Spring 2017

Intersectionality NOW is a collective that believes feminism now must be intersectional (we reject hierarchies based on race, class, gender, ability, sexuality, or age) & that it must work to amplify the most marginalized women & that it must learn to listen and to check its privilege. We want our feminism to be fun but also make us uncomfortable. We want our feminism decolonized, inclusive, and international. With better slogans & cooler signs.

Past Programming

All programs are free and open to the community at: WCCW 2425 Glover Place.

Solidarity Is (Still) For White Women (Workshop)
Monday, Mar 6, 7 – 9:30pm

In this interactive workshop, we provide a space for white women to learn how to be more effective in organizing spaces shared with women of color by unpacking their white privilege, processing their guilt and shame together, and learning how to make space for others to lead and speak. If you want to be an even better ally / accomplice, this workshop is for you. If you want to understand your whiteness and its origins and consequences on a deeper level, this workshop is for you. If you’re exasperated by the phrase “check your privilege,” this workshop is definitely for you. If you went to the Women’s March and didn’t feel uncomfortable at all, this workshop is for you! Facilitated by organizers from Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere (AWARE).

Taking Up ALL the Space Vol. 1
Monday, Mar 13, 7-9pm

As part of our effort to smash White Feminism while hacking white spaces & resources, we invite womxn of color & radical queerdos to join us in a town hall meeting on at the Women’s Center for Creative Work. As part of our Coalitions Residency, we’re opening up the space to marginalized femmes who are implicitly excluded from fully participating. Snacks provided, BYO. Come print, copy, co-work, talk, hang, critique, comment, & get comfortable taking up ALL the space. 

Towards A Trans Inclusive Feminism (A Dinner Party)
Monday, March 20, 7-9:30pm
At Pieter Space
For this community discussion, we’re challenging the cis-centric nature of feminist organizing and practice. How can we work towards a more inclusive (expansive) definition of womanhood? Can trans women be empowered by reclaiming words used to degrade all femme folx? What language and symbols is it time to discard? What language has yet to be invented? What do all femmes gain by centering transfeminism in a movement for women’s rights? We invite trans women to frame the conversation.

This event is open to both trans women and their allies, but the space will be trans & WOC-centric. Please be mindful of the amount of space you take up as a non-trans and/or white person at this event.

Facilitated by Jennicet Gutierrez (Familia TQLM), an. cinquepalmi, Yocheved Zenaida-Cohen, and Amanda-Faye Jimenez.

Pizza (vegan options) will be provided! BYOB.

Mapping Feminist LA // Intersectionality NOW
Monday Mar 27, 7:30-9:30pm

Intersectionality NOW will join Mapping Feminist LA from 7:30–9:30pm on Monday, March 27th, to think about what defines a feminist resource and how women can be connected through various organizations and spaces in Los Angeles. In developing a web application, Mapping Feminist LA considers potential mapped locations and their impact on the local feminist landscape and establishes criteria that ensure shared resources are inclusive and intersectional.

Taking Up ALL the Space Vol. 2: WOC @ WCCW
Monday, April 10, 2017, 7–9pm

As part of our mission to smash White Feminism while hacking white spaces & resources, we invite womxn of color to join us in a town hall meeting on/@ the Women’s Center for Creative Work.

If you are a WOC who:

• Has attended a WCCW event in the past but did not feel comfortable/included
• Has never attended a WCCW event because you felt implicitly excluded
• Has ever attended an event or program at a similar space & felt excluded, invisible, or silenced
• Has ideas & strategies for hacking white spaces & resources to share

This event is for you!

Come print, copy, co-work, talk, hang, critique, comment, & get comfortable taking up ALL the space. Snacks provided, BYO.

Taking Up ALL the Space is a zine project by Ella Mendoza.

FPCC Zine-Making Workshop
Friday, April 14, 2017, 7–9pm
Hosted by Intersectionality NOW in collaboration with Feminist Pornographic Collective Consciousness (FPCC)

In collaboration with Intersectionality NOW, FPCC will host a zine-making workshop that starts off with a reading discussion of Feminist Pornographic Collective Consciousness, Volume 1. Some of the many questions we would like to ask include but are not limited to:

• What does critical and ethical porn look like for folks with different identifications and lived experiences?
• How do we as intersectional feminists dissect our desire and fear for domination, subordination, and everything in between?
• What can pornography mean for folks who are identified as gray sexual or asexual?

In the second part of the event we will make a zine using the xerox machine. If you have images, toys, or texts you’d like to xerox please bring them to the workshop.
Due to the intimate nature of the event, we would like to save seats for 20 POC / LGBTQAI+ / differently-abled folks. If you do not identify as one of the above, you are still welcome to join and listen to the discussion. Please RSVP at [email protected] to reserve your spot!
Accessibility: There are six steps, with dual handrails, leading up the front entrance, and there is a wheelchair accessible entrance through the back. (Come all the way through the adjacent parking gate and around the building). The hallways is 36″  at the narrowest from that back entrance to the main room where the event will be held. There is not a wheelchair accessible restroom. Please don’t hesitate to email [email protected] with any accessibility questions.

