Amy Richards & Jennifer Baumgardner

The day before leaving for a three and a half month book tour, Amy Richards and Jennifer Baumgardner invited me over to Jennifer’s apartment to talk about their new book Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism. Their previous book, Manifesta, resonates with many young women who are searching to establish their own feminist identities, and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to ask some tough but loving questions to two of the third wave’s most prominent activists.

xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" ?>

Altar: Why did you decide to write this book?

Amy: When we were touring for Manifesta and becoming more accessible to people who were interested in feminism the most asked question was some version of “What can I do to get more involved” and when Jennifer and I sought to answer this we at first deflected it on to organizations that seemed equipped to answer that question. It was like, what are the issues you care about? Do you care about girls? Call Girls Inc. Do you care about the environment? Call Natural Resources Defense Council. Do you care about animal rights? Call Feminists for Animal Rights. And then we realized, because we thought that we needed to be more informed, that what these organizations were giving as answers were very similar, regardless of the issue, and that was what we dubbed as the Generic Three: Sending money, calling politicians and volunteering. All of which are worthy and necessary parts of social justice, but what we were feeling was that the people asking the question wanted so much more than that and so Grassroots initially was just going to be an activist idea bank where we could house creative ideas beyond the Generic Three. Then we realized that we actually needed to get this idea out there and we needed more ideas. We needed to also share the things that we’d learned about with other people.

Altar: Who do you see as your audience for the book?

Jennifer: Well, people who read Manifesta and liked it, but also all of these people who say, “I do believe in social justice. I do want to do all this stuff, but I don’t know where to begin. How do I start?” Since the book has come out people have written us already saying things like, “I’m working on this project. I’m not an activist. I don’t know how to do any of these things. I don’t have any money. I didn’t go to college.” There’s a wide variety of things they think that they don’t have. “But I want to have a two-day event in my town that brings together all of these different people.” I think almost everyone has a point in their life where they feel like it’s urgent to put their values into practice or they see some need around them and they really want to do something. So, the book is for anyone who has ever asked that question.

Altar: Why did you decide to include your own personal histories?

Amy: That was not something we planned to do in the beginning, but when we read the book it felt more like we were just telling other people’s stories and that there was a need to reveal our investment in this. It also made us sound less presumptuous to put in our place in the process rather than if we would have just launched in and said that we think there needs to be more activism and here’s what needs to be done. It hopefully reads more as if we’re coming from the same place and that we’re still in process. Just to speak to what Jennifer was saying, there’s a lot in Grassroots that are lessons learned along the way of activism and thought they might not be engaged throughout the whole book and might find it very elementary, I think just the message of being elementary is something that hardcore activists need to learn. Also, how we deal with burnout when we are the people who do the work day in and day out. And how we work towards promoting ourselves better when we are an activist or someone who says, “I believe the government should support reproductive justice or health and justice for all.” What does that mean? So I think that the messages in Grassroots in a specific way are for the person looking to get involved, but breaking those things down when you are already an activist are very crucial to continue in your work.

Refposition.com is an Affordable Website SEO Company providing SEO Packages to get you top rankings on the web. seo company

Jennifer: I think that self-identified activists, and I know you’re one [indicating Mandy], that we do forget all the time about the elementary elements of it. That sometimes being most effective really does just mean helping the kids at the neighboring school develop a recycling program. It might be something seemingly small like answering someone who sent you a random email with some dumb question even though you were initially like, “Why are you asking me and why aren’t you learning how to do these things on your own?” When you asked your first question it made me think both about Ask Amy [Amy Richards’ advice column at Feminist.com] when she gets really vague questions and when I used to work at Ms. Magazine, even though it was just a magazine, it was perceived as this catch-all for the problems in the women’s movement. People would call and tell us that they were fleeing their batterer and ask what they could do. Initially I thought, “I can’t believe their calling a magazine. That’s just ridiculous. You don’t call a magazine. Call somewhere else. Call your local shelter.” Then I started taking it more seriously and you realize that my first response was actually out of my own fear and ignorance. Like when someone asks you what they can do and you don’t know, so you try to pretend like they’re dumb for asking or something, but you can find out more about their problem and come up with a solution, or at least a good referral.