Everywhere’s reanimation of their archive (see Chapter 15 by Kerrow et al, in this volume), I plan to continue to extend the archive and create further resources to support engagement with the material there.9 Or perhaps someone else might pick up the baton, do another relay of the archive. The archive is open to new connections. But rememberings and commemorations do not come always come neatly in the temporal logics of anniversaries. While writing this chapter, a new, Indigenous-​led camp was set up in Ada’itsx, Pacheedaht Territory, also known as Fairy Creek, a little further south on Vancouver Island than Clayoquot Sound, to protest ongoing logging. In accounts of this camp, the Clayoquot protests from 1993 are frequently invoked. There have been more arrests than at Clayoquot, over 1,000 people arrested in Fairy Creek, a new ‘record’, serving as an indicator of the power of feeling around logging, as well as the ability to mobilise activists. Clayoquot appears as a reminder that people have not forgotten, that they can mobilise again. Invoking Clayoquot functions as a threat to the logging company active in Fairy Creek that there is local (and global) memory, and expertise in activism, which can be reactivated. Activists from Clayoquot have reappeared at Fairy Creek –​ Tzeporah Berman, one of the key organisers at Clayoquot in the summer of 1993 has been to Fairy Creek, and was arrested there (Logan, 2021). It is not clear from a distance if Clayoquot’s ecofeminism is being invoked. Clayoquot is invoked as a measure of lack of progress on protection of temperate rainforests –​why is old-​g rowth forest still being logged, despite the mainstreaming of concern about climate crisis? Why are the land rights of Indigenous people still denied? Many have identified the more brutal treatment of protestors by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, noting the appearance of the ‘thin blue line’ on police uniforms that denotes Right-​ wing allegiances, and linking increased violence against protesters with the fact that Fairy Creek is an explicitly Indigenous-​led protest (for example, Coyne, 2021). The story of Clayoquot is being diffracted through other campaigns and issues. For some Clayoquot will be a new story, becoming their cultural 250

Remembering an Eco/Feminist Peace Camp

memory in its reactivation in contact with Fairy Creek. New webs are patterned. Some patterns are made and others are not. How will Fairy Creek be remembered? What archives will it give rise to? What new worlds will it generate?

Conclusion I began with my own ‘cultural memories’ of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. Some have only found Greenham through going in search of ecofeminism in archives. Artist Yvonne Billimore recounted how she went to archives looking for ecofeminism and found Greenham, a story she used to introduce a pair of workshops engaging with Greenham’s archive in the Glasgow Women’s Library, the UK’s only accredited feminist museum and archive.10 Greenham was not part of her personal memory; rather, documents and artefacts that she found in feminist archives meant that Greenham entered her cultural memory and contemporary art practice, where she weaves new webs and passes on Greenham. This search for ecofeminism suggests that something might be missing from the contemporary feminisms circulating in public culture. Maud Perrier and D.M. Withers write that they ‘go to the archive to confront precisely what we do not know about feminist history’ (2016: 358, emphasis in original), echoing Billimore’s journey. Yet not all feminists are so generous or curious. Hemmings’s documentation of dominant ways of ‘telling feminist stories’ (2005), and how feminist decades are reduced to moments of essentialism, or conflict, and narrated to tell stories of loss or progress, evokes Victoria Hesford’s reflection that our encounter with feminist archives is often overdetermined by a kind of screen memory of what we have already imagined we will find in the feminist archive, that works ‘to contain and displace our knowledge’ (Hesford, 2013: 16). Creating feminist archives remains vital, if feminism is to claim relevance, and importantly a critical vision, in the context of what gets called ‘climate crisis’. Feminist archives are powerful sites where we might begin to tell other stories and weave another world. Stories of peace camps are for diffraction, for creating interference, for the passing on and telling of new stories, for making new patterns, new worlds. Archives are critical sites for unlearning mainstream feminism’s powerful stories of the past, and telling new and more complex stories. We have to ask who gets to remember radical activism, and with what consequence, for feminism, and for the world. Chidgey reminds us that ‘memories have political consequences’ (2012: 96). I would also emphasise that memories have worldly consequences. Feminist histories are still in the making. Archiving feminist peace camps is essential to materialising social transformation, to feminist histories and futures. A history of feminism told through story webs of feminist peace camps would look very different. 251

Feminism and Protest Camps

It is not too late to write that history –​indeed this book can be understood as a contribution to that project. Notes 1 2 3

4

5

6

7

8 9

10

See: https://​nat​ive-​land.ca/​maps/​terr​itor​ies/​nuu-​chah-​nulth-​tri​bal-​coun​cil/​ See: https://​cla​yoqu​otli​ves.sps.ed.ac.uk/​ Though Sasha Roseneil’s key texts (1995, 2000) remain critical contributions on Greenham. Including Starhawk, the subject of Chapter 8 by Haran in this volume. Starhawk both visited the camp in the summer of 1993 and was arrested there, but also had organised many WitchCamps in British Columbia (precursors to her Earth Activist Training) annually over about ten years prior to the Clayoquot camp. A number of activists involved in the campaign had participated in many of the WitchCamps and this informed their activism and organising. Making the archive has largely been an unfunded project –​I received a small amount of internal university funding to cover the cost of some research assistance to make the archive. Wonderfully, the conversations with my three collaborators on the archive, Nikki Dunne, Mary Hanlon and Martina Karels, became rich and we are currently continuing to collaborate on a co-​authored book, DIY Academic Archiving: Curating Research Materials and Creating Open Research Data, which draws on our experience creating Clayoquot Lives, and turns to the theory and practice of community archiving to inform the creation of open research data (Moore et al, forthcoming; see also Moore et al, 2021). For further reflections on ecofeminism and new materialism, see also Gaard, 2011; MacGregor, 2021; Gough and Whitehouse, 2020. For a further example of how ecofeminism has been subject to erasure in a way that creates the ground for a supposedly ‘more sophisticated’ feminist theory and politics, see Moore (2008, 2011) for an account of how gender and development scholars have dismissed the work of Vandana Shiva on ecofeminism and the protests of women of the Chipko movement against deforestation. See also Foster (2021) for a rare revisiting and more positive re-​evaluation of the work of Shiva (and other ecofeminists such as Starhawk and Susan Griffin). Though see also Stoddart and Tindall, 2011. I am also inspired by learning from a subsequent project I have been involved in, Reanimating Data: Experiments with People, Place and Archives, http://​rean​imat​ingd​ata. co.uk. The resulting archive is available here: https://​archi​ves.rean​imat​ingd​ata.co.uk/​s/​ fays/​, with details of a range of experiments and reanimations of the archival materials. Yvonne Billimore organised these events, working with Caroline Gausden at the Glasgow Women’s Library. See: https://​womens​libr​ary.org.uk/​event/​re-​read​ing-​green​ham-​com​ mon/​2019-​11-​26/​

References Ahmed, S. (2008) ‘Imaginary Prohibitions: Some Preliminary Remarks on the Founding Gestures of the “New Materialism” ’, The European Journal of Women’s Studies, 15(1): 23–​39. Bell, S. (1993) ‘Eco-​Feminists Run “Peace Camp” at Clayoquot Sound’, Vancouver Sun, 19 August, p B1. Braun, B. (2002) The Intemperate Rainforest: Nature, Culture, and Power on Canada’s West Coast, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 252

Remembering an Eco/Feminist Peace Camp

Chidgey, R. (2012) ‘Hand-​M ade Memories: Remediating Cultural Memory in DIY Feminist Networks’, in E. Zobl and R. Drüeke (eds) Feminist Media: Participatory Spaces, Networks and Cultural Citizenship, Bielefeld: Transcript, pp 87–​97. Coyne, T. (2021) ‘RCMP Union Responds to Fairy Creek Decision, Says Officers “Embodied theThin Blue Line” ’, CTV News Vancouver Island, 30 September. Available from: https://​Vanc​ouver​ isla​ nd.ctvne​ ws.ca/r​ cmp-​ union-r​ espon ​ ds-t​ o-f​ airy-c​ reek-d​ ecisi​ on-s​ ays-o ​ ffice​ rs-e​ mbodi​ ed-t​ he-t​ hin-​ blue-​line-​1.5605​123 [Accessed 8 September 2022]. DuPlessis, R.B. and Snitow, A. (1998) The Feminist Memoir Project: Voices from Women’s Liberation, New York: Three Rivers Press. Eichhorn, K. (2013) The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Feigenbaum, A. (2015) ‘From Cyborg Feminism to Drone Feminism: Remembering Women’s Anti-​Nuclear Activisms’, Feminist Theory, 16(3): 265–​88. Foster, E. (2021) ‘Ecofeminism Revisited: Critical Insights on Contemporary Environmental Governance’, Feminist Theory, 22(2): 190–​205. Gaard, G. (2011) ‘Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Re-​placing Species in a Material Feminist Environmentalism’, Feminist Formations, 23(2): 26–​53. Gaard, G. (2017) Critical Ecofeminism, London: Lexington Books. Gough, A. and Whitehouse, H. (2020) ‘Challenging Amnesias: Re-​ collecting Feminist New Materialism/​​Ecofeminism/​​Climate/​​Education’, Environmental Education Research, 26(9/​10): 1420–​34. Grosz, E. (2005) Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Haran, J. (2019) ‘Bound in the Spiral Dance: Haraway, Starhawk, and Writing ​ iography Studies, 34(3): 427–​43. Lives in Feminist Community’, a/b​ : Auto/B Haraway, D. (1985) ‘Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’, Socialist Review, 80: 65–​108. Haraway, D. (1994) ‘A Game of Cat’s Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies’, Configurations, 2(1): 59–​71. Haraway, D. (1997) Modest-​Witness@Second-​Millennium.FemaleMan-​Meets-​ OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience, London: Routledge. Haraway, D. (2013 [2011]) ‘SF: Science Fiction, Speculative Fabulation, String Figures, So Far: The Pilgrim Award Speech’, Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology, 3. Available from: https://​adan​ewme​ dia.org/​2013/​11/​iss​ue3-​hara​way/​ [Accessed 30 June 2022]. Haraway, D. (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

253

Feminism and Protest Camps

Heath, D. (1997) ‘Bodies, Antibodies, and Modest Interventions’, in G.L. Downey and J. Dumit (eds) Citadels and Cyborgs: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences and Technologies, Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press, pp 67–​82. Hemmings, C. (2005) ‘Telling Feminist Stories’, Feminist Theory, 6(2): 115–​39. Hemmings, C. (2011) Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hesford, V. (2013) Feeling Women’s Liberation, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hirsch, M. (2018) ‘Feminist Archives of Possibility’, Differences, 29(1): 173–​88. Hofman, K. (2021) ‘A Defense of Ecofeminism: Re-​examining the Clayoquot Sound Peace Camp’, MSc dissertation, Victoria, BC: University of Victoria. Available from: https://​dsp​ace.libr​ary.uvic.ca/​han​dle/​1828/​ 12997 [Accessed 24 August 2022]. Ketelaar, E. (2017) ‘Archival Turns and Returns’, in A.J. Gilliland, S. McKemmish and A.J. Lau (eds) Research in the Archival Multiverse, Clayton, VIC: Monash University Publishing, pp 228–​68. Kings, A.E. (2017) ‘Intersectionality and the Changing Face of Ecofeminism’, Ethics and the Environment, 22(1): 63–​87. Lapp, J. (2020) ‘The Provenance of Protest: Conceptualizing Records Creation in Archives of Feminist Materials’, PhD thesis, Toronto: University ​ to.ca/h ​ and​ le/1​ 807/​ of Toronto. Available from: https://t​ spa​ ce.libra​ ry.utoron 103​124 [Accessed 30 June 2022]. Logan, C. (2021) ‘Tzeporah Berman on Her Fairy Creek Arrest and Old-​ Growth’, Canada’s National Observer, 26 May. Available from: https://​www. natio​nalo​bser​ver.com/​2021/​05/​26/​news/​tzepo​rah-​ber​man-​her-​f airy-​ creek-​arr​est-​and-​old-​g ro​wth-​fight [Accessed 30 June 2022]. MacGregor, S. (2021) ‘Making Matter Great Again? Ecofeminism, New Materialism and the Everyday Turn in Environmental Politics’, Environmental Politics, 30(1/​2): 41–​60. Magnusson, W. and Shaw, K. (2003) A Political Space: Reading the Global Through Clayoquot Sound, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Moore, N. (2008) ‘The Rise and Rise of Ecofeminism as a Development Fable: A Response to Melissa Leach’s “Earth Mothers and Other Ecofeminist Fables: How a Strategic Notion Rose and Fell” ’, Development and Change, 39(3): 461–​75. Moore, N. (2011) ‘Eco/​feminism and Rewriting the Ending of Feminism: From the Chipko Movement to Clayoquot Sound’, Feminist Theory, 12(1): 3–​21. Moore, N. (2015) The Changing Nature of Eco/​Feminism: Telling Stories from Clayoquot Sound, Vancouver: UBC Press.

254

Remembering an Eco/Feminist Peace Camp

Moore, N. (2017) ‘Weaving an Archival Imaginary: Researching Community Archives’, in N. Moore, A. Salter, L. Stanley and M. Tamboukou, The Archive Project: Archival Research in the Social Sciences, Abingdon: Routledge, pp 129–​52. Moore, N. (2018) A Cat’s Cradle of Feminist and Other Critical Approaches to Participatory Research, Connected Communities Foundation Series, Bristol: University of Bristol /​ AHRC Connected Communities Programme. Available from: https://​connec​ted-​comm​unit​ies.org/​index. php/c​ onnect​ ed-c​ ommu ​ niti​ es-f​ oun ​ dati​ on-s​ er i​ es/​ [Accessed 30 June 2022]. Moore, N., Dunne, N., Karels, M. and Hanlon, M. (2021) ‘Towards an Inventive Ethics of Carefull Risk: Unsettling Research Through DIY Academic Archiving’, Australian Feminist Studies, 36(108): 180–​99. Moore, N., Dunne, N., Hanlon, M. and Karels, M. (forthcoming) DIY Academic Archiving, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Per r ier, M. and Withers, D.M. (2016) ‘An Archival Feminist Pedagogy: Unlearning and Objects as Affective Knowledge Companions’, Continuum, 30(3): 355–​66. Plumwood, V. (1993) Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, London: Routledge. Pohlhaus, G. Jr (2012) ‘Relational Knowing and Epistemic Injustice: Toward a Theory of Willful Hermeneutical Ignorance’, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 27(4): 715–​35. Reading, A. and Katriel, T. (eds) (2015) Cultural Memories of Nonviolent Struggles: Powerful Times, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Roseneil, S. (1995) Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham, Buckingham: Open University Press. Roseneil, S. (2000) Common Women, Uncommon Practices: The Queer Feminisms of Greenham, London: Cassell. Stoddart, M.C.J. and Tindall, D.B. (2011) ‘Ecofeminism, Hegemonic Masculinity, and Environmental Movement Participation in British Columbia, Canada, 1998–​2007: “Women Always Clean Up the Mess” ’, Sociological Spectrum, 31(3): 342–​68. Stoler, A.L. (2002) ‘Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance’, Archival Science, 2(1/​2): 87–​109.

255

14

US Occupy Encampments and Their Feminist Tensions: Archiving for Contemporary ‘Big-​Tent’ Social Movements Heather McKee Hurwitz and Anne Kumer

Introduction Since the 1970s, US feminist movements have diversified into new institutional contexts and have taken on a variety of goals (Staggenborg and Taylor, 2005). As feminist movements have become more diffuse, their goals, strategies and personnel have influenced other social movements, and other social movements have likewise spilled over into feminism (Meyer and Whittier, 1994; Hurwitz, 2019a). Feminists have utilised the protest camp tactic for decades to both advance feminist goals and contribute to a variety of other social justice objectives, from peace to civil rights and economic issues (McKnight, 1998; Wills, 2012; Nicolosi, 2013). Participation in protest camps exemplifies a contemporary feminism that is characterised by a wide variety of goals and tactics (Reger, 2012; Crossley, 2017). Yet because feminist and women activists have been active in so many different types of US movements and utilised such diverse tactics (Crossley and Hurwitz, 2013; Crossley, 2017; Hurwitz and Crossley, 2019), and because gendered and racial inequalities persist even within progressive spaces (Hurwitz, 2019b), women and feminists have often been marginalised within broader movements. In this chapter, we explore the invisibility of women and feminists of different genders, races/​​ethnicities, and sexualities in the US Occupy movement and reveal the feminist archiving practices that are required to recognise and analyse their substantial contributions.

256

US Occupy Encampments and Their Feminist Tensions

In autumn 2011, activists in New York City and San Francisco, including some feminists, joined the global wave of pro-​democracy protests by founding the Occupy movement. What began in New York City on 17 September 2011, with concurrent solidarity protests in San Francisco, spread over the course of weeks to more than 1,000 cities and towns across the United States and around the world. Activists used online social networks like Facebook and Twitter extensively to build the movement. They also circulated art, flyers and other movement documents at information tables in protest camps and handed out literature to passers-​by to encourage them to join in the camps. The movement was both highly place-​based –​with participants camping overnight together and sharing everything in their daily lives, including food, medical support and entertainment –​and based in the digital sphere, with participants amplifying the movement online and dialoguing across camps and across spaces on social media. Some scholars and journalists argued that the Occupy movement was dominated by White men, that sexism was rampant but ignored in the encampments and movement organisations, and that feminism was peripheral to the movement (Butler, 2011; McVeigh, 2011; Pickerill and Krinsky, 2012; Reger, 2015; Eschle, 2018; Montoya, 2019). Yet others took the position that women participated in all aspects of the movement’s work and that feminist organisations contributed significantly to Occupy protests (Brunner, 2011; Seltzer, 2011; Stevens, 2011; Maharawal, 2011; Milkman et al, 2013). To reveal the extent to which women and feminists of diverse genders, races/​​ ethnicities and sexualities not only participated in key Occupy movement protest camps, but also created diverse items to advocate for feminism and a range of other issues, our team used feminist archiving strategies to create a digital archive of Occupy two-​dimensional paper documents and three-​ dimensional items. This archive drew on a larger ethnographic study by one of the authors of this chapter, Heather McKee Hurwitz, a feminist sociologist by training and an activist for more than 20 years in many different US and global social movements. In the study, Heather utilised feminist methods to examine the submerged voices and experiences of women and queer persons of many races/​​ethnicities and sexualities in Occupy, many of whom were feminists (Hurwitz, 2021). The materials she collected encapsulated the diversity and complexity of a contemporary ‘big-​tent’ social movement that developed on the heels of the global spread of the protest camp tactic. They include badges, social media posts, art, ephemera, mainstream and movement newspaper reports, examples of citizen journalism, movement flyers and other documents, which taken together reflect tensions about sexism and racism that shaped the development of the Occupy movement. As mass street activism continued throughout the decade after the camps, we formed an interdisciplinary and intergenerational group to create an independent open-​source, digital community a​rchive on the back of 257

Feminism and Protest Camps

Heather’s research. Despite the marginal, diffused and contentious presence of feminism within the Occupy movement, which was exacerbated by the online and ephemeral nature of both contemporary feminism and Occupy, this archive extends feminist archiving practices that record and amplify feminist ‘outrage’ (Eichhorn, 2013). Using feminist archiving practices to create a digital archive of Occupy reveals the necessity of archiving movements like Occupy that are both place-​based and virtual, and that include critical but submerged feminist contributions. By digitising and archiving women and feminists’ contributions within the context of a range of other movement artefacts, the archive reveals the state of feminism as both ‘nowhere and everywhere’ (Reger, 2012). Furthermore, our effort to archive a contemporary movement that is not explicitly feminist reveals the benefits of bringing feminist methods and perspectives to the forefront of archiving. Prioritising reuse, the Occupy Archive was designed to be examined and used by students, teachers, scholars and both feminist and non-​feminist activists. Through print and online media items, artworks, objects and flyers collected from protest camps, the archive reveals feminist debates about the direction of the Occupy movement and the continuing need to analyse these in order to highlight feminist contributions and the fault lines that develop around feminism in contemporary activism. In the sections that follow, we argue for using feminist archiving even in contexts that are not explicitly feminist, as necessitated by contemporary feminism’s diffuse and diverse character. Then we spotlight the case study of our creation of a digital archive for the Occupy movement. Arguing for feminist archiving that is collaborative, interdisciplinary and prioritises reuse, we explain in detail the methodology of creating an explicitly feminist digital Occupy Archive. Next, we share examples of the tensions around feminism, by highlighting archival materials that reveal feminism both ‘nowhere and everywhere’ (Reger, 2012) within Occupy. We conclude by arguing that the Occupy Archive shows deep tensions about feminism continue to characterise contemporary activism.

