SDL is excited to collaborate with IMPACCT Brooklyn to bring a financial literacy workshop catered to women of color. 

Over and over again we hear about the disparity in pay for womxn of color. The rates are alarming and we understand that as womxn of color the path to financial stability is stacked against us and we have historically been exploited for our labor and excluded from fully participating in the job market with fair wages and benefits. This translates into low rates in homeownership and women having to retire at a later age to make ends meet. This workshop aims to give us tools that we can use daily in achieving healthy financial habits and tools that can assist in preparing for retirement and homeownership  ||#SisterDiaspora #aLoveEthic

Topics discussed will include:

-Homeownership

-Roth Accounts

-Beginner Investing Tips

• “8.6 million American households are headed by single mothers, while only 2.6 million are headed by single fathers. Similarly, women are significantly more likely to be the sole caretaker for an elderly parent or another adult. These uneven caregiving responsibilities prevent women from equally investing their time and financial resources into homeownership.”
• “Due to factors like the gender pay gap, women tend to have higher debt-to-income ratios and worse credit profiles. Since typical lenders do not consider any offsetting factors, single women are consistently denied mortgages at higher rates than single men, even though women are more reliable when it comes to paying their mortgages.”
• “When single women are awarded mortgages, they face significantly higher interest rates than single men because of their weaker credit profiles and are more likely to be given a subprime loan.”

Source: Habitat for Humanity

• “In 2016, women earned about 80% of what men earn—and experts forecast that it won’t be until 2059 that we can expect that gap to close. And if most Americans are behind in saving for retirement, women’s lower lifetime earnings mean they’re likely falling into the bottom rung of the ill-prepared.”

Source: Forbes

Register Here

Join US! May 19th 2pm-3pm @ the Asian American Writers Workshop

In celebration of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Sister Diaspora for Liberation, the Asian American Feminist Collective and GAPIMNY present an intimate reading and discussion of “My Transgender Ghost Story” with writer Andy Marra.

From Korean mudang, to spirits, and issues of identity and culture, this unique short story takes us through Marra’s spiritual experiences and connection to her Korean ancestors. Join us at the Asian American Writers Workshop for a short reading and open facilitated discussion.

Discussion will be facilitated by Julie Ae Kim from the Asian American Feminist Collective and Patrick Lee from GAPIMNY.

Find Andy’s short story here.

This is a safe space for all self-identified womxn of color. Allies are welcome.

This is a ticketed and free event, please register here.

Andy Marra (she / her / hers) is executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF). Prior to TLDEF, she spent five years leading external communications at the Arcus Foundation; managed public relations at GLSEN, a national organization focused on LGBTQ issues in K-12 education; was co-director at Nodutdol for Korean Community Development; and served as a senior media strategist at GLAAD. Andy currently serves on two boards including Freedom for All Americans and Just Detention International. She has previously served on the boards and advisory councils of Chinese for Affirmative Action, the Funding Exchange, Human Rights Campaign, and the National Center for Transgender Equality. Andy has been honored by the White House and the City of New York for her contributions to the LGBTQ community, profiled in The Advocate’s “Forty Under 40,” and listed as one of The Huffington Post’s “Most Compelling LGBT People.” She is also a past recipient of the GLSEN Pathfinder Award, the National LGBTQ Task Force Creating Change Award, NQAPIA Community Catalyst Award, and the Colin Higgins Foundation Courage Award.

Illustrations:

Alex Myung is a NYC-based animator and illustrator whose most recent short film,“Arrival,” has showed at over 30 international film festivals worldwide and been viewed over 2.5 million times on Youtube. The 22-minute short tells the tale of a young man in the city struggling to come out to his mother back home.

Facilitators:

Julie Ae Kim (she/her) is a Co-Founder and Leadership Committee member of the Asian American Feminist Collective. A native New Yorker raised in Queens, she is an organizer and works in New York City politics. She focuses on issues of gender, immigration, and Asian America.

Patrick G. Lee (he/they) is a queer Korean American filmmaker. He’s currently working on films about Asian American coming out stories, LGBTQ self-representation, and queer Asian history. Patrick works with the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance and his favorite banchan is kongjang (braised soybeans).

