Working Feminist Principles
These principles were informed by the writings of bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, Patricia Hill Collins, and Gloria Anzaldúa as well as many conversations with folks about what feminism means to them! We’re still learning how to put these principles to full and deep practice. Still coming to understand what it looks like to be pro Black, pro immigrant, pro trans, pro sex work. How to support leaders with these identities in our community. How to create leadership positions occupied by a diverse group of folks at Burdock and authentically work, build and create across differences. We invite everyone on this journey with us. We invite you to call us to action when you need clarification, when you need proof, when you have constructive feedback or criticisms or questions. We are committed to being accountable to our community and to these principles as well as the ones we add to this list in the future.
“To maintain their power, dominant groups create and maintain a popular system of 'commonsense' ideas that support their right to rule. In the United States, hegemonic ideologies concerning race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation are often so pervasive that it is difficult to conceptualize alternatives to them, let alone ways of resisting the social practices that they justify.”
— Patricia Hill Collins
“When feminism does not explicitly oppose racism, and when anti-racism does not incorporate opposition to patriarchy, race and gender politics often end up being antagonistic to each other, and both interests lose.
— Kimberle Crenshaw
“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.”
— Audre Lorde
“Feminism is the political theory and practice that struggles to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, disabled women, lesbians, old women - as well as white, economically privileged, heterosexual women. Anything less than this vision of total freedom is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement.”
— Barbara Smith