Feminist archiving in contexts that are not feminist Archives and libraries have long been seen as neutral spaces where free thought, education and scholarship nurture the development and preservation of culture in a society. More recent scholarship, however, shows that libraries are not at all neutral and instead often reinforce the prejudices, biases and preferences of a dominant culture (Honma, 2005; Galvan, 2015; Gibson et al, 2017). Library and archive collections typically document the experiences of those with the power, resources and wealth to preserve their materials for collecting in future archives, in effect upholding current power structures and inequities. Feminist methods that are founded on critiquing 258

US Occupy Encampments and Their Feminist Tensions

traditional, patriarchal, racist and colonial powerholders, and that feature the voices and experiences of women of a variety of racial/​​ethnic backgrounds, mitigate biases within archives and make them more complete. Because libraries are usually situated within larger academic or government institutions, the values of those institutions –​ often rooted in White colonialism –​play a significant role in defining policies regarding collecting, preserving and documenting within libraries, thereby limiting what becomes archived. In addition, archives often lack feminist approaches because of the composition of library collections; the writing and implementation of collection policies that dictate what a library will collect and preserve; and the largely homogeneous demographic of library professionals as White, highly educated and trained in western traditions. As a result, there has been a steady increase in community archives that exist independently from a larger governing institution. In effect, these community archives become intellectual and even sometimes feminist spaces, where collectors, creators and users intentionally focus on a shared identity, idea or purpose that may not fit so neatly in the archival canon, but that follow some of the same best practices for collection stewardship. The creation of independent community archives is a form of activism that seeks to rebalance the pattern of privileging and marginalising present in most institutions, while providing a validating community resource for shared experience and history (Flinn et al, 2009). Community archives, ‘honour specific communities and forge new relationships between parallel histories, reshape and reinterpret dominant narratives, and challenge the concept of the archive itself ’ (Sellie et al, 2015: 454). Often, activists create these archival spaces outside of libraries and museums. Many produce archives on the web, such as the Clayoquot Lives: An Ecofeminist Story Web (see Chapter 13 by Moore, this volume) or in activist centres, such as the LGBTQ Community Centre and Archive in New York City and the Black Culture Archives in South London. Similarly to how protest movement organisers borrow from traditional societal norms of leadership and organisation (whether intentionally or not) (Hurwitz, 2019b), community archives often borrow from traditional archival collecting, documenting and preservation ‘best practices’. In doing so, these archives can legitimise marginalised objects or social phenomena. Providing a defined space, scope and context for their collections, as well as systems of organisation and descriptive practices, community archives bring to the surface otherwise submerged protests and debates. Furthermore, archives create a collective memory of a group or movement and convey their historical significance. Community archives challenge the limits of what is considered an archive and propose new possibilities for archiving. Feminist community archives likewise push the boundaries of archiving and address ongoing debates about feminism. 259

Feminism and Protest Camps

Community archives can be feminist spaces when they pursue inclusive description practices that especially highlight the contributions of women and feminists, collection policies that prioritise objects otherwise overlooked in traditional archives, reuse potential for a diverse audience, and unmitigated, open access. Rachel Lobo (2019: 81) encapsulates the relationship between archives and progressive, even feminist, politics when she argues: Central to the politics of anti-​authoritarian organizations is the prioritization of access and shared ownership as a means of fostering more egalitarian and democratic social relations. … [For] community archives, the aims are to provide space for communities to represent and redefine their own lived history and to support a continual process of archival engagement. Archiving necessitates a certain amount of metadata systemisation for indexing, preserving and providing access to any collection of materials. Feminist archivists have sought to systematise in a more inclusive and egalitarian fashion by, for example, adapting the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). In publication since the early 1900s, the LCSH was founded within the constraints of a White colonial perspective, and foundationally used to catalogue published books. Though it has been heavily altered though the years, LCSH terminology often does not reflect the chosen language of marginalised groups and activists, or the colloquial usage of language. As a result, use of LCSH renders collections that use submerged vocabularies or encapsulate experiences of marginalised groups all but invisible and unfindable in catalogues, inventories and on websites (Lobo, 2019). Feminist archives that adopt the institutional ‘best practice’ of the LCSH tend to add in vocabulary unique to the community or marginalised group to redefine the relevant descriptive terminology. The key here is to amplify experiences through their reuse potential; in other words, to describe them so that they can be found and used by others. A feminist open-​source and open access archive should allow the public to engage with the full breadth of a marginalised discourse: to see what would otherwise remain hidden within it.

Creating a feminist archive for the Occupy Movement For the Occupy Archive, we mirrored the community-​based archiving approach and opposed the conventional hierarchies of traditional archives by including submerged feminist discourses that emerged in tension with the overall discourse of the movement and that were largely invisible within it.

260

US Occupy Encampments and Their Feminist Tensions

Collecting the objects for archiving From autumn 2011 through to 2018, Heather explored the extent to which women and feminists were represented in newspapers, magazines, social media and other web-​based articles about the US Occupy movement. She started with the online media about the movement in 2011–​12 and found the New York City and San Francisco Bay Area occupations to be two of the largest and most influential encampments. They received the most news coverage. They modelled tactics and strategies that Occupy activists in other locations replicated. These camps developed organisations specifically for feminists and people of colour and women appeared to be involved in a range of committees. Heather participated in the main Occupy movement events in these locations and at the Occupy National Gathering. The Occupy National Gathering was a conference that drew representatives from encampments throughout the United States and served as a location in which to meet key organisers and activists from many encampments and learn about the breadth of the US movement. Like the New York and San Francisco protest camps, the conference (based in its own protest camp in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) featured several feminist speakers, events like the first National Feminist General Assembly and LGBTQ+​gatherings. As a feminist researcher and participant visiting protest camps while continuing to monitor online movement communications, Heather collected data on the activities of the most active groups and events, which included those organised by feminists, women, lesbians, gay people, queer people and people of colour. She gathered flyers, pamphlets, badges and signs from the encampments and during the semi-​structured interviews she conducted with 73 participants. Collection took place during 15 days at multi-​event, all-​day encampments and an additional 25 partial-​days at citywide meetings, protests and cultural events. The archive of documents and ephemera included feminists’ words, actions and art. These objects in their many forms and formats not only provided great vibrancy within the protest camps but contributed to the complexity and tensions that characterised the Occupy movement overall. The objects are highly eclectic, ranging from articles about the movement from mainstream newspapers, such as the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle; through ‘founding’ documents that were read, referenced and circulated widely during protest camps especially in New York City such as the ‘Declaration of the Occupation of New York City’; to the movement’s main newspapers, including The Occupied Wall Street Journal, Occupy! An OWS-​Inspired Gazette and Tidal. The collection also includes documentation about feminist organisations and feminist collective actions within Occupy such as documents used by feminists to create and plan the

261

Feminism and Protest Camps

townhall-​like Feminist General Assemblies (FemGAs), flyers advertising specific protest events and mission statements from working groups and committees within the movement like Safer Spaces. The movement’s newspapers, articles from feminist magazines and bloggers, and the wide range of media together provided a written history of the complexity of this ‘big-​tent’ social movement, revealing the intersectional conflicts and the development of feminist mobilisation within it. Many objects provided documentation of the contributions by, and criticisms made of, feminists. The range of objects pointed to the feminist currents that influenced Occupy and also to their marginalisation (Hurwitz, 2021). This dynamic whereby women and feminists make legitimate, essential, but marginalised contributions to progressive struggles in the United States is all too familiar from the Civil Rights movement (Robnett, 2000), the New Left (Evans, 1979), and AIDS activism (Roth, 2017). The Occupy Archive became a place to reveal and historicise these tensions within a contemporary ‘big-​tent’ social movement.

Designing a feminist archive The design of the Occupy Archive embodies and extends feminist archiving by prioritising the experiences of women, queer persons and feminists; by making the materials open access and available for broad reuse; and by utilising community archiving practices that centre feminist and activist discourse. We will explain each of these in turn. First, the Occupy Archive reveals the feminist contributions within the Occupy movement and contextualises these debates in the larger sweep of Occupy movement discourse. While other collecting and archiving initiatives have gathered documentation on Occupy, they lack a feminist lens to reveal intersectional tensions.1 The digital Occupy Archive is a feminist archive because it provides a historical record of these debates for further reflection, and a more complete and complex picture of this moment, including the diffuse and diverse feminist goals submerged within it. Second, we made the decision not to sequester the paper-​based objects collected into a library, or even an activist organisation’s filing cabinet, given this would have opposed the reuse and open access characteristics of feminist archiving as well as the open-​source spirit of Occupy’s protest camps. Creating the archive in 2019–​20 in the midst of heightened street activism in the United States, during frequent street protests against the Trump Administration and for #BlackLivesMatter, gave urgency to our efforts to develop an archive that could be reused. Therefore, the Occupy Archive takes the form of a free, digital, open-​source archive (the digitisation and web-​based platform are discussed in the next section).

262

US Occupy Encampments and Their Feminist Tensions

Finally, the Occupy Archive’s taxonomy, its unique ‘structured vocabulary’, is essential to its character as a feminist archive and its reuse. The taxonomy is a selection of terms that were used to organise each object with a label or ‘tag’. The taxonomy provides standardised metadata, which are set terms that allow users to search the archive and reuse it. Conscious of the best practice from community archives and of the need to create a space for feminist discourse, we developed the taxonomy out of three main types of vocabularies: the LCSH, as a starting point and reference for traditional archives; the subject-​specific Thesaurus of Sociological Indexing Terms, which included more comprehensive social movement discourse; and an original, highly relevant set of terminology culled from the collection materials themselves, participating student researchers’ knowledge, the scholarly literature on feminism and social movements, and activist websites.

Feminist archiving praxis The team developed the digital Occupy Archive through interdisciplinary and intergenerational collaborations and with the shared objectives of using inclusive description practices, prioritising objects otherwise overlooked in traditional archives, and offering reuse and open access potential. As Heather collected the items from 2011 to 2018, she enlisted –​and paid –​undergraduate student research assistants to store them thematically and chronologically in three-​ring binders. These binders became the foundation of the digital Occupy Archive’s Collection Objects. Objects within the binders were arranged by physical location, in the chronological order that they were collected in person, and by theme. Initially, arranging the objects became a collaborative process across generations and sparked the insights and passions of the students involved. Subsequently, in 2019, Heather met with librarians from the Freedman Centre for Digital Scholarship at Case Western Reserve University’s Kelvin Smith Library to discuss a proposal to digitise and make available an online archive of the Occupy documents and ephemera. She was awarded the Freedman Fellowship in the early summer of 2019 to complete the project. The Fellowship granted priority access to librarian expertise, digitisation equipment, software, temporary storage for the physical collection within the library, and funds to hire a team of five student research assistants. Each team member contributed to the development of the project drawing on their unique background and skills. Among several other librarians who contributed (see https://​osf.io/​gvuh2/​ for a full list), Digital Collections Manager Stephanie Becker brought an interest in activism and expertise in digital collection stewardship to the team. Electronic Resources Metadata Librarian Anne Kumer (co-author of this chapter) had lived in New York City and visited the Occupy encampment on numerous occasions, and 263

Feminism and Protest Camps

had extensive experience working within both traditional and community archival collections. Finally, Research Data Specialist Ben Gorham was an expert on the open-​source online database, Open Science Framework (OSF),2 that was used to host the archive. Student research assistants worked with each other, the librarian team members and ourselves. They were valued because they made the collaboration cross-​disciplinary and multigenerational. Together, the team collaboratively developed digitisation workflows, file-​naming structures, and categorisation systems for the objects (Becker et al, 2020). The research assistants handled digitising, saving, uploading and organising the objects. Students invested heavily in the project because they found pride in their new archiving skills and valued creating an archive with diverse content. Usually, they worked together in the lab early on Friday mornings and during their lunch break. They met in person from September 2019 to March 2020 and then continued work remotely during the early days of the COVID-​19 pandemic from March 2020 through June 2020. The project team also used the collection to create teaching resources such as a PowerPoint introductory lecture about the archive, in order to prioritise the reuse potential. In addition to creating course materials, the research assistants tested those same materials by lecturing with them in two introductory social sciences classes, allowing the student researchers and the students attending the class to engage with and reuse the archive immediately. Encapsulating both the diverse teamwork experience and the importance of the Occupy Archive to younger generations and activists, research assistant Zoe Nguyen elaborated: ‘When I first heard about the Occupy Wall Street Movement, I was 11 years old. I thought it was amazing how people were able to gather on such a large scale to protest and advocate for what they believed in. Now, almost a decade later, I can see that this movement was just one of the factors that influenced me to become a social justice advocate. Working on this archive has allowed me to view a point in time where you can feel the hundreds of hours spent on this movement, the objects of history and their stories, and the issues that were and are still majorly prevalent in today’s society. I hope that those viewing the Occupy Archive can see the materials telling a story. Also, I hope they will be able to weave their own stories for advocating what they believe in –​just as I have been able to –​while working on this project with such a supportive team.’ Nguyen elaborates a sentiment held by nearly all members of the team: creating the archive was a complex experience that furthered each individual’s social justice commitments and revealed not only marginalised activist stories, but also the stories of those who created the archive. 264

US Occupy Encampments and Their Feminist Tensions

With the unique interdisciplinary and intergenerational personnel in place, the team developed complex workflows and standard operating procedures to create the archive. Because the digital Occupy Archive resides within OSF, a large database that hosts many different data sets all openly searchable, and because the collection includes over 400 items, many of them with several unique front and back pages, it was necessary for us to develop comprehensive workflows for digitising and describing each of the archive objects. The overall workflow included developing a comprehensive file-​naming system for each digital surrogate, created so that it could be properly stored and retrieved, and methods for communicating progress so that all of the research assistants digitised consistently and did not replicate work (Becker et al, 2020). Likewise, workflows enumerated standard procedures for uploading the digital surrogates into OSF and applying descriptive metadata. The team established an inventory spreadsheet to keep track of completed work, a folder structure within OSF to organise individual objects, and a taxonomy of descriptive terminology for applying metadata in order to facilitate open access searching and reuse of the collection. In addition to the collection objects, we included documents that describe the workflow and digitisation process, research guides that list several objects for key subject themes, and a sample slide presentation and educational assignments to facilitate reuse among researchers and teachers using the archive. The Occupy Archive’s Collection Objects is a data set openly available from: https://​doi.org/​ 10.17605/​OSF.IO/​6V9ZF. As a team, we held frequent group discussions about how objects should be described and organised, with constant feedback and participation from student researchers to make the archive intelligible to their and future generations. Also referred to as participatory description, this process was one component of a larger feminist praxis that engaged the collection’s creators and potential users in the process of organising, cataloguing and caring for the archive, in order to ‘empower creators and their communities to share their stories and perspectives’ (Haberstock, 2020: 126). This methodology promoted a more diverse and inclusive creation of the archive and was foundational to making the collection open, accessible, reusable and feminist; by including students who were not formally trained archivists or librarians in integral decision-​ making parts of the process, we were able to create descriptive practices more relevant to the creators and to general users of the collection.

Feminist absence and presence within the Occupy Archive Activists created unique, creative, art-​and media-​filled worlds to discuss social change and to protest together in the New York City and San Francisco Occupy encampments. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to 265

Feminism and Protest Camps

address the breadth of the Occupy Archive, this chapter would be incomplete without highlighting a couple of objects that demonstrate the narrative tensions that circulated within the some of the largest US protest camps and can be found within the archive. On the one hand, feminism appears absent. A flyer like this is typical: Occupy Wall Street is a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colours, genders, and political persuasions. The one thing that we all have in common is that we are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1% … OWS is an experiment in direct democracy, with the General Assembly (GA) being our current model of decision making. … There is no single leader or governing body of the GA –​we struggle to ensure that everyone’s voice is equal. Anyone is free to propose an idea or express an opinion as part of the GA. (Occupy Archive, https://​osf.io/​j8n76/​) In just a few lines, the flyer conveys not only some of the movement’s key objectives, procedures and basis for unity, but also an aspiration for the protest camp to be a model of a different kind of world, an experimental society. In this iteration, the future world to which the movement aspires is one of leaderlessness, diversity, stopping the 1% and hearing everyone’s voices and ideas. On the flip side of the flyer, its authors suggest five ways to create this future ambitious world right in the moment, including: ‘Occupy! Bring instruments, food, blankets, bedding, rain gear, and a sense of justice’. Even though this flyer circulated in 2011, it echoes a view of prefigurative politics grounded not in contemporary feminism but in longstanding anarchist and Marxist traditions (Törnberg, 2021), manifested in direct, participatory democracy without hierarchal leadership structures in which supposedly anyone can be leader (Breines, 1989; Polletta, 2002; Williams, 2017). In addition, the flyer’s discourse echoes the neo-​anarchist desire to undo existing power structures and create a political force for the future (Yates, 2015; Wagener-​Pacifici and Ruggero, 2020). Despite substantial feminist contributions to prefigurative politics and participatory democracy (see, for example, Chapter 10 by Kavada and Chapter 8 by Haran, this volume), feminist discourse was invisible in flyers such as these. On the other hand, feminism is very much present in the archive. Documents like the mimeographed Post-​Post Script Zine were also circulated in the New York and San Francisco encampments and conveyed a very different view of the goals for Occupy movement politics from the neo-​ anarchist text above. The Post-​Post Script Zine, subtitled ‘Open Letters To and From the (Un)Occupy Movement’, is a compilation of mostly feminist assessments on how to improve the movement. One letter, from the Alliance of Community Trainers and written by Starhawk, Lisa Fithian and Lauren 266

US Occupy Encampments and Their Feminist Tensions

Ross, amplifies feminist views about movement strategies beyond just opposing the 1%: We embrace many labels, including feminist, anti-​racist, eco-​feminist and anarchist. … ‘Diversity of tactics’3 becomes an easy way to avoid wrestling with questions of strategy and accountability. … It becomes a code for ‘anything goes,’ and makes it impossible for our movements to hold anyone accountable. … Nonviolent direct action creates dilemmas for the opposition and clearly dramatizes the difference between the corrupt values of the system and the values we stand for … [S]‌trategic nonviolent direct action is a framework that will allow us to grow in diversity and power. (Occupy Archive, https://​osf.io/​xnrzc/​) Openly drawing on a history of feminist protest along with anarchist and other traditions, Starhawk, Lisa Fithian and Lauren Ross’s letter suggests that the future of the Occupy movement should be non-​violent in order to protect and empower a movement of people of diverse genders, races, ages and abilities. They suggest that the next iteration of the movement, and a future world, must be based on more than just ‘anything goes’. In this, they oppose the strands of anarchism and direct participatory democracy that eschew all structure (Breines, 1989). In opposition to ‘diversity of tactics’, they argue that a broad, diverse, impactful social movement and future ideal society are built through a feminist emphasis on coordination, trust and collaboration (Crossley and Hurwitz, 2013; Crossley, 2017). They emphasise less Marxist traditions of economic change (Törnberg, 2021), and more personal and organisational forces and holistic notions of subjectivity that are woven into the politics and goals of feminist activism (Williams, 2017; for more on Starhawk, see Chapter 8 by Haran in this volume). In sum, as Occupy participants formed protest encampments, shared food, lived together and protested together, they not only formed an experimental space, but also created feminist politics that supported and critiqued the Occupy movement simultaneously. Their efforts are captured in feminist objects archived in the digital Occupy Archive, even as they remain submerged in other objects that render invisible the long history of feminist political contributions to struggles for social change.