Partners:

The Asian American Feminist Collective engages intersectional feminist politics grounded within our communities, including those whose backgrounds encompass East, Southeast, and South Asian, Pacific Islander, multi-ethnic and diasporic Asian identities. The collective seeks to foster dialogue that explores the intersections of Asian/American identity with issues of social justice in order to build towards collective liberation. They continue to interrogate and define the Asian American feminist movement through media-making, event curation, and digital storytelling.

Founded in 1990, GAPIMNY is an all-volunteer, membership-based community organization with the mission to empower queer and trans Asian Pacific Islanders* to create positive change. We provide a range of political, social, educational, and cultural programming and work in coalition with other community organizations to educate and promote dialogue on issues of race, sexuality, gender, and health.

Space:

Established in 1991, AAWW is a national not-for-profit arts organization devoted to the creating, publishing, developing and disseminating of creative writing by Asian Americans–in other words, we’re the preeminent organization dedicated to the belief that Asian American stories deserve to be told.

Such a lovely turn out for the #IWD mixer! Thank you to everyone who came out! We appreciate appreciate all the support and love. Whenever womxn from all walks of life are in the same room the energy shifts. We are powerful. At the mixer, we shared out thoughts on the #CombaheeRiverCollective statement written by Barbara Smith, Demita Frazier, and Beverly Princess who created their own space to address the intersectional challenges as queer, women of color that were not being addressed with the mainstream feminist, civil rights, and Black Panther Movements. Today, those challenges continue but we as women of the diaspora we are more interconnected then ever. From building sisterhood with “Las 17” in El Salvador, to making sure women and girls of Haitian and Dominican descent see themselves represented in dolls, the layers of solidarity are what tie us together. #WomensHistoryMonth #HerstoryMonth || #SisterDiaspora #aLoveEthic

SDL is proud to be participating in this years #16Days to End Gender Based Violence in the World of Work.  This year we will be holding two events to highlight the harassment women in low-wage sectors such as service industry workers, hospitality workers and domestic workers often experience in informal work settings. According to a report published by the AFL-CIO “80 percent of female farmworkers working the fields in central California reported they had experienced sexual harassment.” On November 29, as part of Sister Diaspora’s #16Days of Activism to End Gender Based Violence in the Workplace and on International Women Human Rights Defender Day, we will be holding a vigil supporting the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and their groundbreaking Fair Food Program to end and prevent sexual assault and forced labor in agriculture.  Then, on December 9th we will be hosting our 2nd annual Self-Defense Workshop for Women of Color which aims to empower women in NYC to defend themselves in high risk situations.

On November 29, as part of Sister Diaspora’s #16Days of Activism to End Gender Based Violence in the Workplace and on International Women Human Rights Defender Day, we will be holding a vigil supporting the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and their groundbreaking Fair Food Program to end and prevent sexual assault and forced labor in agriculture.

Femme farmworkers in Immokalee, FL, have been on the frontlines of fighting workplace harassment for decades. Their fight continues with the national boycott Wendy’s, the only major fast-food chain to reject participation in the Fair Food Program. Here in New York City, we will be holding hedge fund billionaire Nelson Peltz (Chairman of the Board of Wendy’s) accountable for not taking action to end abuses in his company’s supply chain.

Sister Diaspora will be delivering a letter to Nelson Peltz demanding that he use his power to bring Wendy’s into the Fair Food Program as other fast food chains have done and commit to ending sexual assault and human right violations in the fields.

You can RSVP HERE

Join Sister Diaspora for Liberation (SDL) and the Center for Anti-Violence Education for an empowering self-defense workshop for Womxn of Color to close #16DaysofActivism to end violence against womxn. The workshop will be lead by the expert facilitators from the Center for Anti-Violence:

The basic self-defense workshop covers strategies and safety plans for dealing with different levels of
violence, emotional aspects of self-defense, and concrete steps we can take to help ourselves. Students of
all skill and ability levels will learn basic physical-defense techniques including strikes, blocks and
kicks; ways to get out of different grabs and holds, verbal exercises, and discussions about dealing with
attackers who are strangers, acquaintances or intimates.

