What are your issues? It can be assumed that since you are posting on a feminist collab, that women's issues are important to you, but what in specific, or in addition? In Manifesta by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, they write about how "...On every Third Wave Foundation membership card, for example, there is a place that asks, 'My issues are. . .?,' and no two cards have ever listed the same answer. Among the responses provided, members list 'Jewish progressive life,' 'war crimes,' . . .Those are just the tip of the iceberg of what young women are thinking about. And, when you scratch the surface of why someone cares about a certain issue, it's almost always because such issues have affected that person or someone he or she cares about" (p 47). Why is such and such an issue important to you? And what do you do about it?

i, like many of us, have different issues and concerns. they are all linked in varying degrees of separation. as a woman of color, my first and foremost concern is regarding the status of my community. of course, within this bracket, i include all my communities: poor, female, white, mexican, etc. no one is only one thing. no one can stand for only one issue. we're complex. we're varied. we all wear different hats.

i tend to be more active in two communities. firstly, i spend a lot of time volunteering in poor areas. i teach literacy, ged, and computer education for a nonprofit center geared towards the economically disadvantaged. i also work with a group to disperse medical education and provide birth control in these communities. part of my efforts in this vein have included learning basic spanish and arabic in order to more effectively communicate with and between our "clients." of course, poverty is a huge dilemma and it affects all of us in different ways, but i am most interested in the way it affects women. especially working women. especially working women with children. one of the goals of my organization is to eliminate the stigma attached to welfare and the working poor. we work to educate the public about the poverty cycle. my favorite quote regarding this comes from a single mother who was in a meeting with her welfare counsellor. the counsellor was being very snooty with the woman and the woman, rather than be indignant or angry, simply stated, "if you were to lose your job right now, you'd be in this chair and i could be in that one." the counsellor's attitude changed almost immediately. that's how it is with the working poor and that's what we are seeking to alleviate and eventually change.

while i am interested in disenfranchising the patriarchy and equal pay for equal work, i am more worried about the violence that faces people of color... especially the poor ones. it is a proven fact that people of color face danger on any given day. that has to change. it has to start with us (us being middle class white valued priviledged people). we have to acknowledge the priviledge afforded us and then take steps to demobilize it. as is stated in this article (thanks, resistivity), "I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks." this issue should be everyone's. that it's not is telling. but, even more hideous is the effect that this has on the communities of color. internalized racism, individual moral culpability, all these things are the result of what is a systematic disenfranchisement of the dark skinned.

as a feminist. no, as a humanist in search of an egalitarian society in which people are not judged on their skin color or wallet size or genitalia or spirituality or sexuality, etc. as that person, i fight white priviledge. i fight assumed heterosexuality. i fight the belief that being female makes me inferior. and i do it by volunteering in the public schools, by canvasing to get more people of color both registered to vote and at the polls, by teaching grown men and women to read for the first time, by teaching those men and women how to take care of themselves in this Western society - how to go to the doctor, the dentist, the grocery store, by not allowing ignorance to be thrown at me without a stiff uppercut.

we all have issues. but, with poverty just one step across a thin, permeable line, we cannot afford to ignore or sublimate this issue. as a person of color, i put my community first and do what is in my power economically and politically to affect change and improve/stabilize our standards of living.