Conclusion The Occupy Archive encapsulates the complexity and tensions that characterised the ‘big-​tent’ Occupy movement and its accompanying period of heightened social media activity. Occupy included activists from many different movements, necessitating a unique archive. It was not dedicated to a particular group like suffrage archives (Library of Congress, 2021), or 267

Feminism and Protest Camps

to a single protest camp with a particular objective like those at Clayoquot Sound or Greenham Common (see Chapter 13 by Moore and Chapter 15 by Kerrow et al in this volume). The Occupy Archive set itself a large task: to gather and make visible women’s and feminist movement objects as part of a broad movement that was not explicitly feminist. Digitising the Occupy Archive on OSF continues the community-​based tradition of that movement and represents its rich and sometimes problematic complexity. Built with the skills and perspectives of a diverse interdisciplinary and intergenerational team, the archive prioritises reuse potential and highlights feminist tensions within the movement. Through its objects, the Archive reveals feminism as important, relevant and essential to some strands of the Occupy movement, as well as marginalised in others. The Occupy Archive implies that deep tensions about feminism characterise contemporary activism. Within the Occupy encampments, feminists often created separate ‘free’ or ‘safe spaces’ (Hurwitz and Taylor, 2018; Montoya, 2019; see also Chapter 2 by Montoya in this volume). In the New York City and San Francisco encampments, feminist and queer activists even cordoned off areas and tents specifically for feminist and queer activists to continue participating in the encampments while practising an explicitly feminist culture otherwise marginalised in the camp space (Maharawal, 2016; Eschle, 2018; Hurwitz, 2021). Despite the exemplary Post-​Post Script Zine and objects like it, feminist politics remain strikingly absent from many of the archival materials. When present, feminist discourse and perspectives serve as important additions to the movement, providing critical commentary upon it. The marginal feminist discourse in the archive mirrors the experiences of women and feminist activists who participated in the movement, and found problematic the lack of intersectionality, the persistence of domestic and other forms of violence, and the exclusion of women from leadership positions –​and who fought hard to transform Occupy camps from within. Notes 1

2

This is true of both community and institutionally housed archives. For example, the New-​ York Historical Society collected Occupy ephemera from the New York encampment, NYU’s Tamiment library recorded meetings held by the Occupy Think Tank group, and the Internet Archive and the Rosenzweig Centre for the History of New Media at George Mason University both embarked on web archiving projects to preserve associated web pages (Schuessler, 2012). None of these archives prioritised a feminist approach. OSF is an interdisciplinary platform for online access, storage and preservation of data. As a team, we chose OSF because it does not require hosting fees or associating the project with a domain name. The platform is supported by Case Western Reserve University’s Information Technology department, which provided ongoing user support for our team. We also chose OSF due to its technological capacities: several research team members could simultaneously upload digitised objects, apply metadata, and add research and teaching documents into the archive’s OSF site from multiple computers. By choosing to host the Occupy Archive on OSF, an Open Access platform, the priority shifts from 268

US Occupy Encampments and Their Feminist Tensions

3

ownership to access, and the identity of the collection retains some independence from a larger governing institution. It also ensures that a wider audience can access the collection with virtually no restrictions. This phrase commonly referred to the unencumbered and volunteer-​driven use of a breadth of protest tactics, including non-​violent protest actions like sit-​ins and permitted marches, as well as what could be considered more aggressive or even violent tactics like purposeful property destruction or antagonistic stand-​offs between police and protesters.

References Becker, S., Hurwitz, H.M. and Kumer, A. (2020) ‘Collection Objects from the Digital Occupy Archive’, Journal of Open Humanities Data, 6(1): art 9. Available from: http://​doi.org/​10.5334/​johd.20 [Accessed 25 August 2022]. Breines, W. (1989) Community and Organization in the New Left, 1962–​ 1968: The Great Refusal, 2nd edn, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Brunner, M. (2011) ‘Who Are the Black Women Occupying Wall Street?’, in L. Parramore, T. Lohan and D. Hazen (eds) The 99%: How the Occupy Wall Street Movement Is Changing America, San Francisco: AlterNet, pp 76–​7. Butler, M. (2011) ‘Finding Our Voices and Creating Safe Spaces at Occupy Wall Street’, in L. Parramore, T. Lohan and D. Hazen (eds) The 99%: How the Occupy Wall Street Movement Is Changing America, San Francisco: AlterNet, pp 71–​3. Crossley, A.D. (2017) Finding Feminism: Millennial Activists and the Unfinished Gender Revolution, New York: New York University Press. Crossley, A.D. and Hurwitz, H.M. (2013) ‘Women’s Movements’, in D.A. Snow, D. della Porta, B. Klandermans and D. McAdam (eds) The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements, Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, pp 1–7. Eichhorn, K. (2013) The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Eschle, C. (2018) ‘Troubling Stories of the End of Occupy: Feminist Narratives of Betrayal at Occupy Glasgow’, Social Movement Studies, 17(5): 524–​40. Evans, S. (1979) Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement, New York: Vintage. Flinn, A., Stevens, M. and Shepherd, E. (2009) ‘Whose Memories, Whose Archives? Independent Community Archives, Autonomy and the Mainstream’, Archival Science, 9(1/​2): 71–​86. Galvan, A. (2015) ‘Soliciting Performance, Hiding Bias: Whiteness and Librarianship’, In the Library with the Lead Pipe, 3 June. Available from: http://​www.inth​elib​rary​with​thel​eadp​ipe.org/​2015/​sol​icit​ing-​ perf​orma​nce-​hid​ing-​bias-​whiten​ess-​and-​librar ​ians​hip/​ [Accessed 23 August 2021]. 269

Feminism and Protest Camps

Gibson, A.N., Chancellor, R.L., Cooke, N.A., Dahlen, S.P., Lee, S.A. and Shorish, Y.L. (2017) ‘Libraries on the Frontlines: Neutrality and Social Justice’, Equity, Diversity and Injustice: An International Journal, 36(8): 751–​66. Haberstock, L. (2020) ‘Participatory Description: Decolonizing Descriptive Methodologies in Archives’, Archival Science, 20(2): 125–​38. Honma, T. (2005) ‘Trippin’ over the Colour Line: The Invisibility of Race in Library and Information Studies’, InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 1(2). Available from: https://​doi.org/​10.5070/​D41​ 2000​540 [Accessed 23 August 2021]. Hurwitz, H.M. (2019a) ‘#FemGA #SayHerName #NotHereForBoys: Feminist Spillover in U.S. Social Movements 2011–​2016’, in J. Reger (ed) Nevertheless They Persisted: Feminisms and Continued Resistance in the U.S. Women’s Movement, New York: Routledge, pp 115–​32. Hurwitz, H.M. (2019b) ‘Gender and Race in the Occupy Movement: Relational Leadership and Discriminatory Resistance’, Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 24(2): 157–​76. Hurwitz, H.M. (2021) Are We the 99%? The Occupy Movement, Feminism, and Intersectionality, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Hurwitz, H.M. and Crossley, A.D. (2019) ‘Gender and Social Movements’, in D.A. Snow, S.A. Soule, H. Kriesel and H.J. McCammon (eds) Wiley-​ Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, 2nd edn, Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell, pp 537–​52. Hurwitz, H.M. and Taylor, V. (2018) ‘Women Occupying Wall Street: Gender Conflict and Feminist Mobilization’, in H.J. McCammon and L.A. Banaszak (eds) 100 Years of the Nineteenth Amendment: An Appraisal of Women’s Political Activism, New York: Oxford University Press, pp 334–​55. Library of Congress (2021) National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection. Available from: https://​www.loc.gov/​coll​ecti​ons/​natio​nal-​ ameri​can-​woman-​suffr​age-​asso​ciat​ion/​about-​this-​col​lect​ion/​ [Accessed 24 August 2021]. Lobo, R. (2019) ‘Archive as Prefigurative Space: Our Lives and Black Feminism in Canada’, Archivaria: Journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists, 87: 68–​86. Maharawal, M.M. (2011) ‘Standing Up’, in A. Taylor, K. Gessen et al (eds) Occupy! Scenes from Occupied America, Brooklyn: Verso, pp 34–​40. Maharawal, M.M. (2016) ‘Occupy Movements’, in N.A. Naples (ed) The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, Malden, MA: Wiley-​Blackwell, pp 1–​5. McKnight, G.D. (1998) The Last Crusade: Martin Luther King, Jr., the FBI and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

270

US Occupy Encampments and Their Feminist Tensions

McVeigh, K. (2011) ‘Occupy Wall Street’s Women Struggle to Make Their Voices Heard’, The Guardian, 30 November. Available from: https://​www. theg​uard​ian.com/w ​ orld/2​ 011/n ​ ov/3​ 0/o ​ ccu ​ py-​wall-​str​eet-​women-​voi​ces [Accessed 28 August 2021]. Meyer, D.S. and Whittier, N. (1994) ‘Social Movement Spillover’, Social Problems, 41(2): 277–​98. Milkman, R., Luce, S. and Lewis, P. (2013) ‘Changing the Subject: A Bottom-​ Up Account of Occupy Wall Street in New York City’, New York: City University of New York Murphy Institute. Available from: https://​ s3.amazon​aws.com/​s3.docume​ntcl​oud.org/​docume​nts/​562​862/​chang​ ing-​the-​subj​ect-​2.pdf [Accessed 25 August 2022]. Montoya, C. (2019) ‘From Identity Politics to Intersectionality? Identity-​Based Organizing in the Occupy Movements’, in J. Irvine, S. Lang and C. Montoya (eds) Gendered Mobilizations and Intersectional Challenges: Contemporary Social Movements in Europe and North America, London: Rowman & Littlefield, pp 135–​53. Nicolosi, A.M. (2013) ‘Cindy Sheehan and the Politics of Motherhood: Politicised Maternity in the Twentieth and Twenty-​First Centuries’, Genders, 58: 41–​50. Pickerill, J. and Krinsky, J. (2012) ‘Why Does Occupy Matter?’, Social Movement Studies, 11(3/​4): 279–​87. Polletta, F. (2002) Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Reger, J. (2012) Everywhere and Nowhere: Contemporary Feminism in the United States, New York: Oxford University Press. Reger, J. (2015) ‘The Story of a Slut Walk: Sexuality, Race, and Generational Divisions in Contemporary Feminist Activism’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnology, 44(1): 84–​112. Robnett, B. (2000) How Long? How Long? African American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights, New York: Oxford University Press. Roth, B. (2017) The Life and Death of ACT UP/​LA: Anti-​AIDS Activism in Los Angeles from the 1980s to the 2000s, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schuessler, J. (2012) ‘Occupy Wall Street: From the Streets to the Archives’, ArtsBeat, New York Times, 2 May. Available from: https://a​ rtsbe​ at.blogs.nyti​ mes.com/​2012/​05/​02/​occ​upy-​wall-​str​eet-​from-​the-​stre​ets-​to-​the-​archi​ ves/​[Accessed 24 August 2021]. Sellie, A., Goldstein, J., Fair, M. and Hoyer, J. (2015) ‘Interference Archive: A Free Space for Social Movement Culture’, Archival Science, 15(4): 453–​72. Seltzer, S. (2011) ‘Where Are the Women at Occupy Wall Street? They’re Everywhere’, in L. Parramore, T. Lohan and D. Hazen (eds) The 99%: How the Occupy Wall Street Movement is Changing America, San Francisco: AlterNet, pp 80–​4. 271

Feminism and Protest Camps

Staggenborg, S. and Taylor, V. (2005) ‘Whatever Happened to the Women’s Movement?’, Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 10(1): 37–​52. Stevens, A.B. (2011) ‘We Are the 99%, Too: Creating a Feminist Space within Occupy Wall Street’, Ms., 11 October. Available from: https://​msm​agaz​ ine.com/​2011/​10/​11/​we-​are-​the-​99-​too-​creat​ing-​a-​femin​ist-​space-​wit​ hin-​occ​upy-​wall-​str​eet/​ [Accessed 24 August 2021]. Törnberg, A. (2021) ‘Prefigurative Politics and Social Change: A Typology Drawing on Transition Studies’, Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 22(1): 83–​107. Wagener-​Pacifici, R. and Ruggero, E.C. (2020) ‘Temporal Blind Spots in Occupy Philadelphia’, Social Movement Studies, 19(5/​6): 675–​96. Williams, S.J. (2017) ‘Personal Prefigurative Politics: Cooking Up an Ideal Society in the Woman’s Temperance and Woman’s Suffrage Movements, 1870–​1920’, Sociological Quarterly, 58(1): 72–​90. Wills, J. (2012) Conservation Fallout: Nuclear Protest at Diablo Canyon, pbk edn, Reno: University of Nevada Press. Yates, L. (2015) ‘Rethinking Prefiguration: Alternatives, Micropolitics and Goals in Social Justice’, Social Movement Studies, 14(1): 1–​21.

272

15

Greenham Women Everywhere: A Feminist Experiment in Recreating Experience and Shaping Collective Memory Kate Kerrow, Rebecca Mordan, Vanessa Pini and Jill (Ray) Raymond, with Alison Bartlett and Catherine Eschle

Introduction In September 1981, 36 women walked from Cardiff to the RAF base at Greenham Common in protest against the American government holding nuclear cruise missiles on common land. This marked the beginning of a 19-year protest at Greenham Common. The Common became home to thousands of women acting in political resistance to the nuclear arms race. In Autumn 2018, The Heritage Lottery Fund South West awarded … a £50k grant to bring this hugely important piece of feminist history and heritage into public access. With this funding, Scary Little Girls and The Heroine Collective embarked on an 18-​month project to interview the women who formed the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp between 1981 and 2000. … It culminated in the largest collection of oral testimonies of the Greenham Women yet collated, digitised and made available to the public. (Scary Little Girls, nd) So opens one of the webpages associated with the Greenham Women Everywhere project, instigated by Rebecca Mordan of feminist production hub Scary Little Girls, and Kate Kerrow of women’s history online publication, The Heroine Collective. Although their project title drew inspiration from a multi-​voiced book from the early days of the Greenham 273

Feminism and Protest Camps

Common Women’s Peace Camp, one that emphasised the camp’s wider network and legacies (Cook and Kirk, 1983), Rebecca and Kate nonetheless feared that Greenham stories were in danger of being entirely lost from public and activist memory, or replaced by tabloid distortions. They thus wanted not only to recover the voices of Greenham, but also to find creative ways to engage a wider and younger audience. In collaboration with co-​ worker Vanessa Pini and Greenham woman Jill (Ray) Raymond, and many other individuals and institutions, Rebecca and Kate have produced an online archive of testimonies from Greenham women (Greenham Women Everywhere, 2021). The project has also generated a multimedia touring exhibition; online events (concerts, book readings and theatrical performances); an interactive ‘virtual reality’ website aimed at enabling a new generation to re-imagine life at the camp (Greenham Women Digital, nd); and a book (Kerrow and Mordan, 2021). This chapter explores the genesis, processes and outcomes of the Greenham Women Everywhere project. Catherine Eschle and Alison Bartlett facilitated two informal conversations with Ray, Rebecca, Vanessa and Kate over Zoom in April 2021, then transcribed, edited and recombined over four hours of discussion, before sharing it with each participant to comment, rearrange, augment and edit. We also inserted some verbatim text from a subsequent discussion at a workshop for this book. While the chapter is thus a co-​creation that retains the form of a dialogue, the responsibility for instigation, organisation and structure, and the writing of this introduction and the endnotes, lies with us (Catherine and Alison). We have tried to push ourselves into the background of the conversation that follows, to leave as much space as possible for Rebecca, Vanessa, Ray and Kate. However, it remains the case that our specific preoccupations –​Catherine’s with the politics and representation of protest camps in the UK, and particularly of Greenham, and Alison’s with feminist archiving and with the intertwining of academic and cultural feminist interventions –​shape what follows. The conversation begins with Rebecca, Kate, Vanessa and Ray introducing themselves, their organisations and the project. Together, we discuss the ethics and process of interviewing Greenham women, before moving on to the techniques through which the testimonies of campers were reinterpreted and recreated in the various spinoffs from the project. Finally, the conversation takes in the politics of forgetting and remembering Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, and its legacies, especially on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of its founding. All this will be of particular value to those researching Greenham (Roseneil, 1995, 2000) or involved in debates about feminist archiving (Moore, 2016; Ashton, 2017), especially in relation to protest camps. But it also raises larger questions. How can contemporary feminists approach and recover lost feminist stories? What are the ethical and political challenges of feminist interviewing or oral histories? How do 274

Greenham Women Everywhere

activists navigate or contest the extractive model of academic research? How do historical erasures or nostalgic attachments shape contemporary feminism?

Origins of Greenham Women Everywhere Rebecca:

I run Scary Little Girls, and I co-​run Greenham Women Everywhere. My mum, Marie Knowles, took me to Greenham and it changed the course of my life, as well as hers. It was a lovely generational experience, which is why we need to make sure those experiences are available to other people, by creating the archive and being very active in its creation and promotion and dissemination.

Ray:

I got involved just by being an interviewee for Greenham Women Everywhere and I thought, ‘What a brilliant thing!’ I think there was a call out on the FiLiA [Feminism in London] newsletter, or there’s a Blue Gate group1 and different Facebook groups, and I responded immediately and became quite supportive. So many of the stories of Greenham are all about the build-​up, the missiles arriving, and then they went, and everyone was happy, everyone went home; when actually we were on the Common for another eight or more years to get rid of the fence. Also, I’m the third Greenham woman to be housing for posterity the Blue Gate diaries. (We decided that we wouldn’t lodge the Blue Gate diaries for public access until we’re all dead.) So that’s partly why I felt a bit of a responsibility; I’ve got these diaries and they are an incredible resource which I’ve been using at times to tell the story to Greenham Women Everywhere.

Vanessa:

I’ve been working for the Greenham Women Everywhere project for just over a year now. My background is in theatre and teaching. Greenham is something that I knew a little bit about before I joined the team, I remember asking my mum about it, but yeah, I’m very passionate about it now. I speak to women every day and find out their interesting and inspiring stories. That’s my job!

Kate:

I am a writer and I edit an online publication called The Heroine Collective, which details the lives of women who challenge and develop socio-​political culture in the past and present. I started it about six years ago, as a sideline 275

Feminism and Protest Camps

really, designed the website that would hold lots of different articles, and then recruited a team of writers from various places: the UK, the USA, Italy. We release long-​form content onto the blog once a month and readers can search for inspiring women via location, historical period, vocation and so on. It’s very much an activist project –​it comes from a real eagerness to share important stories about women’s lives. Rebecca:

It was due to the success of The Heroine Collective, how brilliantly Kate had put it together, that I first talked to her about how we were losing the voices of Greenham.

Kate:

I think it was Helen John dying, wasn’t it?2 I remember a panicked phone call then, when we asked ‘What are we going to do? All these stories are disappearing!’ We felt like we hadn’t heard their voices. So Becca and I came together to work on this –​we’ve known each other for over twenty years. We trained as actors together.

Alison:

Rebecca, how did you start Scary Little Girls?

Rebecca:

Scary Little Girls is a production hub; primarily live arts and theatre practice but increasingly collaborating with different kinds of artists, embracing animation, live music, VR [virtual reality], all sorts of different media, and now we are really involved in the digital world due to the COVID lockdown. But the unifying thing is a commitment to feminism: having a feminist voice and diverse, feminist, women-​led casts. I started it after I went to a very traditional, extremely competitive drama school, and we were so grateful to be the few women that got in that we let this this institution do the most ridiculous things to us as a matter of course, from institutionalised sexism to organised #MeToo style bullying. It was a very unpleasant three years. So I saw how easy it was to have a structure that didn’t treat people very well. I thought, ‘I can’t change everything but I can make one small structure that tries to be a supportive environment that creates really great art and is at least a haven from predatory, sexist, bullying, shitty men’. Now I’m surrounded by absolutely lovely women and a few great men. I got really, really lucky. The financial insecurities that go along with that are utterly worth it. 276

Greenham Women Everywhere

Ray:

What Rebecca has just described is basically the process that a lot of us went through to end up at Greenham. We can’t change this, but we can create our own alternative.

Rebecca:

I am sure I came to that conclusion quicker because I knew about Greenham. That’s why I become passionate about what cultural robbery it is for other women to not know about Greenham. I think we have a duty of care as women to make sure other women know about that.

Alison:

Can you tell me how Greenham Women Everywhere emerged from Scary Little Girls?

Rebecca:

I turned 40. My mum died a few years before, taking all of her Greenham stories with her and, talking to other women, I realised that no one younger than me had heard of Greenham. I thought, they’re erasing these women within their own lifetimes and, if someone doesn’t step in, their stories will be gone. I wasn’t the only woman who thought that, there are quite a lot of cultural projects now about Greenham. I then approached The Heroine Collective and we put together a Heritage Lottery bid to do the original 100 interviews. That’s how it started and now it is its own Community Interest Company, separate from Scary Little Girls.

