From May 20-23, 2011, over 350 young feminists converged in Winnipeg for the 2nd RebELLEs Pan Canadian Young Feminist Gathering, Notre Révolution Féministe, Our Revolution is Now. There was laughter, tears, anger and smiles as we tackled core issues that are at the heart of feminism today.

Throughout the event there were over 60 workshops, an artsy feminist take-over of a downtown campus, skill shares, discussions, a cabaret and dance party, panel presentations, and interactive big group sessions. On the Saturday of the gathering, approximately 100 community members marched with the RebELLEs under a downpour of rain, chanting and laughing in the streets. Everyone was soaked to the bone as we met at the gathering space for a feast of bannock and chili, providing a space to build bridges and relationships between RebELLEs and members of the Winnipeg community. For some participants this was the first big feminist action they had ever participated in.

Workshops ranged in theme and style, including: spoken word, feminist mothering, reproductive justice, body image and fat-phobia, food security and radical cheer leading, to name but a few. In addition, there were workshops framed around five action areas that had been decided through a Pan-Canadian consultation process: Violence Against Women, Anti-racism and Decolonization, Poverty and Anti-capitalism, Women and the Environment, and Peace and Demilitarization. These workshops provided an opportunity for participants to discuss the action areas and help develop content for a set of Resistance Actions, Alternatives and Demands (RAD) to inspire our movement and guide a diversity of tactics and different approaches to making change in our communities, relationships and society. A committee of participants from diverse backgrounds and geographical locations – the RAD Team – worked tirelessly to bring together the content and priorities from the Action Area workshops and compiled a draft to present to all participants.

Walking into an intentionally created feminist space does not automatically guarantee an oppression-free environment. Feminist and activist communities are not perfect and often reinforce the systems we are fighting against as everyone walks in with baggage that comes from living in a patriarchal, racist and capitalist society. In this sense it was not surprising, albeit still disheartening, to see these systems at work at the RebELLEs gathering.

Throughout the weekend, both participants and the Organizing Committee (OC) began to see and experience racism, homophobia, ableism, and other types of oppressions being carried out in workshops and conversations that were intended to focus on what and how we are going to take collective action on as RebELLEs and young feminists. On the third day of the gathering, the OC spent many hours debriefing and discussing what was occurring at the gathering, what this means on a larger scale, and in relation to building a movement. We know that anti-oppression work is often pushed to the sidelines in favour of the ‘more important’ tasks, the ‘real’ politics, and we knew we didn’t want to make these same mistakes – mistakes that work to reinforce the blockades and barriers to real change, to real revolutions. These decisions don’t allow us to pause, stop what we are doing, look around at which of our sisters are here, and which are not. These choices don’t allow us to process, reconsider our actions and our strategies for a more just society, free from patriarchy, capitalism, racism, colonialism and all other systems of oppression that divide our communities and dictate who our sisters and allies are.

And so, after many hours of discussion late into the night on Sunday, the OC altered Monday’s program. The morning was originally dedicated to the collective editing and adoption process of the RAD document; pushing this process to the afternoon, we opened the space for participants to autonomously organize and discuss how we, as young feminists, are organizing and building a movement – what is working and what we should keep doing, as well as looking at what we need to change in order to move forward and continue working together to improve w omen’s lives. If we can’t stop, deconstruct, process, and change how we work together within our own movements, we aren’t going to be able to collectively make change in the world around us.

Because of the program change the RAD document was not adopted, however the RebELLEs movement is committed to organizing around the five action areas, as well as developing an effective strategy for how to continue to work on these priorities, while acknowledging the critiques of its process and purpose and incorporating many of the suggestions that were provided.

While clearly we did not solve oppression at the gathering (shucks!), 350 young feminists returned to their communities questioning and critiquing how to collectively organize without reproducing the very oppressions we are fighting against, and how to develop effective tools for anti-oppression work.

Unlearning, relearning, and changing the ways we interact with one another is an active and ongoing practice in which we all need to participate. As we continue to take action as RebELLEs, we must continue to critically reflect on and unravel the complexities of oppression and their relation to the ways in which we organize, mobilize, and build a movement.

Our struggle is not over, and we’ll be fighting with love and rage.

This article appeared in the Sept/Oct 2011 issue of Canadian Dimension (Canada’s Criminal (Justice) System).