Lessons Learned in the Making of a Feminist Bloc

Field: Social Sciences (Social Sciences)

The Feminist Bloc was formed in the wake of the 2015 protests in Lebanon and the garbage crisis. We continue to try to build an independent feminist movement of different organizations that work together without a funded agenda and independently of all the sectarian political practices currently dominating the country.During the protests in the summer of 2015, Sawt al Niswa, a feminist group aiming to produce feminist knowledge and writing, invited participation in a "feminist bloc" after realizing that many patriarchal practices were dominating the protests. Different groups sidelined feminists from the leadership, and their participation, despite its significance, was not taken seriously and kept at a nominal level. While most groups used the energy and efforts of the feminists in the 2015 movement, they made no attempt to build a space for feminists and feminist work. Working on the principle of feminist "killjoy," associated with Sarah Ahmed, we decided to highlight this problematic and faced both the state and the 2015 movement under the slogan "The patriarchal system is murderous."As the protests ended, a meeting was set to continue working through a feminist bloc. However, it was hard to relaunch, given the frustration, burnout, and exhaustion everyone felt at the end of this movement—the difficulty of rethinking and reassessing it as well as the ambiguity of new beginnings. Of course, there were initiatives between 2015 and 2017. The Red Oak Club at the American University of Beirut (AUB) organized a take-back-the-night march called "The Street Is Ours, Even at the End of the Night," to mark International Women's Day 2016. In 2017 Dammeh, a cooperative for women and trans* persons, and Sawt al Niswa, planning for an International Women's Day march, invited women/feminist groups and spaces with parallel discourses to collectively organize the event. A product of collective work, the march was a great success, and everyone felt the need to expand this experience and continue working together as a bloc. The Feminist Bloc was revived, and different groups started rethinking how to manage, sustain, and develop it. The process of organizing the International Women's Day march was an important model for the bloc's collective work. The bloc aims to preserve and develop its work though this way of organizing.The process of planning the "Different Causes, One Struggle" march had two main components: first, gathering resources and creating a participatory space for organizing in the lead-up to the march, and second, forming the various teams that collaborated before and during the march. The Feminist Bloc attempted to practice these two elements in ways that reflect our collective values, as well as to practice feminism, not dictate it in theory, in the spaces we are creating.Different collectives who were part of the planning committee helped contribute to the fund-raising efforts before the march. After an identity and a slogan for the march were established, it was easy for groups to publicize the campaign from their own positionality and target spaces, such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) outside Beirut, student clubs from various universities, and migrant activist groups like the Anti-Racism Movement. Student groups put up stands to rally attendees for the march and discuss why people would attend. The Feminist Committee of the Socialist Forum planned a live-music event to fund-raise, and several individuals crowdfunded donations with a specified limit to contribute to the march's budget.The main teams that functioned in the lead-up to the march were outreach and design. Membership to these teams was from within the planning committee, and volunteers were recruited for each through a photo that circulated on social media and WhatsApp that included contact information. We tried to reach as many people as possible from areas outside Beirut, including Tripoli, Akkar, Chtoura, and Northern Beqaa. In alignment with the slogan "Different Causes, One Struggle," the team decided to create a visual message and identity that incorporated diverse viewpoints, which became three yellow stripes. These could be printed on any surface.The decision to form a feminist bloc after the International Women's Day March in 2017 immediately opened discussions about membership rules and identity. Membership in the bloc is diverse and includes student clubs and organizations, cooperatives, NGOs, independent groups, and feminist committees in leftist parties. Since the idea is to build a broad-based collective, individuals may not join. Despite their different natures and goals, the member groups cooperate and appreciate the space of the Feminist Bloc, which allows them to work with other groups based on shared values.The debate about having a consolidated identity for the Feminist Bloc is ongoing. However, the inclination is that the bloc does not need a unified identity, because different groups sometimes prioritize different causes despite shared values and red lines.The Feminist Bloc, although a new and diverse entity, has a clear path and direction, and this makes it easier for other groups to join and work with us.The invitation for an International Women's Day march did not have a set agenda. The idea was to gather the largest number possible of working feminist groups and build a strong grassroots feminist movement. This does not mean that the feminist bloc invented the Lebanese feminist movement, which existed long