Alison:

Was it a conscious decision to not go to an institution, for example where other Greenham archives are held?3

Rebecca:

Actually, Kate was doing her MA at the time, so one of the partners we had through her connections was the Women’s Library at the LSE [London School of Economics]. And Goldsmiths was a partner, also Bristol University and Gwithtiow Kernow, which is an archive for Cornish life. They had roles in training. The University of West England trained the volunteers in how to interview, consent forms—​

Kate:

And in archiving, training people to actually put the data online.

Rebecca:

Falmouth University was on hand for questions like, how do you deal with someone talking about somebody who’s died? We could check in with them about legal 277

Feminism and Protest Camps

best practice. And we are now archiving all of the existing interviews with the LSE and their archivist. Kate:

Goldsmiths offered us exhibition space and asked us to do a talk.

Rebecca:

But we wanted to be the main creators behind it, not tied up with one institution.

Interviewing Greenham women Alison:

Can you say more about the women you’ve been interviewing? Who comes forward? Why do they want to talk about it? What’s it like remembering Greenham?

Vanessa:

A mix of women come forward. Some get in touch and say, ‘I’ve come across your project, I’d love to talk about it’. Others we find, and contact them, and sometimes women are quite reluctant because they don’t know why we’d be interested in them, some because they say they never actually lived there so they think they weren’t really a Greenham woman –​even though they supported the camp, did Cruisewatch,4 took food every single weekend for five years! So some think their stories aren’t valuable. Lots of them through the interview then remember all of these things, it helps them remember.

Rebecca:

When we first set up the project, Kate and I expected to interview twenty to thirty women, if we could find them out there. We were deluged with women! Actually, during the first year of the project we lost trust because we fell behind with the amount of women contacting us. Vanessa’s role in keeping in touch with interviewees can’t be underestimated, it helps us keep faith with the networks of Greenham women.

Ray:

I think it helps that you are using these networks. I’ve done a few interviews for academic research, and they are off-​putting. You feel like some sort of specimen. I have no say on how they’re going to represent me, and they’ve got their own agenda and it’s going to be extracted to illustrate their agenda. In one instance, questions like, ‘What did you do about supporting disabled women to be 278

Greenham Women Everywhere

at camp?’ Well, we were being evicted twice a day!5 It’s a very institutionalised question. Disabled women came with their abilities and they knew what support they needed, they have their own solutions to hand and we worked with them according to their requirements. It wasn’t us being the social services: they came with their own solutions. Catherine:

How was the experience of being interviewed for the Greenham Women Everywhere project different from academic interviews?

Ray:

I could tell my story. I was reading ecofeminist Vandana Shiva in Manushi before I went to Greenham and had a separatist phase which fitted with Greenham. People associate Greenham with a motherhood approach to resisting nuclear weapons, but I and others really did not like or relate to that as a motivation, it was a mainstream narrative, we were creating a separatist and lesbian culture and lifestyle.     Also because I’ve got the diaries –​I went to the meeting to vote for it to be women-​only and get rid of the men; I went with my girlfriend to tow away the last caravan at Blue Gate: I wasn’t there consistently but I have a broad overview. I have my own agenda and part of my theme was Greenham women are everywhere. The women that Vanessa just talked about, who brought hot meals for five years, I wanted to make them visible. You didn’t have to camp to be a Greenham woman. Rebecca:

Kate and I were both aware that Greenham women can be quite distrustful about how they’re represented. I think one of the things that helped us was that we weren’t saying this is a body of work for this university, or for this TV programme: it was just: Be in it for your own sake, in your own voice, on this website. And though you change things even by documenting them, it is important that the women know their story is changed as little as possible.

Vanessa:

It’s also important that I reassure them that they can listen before we upload it and can edit it. We can check for when people mention names of people who may not want to be named, or respond to people who have gone on to be judges and don’t want the interview out there.

279

Feminism and Protest Camps

Rebecca:

I honestly think it made a big difference that I was a Greenham child. As soon as I mentioned it, interviewees would ask, ‘Ooh, what was your mum’s name?’ It totally changed the style of the dialogue; suddenly it was a memory share. So the two biggest tools have been: ‘we’re just trying to record your stories’; and then, ‘I was at Greenham so I know how important it is’. Those two things seem to gain women’s trust.

Alison:

Have you come across other Greenham children?

Vanessa:

I interviewed a family where the grandmother, her daughter and granddaughter had all been at Greenham. So it’s not just the stories of Greenham but the impact that it’s had on people’s lives since. The daughter was there at Embrace the Base6 at the age of five and while she doesn’t have distinct memories of it, she said in her interview that she must have absorbed holding hands with 30,000 women around a nine-​mile fence and singing, because now she runs singing circles as her main job.

Catherine:

Like Rebecca, I went to Greenham as a child with my mum, Sheila Eschle, and it’s only as my work developed that I’ve realised how formative that was. You interviewed Mum for the archive, she was worried about not remembering things correctly, and then she had a strong emotional reaction during the interview as the memories came back. How did others react?

Rebecca:

Lots of women get upset and have a little cry, some of them get all giddy and giggly and sing us songs, sometimes both in the same interview. They get rageful. Very highly literate, articulate smart women being honest, emotionally and intellectually, they’re quite passionate interviews. I think most women seem to feel good that they’ve done it. There’s only been a couple of women in the whole process that have said ‘I don’t want my piece used at all’. A few women who check carefully every word, do several edits. But by and large women go, ‘Yeah, I did do all that! Now it’s there forever. I was pretty bloody great wasn’t I!’. We don’t get enough time to reflect on what we did and what we’re capable of. I really hope we’re doing everything we can to make it empowering for the women who give us interviews and who listen to them. 280

Greenham Women Everywhere

Catherine:

And Ray, you’ve gone from being interviewed to doing interviews now?

Ray:

I’ve only done a few, and it’s mostly been with friends that I’ve press-​ganged into doing them. It’s more conversational, but sometimes I know that they know things that they’re not telling me, which is difficult, but maybe they don’t want it on record. The other thing I find challenging is when they say things that I know are wrong! But it is really fun, and I’m up for doing more.

Rebecca:

It’s really important having a Greenham woman in the team of interviewers too. It just brings something else out in the mix. Just by saying, ‘Yeah, I remember that, did this happen?’ Or, ‘Do you remember this?’.7

Representing and re-imagining Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp Rebecca:

The original funding was to collect the oral testimonies and then to create a pop-​up exhibition to be a kind of conversation piece –​to create awareness.

Kate:

So we created a tent filled with paraphernalia, memorabilia, objects, news articles, photographs, into which people could go and listen on headphones to the Greenham women speaking. The idea was to direct them back to the website to hear the testimonies. A visual arts academic from the University of the West of England designed the tent. It went to a few festivals, libraries, even to some quite Right-​wing locations around the UK—​

Rebecca:

to CND [Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament], and back to Greenham Common. Where people from the nearby town of Newbury had a go at us because they were still really angry forty years later! We always host these things with Greenham women.     When the pandemic hit we got some funding to redo it all as a VR exhibition online, Greenham Women Digital, with a group called Animorph.8 And we were also funded to make the original website more accessible, so we’re using software to turn all the audio into transcripts. And another artist, LH 281

Feminism and Protest Camps

Trevail, suggested some open-​source software called Twine that would make a narrative game out of the transcripts. LH has made this amazing ‘choose your own adventure’ game: so you read it, and it might begin with: ‘You approach a campfire. There are six women. Who do you want to talk to?’. And then you click through and ask them questions.9     And then during lockdown we started thinking about how many women needed remote tech skills, so now we have funding to teach women to use the software so that they can make their own versions of these games. We’re using the transcripts, and it also gives them remote skills that they can turn to absolutely anything else they like. Catherine:

I went to an event at Glasgow Women’s Library, where we sat with an archive box of newsletters and other documents from Greenham, and people loved seeing the text and images.10 But what really struck me about your work, particularly the interactive VR website, is the distinctive use of sound. The visual imagery is quite simple, but there are layers of music and birdsong and you make creative use of recorded interviews and performance. Sound was also important in the tent exhibition, wasn’t it? Is there something about that which is important for documenting Greenham?

Rebecca:

I think the images really date, because photos looked a certain way then. They were using analogue technology to make zines and posters. So even though these things are lovely, it’s a very particular aesthetic that is quite separate from where we are now. Whereas when you hear women talk about, ‘This is what we did. Oh! and then I did this with my life’, or ‘Now I’m doing this’, you suddenly realise it’s not finished, it’s not this place in the past where they do things differently: it’s these people doing things and here are the things we’re still doing, here’s the nuclear policy that we still need to change, here’s this resurgence of veganism that they were doing at the camp forty years ago. It makes it very current and much less dismissible if you have those women actually speaking.

Catherine:

There’s also something particularly immersive about the sound. There are parallels with a Glasgow Transport Museum exhibit that had a caravan from Faslane Peace Camp,11 you could go inside and listen to a recording 282

Greenham Women Everywhere

from someone who lived in the van, people talking, the campfire crackling. Kate:

I think it shows how many of the interviews were so focused on life outdoors, survival outdoors was such a huge part of it, as if a primary memory was the fire, being outdoors and surviving. And the resilience it gave them to then combat other things in their lives. Once you’ve snapped a blanket in half that is frozen over your head, you can do anything! There is a visceral quality to that.

Alison:

Tell us about the book. Is your imagined audience people who don’t know anything about Greenham?

Kate:

I don’t think so, because it is with the History Press, people go there with an interest in history. I imagine their demographics are a little older, so marketing it to younger people will be work we have to do. We tried to make the book’s language as accessible as we could for the younger generation.

Rebecca:

And there’s so many women’s voices in it, even if you know about the camp, you will still find loads in there.

Kate:

It’s like an ensemble piece. We’ve called it Out of the Darkness, after a Frankie Armstrong song.12 It took the best part of a year. We spent a lot of time listening to the interviews, and we talked a lot about how to make it voice-​led rather than led by us. Rebecca and I have co-​written it, as a vehicle for the 60 interviews we’ve peppered throughout –​so there’s loads of their content, far more them than us.

Rebecca:

We planned out a map, everything we wanted to include about, say, camp life, we would then think, ‘So these are the things people who don’t know this yet need to know, and here are all the women that talk about it’, and then we worked out a structure with a story arc. It was helpful that both of us are fiction writers. It’s the book I was looking for about Greenham, with as many women’s voices in as possible, to tell me the story of the camp.

283

Feminism and Protest Camps

Kate:

The chapter themes seemed quite obvious by that point as we’d interviewed so many women, and it was the same things coming up every time. There were some difficulties like, how do you talk about NVDA [non-​violent direct action] and not talk about violence; 13 how do we talk about NVDA and separate it from their use of art as a form of activism?14

Rebecca:

A crucial decision we made was whether there should be a chapter on sexuality and lesbianism and we decided no, that should just be in every chapter, because it’s such a huge underpinning of the camp. It was probably, generously, 70/​ 30 lesbian/​​straight, so having their own chapter was just weird; they should actually be represented in every chapter.

Kate:

It was articulated all the time in the interviews. So much of the art was about being a lesbian. Then so much of the NVDA stuff was entwined with being a lesbian. And the aggression from the media and police was often targeted at lesbians, so it was everywhere.

Rebecca:

In the last chapter of our book we look at the kind of work Greenham women went on to do, and some continued in various campaigns, and they work today in the #MeToo movement, for Black Lives Matter, animal rights, Extinction Rebellion. We’re now making more Trident nuclear missiles, nuclear proliferation is back on the agenda:15 almost everything they did at Greenham we could be learning from, and Greenham women are still involved in these issues, it’s not all about ‘back then’.

Forgetting Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp Catherine:

You talk of people being robbed of the memory of Greenham. Who it was that had forgotten: was it feminist women specifically, or women generally, or activists? Or the wider public?

Rebecca:

All of them. I’ve been working with younger feminists, my background is in tackling male violence, doing Reclaim the Night marches,16 my partner’s family is in the radical Green movement, anti-​fracking, non-​violent direct actions,17 and I would say, ‘That’s like Greenham’, and 284

Greenham Women Everywhere

they would say, ‘Like what?’. I would say, ‘How can you not know?’. I recognised there were a lot of people not standing on the shoulders of the giants that came before them because didn’t know they existed. It’s just not in our cultural framework to talk about it. Unlike the suffragettes.     I’ve given talks to primary school through to university level students, hundreds of them at a time, and when you tell them about Greenham, their first reaction is, ‘This is brilliant!’ And their next reaction is, ‘Why don’t I know about this?’. Ray:

I think it was completely erased, even from radical stories. At the time it was worse, we were slandered and silenced. We were ‘dirty lezzies’ [lesbians], squatting in the mud. The vilification in the mainstream media was much more vicious then. And after the Cruise missiles left, other parts of the peace movement were like, ‘Why are the women still there?’. And then it was, ‘No they’re gone, they’re not there anymore’ –​and we were! I’ve got evidence in the diaries that CND said in their Sanity magazine that we weren’t there anymore. The Quakers pulled out support once the Cruise missiles went. Which is pretty weird, because the base at Greenham Common was still the largest military runway in Europe. I think the separatist and lesbian culture and lifestyle became stronger after Cruise had gone and with it much anti-​nuclear interest and support.

Rebecca:

I also think there is a big problem with academic and activist representation of Greenham when I hear it dismissed as ‘White feminism’. I find that really problematic and I would love our archive to challenge it, because it is a patriarchal move in my opinion. This is the biggest women-​led campaign since suffrage, we are talking about the experiences of thousands of women. It’s another way of silencing women, to write off a movement of thousands of women as one thing.     Ray and other women in our archive speak very eloquently about the dynamics of race at the camp. It was a very international camp, but it was largely White. The women that we have spoken to who are mixed heritage or Black say that it wasn’t the camp that was the problem, it was the institutionalised racism of the military and the police and the courts structures that made it really difficult for women of colour to be there. And there are other women 285

Feminism and Protest Camps

who talked about it being a self-​fulfilling prophecy, so one of our interviewees says she can imagine if she was Black and she turned up, she’d be like, ‘not sure this is for me’. But other women also talk about their successful outreach to women all over the world, particularly Indigenous women, which I know was a big part of the Pine Gap camp,18 and those women, some still work with Indigenous women in international rights movements, particularly in the Pacific where they tested nuclear weapons.19 Ray:

Land rights was one of the issues that linked us with Indigenous groups –​reclaiming the common was always part of the Greenham campaign. This was not much on any other movement’s agenda, although the anti-​apartheid movement was big for a long time during that era.

Rebecca:

Also I think dismissing Greenham as White feminism is a really reductive way to catalogue diversity, because actually our archive –​which is only a couple of hundred women representing thousands of women –​it’s got women of colour, it’s got women of all different classes, different ages, really broad physical abilities, women from Europe and all over the world and of course it is predominantly lesbian. And women who are now into all sides of the different political feminist debates –​‘gender critical’, trans feminist, pro sex work, abolitionist –​our archive covers all of those opinions as well and the women don’t necessarily agree on all those things. So it is an enormously diverse collection of women at Greenham, because how could thousands of women not be? To write off all of that diversity as White feminism: it’s another way of not counting it.

Vanessa:

A lot of that is about turning women against women. The media just puts it down as very middle-​class, White housewives, who’ve got lots of money and it’s just a hobby for them because they’ve got nothing else to do. That can influence women from other classes and cultural backgrounds to think, ‘Oh yeah that’s what it was’. I think a lot of women do think that way about it.

Ray:

An academic piece that Rebecca sent to me was specifically about the role of religion and spirituality at camp and all the way through, except for one or two occasions, 286

Greenham Women Everywhere

the author completely erased the word ‘women’: it was Greenham Peace Camp. One of our identities was that we are Common women. You can’t take Greenham and then remove the women bit because it’s a lie. That’s a part of the erasure in academia now, I think it’s a queer theory thing that they sign up to, erasing and rewriting by not using the word ‘women’.20     At Aldermaston Women’s Peace Camp21 –​I stopped going about ten years ago, it’s one weekend a month usually Friday and Saturday night –​we had a couple of inquiries from trans women who were interested in what our policy was and we said, ‘Just turn up. Just come and meet us. We don’t have a policy. We’re not being forced to make any exceptional statements. You’re welcome. Come and meet us.’ I mean, they never did, or if they did we didn’t know. But if they had stayed overnight then we would have seen how it goes: when you actually start living with people, having breakfast, when you’re feeling hungover, it all shakes down. Rebecca:

It’s interesting to wonder what would happen now. Almost straight away some of the major arguments would be: ‘Who is a woman? Who gets to come? How do we define “woman”?’22 I wonder if it would survive those debates –​ especially now, when we can offload straight away on social media. At Greenham if there was division, if there was a row, it might take a few weeks to get to the mainstream papers.

Kate:

Yeah, there were arguments between women at Greenham but I think there’s something about having the same overall goal, where space can be made for different political opinions. I feel we can learn from that. At the moment it often feels like we’re punching at each other rather than coming together.

Catherine:

Is there something about the protest camp space, when people were actually living together, that allows those conversations?

Rebecca:

One of the women we interviewed talks about how it’s really unusual now to sit down with someone who is fundamentally not from your world and find out their experiences, and Greenham allowed that space. If you disagreed with someone it was your duty to try to enlighten 287

Feminism and Protest Camps

them, and their duty to enlighten you, and you had to put the time and the work into properly discussing things. And then later you would be watching each other’s backs, linking arms because the missiles were coming out, and so on. I think there is something to be learned about not playing into the hands of patriarchy. We don’t necessarily have to agree with each other all the time. We do need to be united against our oppressors and save our biggest fights for that.

Greenham futures Catherine:

What are your plans for the project moving forward?

Kate:

We are working on a podcast. I am interested in getting more articles out there about the content of the archive, to explore that in print, I’m not sure where but I’d like to write about how you do this kind of work, in non-​fictional writing or journalistic work.

Rebecca:

Scary Little Girls and Greenham Women Everywhere are working toward a big celebratory event for the start of the 40th anniversary of Greenham later in 2021 –​Greenham women don’t all agree when it ended but they do all agree when it started! We are recreating the initial march from Cardiff to Greenham Common that started the camp.23 We hope to walk in the last week of August and arrive the 3rd September. Have a day to relax and then a day of celebrations, or some collaborations with local organisations. But we don’t yet know about COVID, or if we will have money to organise any infrastructure or digital activities for it.

Ray:

There’s been a bit of conversation around nostalgia, but recreating is not about nostalgia. There are many different ways of taking control of our own stories, writing our own herstories, so one of the one of the words I call it is a re-​enactment.

Rebecca:

It has divided the Greenham women a bit, that it’s either nostalgic or it’s a waste of energy, but we exist to catalogue and promote Greenham and part of that is to reach the next generation, to say not ‘just look what they did’ but

288

Greenham Women Everywhere

‘look what that means you could do if you want to’. We can end patriarchy together. Ray:

It also sidesteps the questions about ‘why women only?’. Anyone can come, because anyone came on the first one. And on a walk you walk alongside different women, for different lengths of time, and have actual conversations that are not recorded. It resolves all sorts of issues.

Rebecca:

And it is not about the past, it is viscerally linked to our current policy, the way the law works now, how new campaigners and new activists have to deal with the law. The laws around activism, and how we penalise it, come out of how they penalised Greenham women and developed the law to penalise them more. It’s current.     My more personal mission is to get a fiction film or documentary made by a British or American TV company. My dream is a TV series about Greenham, a kind of Orange Is the New Black, with a writers’ room, not just my thing, a group of women writing it, a diverse multi-​women cast. Television is probably the most potent and most immediate medium, and when it’s done well, it’s brilliant. And the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] are going to let this whole anniversary year go by and not do anything! Kate:

It needs to be chipped away at in different areas. We talk in our book about Greenham radicalising an entire generation, and I think if you start putting Greenham out en masse on TV stations –​what’s going to happen? Stories are really powerful: they make us act, they create feelings in us. In terms of upholding the patriarchy, it’s a very good idea not to put Greenham on television.

Rebecca:

Because women inspire women. And it’s nice to have a win story when you become politicised, so it’s not all about all the problems, what we still have to do. These women impacted international policy, they got the Common back for the British people, they lived huge lives in the process of doing it –​this is a really celebratory story. We can enjoy learning from that.

