Reflections on Readings and Voter Suppression Documentary
I really enjoyed watching the documentary about Stacy Abram’s and the work that she does and learning more about the history and current state of voter suppression in the United States. Since coming to UNE I’ve learned way more about voter suppression than I ever knew existed, and the documentary continued to add on to the information that I’ve learned. Watching this documentary really helped to solidify for me how much I care about this topic and would love to be someone who helps to fight voter suppression in the field. Watching Stacy’s team go to work in the community and bring people out of their homes to go vote seemed like something that would be really rewarding to me. It got me thinking a bit about my activism project and where I may go with that later on in the semester. I think that bringing together women’s issues and voting issues in a weird way could help to mend the disconnect between why and how issues of oppression effect all of us whether we are the oppressor or the one being oppressed in a given scenario. The documentary did a beautiful job of illustrating how an issue that is mainly affecting only a subgroup of the population is actually negatively affecting all of us. I think that we could use a modified version of this to help explain how women’s issues are men’s issues, etc.
Regarding the readings for the week, I think that reading Susan B. Anthony’s historical piece alongside Audre Lorde’s contemporary piece painted a very interesting picture of where feminism is at today. When I was in high school, I took an introductory women’s and gender studies course in which we read the same piece by Susan B. Anthony. Rereading the same piece again but with a new perspective was very enlightening for me and brought me a new perspective. Especially with all of the discussions we have had lately regarding intersectionality, I am able to real Anthony’s historical words and align with them while also critiquing them from a position in the future. Doing this I think helps me to take a second to see how far we’ve come and redirect where we are going in terms of feminism. Sometimes when we are disconnected from the literature or from the conversation just from day to day, we forget how the conditions of the world actually are and we are reminded about how we want to change them.
I also really enjoyed reading Lorde’s paper because I find myself really resonating with her perspective. Although I don’t think her approach is the most fast paced or the easiest option, I agree with the idea of radical feminism in that we are required to destroy the current system in order to rebuild a better one. I also really enjoyed the quotes that were included throughout the entirety of Lorde’s paper because they really helped to instill a sense of power or drive in me to work towards activism at a larger scale.
