Allison Attenello’s “Navigating Identity Politics in Activism” defines leadership and what the best role is to play when dealing with activism that is not necessarily your identity’s activism. Attenello starts off her passage by informing the reader about the serial rapes occurring in the New Brunswick area. Right away she made the distinction between the two very different communities occupying New Brunswick. There were Rutgers students and then lots of Mexican immigrants. Attenello discusses how the Rutgers students received more media coverage for these rapes then Mexican women. In July 2003, Mexican women march to City Hall in demand of adequate protection and rights. While attending, Attenello was introduced to Lupe who was the leader of these Mexican woman. Lupe invited her to attend their meetings to offer her skills of activism. Attenello came to the first meeting making many assumptions, including this was an organized group, the members identified as feminists and activists, and trying to combat rape. She soon found that she was dealing with many more Mexican immigrant issues that she had no knowledge about and could not identify with. Her experience with Unidad de New Brunswick made her ask the question: “if activists do not belong to a particular community, should they play a leadership role in an organization that represents that population?” (102). Attenello decided it would be inappropriate for her to take on a leadership role in Unidad de New Brunswick. She felt as if she was enabling these members as oppose to her goal of empowering them. However, Lupe disagreed that her leaving the group would be beneficial to the members striving for their goals. Attenello struggled with the concept of leadership in a group that she did not identify with. She came to the conclusion that she was actually benefiting the group by having time, resources and language skills that could move Unidad de New Brunswick forward. Although, she says, “I could contribute to the body’s mission by sharing organizing and leadership skills” (105).
Shira Lynn Pruce’s “Blurring the Lines That Divide” was really inspirational to me. She starts off by talking about living in Jerusalem in 2000 and having a front row seat to the violence and suicide bombers between Israel and Palestine. She brought her experience back to Douglass College where there was a lot of anti-Semitism towards Jews in the aftermath of 9/11, blaming the bombings on Israel’s existence. Pruce started to take action by founding an unaffiliated Jewish Zionist group on campus to give Zionism and Judaism a local presence. Pruce took her first women’s and gender studies course where she was enlightened on life through a gendered lens. She discusses how she recognized the system that has been so oppressive to women: “patriarchy, a system of male normativity and control that systemically oppresses women” (187). Like Pruce, I did not realize the patriarchal system we live in until taking this course and reading essays such as Johnson’s. Pruce started to realize that she felt excluded and marginalized by the patriarchal system reining in on our world. She says, “I started seeing the glass ceiling and walls everywhere; I felt I had the power to produce real social change” (187). This statement made me think of Frye’s birdcage where it seems as if women are not constraint by society, yet there are so many factors that make them this “other” than the “norm” and are trapped in the cage. Pruce explains how attending IWL has transformed her into a stronger, more focused, more confident and more articulate woman and leader. Pruce found herself torn between grassroots activism and formal political participation, which she originally thought were two distinct spheres. However, she came to the conclusion that these two lines of work were very much connected to one another. I like really like when she says, “Society portrays one group as professionals in suits, as the others as troublemakers in jeans and sometimes handcuffs” (188). While at Rutgers, an international anti-Zionist organization planned on hosting its annual conference at Rutgers. To combat this organization, Pruce and friends organized events under Israel Inspires to “support the transformation and education of Rutgers University’s Jewish campus life” (189). 7,000 people, including New Jersey senators and governor attended their rally to promote positive change for the Jewish community at Rutgers. She continues her activism by organizing campus events that attracted NOW and shed light on women’s issues for Rutgers students to be educated on. The most interesting part of her essay is when she worked with Palestinian women who she had once worked against. Her work with these Palestinian women has taught her how important it is to “not necessarily to overcome difference but rather to blur the differences in the face of a common cause” (190). While interning in Israel, Pruce discovers that grassroots activism and formal political participation intersect much more than she could have imagined. Pruce has found a balance between her fights for Jewish and Women’s right and as been able to blur the lines between these causes for the bigger cause.
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