289

Feminism and Protest Camps

Notes 1

2

3

4

5 6

7

8

9 10

11 12

13

Initially, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp was just one camp, at the main gate of the military base. Over time, other camps were set up at other gates: all were colour coded by the campers, and each attracted a particular subset of women and had a different ‘personality’ (Roseneil, 1995: 75–​82). Helen John was a Greenham woman who remained a prominent peace campaigner until her death in 2017, see: https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​uk-​news/​2017/​nov/​13/​helen-​ john-​obitu​ary Greenham archives are kept in several university and public libraries, including in the Women’s Library collection hosted at the London School of Economics (https://​arch​ives​ hub.jisc.ac.uk/​sea​rch/​archi​ves/​c4a93​2b1-​8836-​3d12-​a7bb-​d98b5​37cc​36f), at Feminist Archive South, based at the University of Bristol (Bartlett, 2015), and at Glasgow Women’s Library (https://​womens​libr​ary.org.uk/​about-​us/​our-​proje​cts/​the-​wom​ens-​arch​ive/)​ Cruisewatch brought together peace campaigners in the 1980s seeking to track and raise awareness of the transportation of ground-​launched, nuclear-​armed Cruise missiles on the roads of the UK (Nuclear Information Service, 1986). The contemporary equivalent is Nukewatch UK (https://​www.nukewa​tch.org.uk/​). The ‘cat and mouse game’ of evictions at the camp is detailed by Sasha Roseneil (1995: 120–​​4). Embrace the Base took place on 12 December 1982: over 30,000 women took part, attracting significant media attention (Roseneil, 1995: 101–​2). These observations on interviewing Greenham women recall Ann Oakley’s classic text on feminist interviewing as a kind of conversational exchange of experience between equals (1982). While Oakley’s view can be critiqued for ignoring power inequalities and experiential differences between women, and between feminist researchers and their research subjects, her trenchant criticisms of the exploitative and hierarchical nature of conventional academic interviewing, and her insistence on the need for a more egalitarian and caring feminist alternative, remain highly influential. Unfortunately, it would appear that Ray’s experience of feminist academic interviews replicates some of the dynamics so criticised by Oakley. The Greenham Women Digital experience can be accessed here: https://​greenh​amwo​ men.digi​tal/​about. The game can be accessed here: https://​scary​litt​legi​rls.co.uk/​campf​i re/.​ This was one of a pair of archival workshops organised in 2019 by artist and curator Yvonne Billimore, discussed in more detail in Chapter 13 by Niamh Moore. See Chapter 9 by Catherine Eschle in this volume. Hear Frankie Armstrong talk about the inspiration for this song on the Scary Girls website (Scary Little Girls, 2020). Non-​violent direct action or NVDA refers to a long-​established tradition of political intervention in which activists do not rely on institutional or representative mechanisms for change but instead seek an immediate impact that disrupts business as usual, in ways that are shaped by a commitment to not doing harm to others. As Roseneil puts it, ‘It was a principle of Greenham that no violence should be used either in daily life at the camp, or in the course of actions, even when faced with violence from police or soldiers (1995: 63). Simultaneously ‘there was an increasing tendency for actions to have a direct impact as well as a symbolic one, that is, for them to involve physical interventions in the work of the base or sabotage and/​or damage’ (1995: 100). This involved a specific understanding of NVDA as active not passive, involving confrontation with authority, risk of hurt to the self, and damage to property. As Chris Rossdale recognises (2019: 26), NVDA at Greenham and the media attention it received, ‘played a major role in normalising mass, obstructive and illegal direct action within anti-​militarist politics’ and beyond. 290

Greenham Women Everywhere 14

15

16

17

18 19

20

21

22

23

The art of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp ranged from songs to zines (Feigenbaum, 2010, 2013), along with the creative incorporation into direct actions of visual imagery (family photographs, spider sculptures, textiles and woven thread) intended to invoke both everyday domesticity and subversive symbols of feminine power (Feigenbaum, 2015). See the UK Government’s Integrated Review for details of the planned increase in the overall nuclear warhead ceiling from 225 to 260 (HM Government, 2021: 76–​8). Reclaim the Night marches defend the right of women to move safely through public space at night, free from the threat of sexual violence. Beginning in the late 1970s, the marches were a common feature of the second-​wave feminist movement in England, but petered out in the 1990s. However, they underwent a revival from the mid-​2000s, led by the London Feminist Network (Mackay, 2013). The 1990s saw an upsurge of radical environmental activism in the UK, characterised by a rejection of institutionalised lobbying techniques in favour of direct action and centring initially on opposition to road-​building. A new generation of protest camps was established in this context (Doherty, 2000). Since around 2010, road-building has been replaced by fracking –​or the hydraulic pumping of water and chemicals at high pressure through rock to extract gas –​and latterly by the climate crisis as the main focus of UK environmentalists’ direct action (see: https://​frack-​off.org.uk/ and https://extinctionrebellion.uk/​). See Chapter 12 by Alison Bartlett in this volume. The UK–​Pacific solidarity network, Women Working for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific, emerged from Greenham and continued until the late 1990s (Eschle, 2020). Ray’s concern that the rise of queer theory within the academy has displaced a focus on women’s experience echoes some radical feminist critiques of queer theory’s poststructuralist-​influenced destabilisation of fixed identity categories, or of the presumed dominance in queer theory of gay men and with them the rise of a male-​dominated politics (for example, Walters, 1996; Rudy, 2001). However, it is worth noting that queer theory has been used productively by feminists to interpret Greenham. In this vein, Sasha Roseneil argues that a queer lens can show how the camp ‘destabilized gender and sexual identities, and provoked radical reworkings of ways of thinking about and being a “woman” ’ as well as underlining the ‘unusualness of its politics and practices … how life there uncompromisingly challenged authority and convention’(Roseneil, 2000: 6–​7). See also Chapter 4 in this volume by Finn Mackay. AWE (Atomic Weapons Establishment) Aldermaston is a UK Ministry of Defence nuclear research and testing centre. Greenham women began camping there intermittently in 1985 and a monthly women’s camp has taken place regularly ever since (see https://​www. faceb​ook.com/​Alde​r mas​ton-​Wom​ens-​Peace-​Camp-​1768​8602​5697​350/​). Such arguments did take place at Greenham, right from the decision in February 1982 to become women-​only. Roseneil argues that ‘[q]‌uestions about who the women of Greenham were, about degrees and hierarchies of being Greenham women, and how the identity of “woman” was to be performed at Greenham were the issues which constituted the internal politics of the movement’, giving rise to fractious and often unresolved debates and conflicts (Roseneil, 2000: 141). However, on Roseneil’s account these conflicts were not about the biological status or otherwise of the category of ‘woman’ and whether the camp should be trans-​inclusive, which is what Ray and Rebecca are alluding to and which has become a much more politicised issue in the UK in recent years. In Chapter 4 in this volume, Finn Mackay has reinterpreted her experience at Menwith Hill Women’s Peace Camp in the light of this development, in ways that destabilise fixed understandings of ‘women’ at that camp. See also Chapter 7 by Emma Gómez Nicolau, which documents how recent feminist protest camps in Spain reinterpret ‘women-​only’ to include trans women and non-​binary people. See: https://​gree​nham​wome​neve​rywh​ere.co.uk/​march/.​ 291

Feminism and Protest Camps

References Ashton, J. (2017) ‘Feminist Archiving [A Manifesto Continued]: Skilling for Activism and Organising’, Australian Feminist Studies, 32(91/​2): 126–​49. Bartlett, A. (2015) ‘Researching the International Feminist Peace Movement’, Feminist Archive South. Available from: http://​femin​ista​rchi​veso​uth.org. uk/​ali​son-​bartl​ett-​rese​arch​ing-​the-​intern​atio​nal-​femin​ist-​peace-​movem​ ent/​[Accessed 12 August 2021]. Cook, A. and Kirk, G. (1983) Greenham Women Everywhere: Dreams, Ideas and Actions from the Women’s Peace Movement, London: Pluto. Doherty, B. (2000) ‘Manufactured Vulnerability: Protest Camp Tactics’, in B. Seel, M. Paterson and B. Doherty (eds) Direct Action in British Environmentalism, London: Routledge, pp 62–​78. Eschle, C. (2020) ‘Research Note: Racism, Colonialism and Transnational Solidarity in Feminist Anti-​Nuclear Activism’, DEP –​Deportate, esuli, profughe, 41/​2(1): 64–​78. Available at: https://​www.unive.it/​pag/​filead​ min/​user​_​upl​oad/​dipar​time​nti/​DSLCC/​docume​nti/​DEP/​num​eri/​n41-​ 42/​9_​Esc​hle.pdf [Accessed 30 June 2022]. Feigenbaum, A. (2010) ‘ “Now I’m a Happy Dyke!”: Creating Collective Identity and Queer Community in Greenham Women’s Songs’, Journal of Popular Music Studies, 22(4): 367–​88. Feigenbaum, A. (2013) ‘Written in the Mud’, Feminist Media Studies, 13(1): 1–​13. Feigenbaum, A. (2015) ‘From Cyborg Feminism to Drone Feminism: Remembering Women’s Anti-​Nuclear Activisms’, Feminist Theory, 16(3): 265–​88. Greenham Women Everywhere (2021) ‘Homepage’. Available from: https://​ gree​nham​wome​neve​r ywh​ere.co.uk/​ [Accessed 19 May 2021]. HM Government (2021) Global Britain in a Competitive Age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, CP 403, March. London: HM Stationery Office. Available from: https://​www.gov.uk/​gov​ ernme​ nt/p​ ubli​cati​ons/​glo​bal-​brit​ain-​in-​a-​comp​etit​ive-​age-​the-​int​egra​ted-​ rev​iew-​of-​secur​ity-​defe​nce-​deve​lopm​ent-​and-​fore​ign-​pol​icy [Accessed 19 May 2021]. Kerrow, K. and Mordan, R. (2021) Out of the Darkness: Greenham Voices 1981–​2000, Cheltenham: History Press. Mackay, F. (2013) ‘The March of Reclaim the Night: Feminist Activism in Movement’, PhD thesis, University of Bristol. Available from: https://​ ethos.bl.uk/​ O rder​ D eta​ i ls.do?uin=​ u k.bl.ethos.627 ​ 9 50 [Accessed 4 October 2021]. Moore, N. (2016) ‘Weaving Archival Imaginaries: Researching Community Archives’, in N. Moore, A. Salter, L. Stanley and M. Tamboukou, The Archive Project: Archival Research in the Social Sciences, Abingdon: Routledge, pp 129–​52. 292

Greenham Women Everywhere

Nuclear Information Service (1986) ‘Cruisewatch Melting into the Countryside’, YouTube. Available from: https://​www.yout​ube.com/​ watch?v=​Lh1F​xvgB​xAs [Accessed 19 May 2021]. Oakley, A. (1982) ‘Interviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms’, in H. Roberts (ed) Doing Feminist Research, London: Routledge, pp 30–​61. Roseneil, S. (1995) Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham, Buckingham: Open University Press. Roseneil, S. (2000) Common Women, Uncommon Practices: The Queer Feminisms of Greenham, London: Cassell. Rossdale, C. (2021) Resisting Militarism: Direct Action and the Politics of Subversion, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Rudy, K. (2001) ‘Radical Feminism, Lesbian Separatism, and Queer Theory’, Feminist Studies, 27(1): 191–​222. Scary Little Girls (2020) ‘Out of the Darkness (Clip from Frankie Armstrong Interview, Greenham Women Everywhere Project)’, 21 August. Available from: https://​scary​litt​legi​rls.co.uk/​2020/​08/​21/​out-​of-​the-​darkn​ess/​ [Accessed 19 May 2021]. Scary Little Girls (nd) ‘Greenham Women Everywhere’. Available from: https://​scary​litt​legi​rls.co.uk/​commun​ity/​herit​age-​and-​collab​orat​ ion/​green​ham-​women-​eve​r ywh​ere/​ [Accessed 19 May 2021]. Walters, S.D. (1996) ‘From Here to Queer: Radical Feminism, Postmodernism, and the Lesbian Menace (or, Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Fag?)’, Signs, 21(4): 830–​69.

293

16

Conclusion: Rethinking Protest Camps, Rethinking Feminism Catherine Eschle and Alison Bartlett

The chapters we have collected here offer a polyphonic response to the feminist questions of protest camps we asked in the Introduction. They showcase a range of feminist theoretical and methodological frameworks that collectively reach towards a broadly intersectional or decolonial approach, along with case studies of camps from past and present, and from around the world. Notably, the chapters consider both Cold War western women-​ only peace camps and mixed-​gender camps from the recent ‘global wave’ and beyond, previously studied in largely distinct sets of scholarly research. Together, our contributors reveal fresh insights into how camps are sites of both gendered politics and of feminist activism; they draw on feminist theoretical frameworks to develop new ways of assessing the limitations and possibilities of the protest camp form; and they spotlight the complex legacies of past camps for feminist theory and practice today. This conclusion draws out some of the cross-​cutting insights from the chapters, in two sections. First we consider several ways in which the feminist orientation of our authors produces new lines of sight into the politics of protest camps. Second we reverse our focus and reflect on how grounding the analysis in protest camp politics generates new perspectives on feminist theory and practice.

Rethinking protest camps So how does the feminist perspective adopted in this book –​and the specific feminist approaches of our authors –​help us see protest camps differently? We organise the following discussion in terms of power, space, the body and language. 294

Conclusion

Power To begin with, the chapters draw our attention to the persistence, complexity and granularity of power relations within protest camps. Like the social movements in which they are embedded, camps do not transcend the power dynamics in wider society that activists may seek to overturn but are often mired within them, in ways that constrain activist interactions with each other in the camp and their broader sustainability and effectiveness. This phenomenon is illustrated vividly in the chapters on mixed-​gender camps. Take the discussion of Occupy camps in the United States and UK in the chapters by Celeste Montoya, Catherine Eschle, and Heather McKee Hurwitz and Anne Kumer (Chapters 2, 9 and 14), which together show how women, people of colour and queer and trans activists were sometimes subjected to physical and sexual violence, made to feel unsafe as well as unwelcome, in camp and online spaces. The chapters by Māhealani Ahia and Kahala Johnson on the Mauna Kea camp in Hawai’i, Chia-​Ling Yang on the 3/​18 Movement in Taiwan, Emma Gómez Nicolau on the Spanish 15-​M movement, and Sara Motta et al on the camps of the Landless Movement (MST) in Brazil (Chapters 3, 5, 7, and 11 respectively), all reveal hierarchical gender relations between activists in very different camp contexts. Moreover, because the broad feminist approach shared in this volume does not focus on gender hierarchies in a vacuum but instead emphasises the multiplicity and intersectionality of power relations, the chapters also underscore how power is at work in women-​only camps, and in women-​only spaces within mixed camps. While previous studies of the women’s peace camps of the Cold War have certainly paid attention to tactical differences and ideological conflicts on site (for example, Krasniewicz, 1992; Roseneil, 1995; Bartlett, 2011), the persistence of social hierarchies cutting across gender have received less attention. Rectifying this, Alison Bartlett in Chapter 12 identifies the ways in which living in a colonised nation produces political priorities at odds for the non-​ Indigenous and Indigenous women protesting at Pine Gap military installation in the Australian outback in 1983. These lived relations of dis/​possession created conflict around issues such as the involvement of men in the Pine Gap protests, interactions with police, and lesbian relationships. And Gómez Nicolau discusses how the Spanish activists who set up the #OrditFeminista camp in 2020 sought to respond to the past exclusions of women-​only spaces by reconceptualising the parameters of their ‘non-​mixed’ camp to include trans women and non-​ binary activists, and by centring the experiences of migrant women.

Space Connectedly, the chapters in this book illuminate the gendered spatiality of camps. There is already considerable attention in the social movement 295

Feminism and Protest Camps

literature to the spatial dimensions of protest camps: to how camps are spaces of movement convergence with their own distinctive topographies and infrastructures, online and offline (Kaika and Karaliotas, 2016; Kavada and Dimitriou, 2018); and to how the global wave of camps sought to reclaim public space from corporate ownership and neoliberal governmental forces in order to revitalise democracy (Dhaliwal, 2012; Arenas, 2014). In parallel, feminist geographers have argued that there are gendered dimensions of political processes and spaces at multiple scales (Staeheli et al, 2004; Pain and Smith, 2008; Kern, 2020). Bringing this work into view adds to the study of protest camps an understanding of how their spatial topographies, and the public space that underpins democratic participation, are stratified by the power relations discussed earlier. In this vein, several of the chapters in this book draw attention to how protest camps transgress the foundational divide in liberal capitalism between public and private life, and with it the notion of a separate private sphere, historically associated with women and the feminine. The public/​​private distinction still functions today both ideologically and in practical terms to constrain women’s full political participation and particularly the participation of women of colour and migrants. Camps establish domestic and intimate spaces in public view, however, and bring associated relations of care into public space, which Eschle in Chapter 9 and Anastasia Kavada in Chapter 10 both seek to capture by extending the heuristic of camp infrastructure developed in social movement scholarship to incorporate domestic and care functions. Connectedly, camps can be spaces in which some women are rendered strikingly visible as democratic actors or as resistant subjectivities. Yeşim Arat’s account in Chapter 6 of the iconography of the Gezi Park protest in Istanbul testifies to this, for example, as does Finn Mackay’s reflection in Chapter 4 on the visibility of diversely embodied women at Menwith Hill camp in the UK. The material and symbolic importance of the domestic dimensions of camp life and of the labour processes that underpin them may be particularly valued by women and feminist activists, as we can see in Chapter 8 by Joan Haran on the infrastructural work of the US ecofeminist organiser Starhawk, or in Yang’s Chapter 5 on the 3/​18 Movement. And in Kavada’s Chapter 10, we are given a sense of how the transgression of the public/​​private divide, the collectivisation of ‘the commons’ and the extension of relations of care into the public realm, are core to the feminist-​imbued model of ‘project democracy’ that Kavada gleans from her fieldwork in various protest camps. In addition, the chapters show that camps can be highly unequal and differentiated spaces. In this regard, Yang deploys a revealing spatial metaphor in her discussion of the 3/​18 camp, mapping how men occupied the leadership and performance roles at centre stage, while women were largely relegated to work behind the scenes. Moreover, Eschle’s analysis of 296

Conclusion

Occupy Glasgow and Faslane Peace Camp intimates that shifting ostensibly private and intimate aspects of life such as socialising and sleeping into public space can also have negative effects. It may actually make it harder for some overlapping groups of women to participate –​those with caring responsibilities, precarious jobs, disabilities, or in an insecure relationship to the state. Worse, this dimension of camp life may intensify the possibility of sexual violence and systemic insecurity for women and other marginalised groups. As both Montoya and Gómez Nicolau warn (in Chapters 2 and 7), feminist spatial strategies to combat that insecurity by providing ‘safe spaces’ within camps can also reproduce exclusions, hinging on expectations of (White, cis, heterosexual) normative femininity. The gendered spatiality of protest camps is thus complex and context-​specific: it may enable the entry of feminists and their allies into public space and discourse, through the creation of ‘brave spaces’ as Ahia and Johnson call them (Chapter 3); or it may reinstate or even exacerbate the spatial boundaries and exclusions of wider society. A more obvious spatial aspect of protest camps is evident in the broad range of geopolitical locations for case studies in this volume. While the famously muddy, cold and wet common of Greenham in the 1980s discussed in Chapter 15 by Kate Kerrow et al occupies a somewhat iconic position in the collective imaginary of feminist protest camps, the very idea of recreating a domestic space is transformed when it moves to the Australian desert (Bartlett, Chapter 12), the Brazilian countryside (Motta et al, Chapter 11), or a logging site on Vancouver Island (Moore, Chapter 13). The specificities of every region and their local politics in relation to globalisation impacts what the camps look like, how they are organised and how they intersect with gender and feminism (see also Eschle, 2017). This contextual specificity has temporal as well as geopolitical dimensions, with both camps and gender politics differing over time as well as place. Yet as Chapter 8 by Haran and Chapter 13 by Niamh Moore argue, camps also often escape their immediate time and place, with their traces and effects spiralling outward and onward through movements, networks, individuals, archives and cultural memories. In these two chapters, we find another reworking of the concept of camp infrastructures that has been so influential in social movement scholarship to try to capture this spatial and temporal extension: Haran pointing to the shared labour of passing on group rituals and Moore arguing that the ongoing construction of camp archives should be considered an important element of communicative infrastructure. Both contributors also turn to feminist metaphors: to the weaving and webs so prevalent at Greenham, and also to Donna Haraway’s thinking through the collective web work of cat’s cradles. In such ways, we are shown how camps, and the feminist politics within them, might ultimately refuse confinement to their particular time and place. 297