Basic self-defense strategies include a full spectrum of responses, such as avoiding danger, yelling, getting away, tricking someone, defending with physical techniques, and seeking help afterwards.

This workshop is a safe space for all self-identifed womxn of color including LBTQ and GNC and is offered free to our communities. Donations are welcome.

Registration begins at 1:30pm, please arrive at least 10 minutes before the beginning of the workshop to sign-in and store any belongings.

Snacks and beverages will be provided, please contact us in advance if child care is needed.

You can RSVP HERE

Last Sunday we hosted a preconception womb wellness workshop for our community. We discussed our womb in detail, the stories our womb tells, and the manifestations we want to explore through our womb. Overall, the workshop brought reflection and celebration of our bodies and wombynhood. #SDLBirthSupport ||#SisterDiaspora #aLoveEthic

Our wombs are extraordinary storytellers. Through sensations, symptoms and cycles, they offer clues to our health. Our relationship to our womb strengthens our intuition, creativity and power. Historically systems of oppression have worked to strategically diminish our connection to this great source of information.

In this workshop, we will explore our past and present relationship to our wombs as well as gain new knowledge of how to radically care for ourselves. Participants will be invited to share their stories, create intentions and learn new ways to actively engage in our wellness and healing by reconnecting to our wombs. We hope to see you there!

Preconception Workshop: Sun 10/21 1-3pm in The Heights!

RSVP here

#SDLBirthSupport

We are still full of love and gratitude for this amazing event. The energy in the room was palpable.   It revitalized our commitment to our communities and the efforts to create spaces for us and by us. Thank you Creators of Women Warriors of the Afro-Latina Diaspora: Dr. Marta Moreno Vega, Marinieves Alba, and Yvette Mondestin for answering our call to share your wonderful selves with us.  Also, a special thanks to the Carribean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute for sharing space with us.

“You cant be free if you’re broken, its important to integrate healing and spirituality in our work.” Marineves Alba

“We’re still becoming, Africans are just as colonized as Africans in the Diaspora.” Dr. Marta Morena Vega

“It was colored water fountains, it was segregation, Jim Crow did take place in Panama.” Yvette Mondestin

#LatinxHeritageMonth #aLoveEthic #SisterDiasopra #SDLReading Circle.

The Healing Circle team, a branch of the SDL collective, celebrated the launch of their Full Spectrum Doula / Birth Activist #SDLBirthSupport program on Saturday, June 23rd, 2018. The day began with a workshop, continued with a speaker series and culminated with a celebration. The event took place in Harlem.

SDL Birth Support partnered with Yokasta Tineo, LMT (Kasa Healing Massage Therapy & Reiki) to host “Birthing Ourselves / Conceiving Our Dreams,” a pre-conception workshop that encouraged participants to reevaluate, reconstruct and rebirth their goals and intentions through an exploration of their patterned thoughts, behaviors and resistances. The presenters facilitated a discussion on vibrational realignment and strengthening their commitment to self-discipline and self-love as a means towards personal and collective liberation.

Following the workshop, Maternal Justice Campaign Director, S. Nadia Hussain (MomsRising) addressed the ongoing efforts of the #MaternalJustice and Black Mamas Matter campaigns. Jazmin Chavez, Director of Digital for The Center for Popular Democracy drew a correlation between reproductive rights/justice and keeping families together. After the speaker series, SDL Birth Support gave homage to their mentors, supporters, and collaborators, who included Katie Grassle (Citizens Committee for New York City) and Mélat Seyoum a full-spectrum doula and freelance GIS Analyst/Developer. It was a warm, joyful and uplifting event, where healers, activists, and community leaders gathered to address the complexities and intersections that exist in birth work. for more pics, check out our facebook album!

Next steps and Resources:

• Family Separation at the US Border – What can you do?  &  14 Orgs  you can Donate
• Raising our Voices for Maternal Health – Resource & Story Book

(limited slots) RSVP here