Remember, Resist and Re-Imagine
Monday, April 24, 2017, 7:30–9:30pm
Artists Heisue Chung-Matheu and Grace Hwang invite Maythinee Washington and Chelle Babour into conversation with the public to reflect on the 25th anniversary of the 1992 LA Uprisings, and speak about how art has been a form of resistance and re-imagination for multiracial solidarity.

Selections from Anna Deavere Smith’s work Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 will be screened, followed by a Q & A discussion. Chung-Matheu and Hwang invite the public to a *fishbowlconversation on witnessing, representation and memorializing. The audience is invited to participate in a discussion about the role of artists in diverse, intersectional communities and the means to engage/tackle social issues with artistic/cultural production.

(*Used to facilitate listening and speaking in large groups, a fishbowl conversation allows the entire group to participate in a conversation.)

Heisue Chung-Matheu and Grace Hwang recently performed the work “sa-yi-gu: the fire this (next) time” at Highways Performance Space, offering up the remembrance of rebellion and uprising in order to help us resist oppression today—specifically how embodying these stories and memories can serve to process, resist, remember, forget, mourn, grieve, heal, hope, and empower.

Chelle Barbour is a multi-disciplinary artist, independent curator, and co-director of Autonomie Projects, a non-profit arts organization.

Maythinee Washington’s recent performances include Constellations (Marianne) and Anna Deavere Smith’s seminal solo show Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992.

Having Left: Intersectional Perspectives on Migration
Wednesday, April 26, 2017, 7-9pm
Human Resources: 410 Cottage Home Street, Los Angeles, California 90012
Transnational and intersectional perspectives on feminism encompass questions that challenge postcolonial frameworks and scrutinize the destruction carried out by Western imperialism. Several artists from the Asian diaspora—Christine Dianne Guiyangco, Thinh Nguyen, Seo Yun Son & eunhae yoo—will present work exploring global migration, labor, and gender identity. This program is curated by Hyunjee Nicole Kim and presented by Intersectionality NOW.

Christine Dianne Guiyangco is a Los Angeles-based artist.  She was born in Philippines in 1992 and moved to United States in 2001. Guiyangco actively works in a range of fields including performance, painting, writing, installation, video, and sculpture. She has exhibited in Space B Gallery, PØST Gallery, UCLA Hillel, New Wight Gallery, Charlie James Gallery, and Angel’s Gate Cultural Center. In 2014, she graduated with Bachelor of Arts at the University of California Los Angeles.

Thinh Nguyen’s work is a complex contemporary look at a few converging issues investigating the personal, social, cultural, and historical while innovatively engaging the public in the process. He explores formal and conceptual process in different media as a strategy to continue the development of critical exchange and aesthetic innovation. He received an MFA at Claremont Graduate University and BFA a California State University, Fullerton.

Seo Yun Son is an artist and educator living in Los Angeles, California. She received her BFA in Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles. As an undocumented immigrant, her practice examines the politics of constructing one’s identity by remapping territory and citizenship as well as the circulation and progression of one’s personal memory and history.

eunhae yoo is a Los Angeles-based artist who received her BFA in Fine Arts from University of California, Los Angeles. She grew up in South Korea and immigrated to the U.S. in 2002. Her identity-based works stem from her undocumented status and the internal split caused by dichotomous cultural influences and memories. Through her conceptual practice, the artist inspects the fluid – and often clashing – nature behind the sense of belonging to oneself and to a larger entity.

Feminists Against Capitalism
Monday, May 8, 6:30-8:30pm

Our feminisms—intersectionality, socialist feminism, anarchist feminism, platformist anarcho-communism, and Jineology—reject capitalism as fundamentally and necessarily patriarchal, racist, classist, ableist, and hierarchical.

Because these feminisms share a vision of equality in a world done away with capitalism, their liberation strategies have sought to build the power of the people both within and also outside capitalist political formations and institutions.

Two historical and now increasingly ever present threats—that of liberal feminist co-optation on the one hand and anticapitalist struggles that treat feminism as secondary on the other—prompt us to make clear where we stand NOW as FEMINISTS AGAINST CAPITALISM.

An open discussion will follow the panel.

Speakers:

Romina Akemi is a Black Rose Anarchist Federation member and prolific writer specializing in feminist and sexual dissidence movements in Latin America.

Solîn Bendewa is an editor for the social media platform The Middle Eastern Feminist. Her past organizing has included a materialist feminist reading group, a committee in solidarity with the Democratic Confederalist movement in N. Syria, and development of curriculum for a weekly group empowering local transgender youth.

