We Won’t Go Back: Thousands of Everyday Women Gather in Houston, TX for this year’s Women’s Convention

Note from the CREDO team: This August, Women’s March is among three amazing groups that will receive a share of our monthly grant. Funding from the CREDO community will power travel and accommodations scholarships for the Women’s Convention in Houston, TX, so everyday women activists can build the skills and community required to create the feminist future we all need.

Read this important blog post from Caitlin Breedlove, Deputy Executive Director of Organizational Advancement at Women’s March, then click here to visit CREDODonations.com to cast your vote to help determine how we distribute our monthly grant to this organization and our other amazing grantees this August.

Amid the greatest attacks on our freedom and bodily autonomy in a generation, we are filled with rage and determination. Thus we must consolidate everyday women and allies together into a force with one overriding purpose: to strengthen our capacity to defy and defeat the radical right, as we work to build a feminist future where everyone can thrive. We won’t sugarcoat the situation: These are dire and dangerous times. We won’t win back what we lost overnight. No single strategy can undo the damage that has been done. This moment requires all of us to bring our best and highest contribution using every tool in our toolbox. 

Not everyone’s work at this moment is to organize women as a political group, but it is ours, and this roadmap is our offering as a strategic intervention. Our opposition seeks to divide us, and yet we commit to organizing with people of all genders who are affected by the current onslaught of attacks, as well as our allies.

That is exactly why we organize to build power — especially with this August’s Women’s Convention in Houston, TX. The Women’s Convention is a weekend of workshops, strategy sessions, inspiring forums, creative expression, and intersectional movement building. It will be a place where cause, community, and creativity intersect. We provide a space where people can meet, share common interests, and engage on issues of civic engagement, accelerated by pop culture. We engage activists by melding traditional organizing programming with non-traditional programming, including salons, art spaces, screenings, social programming, and women’s workforce development.

We know that a robust and growing majority of the country’s population supports our values, even as the right works to enact its racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, and transphobic priorities into violent public policy with long lasting and deeply harmful impact. 

Our interventions will bring together people from the gender justice, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, and environmental justice movements, to build collective power for both the short- and long-term. We are gathering in Houston this summer to nourish and strengthen our spirits, to sharpen our organizing skills, to forge the personal connections that sustain every movement for justice. We know that there will be no solution that does not involve more of us, more everyday people, not just the choir. We need to broaden our partnerships: that is why the convention partners with Planned Parenthood, Black Feminist Future, National Women’s Law Center, NOW, Mozilla, National LGBTQ Task Force, UltraViolet, and so many others. We know that we need more brand new activists: which is why we organized the content of the convention around delegations from 43 states, and learning tracks that equip new women activists with skills while building community.

Tarso Ramos of Political Research Associates often says when you study the history of authoritarianism you see that a key antidote to this tyranny is a mass-based women’s movement. We need one now. So, we are uniting women and our allies around shared values, experience, and culture so we can heal wounds from the pandemic, the economic depression, and a history of racism to build a nation that works for all of us. 

The 2022 Women’s Convention is not just about building a community, it is about building a community with a purpose. It is for us those new to social change, and those of us who need to rekindle our hope and determination through community. We need to glimpse the feminist future we want in order to build it.