before 2017. However, we hope to have made it stronger and more visible on the ground in the country.Coming together proved easier than expected. Groups based outside Beirut joined. We were later able to provide transportation for these organizations and independent individuals who wanted to come to Beirut to march. It was also easy to find common ground partly because in the previous few years various independent groups, collectives, and student clubs working on feminist issues had formed in Beirut. Despite the different identities, functions, and causes of these organizations, we concluded that what needs to be emphasized the most, here and now, is building solidarity among feminists. The common assumption that these groups cannot work together because the nature of their work is different proved wrong in practice.One of our goals was to counter the fragility and lack of resources on one group's level. Previously, before planning any project, all of us had a lingering fear about funding it. We decided to pool the groups' resources to build a strong collective force.Despite great effort, we do not claim to have brought together all women and trans and nonconforming people. A few groups were not able to join us or attended the introductory meeting but could not continue. Sometimes this was because such groups, in working closely with vulnerable people, used different communication strategies and methods, or because the nature of their work limited the form of political action they could use to fight patriarchy. Marching in an overtly confrontational protest on Women's Day might have compromised such groups' work and their safety. The current political system often forces women and marginalized groups to resist indirectly and use strategies that may involve compromise and negotiation, not only confrontation. In many cases, support and solidarity turned out to be the only option we have to build bridges with these groups.We agreed on certain values at our early brainstorming meetings, including cooperation, solidarity, respect despite differences, safety, and open discourse. Our aim now is to make this movement even bigger and stronger, to be inclusive of groups beyond those who started the bloc in 2015 and relaunched it in 2017. We want feminist solidarity to reach marginalized individuals and groups who could not participate, no matter the reason.The work and support did not stop after the 2017 march. The groups of the bloc are more in touch with one another, with each constantly following up on other groups' news and activity. A group can receive help and support from other groups whenever a problem arises. Often our difference in backgrounds helps us find solutions. Moreover, we now can represent ourselves as a bloc in other activities.The work and strategies of the Feminist Bloc are quite different from the typical NGOs that have dominated the feminist scene for many years. Each constituent group has worked on a specific cause that followed the available funding or the hot topic that grabbed people's attention. While the Feminist Bloc recognizes the efforts of these groups, we do not have to follow these methods of organizing. This grassroots bloc is not obligated to negotiate our rights with the state or work on policy exclusively. Instead, our groups can work together within diverse frameworks but with a higher threshold of demands.We need to better appreciate all our work as feminists in Lebanon and in the region. While our region is going through crises, the feminist movement is not. Instead, we are reshaping feminist discourse through our activities on the streets. There are numerous changes that many fail to recognize. For example, media terminology used to describe LGBT people (often negative and demonizing) and discourse on queer rights have improved. The 2015 protests and the campaigns and groups that blossomed from it produced new attention and commitment to having as many female as male speakers at events. Celebrities and politicians are quickly condemned when they make sexist or homophobic statements, which was not the case just a few years back. These were not goals, but they indicate that the society is reckoning with a strong feminist force.While spontaneous, we study and manage our organizing closely, and our experiences have added to all of our expertise. We created many committees during the march to assure that our values and principles were implemented, including safe space, protection from harassment, and environmentalism. The love and support that the different groups shared with one another was built on anticompetitive and anticapitalist feminist ethics that are difficult to sustain when different funded groups work on the same issues.We remain enthusiastic about this project. We do not agree that feminism is in crisis. We are doing very well. In addition to the changes in policy undertaken by some NGOs, we as groups are becoming more mature. If we do not find our place within a movement, we create our own space. The crisis is the gap between the activities of grassroots feminists and recognition by academics. Our organizing, discourse, and efforts usually become the material used and consumed by academics. As we have built bridges between different groups and individuals in this bloc, we desire to do the same with academe. However, recognizing each other goes both ways and requires standing on the same ground. Academe may doubt feminism, but we are living in a historical moment when feminists from different political spectrums are fighting conservative attacks and making transformations.