I found a lot of truth and resonance within the Combahee River Collective statement from 1977 in the reading/watchlist.  I had never known prior to reading this that there existed a single piece of writing that collected and laid out so many important points and ideas that are essential to understanding so many different movements ongoing in the united states; which also highlights just how much progress, labor, and intellectual thinking has been and still is due to black women, something I’m also glad has been devoted this entire section to in this class. I personally have trouble thinking of a current revolutionary line of thinking that has not in some way been contributed to largely by at least a single black woman prior to, during, and after the civil rights era. At the same time, these revolutionary movements often overlook them, which is why I think there is a lot of truth in the statement “We are not convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and anti-racist revolution will guarantee our liberation”, something that is evident in many progressive movements. This can currently be seen very evidently in the white socialist movement that has gained a lot of popularity in recent years, which leaves out causes for women outside of white women, as well as any other non-white person in the country and definietly leaves out black women in all but a way to further their own white-specific causes.
    Also prior to this class, I’d never seen the film Paris is Burning. It’s full of some really incredible footage and information, and after watching it I hope that it is preserved for a very long time and made available to watch for a much wider audience. It’s very great to see nyc’s ungentrified drag queen culture before it and its language became

The incidents at the sweatshops mentioned in both videos are about as unsurprising as they are gruesome. It’s hard to imagine a more pressing and immediate need for feminism and women in America than the need for better working conditions for everyone in the country. The more workers that are unionized in this country and the better the conditions are to allow for people to form those unions without inhuman backlash from their employers the better it will be for women. Disasters like the sweatshop fires discussed in the youtube videos are very terrible, but it is due to their very visible nature that we hear about them in the first place. There have been and continue to be sweatshops all over the country, as well as outsourced work in even worse conditions brought on by the very same companies in places all over the world. These sweatshops either remain hidden, or are torturing distant people of distant ethnicities uninteresting to the general public american eye and therefore ignored, or simply known of and been fought against but have had little to no repercussions to those responsible. And even for those that aren’t working in sweatshops, so many are still being taken advantage of for their labor, overworked and underpaid, straining their mental and physical health in order to make next month’s payment again and again, often with increasing fees and unexpected payments and accidents. Money is necessary for survival in the imposed capitalist systems in our current world, and the countless ways that it is kept from people most in need of it in order to further gain mind-boggling levels of wealth and power is standing very firmly in the way of women’s rights and equality. 

It’s very crazy to think about how long the fight for the ratification of the ERA has been going on. The protests that you can see in a lot of people’s latest snapshots as well as the image from the article span a pretty big chunk of time. Although it was still fairly recently that it was written, it’s insane how slowly very popular and important amendments and laws can move through the government system in contrast to how fast they can move when leaders really want, as we’ve seen from many a republican governor. When things like this are delayed and ignored from government, it’s difficult to see them successfully creating and passing very time-sensitive environmental laws. Every day people are disenfranchised and put into more challenging situations as the days get warmer and the natural disasters become more common and more intense. Hopefully people will continue to fight for these things that are essential for us to continue and function, and hopefully governors will listen and take action on these matters much quicker than they have been.