Third World Women's Alliance

The Third World Women's Alliance (TWWA) was a revolutionary organization of women of color active from 1970 to 1977 aimed at ending racism, imperialism, and sexism. The TWWA was one of the earliest groups advocating an intersectional approach to women's oppression.

History

The Third World Women’s Alliance was founded in New York City in the summer of 1970.[1] Its origins lay in women's activism in Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In December 1968, Black women in SNCC formed a Black women's liberation committee, but early in 1970, the women decided to expand their membership beyond SNCC and renamed their group the Black Women's Alliance.[2] In the Summer of 1970, the Black Women's Alliance joined with revolutionary Puerto Rican women activists to create the Third World Women’s Alliance.[3] A second chapter in Oakland/San Francisco formed in 1971.

The main focus of the Third World Women's Alliance was to unite women of color in struggle against racism, imperialism, and sexism, as the banner of their newspaper Triple Jeopardy (1971-1975) proclaimed.[2] The Third World Women's Alliance stressed the ideological connections between capitalist exploitation, global imperialism, and oppression of women of color.

The Alliance had many strategies to attack the threats of racism, imperialism, and sexism. A statement in the first issue of Triple Jeopardy proclaimed "the struggle against racism and imperialism must be waged simultaneously with the struggle for women's liberation" by "a strong independent socialist women's group."[4]

The first meeting was on September 25, 1971 and was followed by a series of consciousness-raising sessions, which covered political and cultural education issues such as political prisoners. While losing some lesbians of color, the TWWA’s priority concern was not on homosexuality, but building alliances and coalitions with other revolutionary organizations. To be well known in the public and political actions that take place in the organizations was key.

The Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA) widened the possibility of women’s involvement through a triple jeopardy perspective. This idea motions an open-minded perspective on the feminists who connected domestic issues in communities of color to justice and anti-imperial movements in the Third World. Adding to the critical reproductive theory. Furthermore, it demonstrates how Black women's protests against sexism in the civil rights movements formed a Black feminist mutual identity.

Many understood the Third World Women's Alliance to be a US Women of Color political formation. Because it was a radical based movement, they focused on the experiences, concerns, and perspectives of black, Asian, Puerto Rican and Hispanic women who were critical of the masculine beliefs interfering with the justice movements occurring within their community. It developed with the goal of redefining the "role of the black woman in the revolutionary struggle". The group, now to be called the Third World Women's Alliance (TWWA) brought differences of culture, race, and ethnicity into the fight against capitalist exploitation in communities of color, stereotypes, and drug and alcohol abuse. They waged with segments of Black Power and women's liberation movements.

Contributions

The common ground in the Alliance was oppression and how they faced oppression from the time they had to resist it. The thought of the Alliance was to bring out the depth of the stress on how the oppression and suffering blacks have experienced. If there is anything to learn from the Alliance is that were a revolutionary feminist groups, which roles are not made from the incompatibility of white role models but to be with the goal of black liberation.

References

  1. ↑ Ward, Stephen (2013). "Third World Women's Alliance". In Peniel E. Joseph. Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era. Routledge. p. 141. ISBN 1-136-77340-1.
  2. 1 2 Kimberly Springer (1999). Still Lifting, Still Climbing: Contemporary African American Women's Activism. NYU Press. p. 111. ISBN 978-0-8147-8124-1.
  3. ↑ Kimberly Springer (7 April 2005). Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968–1980. Duke University Press. p. 49. ISBN 0-8223-8685-2.
  4. ↑ "Women in the Struggle". Triple Jeopardy 1 (1): 8–9. September–October 1971.

External links

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