Miranda Sklaroff is the founding chair of the socialist feminist committee for Democratic Socialists of America-Los Angeles, a member of the DSA Left Caucus, and an organizer of the LA-based feminist collective/discussion group the hell books club.

Moderated by Nicole Kelly from Intersectionality NOW.

Taking Up ALL the Space Vol. 3: WOC @ WCCW
Monday, May 15, 7-9pm

For Taking Up ALL the Space Vol. 3, coalitions resident Intersectionality NOW would like to continue the conversation from Vol. 2! We invite womxn of color to join us again at the Women’s Center for Creative Work to talk, hang, eat, collaborate, and get used to taking up ALL the space.

This is more chill potluck than structured conversation, but some topics of conversation might include:

• Building a community of artists of color within the broader WCCW community
• Ideas & suggestions for more inclusive/diverse WCCW programming
• Ideas & strategies for hacking white spaces & resources
• De-centering whiteness in arts/feminist spaces

Some snacks/drinks provided + BYO!  

Taking Up ALL the Space is a zine project by Ella Mendoza.

A Conversation On Disability, Neurodiversity, & Chronic Illness
Friday, May 26, 6:30-8:30pm

This event will be a decentralized dialogue on the intersections of disability, chronic illness and neurodiversity within transgender communities, with a particular emphasis on the experience of transgender femmes and transgender women. This event is a space for disabled, chronically ill, and neurodiverse people to express and share their personal experiences, stories and truths.

So often these topics and intersections are silenced or not discussed in feminist spaces, and we hope that this event will open up further dialogue. Rather than a traditional workshop or panel where the audience’s primary role is that of the listener, at this event a variety of stories, experiences, compensations, truths, identities, challenges and successes (to name just a few aspects) from both the audience and the panelists are represented, shared, heard, supported, and affirmed.

This event will center disabled, neurodiverse, and chronically ill transgender and gender nonconforming people. Allies are encouraged to step back and actively listen, engage, reflect, and inquire about how to support and affirm. Please keep in mind the physical and emotional labor of the audience and presenters. Zines will be provided for additional resources.

Facilitated By:

The Hatfield system (Nami Kitsune Raven Hatfield), is a collective of disabled transgender women. We work together to try to make the world a better place and encourage others to dream. We are currently working as an assistant librarian (with a focus on working with children, parents, and educator) at West Hollywood Public Library. We also run a blog based upon our experiences with dissociative identity disorder, disabilities, being transgender, and other topics found here: https://teaandmultiplicity.wordpress.com/. In the past we have worked with the Los Angeles LGBT center leadership lab, as a member of the St.John’s Transgender Right to Health Committee and advisory board, a student activist, librarian, and leader at UCLA, and a community archivist at the June L. Mazer Archives.

Rajah Jones is a 36 year old Black, Latinx Intersex Queer NonBinary Trans Femme who identifies as Disabled, neurodiverse, and chronically ill, who suffers from PTSD and Borderline Personality Disorder, and a survivor. A community organizer and activist for the POC, low income, Disabled, and Transgender communities. A former board member for Gender Justice Los Angeles and board member of Equal Action, who sponsors the longest-running LGBTQIA open mic in LA, OutSpoken Sessions. Author of poetry, plays, and rap.

Lilac Vylette Maldonado is a nontraditional graduate student, community organizer, and artivist who identifies as a queer, femme, disabled/chronically ill/neurodivergent, Chicanx demigirl. Lilac uses the neutral pronouns they/them/theirs. They have been actively organizing since 2009 around many intersectional social justice issues such as racial justice, gender justice, food justice, reproductive justice, LGBTQIA issues, and body positivity. They have worked locally with various groups including serving as a Lead Volunteer and Intern for the LGBT political research organization Leadership LAB (2011-2014), a Core Collective Member and Logistics Coordinator for the eating disorder and body positivity group Trans Folx Fighting Eating Disorders (2014-2016), a Member of the Planning Committee for the LGBTQIA open mic night OUTspoken Sessions (2015-2016), and as a Board Member for the intersectional LGBTQIA organization Equal Action (2016).

Asher Silberman is a white, nonbinary gender student with a learning disability. They are graduating with a Bachelors of Computer Information Technology from California State University Northridge. They are on the executive board of their sorority, Gamma Rho Lambda and the club CSUN Queer STEM on campus. They help run a community website for bisexual folks at bitopia.org, are part of the first annual meeting of trans hackers (Information Security Professionals) called Beyond Binaries, and involved in developing a new type of visual-motor assessment. You can find their online identities at https://keybase.io/asher.

About the Residents

Hyunjee Nicole Kim is a writer & editor residing in Los Angeles.
Nicole Kelly is a writer, maker, party planner. Co-host of bitchface, a podcast about art & feminism. Writer & medic for Feminist Pizza.
Phoebe Ünter is an independent graphic designer & journalist focused on social justice and art.