Feminism and Protest Camps

Body Gender and feminist politics have always been about bodies, and it is thus no surprise that this book pays close attention to the racialised, gendered and sexualised bodies that inhabit camps, insisting that what Motta and colleagues (Chapter 11) call ‘enfleshed’ embodiment is key to how camps are organised and what political tactics are deployed, and to their symbolic and concrete effects. As argued elsewhere by Orna Sasson-​Levy and Tamar Rapoport, ‘analytical questions raised by the “protesting body” of men and women have been mostly neglected’ in social movement theory (2003: 379), but there is much to learn on this point from feminist scholarship focused on the gendered production and disciplining of bodies, and the body as a site of individual and collective resistance (2003: 382). The chapters in this book contribute to such scholarship in several ways. First, they show how gendered and racialised bodies are mobilised in and through protest camps to create spectacles of defiance. Take Yang’s account in Chapter 5 of 3/​18 Movement activists deliberately dressing up in hyperfeminine clothing in order to confound expectations about who can physically defy the police (a strategy she shows to be open only to women who were from the dominant Chinese ethnic group, and straight), or Arat’s description of the women of Gezi Park (Chapter 6) wearing t-​shirts emblazoned with slogans poking fun at the Turkish leader Erdoğan’s latest pronouncement about women’s reproductive duties. These are instances where women deployed their bodies in ways that both drew upon and undermined the association of women with the private sphere and its caring roles, and that played with or subverted norms of racialised and feminine comportment and dress. Second, the chapters show camps to be important sites for the transformation of embodied subjectivities. In the women-​only camps discussed in this volume by Mackay, Bartlett and Kerrow et al (Chapters 4, 12 and 15, respectively), repeated confrontation with authority and new modes of interaction with other women can lead to radical shifts in not only how bodies are clothed but more generally in how they are comported, labelled, loved. Mackay’s chapter makes particularly clear that what it means to be a woman is thus a site of political contestation in women-​only camps, not their fixed foundation. For Motta et al (Chapter 11), resistances in mixed-​ gender protest camps and other spaces in Northeastern Brazil are about the ‘reoccupation’ of the body as much as land and territory: both are landscapes of the emergence of political possibility and of a more fully flourishing life. Third, the chapters underline how the feminised, racialised and otherwise non-​normative body is not only a conduit for resistance in camps, but also a site of vulnerability. This has a negative dimension in that particular bodies in camps constitute a target for shaming, marginalisation and violence, as 298

Conclusion

indicated earlier. Sasson-​Levy and Rapoport with reference to the Israeli Women in Black have shown how, when female activists use their bodies as sites of protest, the slurs and aggression directed at them by opponents are likely to target those same bodies (2003: 395), a phenomenon that has already been well documented in relation to Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp (for example, Cresswell, 1996: Ch. 5). Our chapters make clear that such hostility can also emanate from other activists in mixed-​gender protest sites. Those whose bodies can fit more easily into the pre-​existing mould for the activist, whether as rational tactician, rhetorician or heroic warrior for justice, have consciously targeted or unconsciously marginalised bodies that fail to fit this mould, as illustrated in this volume by Montoya, Ahia and Johnson, Yang, and Eschle (Chapters 2, 3, 5 and 9; see, more generally, Coleman and Bassi, 2011; Eschle, 2017). However, these chapters and others show that bodily vulnerability within protest camps also has a positive dimension, because activist recognition of it is key to mutual flourishing in camps and in life more generally: ‘our vulnerability and precarity “do not contain us but expose us to a world without which our living is not possible” ’ (Butler cited in Fotaki and Daskalaki, 2021: 1269). In different ways, this insight underpins both Kavada and Gómez Nicolau’s theorisation of the potential of protest camps (see Chapters 10 and 7). For Kavada, acknowledgement of bodily vulnerability and interdependence underpin the attitudes and relations of care that are crucial to what she calls the ‘project democracy’ that camps can facilitate. For Gómez Nicolau, recognition of the differential embodiment and experience of others is essential in order for camps to become spaces for the manifestation of diverse political subjects (following Butler, 2011). Either way, feminist theorisation puts the body centre stage in analysis of both the limitations and possibilities of the protest camp form.

Language We turn next to the discursive dimension of protest camp politics: to who gets to speak in or about camps, and to which languages and discourses carry authority. As in society more generally, men from the dominant ethnic, class and sexual groupings in society tend to assume more power to speak in camps. Thus, in Chapter 5, Yang draws attention to how male students from the top universities dominated relations with the media during the 3/​ 18 Movement, partly because they fitted both activist and media expectations of what a leader should look and talk like. Yang and other contributors also show how the political discourses that circulate in mixed protest camps frequently default to misogynistic or homophobic colloquialisms. This is evident in Yang’s description of the street ‘cursing-​stage’ in the 3/​18 Movement, where sexist slurs dominated, and in the accounts of both Arat 299

Feminism and Protest Camps

and Gómez Nicolau, in Chapters 6 and 7, of exclusionary language in the Gezi Park and 15-​M protests respectively. In addition, the chapters reveal how alternative political discourses are articulated and reclaimed within camps. See, for example Arat’s playful description of when sex workers in Gezi Park responded to the use of the epithets ‘son of a whore’ being hurled at President Erdoğan by insisting that he was no son of theirs. As well as contesting specific phrases, other chapters suggest particular forms of feminist knowledge production emerge from and about camps, whether it be oral history interviews or personal reflections, that situate knowledge in time as well as place (Haraway, 1988) and that offer a method of theorising from narrative or anecdote (Gallop, 2002). More broadly, the cases show how intersectional feminist research into protest camps can move subordinated movement discourses into the spotlight, whether these are the poems of Afro-​Brazilian women’s collectives in Motta et al in Chapter 11, the ecofeminist lineages traced by Haran and Moore in Chapters 8 and 13, or the activist discourses of care untangled by Kavada in Chapter 10. Particularly notable in this regard are the contributions by authors who write to decolonise the structures and epistemologies that often prompt social movements and yet remain embedded in their praxis. Ahia and Johnson’s Chapter 3 is a political act of bringing Indigenous Hawaiian language into the protest camp archive; similarly, Bartlett in Chapter 12 brings the language of Indigenous Australian feminists to her account of the Pine Gap/​​Quiurnpa protest, as well as actively re-​naming Anglicised locations as First Nations’ country. In parallel, Motta et al in Chapter 11 employ Brazilian Portuguese to describe forms of resistance that they feel are not directly translatable into academic English, and to thereby maintain a kind of conceptual dissonance for the Anglophone reader refused their expected political categories. These decolonising methods and gestures are critical forms that often require going against the expected grammar of academic essays. To unpack this a little: Ahia and Johnson’s linguistic specificity in describing and analysing the Mauna Kea camp and its context is a form of self-​determination in the face of continued colonial imposition in Hawai’i, hence their insistence on readers doing some work to connect with this culture and heritage through active translation of the Hawaiian language. Their chapter brings new conceptual idioms into the study of protest camps, vivid as their account is with reference to the land on which the camp was held and the plants that grow there. In this conceptual framework, the camp was sustained through metaphors of working the ground, of roots, growth and fecundity, as well as of constructing a shared house and home. Moreover, Ahia and Johnson’s chapter does not ossify Indigenous idioms but reveals their porousness with international feminist and queer narratives about dignity and respect, even in the face of internal opposition. This valuable 300

Conclusion

approach is echoed by Motta et al, who insist on the relation of land to body through the reoccupation of tierra and through a partial re-imagining of language and onto-​epistemologies in terms of what they call escrevivência and the gramáticas da dor e alegria. Motta et al’s linking of macro-​level social structures with the micro-​specifics of grammar suggests an intersectional and multilinguistic vision of occupation by particular bodies in time and place, protesting the terms of their dispossession and asserting their right to live and express themselves differently. In sum, these chapters share a discursive strategy that troubles and begins to unravel the colonial legacies that shape protest camps, not only in terms of the political languages that are articulated within them, but also in the analytic writing about them available to readers.

Rethinking feminism We want now to reverse the direction of our analysis to consider how a focus on protest camps might enable a rethinking of feminist theory and activism. As several of the chapters have shown, protest camps are frequently sites of deep feminist engagement and of diverse feminist tactics. These are strategically innovative and aesthetically interesting, and worthy of study in their own right, as well as of wider political resonance. In this section, we suggest they constitute an important and under-​recognised element of contemporary feminist mobilisation, in many contexts around the world and that acknowledging them can complicate well-​established narratives –​ what Moore, in Chapter 13, calls ‘cultural memories’ about feminism –​as well as making new contributions to feminist archiving. We begin by examining how protest camp involvement fits in wider discourses about feminist movement. For many years, the dominant narratives about feminism in the West have focused not on the street, park and square but rather on demobilisation, in the form of increasing institutional integration (Ferree and Martin, 1995; Krook and Mackay, 2010), co-​optation by governments and corporations (Eschle and Maiguashca, 2018), the move to the digital sphere (Baer, 2016; Mendes and Ringrose, 2019), and the erosion of community organising, particularly by women of colour, in decades of neoliberalism and austerity (Bassel and Emejulu, 2017; Emejulu and Bassel, 2021). These shifts register the changing status of women amid broader economic and cultural transformation, and also chime with a widespread discourse of postfeminism, which has both incorporated and disavowed feminism since the 1980s (for example, Henderson and Taylor, 2020). Perhaps surprisingly, a focus on protest camps can affirm these dynamics in some contexts. In Chapter 5 on the 3/​18 Movement, for example, Yang points to a misidentification by young women protestors of feminism in Taiwan as firmly located in the past and of women’s equality as fully achieved. Consequently, these protesters 301

Feminism and Protest Camps

distanced themselves from women’s organisations and responded to the sexism and misogyny they faced with individualised strategies that Yang suggests were at best ambivalent in their impact. It is, however, recent accounts of the revival, remobilisation or ‘fourth wave’ of feminism that are more frequently given succour by the case studies here. Drawing on examples including the US Women’s March, the ‘green tide’ in Latin America and the ‘black protests’ of Poland, such accounts tend to emphasise the role of young women or a new generation, the interconnection of street protest and online campaigning, and a shared focus on defending bodily integrity and rights in the face of a resurgent anti-​feminist Right (see, for example, Carpenter, 2019; Chira, 2020; Molyneux et al, 2021). The chapters in this volume show how the involvement of young women in the ‘global wave’ of mixed protest camps, otherwise known as the ‘movements of the squares’, may have helped to sustain or accelerate feminist mobilisation in some of these contexts. Arat’s account of the Gezi Park camp in Chapter 6, for instance, argues that Turkish feminists embedded their values, wit and organisational tactics into the protest, thus drawing in a new generation. Gómez Nicolau argues in Chapter 7 that feminists have continued to mobilise in Spain since the 15-​ M movement upsurge, suggestively characterising feminism in this context as ‘slow-​cooked’ rather than instant sustenance. And Hurwitz and Kumar in Chapter 14 resituate the Women’s March, Black Lives Matter and other contemporaneous US movements in the context of the Occupy protests that radicalised many across US cities in 2011. How do these chapters help to conceptualise the relationship between feminism-​in-​m ovement and protest camps in more general terms? Hurwitz and Kumar draw on the work of Jo Reger (2012) to describe contemporary feminism as both everywhere and nowhere, taking fleeting shape in protest camps as it twines through other movements. Haran in Chapter 8 further theorises this phenomenon through the metaphor of a mycelial network: a fungal root system that spreads underground and occasionally erupts through the soil to be seen. Perhaps we can extend this metaphor to Moore’s Chapter 13, which is grounded in an enduring cultural memory of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp that takes her to the Clayoquot logging protest in Canada, and also to Chapter 15 by Kerrow et al, where Eschle and Rebecca Mordan both describe their mothers taking them to Greenham, and imply a direct lineage between this experience and their professional work. Those contributors immersed as activists in historic protest camps, like Moore, Mackay and Jill (‘Ray’) Raymond, or in more recent camps, like Gómez Nicolau and Ahia and Johnson, offer a particular kind of authority in their reflective writing which those of us researching without the memory of experience try to find in extant remnants of events. Such accounts could themselves be seen as the 302

Conclusion

spores of the mycelial network, which spreads not only through protest camps but also through feminist retellings of them. In such ways, we suggest, a focus on protest camps narrates feminism differently. Specifically, it draws attention to past mobilisations, both women-​ only and mixed-​gender, that are at risk of being forgotten in stories that focus on movement over situated resistance, or on institutional dynamics over protest, or on feminism as a distinct struggle over feminist diffusion through other mobilisations. We note, for example, that Chapter 13 by Moore and Chapter 4 by Mackay both use the terminology of ‘women’s peace camps’ rather than of protest camps (at Clayoquot Sound in Canada and ‘Womenwith Hill’ in the UK respectively). This naming not only resists the flattening of the feminist specificities of their case studies within the conceptual framework provided by social movement scholarship, but also locates them within a genealogy of western feminist theory and practice that spirals outward from Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. Haran’s Chapter 8 further elaborates on this genealogy, focusing on the persistent figure of the ecofeminist Starhawk to illuminate the multidirectional threads linking feminist peace and permaculture activism to very different camps over time and space. In such ways, these chapters not only offer a feminist recontextualisation of the particular camps with which they are concerned, but also make feminist theory and practice central to the contemporary protest camp landscape, particularly in the British and North American contexts. In so doing, they collectively insist on some significant continuities around the substantive values and practices associated with feminist peace activism and what Haran names eco/​feminist lineages that thread between feminism and other movements. Close attention to the perennial tactic of making camp together draws these continuities, and their contemporary legacy, into the light. This brings us to the fact that several of the chapters in this book, particularly in Part IV, are concerned with how best to ensure that feminism involvement in protest camps –​often a relatively fleeting and ephemeral phenomenon –​remains in the collective, public memory of feminism. In this vein, Moore, Hurwitz and Kumar, and Kerrow et al (in Chapters 13, 14 and 15) are all preoccupied with (re)making archives as a form of political intervention, in order to extend the life of feminist thought and activism into contemporary protest culture and also to challenge ‘who gets to remember radical activism, and with what consequence’, as Moore puts it. Hurwitz and Kumar make the case for a radical digital archiving strategy that draws on institutional support even as it subverts institutional standards of archive construction and dissemination. The authors see this strategy as essential if the feminist presence in ‘big-​tent’ social movements is to remain alive in subsequent popular memory of those movements, and of feminism. There are parallels with the subsequent collaborative conversation between Kerrow 303

Feminism and Protest Camps

and her colleagues about their ‘Greenham Women Everywhere’ project. Fearing that Greenham was being forgotten and its model of feminist activism lost to a younger generation, Kerrow et al created an independent online archive of oral history interviews with Greenham women and have since devised a range of creative strategies, from immersive virtual environments to museum installations and online shows, as well as writing a book, in order to animate the interview material in multisensory ways that substantially enrich audience encounters with it. It is clear from all three of these chapters that the point is not to preserve the feminist past (can it ever be preserved, when new readers come to it?), but to reanimate it for contemporary political purposes. Notably, Chapter 15 by Kerrow et al also demonstrates what Moore refers to as the ‘radical potentials of oral history’ to create adjunct or ancillary forms of publicly accessible counter-​memory that can disrupt congealed narratives of feminism. Concurrently, there are chapters threading through the entire book that contest the kinds of feminism that are remembered, implying that particular forms of 20th-​century feminism are too easily discarded nowadays as ‘old-​ fashioned’, essentialist or racist. These chapters propose that feminist attention to protest camps brings the continuing political valency of such theories and praxis to the fore. The numerous references to Claire Hemmings’ (2011) book Why Stories Matter, in which she shows how feminism is narrated through discrete decades in ways that are invested in developmental stories of progress and loss, are testament to the perceived need to revisit earlier feminisms and their legacies. For example, Bartlett’s Chapter 12 demonstrates that the archive must be actively worked over and supplemented to find Indigenous commentary, and the ways in which non-​Indigenous feminists engaged with Indigenous women and culture in 1980s Australia. Several other chapters persuasively argue that 20th-​century protest camps in Europe, North America and the UK, along with their archival traces, offer potent philosophical and epistemological foundations for ongoing feminist theorising and praxis around gender identity, climate crisis, democracy, mobilisation and civil disobedience, to name a few. In sum, tracing feminist movement and memory through protest camps recovers a wider range of feminist voices to help us think through feminism in the here and now. In concluding, we anticipate further work on protest camps and feminism will be called for as discontent intensifies with authoritarian, xenophobic, misogynistic and rapacious governments, and connectedly with the desecration of forests, overconsumption, economic exploitation and austerity, militarism and war-​mongering, the erosion of women’s and migrants rights, and the climate crisis –​among other myriad problems. This book has established that feminism is a cornerstone of protest camps in many contexts, just as protest camp involvement has been a perennial feature of feminism. More than this, the chapters have shown collectively that the 304

Conclusion

practice of camping in the place of protest often brings gender politics into the open, inviting both reinvestment in and contestation of private/​​public, male/​​female distinctions. The salient features of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and race, and class are likely to prove enduring trajectories for reflection and analysis, but we hope this book will also invite future contributions from other disciplinary perspectives and legacies of reading. For example, research by feminists invested in the disciplinary traditions of geography, migration studies, law, literature, fine arts, history or linguistics might offer further rich and creative angles from which to interrogate the relationship between feminism and protest camps. As some of the less conventional chapters in this volume inaugurate, the development of a broader range of methodologies and narrative approaches to protest camps would also be welcome, and is likely to bring with it yet more reorientations of feminism and feminist stories. Finally, while this book includes diverse international examples, there are entire continents missing from our conversation (reflective partly of the limitations of our networks, and partly of the political economy of knowledge production), that would bring important new perspectives. At the same time, close attention to the specificities of place will be significant for resisting homogenisation in our accounts of both feminism and protest camps, and the erasures entailed by a desire to find commonalities across locales. Protest camps as a distinctive form of social movement practice entail the creation of micro-​communities that prefigure alternative modes of daily living and ethical practice; they are sites of experimental, embodied ways of being and relating; and they aim to provoke and inspire structural change. While they are contorted by wider power relations, including gender, they are also sites in which gender can be undone and remade. As such, their affinity with feminism is palpable and they are fertile ground for further feminist reflection and analysis. There is much undoing and remaking yet to be undertaken. References Arenas, I. (2014) ‘Assembling the Multitude: Material Geographies of Social Movements from Oaxaca to Occupy’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32(3): 433–​49. Baer, H. (2016) ‘Redoing Feminism: Digital Activism, Body Politics, and Neoliberalism’, Feminist Media Studies, 16(1): 17–​34. Bartlett, A. (2011) ‘Feminist Protest and Maternity at Pine Gap Women’s Peace Camp, Australia 1983’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 34(1): 31–​8. Bassel, L. and Emejulu, A. (2017) Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain, Bristol: Policy Press.

305

Feminism and Protest Camps

Butler, J. (2011) ‘Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street’, lecture held in Venice, 7 September, in the framework of the series The State of Things, organized by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA). Available from: https://t​ rans​ vers​ al.at/t​ rans​ ver​sal/​1011/​but​ler/​en [Accessed 17 March 2015]. Carpenter, Z. (2019) ‘This Was the Decade of Feminist Uprisings in Latin ​ ww.thenat​ America’, The Nation, 31 December. Available from: https://w ion.com/​arti​cle/​arch​ive/​ecua​dor-​abort​ion-​g reen-​wave/​ [Accessed 20 December 2021]. Chira, S. (2020) ‘Donald Trump’s Gift to Feminism: The Resistance’, Daedalus, 149(1): 72–​83. Coleman, L.M. and Bassi, S.A. (2011) ‘Deconstructing Militant Manhood’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 13(2): 204–​24. Cresswell, T. (1996) In Place/​Out of Place: Geography, Ideology and Transgression, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. Dhaliwal, P. (2012) ‘Public Squares and Resistance: The Politics of Space in the Indignados Movement’, Interface: A Journal For and About Social Movements, 4(1): 251–​73. Available at: http://​www.inter​face​jour​nal.net/​ wordpr​ess/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2012/​05/​Interf​ace-​4-​1-​Dhali​wal.pdf [Accessed 30 June 2022]. Emejulu, A. and Bassel, L. (2021) Women of Colour Resist: Exploring Women of Colour’s Activism in Europe, University of Warwick. Available from: http://​ www.wocres​ist.com/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2021/​12/​Women-​of-​Col​our-​ Res​ist.pdf [Accessed 15 December 2021]. Eschle, C. (2017) ‘Beyond Greenham Woman? Gender Identities and Anti-​ Nuclear Activism in Peace Camps’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 19(4): 471–​90. Eschle, C. and Maiguashca, B. (2018) ‘Theorising Feminist Organising in and against Neoliberalism: Beyond Co-​optation and Resistance?’, European Journal of Politics and Gender, 1(1/​2): 223–​39. Ferree, M.M. and Martin, P.Y. (eds) (1995) Feminist Organizations: Harvest of the New Women’s Movement, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Fotaki, M. and Daskalaki, M. (2021) ‘Politicizing the Body in the Anti-​ Mining Protest in Greece’, Organization Studies, 42(8): 1265–​90. Gallop, J. (2002) Anecdotal Theory, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Haraway, D. (1988) ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’, Feminist Studies, 14(3): 575–​99. Hemmings, C. (2011) Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Henderson, M. and Taylor, A. (2020) Postfeminism in Context: Women, Australian Popular Culture, and the Unsettling of Postfeminism, New York: Routledge.

