This year’s Blog Action Day is on the theme of poverty. The organizers are asking bloggers to:
- spend the next two months educating themselves on poverty
- write an indepth post on poverty related to their normal blog content
Given the conversations about feminism and capitalism going on right now, I think this topic is ideal for feminist bloggers to reflect on socio-political economic systems and their impact on feminist struggles. While I think a discussion of women and poverty is timely and necessary, I would ask those who can, to be even more bold in joining this Blog Action Day by answering the following questions:
- What is feminism’s social justice responsibilities with regards to poverty?
- How are these responsibilities enacted individually, socially, politically, and globally?
And
- to do so, with concrete examples from ones own life, grounded data about women’s communities or women’s experiences of poverty, etc.
- to move from a philanthropic othering to an actual sense of connectivity in struggle
- to cite sources of your ideas (ie if you are thinking of a particular school of feminists, or repeating or modifying arguments from a particular feminist or group of feminists, cite them, don’t just pass it off as your own ideas)
Reading lists that may help you get started:
- see the Historical Reading List here and the links within
- see Jessica Hoffman’s cited influences in her post here (htp Sudy by way of BFP)
Think about some of the material published by these presses:
And if you can, you might want to consider going to the Radical Women Conference 2008 Oct. 3-6 in San Fran which could get you all jazzed with ideas for not only Blog Action Day but also some serious praxis.
Like a Whisper 
I am planning on participating in this blog action day – thank you for suggesting these ways of centering our responses!