WAM! - We B(e)lo(n)g: Womyn of Color & Online Feminism

I'm sitting next to Liza and she asked just before we started "Is Brownfemipower here?" When she said, "Yes!" I ran to her, but Liza jumped over a table. We embraced BFP in such a large hug. Oh, yes...we set the stage for the love fest.

We are beginning with introductions about our wishes. Here is my introduction:

I wish that I didn't have to justify my Latinaness just because I don't speak Spanish. I wish that my daughter will not wrestle with this and grow up always surrounded by love.

There are a lot of awesome wishes which I won't even attempt to write down here for fear of misstating them. We all wish for better representations, complete histories, I wasn't so tired, that our brothers had a positive view of themselves in media, and many many more. The openness of just our introductions is so heart warming, so honest, so needed.

There is a blog that is associated to our wishes! wishes fulfilled. Go, post your wish. We're in a six minute exercise to write our wishes down. Since I already did I'll write a few more wishes for this conference:

• I wish that I would find more awesome bloggers to collaborate with
• I wish that I could take all these women home with me
• I wish that I felt as awesome as I feel for them
• I wish I had a better answer for "So why do you blog so much? Especially not for pay?" when people start grilling me
  
• I wish we could all feel this loved
  

Discussion points:

• we need to value our spaces, our blogs, our words, our work
• how do we get involved in/find the WOC community
• we need to not only find our own WOC mentors, but also find time to mentor others

The conversations were awesome and because this was such a safe space, I really don't want to write too much of what was discussed. It's not that some totally private stuff was said, but ya know?

Now we're wrapping up. Please don't forget about the WAM! Ning site and the WOC group I set up.

Technorati tags: WAM!, WAM! 2008