306

Conclusion

Kaika, M. and Karaliotas, L. (2016) ‘The Spatialization of Democratic Politics: Insights from Indignant Squares’, European Urban and Regional Studies, 23(4): 556–​70. Kavada, A. and Dimitriou, O. (2018) ‘Protest Spaces Online and Offline: The Indignant Movement in Syntagma Square’, in G. Brown, A. Feigenbaum, F. Frenzel and P. McCurdy (eds) Protest Camps in International Context: Spaces, Infrastructures and Media of Resistance, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 71–​90. Kern, L. (2020) Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-​Made World, London: Verso. Krasniewicz, L. (1992) Nuclear Summer: The Clash of Communities at the Seneca Women’s Peace Encampment, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Krook, M.L. and Mackay, F. (eds) (2010) Gender, Politics and Institutions: Towards a Feminist Institutionalism, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Mendes, K. and Ringrose, J. (2019) ‘Digital Feminist Activism: #MeToo and the Everyday Experiences of Challenging Rape Culture’, in B. Fileborn and R. Loney-​Howes (eds) #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change, Cham: Springer, pp 37–​51. Molyneux, M., Dey, A., Gatto, M.A.C. and Rowden, H. (2021) ‘New Feminist Activism, Waves and Generations’, UN Women Background ​ ww.unwo​ Paper No. 40. New York: UN Women. Available from: https://w men.org/s​ ites/d​ efau ​ lt/fi ​ les/H ​ eadqu ​ arte​ rs/A ​ ttac​ hmen ​ ts/S​ ectio ​ ns/L ​ ibra​ ry/​ Publi​cati​ons/​2021/​Dis​cuss​ion-​paper-​New-​femin​ist-​activ​ism-​waves-​and-​ gene​rati​ons-​en.pdf [Accessed 20 December 2021]. Pain, R. and Smith, S.J. (2008) Fear: Critical Geopolitics and Everyday Life, Aldershot: Ashgate. Reger, J. (2012) Everywhere and Nowhere: Contemporary Feminism in the United States, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roseneil, S. (1995) Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham, Buckingham: Open University Press. Sasson-​Levy, O. and Rapoport, T. (2003) ‘Body, Gender, and Knowledge in Protest Movements: The Israeli Case’, Gender and Society, 17(3): 379–​403. Staeheli, L., Kofman, E. and Peake, L. (eds) (2004) Making Women, Mapping Politics: Feminist Perspectives on Political Geography, Abingdon: Routledge.

307

Index References to figures appear in italic type. References to endnotes show both the page number and the note number (231n3). A 3/​18 Parliament Occupation Movement  7, 78–​84, 85–​94, 295, 296, 298, 299, 301 see also Sunflower Movement 15-​M Movement  7, 8, 116–​23, 129, 177, 182, 295, 300, 302 see also Indignados Abalone Alliance  136, 150 abolitionist  39, 40, 286 Aboriginal  218–​29, 230–​1 abortion  102, 105, 120, 123, 125, 222, 227 accountability  21, 31, 32, 47, 62, 185, 267 activism  1–​8, 10, 17–​19, 22, 25–​9, 38, 43–​49, 52, 58, 62–​72, 74n1, 78–​82, 85–​94, 116–​23, 128, 129, 135–​51, 152n5, 157–​60, 163, 167, 171–​3, 176–​90, 198–​9, 202, 205, 210, 219–​32, 235–​51, 252n4, 256–​68, 274, 275, 276, 284, 289, 290n13, 291n17, 294–​304 Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP)  100, 101, 105, 108 advertising  69, 71 African American  7, 27, 157, 160, 163, 172 Afro-​Brazilian  6, 9, 195–​7, 200, 206–​10, 300 ageism  19, 126 agribusiness  197, 202, 203 agroecology  196–​9, 202, 204, 210 ʻAha Kiaʻi Aloha  39, 42, 44, 45, 53, 54 Ahia, Noelani  41, 54 aikāne  49, 57 akua  46, 57 akuahine  46, 57 Ala Kupuna  51, 57 alcohol  165, 166, 167, 183 Aldermaston  64, 74, 291n21 see also Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) Alevism  100, 101 Alice Springs  218–​19, 224–​30 Al Jazeera  3

aloha ʻāina  40, 57 anarchism  70, 170, 145, 186, 189, 266, 267 ancestor  37, 38, 43, 44, 48, 53, 58, 196 animal  46 rights  66, 284 anti-​austerity  3, 115, 118 see also 15-​M Movement, Indignados anti-​Media Monopoly Campaign  78, 86 anti-​nuclear  8, 138–​9, 150–​1, 167, 219–​25, 285 anti-​roads  66 antisemitic  166, 167 APY (Arrernte, Pitjantjatjara, Yankuntatjara)  218, 224, 226, 230 Arab Spring  2, 118, 176 see also Tahrir Square archival turn  6, 221, 240, 241 art  46, 48, 103, 198, 200, 251, 257, 261, 265, 276, 284, 291n14 assault  18, 22–​32, 40, 55, 92 Athens  3, 177, 184 see also Syntagma Square Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE)  64, 291n21 see also Aldermaston Aunty Twinkle Borge  38, 49 austerity  3, 115, 118, 120–​2, 162–​4, 167, 170, 171, 301, 304 see also anti-​austerity Australia  3, 9, 61, 102, 140, 152n6, 196, 199, 217–​32, 295, 297, 300, 304 authoritarianism  99, 100, 105, 109, 110, 149, 150, 178, 191, 260, 304 autonomy  8, 9, 25, 94, 119, 127, 129, 140, 142, 159, 164, 167, 170, 171, 208, 223 Awakening Foundation  79, 81, 83, 90–​3, 94n1 B babysitter  86, 87 backlash  8, 48

308

Index

Ballistic Missile Defence  61 Baltimore  21–​8 BaRRosas  195, 197, 205, 206 BBC  167, 289 beauty  89, 90 Beijing  78 Big Tent  10, 256–​62, 267, 303 biological essentialism  68–​70 bisexual  80, 81 see also LGBTQIA+ Black  5, 6, 8, 9, 49, 51, 52, 57, 158, 161–​3, 195–​7, 200, 206–​10, 218, 221, 222, 226, 230, 285–​6, 299 community  49, 50, 157, 171, 172 feminist thought  5, 9, 157, 161, 163 liberation movement  83, 172 Black Lives Matter  30, 43, 262, 284, 302 blockade  38, 39, 66, 136, 142, 143, 148–​50, 235, 236 body shape  71 Bolsonaro, Jair  198 Boston  21, 24, 26, 31, 176, 177, 219 brave spaces  7, 45, 47, 48, 125, 297 Brazil  6, 9, 195–​210, 211n1, 211n4, 295, 297–​300 see also Fortaleza Breitbart  23 Bulgaria  3 Butler, Judith  71, 115–​18, 124, 127, 128 C California  20, 21, 136, 137, 139 Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (CAAB)  62, 74n1 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)  62, 64, 281, 285 Campbell, Jane  2, 10n1 campesino  195–​6, 209 Canada  9, 145, 235, 243, 302, 303 see also Vancouver Island capitalism  40, 71, 129, 145, 151, 157–​63, 163, 171, 178, 189, 197, 202–​5, 296 caravan  64, 66, 67, 74, 168–​70, 279, 282 care ethics  9, 87, 89, 180, 182, 186 cat’s cradle  149, 150, 241–​8, 297 charity  186 childbirth  37, 42, 46, 147 childcare  159, 202 children  29, 40, 42, 50, 52, 66, 68–​70, 79, 105, 108, 161, 165, 166, 169, 181, 201, 202, 204, 222–​7, 280 China  78, 82, 90, 91 see also Beijing Christianity  230–​1 cis  4, 5, 29, 52, 118, 121, 124, 125, 297 cisheteropatriarchy  42, 43, 50–​4, 210 citizenship  125, 162, 176, 179, 182, 187, 190 Civil Code  92, 103 civil disobedience  235, 249, 304

civil rights  103, 256, 262 Clayoquot Lives  236, 237, 238, 245–​8, 252n5, 259 Clayoquot Sound ecofeminist peace camp  9, 139, 235, 238, 242, 248–​50, 303 see also Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS) climate change  3, 248 clothing  64, 67, 71, 72, 89, 104, 161, 298 CNN Türk  108 Cold War  2–​5, 68, 91, 294, 295 collective identity  2, 70, 73 colonialism  6, 40, 45, 47, 52, 53, 225–​6, 235–​6, 242–​3, 259–​60 colonisation  6, 37, 40, 45, 47, 52, 53, 225, 226, 235–​6, 242–​3, 260 Combahee River Collective  5 commoning  188, 190, 191 Common Justice’s restorative justice programme  21 Communist Party  91 communities of care  179 consent  29, 45, 47, 54, 66, 224, 277 Conservative Nationalist Party  see Kuomintang (KMT) consumerism  100 contraception  49, 227 cosplay  89, 94n2 counselling  29 counter-​memory  9, 248, 304 COVID-​19  3, 56, 264, 276, 281, 288 Cre8 Summit  142, 144 crime  19, 21, 92, 103 criminal damage  65 criminal justice  66 Critical Resistance and INCITE!  21, 31 critical Whiteness theory  6, 52, 221–2 Cross-​Strait Service Trade Agreement  78, 81–3, 243 Cruise missiles  273, 285, 290n4 cyborg  149, 241 D dance  24, 48, 139, 149–​50, 152n5, 152n10, 184, 198, 200, 228, 230, 231, 248 see also spiral dance death  70, 147, 180, 200, 207, 229, 239, 290n2 decolonisation  6, 45, 198, 210 deforestation  235, 237, 243, 252n7 Democracia Real ¡Ya!  120 democracy  8, 9, 17, 78, 99, 109, 110, 119, 122, 129, 135, 176–​88, 190–​2, 257, 266–​7, 296, 299, 304 Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)  82 demonstration  67, 78, 84, 92, 100, 117, 120, 123, 126, 129, 219, 223 descendant  37, 39, 58, 142 Diablo Canyon  136, 142, 143, 150 Encampment  149

309

FEMINISM AND PROTEST CAMPS

digital archive  9, 10, 137–​8, 237, 246–​9, 257, 258 disabled  30, 159, 278, 279 disruptive behaviour  29, 30 Dissent! Network of Resistance  142, 145, 149 divorce  104 domestic abuse  46, 92, 103 domestic violence  see domestic abuse drag  49, 50, 52 Dreaming the Dark  149 drone  61 drugs  27, 166 dualism  242–​3, 249 E Earth Activist Training (EAT)  138–​40, 141, 142, 144, 145, 147, 155, 252n4 Reader  140, 142, 144 earth mother  55, 68, 72 ecofeminism  69–​70, 136, 140, 147, 242–​51, 252n6, 252n7 Egypt  2 elderly  108, 126, 161–​2 Embrace the Base  87, 92, 117, 243, 280, 290n6 employment  46, 242 Regulation Order  117 see also unemployment Enlightenment theory  69 environment  22, 40, 91, 100, 101, 136–​9, 141, 143, 144, 152n3, 166, 173, 177, 184, 223, 235, 237, 242–​4, 276, 291n17 Epstein, Barbara  136, 150 equity  21, 92 Erdoğan, Tayyip  104, 107–​10, 298, 300 escrevivência  195, 197, 200, 201, 206, 208, 210, 301 essentialism  63, 68–​70, 118, 244–​7, 251, 304 see also biological essentialism ethnicity  5, 21, 83, 87, 120, 305 European Central Bank  177 European Commission  177 European Union  151 Evaristo, Conceição  197, 200 eviction  17, 21, 27, 30–​2, 67, 79, 121, 164, 167, 169, 290n5 exclusion  4, 19, 20, 22, 30–​2, 63, 72, 83, 85, 101, 107, 115–​18, 125, 126, 160, 178, 186, 188, 196, 207, 210, 268, 295, 297, 300 exploitation  40, 67, 161–​3, 172, 178, 203, 227, 304 Extinction Rebellion  3, 284 F Facebook  189, 190, 257, 275 Fairy Creek  250–​1 family  29, 47, 48, 52, 59, 64, 86, 89, 104, 105, 161–​2, 169, 171, 202–​4, 222–​3, 243, 280, 284

farming  64, 92, 144–​5, 180, 195, 202–​5 far Right  128, 302 Faslane Peace Camp  9, 158, 163, 167–​71, 282, 297 father  48, 93, 188, 208, 299 fear  18–​20, 28, 46, 52, 128, 129, 165, 170, 177 Feigenbaum, Anna  3, 69–​73, 157, 158–​60, 163, 168, 170, 172, 179–​80, 241, 291n14 feminist  archiving  6, 258–​60, 262, 274, 290n3 Democratic Theory  176, 182, 187–​91 General Assemblies  17, 23, 32, 181, 183, 262 history  220, 232, 237, 239, 241, 244, 248–​51, 273 lens  2–​6, 9, 158, 171, 262, 263 literature  83, 156–​8, 161, 162, 171, 242, 257, 263, 296, 305 mobilisation  4, 8, 129, 262, 301 organisation  116, 243, 257, 261 theory  2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 63, 68, 72, 161, 169, 176, 188, 191, 192, 195, 196, 217–​22, 231, 246, 252n7, 291n20, 294, 301–​4 see also ecofeminism femininity  3, 71, 72, 80, 89–​90, 94, 297 fertility  222, 227 Fifth Sacred Thing, The  137–​9, 143, 149 see also Starhawk financial crisis  120, 167, 171 First Nations  9, 221, 235, 243, 300 Five Flowers  90 Five Tiger Generals  90 food  22, 47, 64, 67, 103, 123, 135, 139, 144, 148, 161–​4, 170, 180, 219, 257, 266–​7, 278 forest  158, 236, 242, 243–​4, 245, 250, 304 see also rainforest Fortaleza  195–​6, 199, 207–​10 Fort Meade  61 Foucault, Michel  160 Fox News  22, 27 France  51, 176–​8 see also Nuit Debout Francoism  122 free trade  78, 82, 145 Freire, Paolo  211n1 Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS)  235, 243–​4 fugitive democracy  8, 99, 110 G G8 Summit  135–​7, 142–​9 garden  106, 142, 147, 180–​1, 219 gender  2–​10, 20–​9, 29–​32, 39–​47, 52–​6, 63, 68, 71–​4, 82–​4, 87, 91–​3, 108–​9, 116–​18, 120–​7, 130n1, 158–​63, 166–​9, 171–​2, 182, 187, 200–​2, 210, 220, 227, 230, 236, 250, 252n7, 257, 266, 267, 286, 291n20, 294–​9, 303–​5

310

Index

equality  7, 8, 80, 61, 79, 94, 105, 161, 167, 256 hierarchies  7, 79, 295 imbalance  61, 83, 84, 90, 256 wars  63 see also power, gendered; violence, gendered General Assembly  22, 121, 178–​9, 184, 261, 266 geography  19, 138, 195, 198, 296, 305 geopolitics  10, 297 George Square  164, 165, 166 Gezi Park  2, 3, 8, 10n2, 90, 93, 99–​110, 296, 298, 300, 302 Gill, Rosalind  90 Glasgow  8, 121, 142, 158, 163–​72, 297 Women’s Activist Forum  4 Women’s Library  251, 252n10, 282, 290n3 see also George Square; Occupy Glasgow Gleneagles  135, 137, 145 globalisation  8, 297 Global North  162, 237, 244 Global South  162, 244 global wave  2–​6, 10, 118, 122, 129, 209, 257, 294, 297, 302 Goddess  46, 68–​70, 73, 139, 143, 147, 151, 241 Graduate Theological Union  137 graffiti  99, 103, 106 gramática da dor  197, 201, 203, 206–​10 grassroots  92, 239 Greece  3, 177, 184 see also Athens Greek Indignant movement  176 Green Bloc  145–​6, 151 Greenham Common  65, 67, 273, 281, 285, 288, 297 Women’s Peace Camp [sometimes abbreviated to ‘Greenham’]  2, 7, 9–10, 10n1, 63–5, 67–70, 73–4, 150, 218–9, 231, 238–41, 243–4, 251, 252n3, 268, 273–89, 290n1, 290n13, 291n14, 291n19, 291n20, 291n22, 297, 299, 302–4 Greenham women [or woman]  10, 62, 70, 273–5, 278–9, 281, 284, 288–90, 291n21, 291n22, 304 Greenham Women Everywhere  10n1, 250, 273–​88, 304 Grindr  49 Grosz, Elizabeth  248–​9 grunge  72 H hairstyle  72 Hale Kūkākūkā  48 Hale Mauna Māhū  39, 42, 44, 49–​53, 56 Hale Mauna Wahine  39, 42–​4, 56 harassment  4, 17, 19, 20–​32, 53, 66, 90, 92, 104–​9, 116, 121, 127

Haraway, Donna  149–​50, 217, 241–​2, 248, 297, 300 see also cat’s cradle Hawaii  7, 37–​41, 43, 45, 47, 49–​59, 300 see also Kanaka Maoli health care  135 He Kumulipo  42–​3 Hemmings, Claire  6, 63, 220, 244–​5, 251, 304 see also Why Stories Matter Heroine Collective, The  273–​7 heteronormative  4, 90, 94, 220 heterosexuality  4, 7, 69, 79, 80, 85, 90, 92, 106, 108, 121, 124, 297 High Council for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage  101 HIV/​AIDS  49, 262 Hollaback!  24 Hong Kong  3 see also Umbrella Movement honua  19 Hoʻohōkūkalani  47, 55–​8 hooks, bell  5, 157–​63, 171–​2, 173n1 HoriZone Ecovillage  8, 135–​8, 141–​51 housewife  103–​4, 159, 161, 162, 286 #HuelgaFeminista  123 humiliation  107, 121, 204 humour  73, 74, 99, 103, 108 Hurricane Katrina  144 Hurricane Sandy  186 see also Occupy Sandy I identity  4–​8, 19–​23, 47, 58–​9, 70–​3, 81, 83, 104, 109, 116, 122, 125, 140, 151n1, 200, 291n20, 291n22, 304 politics  4, 122 shared  259 Ihumatao  53 Ikle, Maj  see Campbell, Jane imaginactivism  137–​9 immigration  20, 231 see also migration inclusivity  4, 22, 124, 184 Indigenous peoples  6–​9, 39, 43, 49, 50, 79, 82, 83, 90, 92, 183, 195–​6, 199, 209, 217, 222, 229, 230–​5, 243, 250, 286, 295–​304 see also First Nations Indignados  2, 8, 115–​16, 120, 129, 135 see also 15-​M Movement; anti-​austerity individualism  79, 80, 92, 94 inequality  4, 7, 8, 17, 20, 83, 118, 161 infiltration  27, 44, 63, 67, 162 informal network  7, 79, 80, 83–​8, 93 institutionalisation  31, 117, 122, 123, 239, 276, 279, 285, 291n17 International Monetary Fund  177 International Women’s Day  115–​18, 123 intersectionality  5, 83, 122, 124, 129, 130, 223, 268, 295

311

FEMINISM AND PROTEST CAMPS

interview  6, 9, 10, 21–​7, 80–​4, 88, 90, 106, 108, 116, 126, 128, 137, 138, 150, 152n5, 163–​9, 176, 178–​90, 203–​5, 237, 238, 244, 246–​50, 261, 273–​87, 290n7, 300, 304 Islam  100–​7 see also mosque Istanbul  2, 10n2, 99, 101–​8, 296 Feminist Collective  105–​6 see also Gezi Park Italy  102, 276 J Jasper, James M.  119, 128 Jewish  167 John, Helen  62, 64, 276, 290n2 journalist  84, 100, 222, 247, 257, 288 justice  19–​24, 31, 43, 57, 66, 88–​9, 100, 108, 119, 130, 136–​8, 141–​3, 147, 182, 200, 249, 256, 264, 266, 299 Juventud Sin Futuro  120 K Kanaka Maoli  7, 37–​40, 49, 55–​8 Kapu Aloha  42, 49, 51, 55, 58 Kelham, Megg  219–​27 Kemalism  100, 104, 107, 111n1 Kemal, Mustafa  107, 111n1 see also Kemalism Ketelaar, Eric  241 Khartoum  3 Kill The Bill  66 kinship  40, 50, 58, 195–​9, 210, 221 Kropotkin, Peter  186 Kuomintang (KMT)  82, 91 Kurd  100–​7 L Laʻilaʻi  42–​3, 58 La Manada  123, 127 Landless Movement  9, 295 see also Movimento Sem Terra (MST) land rights  218, 221–​9, 231, 250, 286 language  8, 9, 23, 59n1, 70, 106–​10, 118, 121, 124, 140, 195, 198, 206–​9, 211n4, 217, 220–​6, 231, 232, 260, 283, 295–​301 Latinx  49 law  31, 91, 92, 94n1, 105, 110, 123, 177, 224, 289, 305 enforcement  30 Lee, Anne  62, 74 Left-​wing  91, 172, 177 lesbian  10n1, 63, 68–​74, 80, 81, 90, 117, 121, 124, 222, 227, 228, 261, 279, 284–​6, 295 see also LGBTQIA+ LGBTQIA+  20, 24, 45, 49–​53, 91–​4, 101, 185, 259, 261 liberation  32, 39, 44, 45, 57, 70, 72, 83, 142, 172, 197, 220 lifeworld  198, 200, 206

Līlīnoe  41, 46 Livermore Action Group  150 logging  235–​7, 238, 243–​50, 297, 302 see also deforestation London  3, 30, 64, 69, 176–​8, 183, 243, 259, 275, 277, 290n3 Feminist Network  291n16 see also Occupy London love  40, 41, 49, 51, 57, 128, 170, 190, 201, 208 M Madrid  117, 120–​1, 177 see also Puerta del Sol Main Chamber  79, 82, 84, 86–​9 make-​up  72, 90 male domination  23, 25, 181 male gaze  90 Mansbridge, Jane  181, 185, 187, 188 Mãos que Criam  195–​7, 201, 204 Maralinga  223 marginalisation  4, 6, 9, 19, 29, 49, 55, 130, 166, 172, 249, 256, 259–​68, 297–​9 martial law  94n1 Marxism  8, 89, 159, 161–​3, 171, 189, 197, 266, 267 masculinity  46–​7, 71, 74, 90 toxic  47 maternalism  68–​70, 104 see also motherhood Mauna Kea  7, 37–​49, 55–​8, 295–​300 Maunakea  see Mauna Kea Mauna Medics Lokahi Team  48, 54 see also Hale Kūkākūkā Ma Ying-​Jeou  78 McKeldin Square  28 McRobbie, Angela  80, 91 media  17, 18–​22, 27, 28, 53, 66, 68, 70, 71, 78, 82–​90, 93, 101–​3, 107, 159, 163, 179, 190–​1, 218, 219, 238, 240–​1, 257–​67, 268n1, 274, 276, 284–​7, 290n6, 290n13, 299 memory  9, 99, 110, 223, 238–​41, 249–​51, 273–​4, 280–​3, 302–​4 see also countermemory menstruation  46, 70, 128, 243–​4 mental health  54, 159, 169 Menwith Hill  7, 61, 62, 63–​5, 70, 71, 74, 291n22, 296, 303 mestiza  199 metadata  260–​5, 268n2 #MeToo movement  47, 276, 284 Mexico  145 microcosm  26, 27, 223 migration  121, 127, 128, 162, 172, 295, 305 militarism  3, 66, 220, 304 military  30, 38–​44, 47, 50, 51, 61, 65, 67, 122, 139, 218–​28, 285, 290n1, 295 mining  223–​4, 265 see also uranium

312

Index

Ministry of Defence (MoD)  62, 67, 291n21 Minnesota  136, 152n3 misogyny  22, 29, 104, 105, 208, 249, 304 mixed camp [or mixed-gender camp]  4, 7, 8, 10, 62–3, 94, 121, 122, 294, 295, 298, 299, 302 see also non-​mixed camp  mobilisation  2–​4, 17–​22, 31, 32, 66, 92, 128–​9, 209, 265, 301–​4 Moʻoinanea  46 Moonbow Corner camp  64, 65 moonscape  235, 237 Moreton-​Robinson, Aileen  218, 222, 224, 226, 229, 230, 232 mosque  110 motherhood  68, 93, 205, 279 see also childbirth; maternalism; pregnancy Movimento Sem Terra (MST)  195, 196, 199, 201–​5, 209, 210, 295 see also Landless Movement museum  103, 251, 259, 282, 304 Muslim  see Islam mutual aid  186, 206 mycelial network  149, 302

weapons  69, 148, 168–​9, 271, 279, 281, 286, 290n4, 291n15 see also anti-​nuclear; Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND); Trident Nuit Debout  176–​8, 190 Nuu-​chah-​nulth  235, 252n1

N National Security Agency (NSA)  61 nation-​building  39, 41 NATO  65 necropolitics  198 Neoliberal Capitalism  8, 66, 126, 129, 157, 163, 167, 171 neoliberalism  94, 128, 221, 301 New Age Traveller  72 Newbury bypass  238 New Left  68, 262 new materialism  248–​9, 252n6 New Orleans  144 newsletter  66, 75, 163, 275, 282 New York  3, 21–​5, 29, 69, 177–​80, 186, 190, 257, 259, 261, 263–​6, 268n1 see also Occupy; Zuccotti Park New York Post  22 New York Times  69, 261 No les Votes  120 non-​binary  42, 49, 58–​9, 117, 124, 291n22 nongovernmental organisation (NGO) 78–​86, 91 non-​mixed camp [no mixto]  8, 115–​18, 123–​30, 295 non-​violent direct action (NVDA)  62, 66, 73, 135, 138, 139–​43, 148, 151, 218, 249, 284, 290n13 Noongar people  217, 219 nuclear  8, 62, 64, 69, 70, 73, 136, 138–​9, 142–​51, 167–​72, 220–​5, 231, 271, 279, 281–​6, 290n4, 291n15, 291n19, 291n21 arms race  223, 273 power  136, 224

O Oakland Occupy Patriarchy  24–​5, 29 Occupy  3, 7, 9, 10, 17, 18–​23, 24–​8, 31–​2, 118, 121, 159, 177, 180, 182, 185, 256–​68, 268n1, 268n2, 295, 302 Archive  258, 260–​8, 268n2 Boston  24 encampment  17–​22, 26, 32, 256, 263, 265, 268, 295 Glasgow  8, 121, 158, 163–​72, 297 London  178, 183, 190 Oakland  22, 24, 29, 30 Sandy  178, 186 Seattle  178, 183, 184 Wall Street (OWS)  17, 21–​9, 31, 176–​9, 180–​9, 261, 264, 266 see also Women Occupy Wall Street (WOW) Octavia’s Brood  137 Open Knowledge  189 Open Science Framework (OSF)  263–​8, 268n2 open-​source  189, 257, 262–​4, 282 oppression  5, 7, 17–​27, 29, 32, 47–​50, 58, 118, 122, 125, 130, 150, 157, 163, 172, 177, 184, 203, 242 oral history  9, 237, 244, 246, 300, 304 #OrditFeminista  123, 124, 126, 295 P paia  39, 43, 45, 49, 58 Palestine  43, 51 pandemic  3, 264, 281 see also COVID-​19 Papahānaumoku  37, 47, 55–​9 parliament  7, 78–​92, 100–​3, 110, 224 see also Main Chamber participant action research (PAR)  199 password wars  190 patriarchy  23–​9, 39–​57, 68, 69, 105, 122, 127, 158, 181, 197, 198–​208, 210, 220–​3, 259, 285–​9 peace camp  2–​10, 10n1, 61–​74, 139, 142, 145, 150, 158, 163–​7, 168, 169–​71, 217–​21, 229, 231, 235–​51 see also Faslane; Pine Gap; Clayoquot Sound Peace Mothers  104, 108 peace song  64, 66, 73 peacewomen  64, 65, 68, 70 pedagogy  138, 139–​40, 150 Pele  46 Penal Code  103

313

FEMINISM AND PROTEST CAMPS

People of Colour  51, 186, 261, 295 People’s Party  123 period  see menstruation permaculture  8, 136–​51, 152n7, 303 Pine Gap Women’s Peace Camp  9, 61, 217–​30, 231 poetry  9, 10n2, 69, 195, 197, 201, 205–​8, 211n1 Poliʻahu  41, 46 police  7, 22, 43–​5, 50–​6, 62, 63, 66–​8, 79, 85, 88, 89, 99, 101–​9, 125–​7, 148, 162, 165, 170, 172, 177, 185, 208, 219, 220, 228, 229, 250, 269n3, 284, 285, 290n13, 295, 298 undercover  63–​6 Policing, Sentencing and Courts Bill  66 see also Kill The Bill pollution  138, 202 polyamorous  43, 49, 57, 58 postfeminism  7, 78–​85, 90, 91, 94, 301 Post-​Post Script Zine  266, 268 post-​structuralist theory  244–​8 pou  43, 49 poverty  162, 172 power, gendered  7, 30, 78–82, 85, 87, 90, 91–4 pregnancy  37, 59, 68 press  see media Pretarau  195, 197, 206–​9 Principles of Unity  140 prison  57, 62, 110, 220 privacy  146, 165, 166, 168 private property  168, 188–​92 privilege  5, 47, 58, 125, 130, 147, 183, 222, 226, 229, 240 project democracy  9, 176–​9, 182–​91, 296, 299 propaganda  78 prostitute  see sex worker protestor  3, 7, 9, 10n2, 63, 66, 74n1, 100–​10, 146, 164, 219, 220, 228, 230, 250, 301 pseudonym  80–​1, 94n2, 173n2 public safety  27 public space  19, 20, 24, 104, 110, 117, 125–​7, 148, 177, 209, 291n16, 296–​7 Puerta del Sol  120, 177 Puget Sound  238, 244 Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu  38, 39–​41, 42, 43–​4, 49–​53, 57, 58 Puʻuhuluhulu University  42, 46, 50, 56 Q Quaker  230, 285 queer  4, 7, 8, 21, 24, 25, 29, 49–​52, 58, 63, 68, 69, 74, 115, 117–​24, 129, 130n2, 130n3, 257, 261, 262, 268, 287, 291n20, 295, 300 see also LGBTQIA+ Quiurnpa  see Pine Gap Women’s Peace Camp

R racism  4, 20, 25–​6, 31, 68, 83, 121, 125, 130, 157–​61, 167, 172, 206–​9, 218, 221–​6, 229, 231, 242, 257, 259, 285, 304 see also xenophobia Radical Feminism  68 radome  61, 62, 218 rainforest  235, 236, 237, 243–​4, 250 rape  4, 19, 20, 22, 27–​8, 53, 121, 123, 127, 165–​6 Rebel Dykes  69 Reclaiming Collective  139 Reclaiming WitchCamps  140 Reclaim the Night marches  284, 291n16 see also Take Back the Night re-​existencias  195–​209 reflexivity  6 refuge  37–​43, 49, 53, 56, 59 religion  45, 47, 100–​5, 110, 126, 139, 286 see also Christianity; Islam repression  28, 85, 109, 177 reproductive labour  122, 128, 160 resistance  9, 21, 31, 39, 46, 69, 101–​8, 115, 128–​9, 130n1, 142, 152n3, 157, 160, 163, 167, 195–​8, 200–​9, 266, 273, 298, 300, 303 Reuters  102 revolution  9, 40, 57, 63, 68, 100–​1, 185, 189, 195–​7, 205–​9 riot  43, 66 ritual  8, 37, 38, 45–​50, 59, 70, 73, 139–​41, 149–​50, 297 Rizzi, Nina  201, 207, 208 Roseneil, Sasha  3, 7, 68, 74, 252n3, 274, 290n1, 290n5, 290n13, 291n20, 291n22 Royal Order of Kamehameha I  38, 56 S safe space  7, 17, 22–​31, 124, 130, 166, 220, 227, 228, 268, 297 Safer Spaces  29, 262 same-​sex marriage  92 San Francisco  138, 139, 152n5, 257, 261, 265, 268 sanitation  50, 145, 182 see also toilets; water Santa Rita jail  149–​50 satellite communications  61 Scary Little Girls  273, 275–​7, 288, 290n12 school  63–​4, 69, 108, 202, 276–​8 Seamoon House  138 self-​defence  29, 128 Sellafield  64 settler  6, 39–​44, 50–​6, 232, 235–​6, 243 see also colonialism Seneca  238, 244 sex education  49

314

Index

sexism  19, 26, 79, 88, 104–​10, 117, 121–​7, 130, 142, 157, 166, 172, 221, 257, 276, 299, 302 sex offender  22, 31 sexuality  4, 5, 20, 22–​5, 54, 80, 83, 90, 105–​7, 220, 227, 284, 305 see also heterosexuality; LGBTQIA+ sexual violence  4, 18–​31, 39, 42–​8, 52–​6, 116, 121, 127, 156, 159, 171, 291n16, 295, 297 see also harassment; rape sex worker  102–​7, 300 shelter  19, 37, 39, 40, 58–​9, 74, 105, 135, 144, 161 shooting  22 sibling  38, 47, 49, 50–​8 Silkwood, Karen  219, 228, 230 Sintel  116–​19 slavery  162, 186 slogan  66, 70, 86, 99, 103–​7, 110, 117, 120–​1, 167, 298 SlutWalk  127 socialism  91–​2, 94, 100–​6, 189 Socialist Feminist Collective  105–​6 social media  17, 21, 24, 43, 82, 101, 190–​1, 257, 261, 267, 287 see also Facebook; Twitter social reproduction  8, 9, 80, 87, 157–​67, 170–​2, 191, 196–​7, 203–​10 social sciences  264 software  189, 263, 281–​2 soldier  66, 107, 290n13 Sol Feminist Commission  121 solidarity  2, 10n2, 17–​23, 43, 51–​2, 70, 73, 83, 92, 101–​2, 107–​10, 182, 189, 220, 225, 257, 291n19 song  64, 66, 69, 70, 73, 74, 184, 196, 201, 230, 238, 280–​2, 290n12, 291n14 see also peace song Spain  2, 8, 63, 115–​29, 177, 210, 290n22, 302 see also Valencia spiral dance  139, 143, 149–​50, 152n5, 152n10, 248 spirituality  70, 136–​43, 146, 149, 209, 230, 286 stalking  53 Standing Rock  3, 43, 53 Starhawk  8, 135–​40, 141, 142–​51, 151n1, 152n3, 152n4, 152n5, 152n8, 252n4, 252n7, 266–​7, 296, 303 see also Dreaming the Dark; Fifth Sacred Thing, The; Webs of Power sterilisation  221, 227 stereotyping  4, 18, 68, 71, 87, 89, 93, 227 Stirling  8, 135–​7, 145, 151 storytelling  39, 45, 46, 48, 63, 183, 198, 211, 241, 247 Sudan  3 see also Khartoum

suffrage  188, 267, 285 suffragette  see suffrage Sunflower Movement  3, 78, 80, 83, 89 see also 3/​18 Parliament Occupation Movement; Five Flowers; Five Tiger Generals surveillance  44, 47, 48, 51, 125–​7, 162 survivor  21, 28–​32, 40, 42, 44–​5, 48, 56–​7 sustainability  4, 7, 38, 170, 295 symbolism  46, 90, 119, 128 sympathy  20, 163 Syntagma Square  3, 177 T Taipei  92 Taiwan  3, 6, 7, 78–​80, 82–​6, 90–​4, 94n2, 94n5, 295, 301 Democracy Watch  78 Feminist Scholars Association  92 see also Sunflower Movement Take Back the Night  127 see also Reclaim the Night Taksim Platform  101 Taksim Square  100, 101, 107, 110 see also Gezi Park tampons  70, 244 see also menstruation tear gas  43, 105, 108–​9 tent  10, 19, 22–​3, 45, 64, 67, 69, 71, 79, 101, 104, 105, 125, 128, 159, 164, 165, 166–​8, 180, 219, 235, 257, 262, 268, 281–​2, 303 terrorism  107 theatre  126, 219, 275–​6 Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT)  38, 39, 41, 47, 51, 53, 55–​7 tierra  195, 196, 301 toilets  64, 126, 135–​51, 159, 164, 168, 236, 243 tourism  127, 243 transfeminism  122, 130 transgender  29, 43, 68, 74, 122 see also LGBTQIA+ transphobic  4, 63, 69, 124, 130 trans women  7, 29–30, 73, 124, 287, 291n22 trauma  7, 31, 41–​9, 53–​7, 166, 201, 207 Trident  284 trolling  28 Trump, Donald  262 trust  53, 85, 87, 111n1, 182, 190, 267, 278, 280 Turkey  3, 6, 8, 93, 99–​110, 111n1, 298, 302 see also Gezi Park; Istanbul Turkish Republic  111n1 TV  88, 90, 91, 94n3, 94n4, 108, 167, 178, 279, 289 see also BBC

315

FEMINISM AND PROTEST CAMPS

Twitter  24, 190, 257 U Umbrella Movement  3 unemployment  64, 120, 159, 170, 184 United States (US)  17, 21–​2, 37, 61, 94, 102, 138, 145, 172, 177, 189, 218–​19, 223, 257, 261–​2, 295 National Guard  39 uranium  223–​4 utopia  26, 121, 136, 170, 198 V Valencia  115–​17, 120–​3, 124, 126–​30 Feminist Assembly  116–​17, 127, 128 Vancouver Island  235, 244, 250, 297 veganism  67, 282 victim  20, 22, 31, 90, 104, 109, 125, 127 -​blaming  31 violence  2, 4, 7, 8, 17–​29, 31–​3, 37, 39–​47, 48–​59, 63, 66, 88–​93, 101–​9, 115–​18, 121–​8, 130, 136–​9, 142, 152n5, 159, 162, 167, 171–​2, 185, 198, 201–​2, 206–​8, 220, 223, 229, 235, 243, 250, 268, 284, 290n13, 291n16, 295, 297, 298 gendered  7, 17–​20, 31–​2 police  7, 88, 109, 229 state  18, 20, 32, 39, 40, 47, 104, 109 virginity  107 virtual reality (VR)  274, 276, 281, 282 visibility  3, 22, 71, 72, 100, 118, 169, 182, 192, 196, 198, 201–​8, 243, 256, 296 Viva a Palavra  199, 205 vulnerability  19, 20, 48, 78, 116, 127, 145, 162, 176, 182–​7, 191–​2, 240, 298–​9 W Waiau  46 Wākea  40, 45, 47–​8, 55, 56, 59 war  2–​5, 37, 59, 61, 66, 68, 91, 105, 107, 119, 223–​4, 231, 242, 291n15, 295, 304 see also Cold War

water  58, 64, 89, 101, 102, 105, 136, 138–​40, 144–​7, 169, 202, 291n17 Webs of Power  148 see also Starhawk well-​being  29, 158–​9, 202, 204, 243 Whadjuk  217, 219 White supremacism  162 Why Stories Matter  220, 244, 304 see also Hemmings, Claire wife  118, 161 witch  see witchcraft witchcraft  70, 139, 148 womanhood  4, 73 Women for Survival  218, 223–​6 Women Occupy Wall Street (WOW)  21, 23 women of colour  5, 20–​1, 27, 40, 161–​3, 171–​3, 285–​6, 301 women-​only space  29, 72, 130, 206, 210, 227–​8, 285, 295 Women’s Environmental Network (WEN)  243 Women’s Liberation Movement  70, 72 working class  118, 161, 164 workplace  80, 85 World Trade Organization  143 X xenophobia  20, 304 see also racism Y Yorkshire  61, 62, 74n1 see also Menwith Hill young people  see youth youth  50, 82, 91, 100, 106, 120, 130n1 Z Zé Maria do Tomé  197, 199, 201–​3 Zoom  196, 274 Zuccotti Park  22, 177, 179

316