This year’s Minnesota NOW State Conference features the following theme: Love Starts Here, Love Starts NOW…..FOR ALL.

This is a kinder, gentler version of the words writer Flavia Dzodan used when she famously declared on the blog Tiger Beatdown: “my feminism will be intersectional or it will be bull****!”  She wrote:

…while I am screaming at you, I am also asking, nay, DEMANDING that you scream with me. And I am asking that you become as angry as I have been…. Because without anger and without righteous indignation and without the deep, relentless demand for change, my feminism, YOUR feminism, everyone’s feminism will fail.

We are fortunate to have four activists from diverse backgrounds who are joining our conference for a morning discussion of intersectionality, its importance to the feminist movement, and how it will strengthen our collective goal of a more just, peaceful, and equitable world.

FARHEEN HAKEEM is a leader, educator, and community organizer who has done extensive anti-oppression work in fighting Islamophobia and building solidarity in many activist communities.  She is currently terming out as National Co-chair of the Green Party of the United States. Professionally, she is Director of Membership and Communication for worker collective.  In addition, Farheen has been instrumental in including Muslim women voices in forums such as electoral politics, feminism, child welfare, leadership development, immigrant rights, and collective liberation.  As a joke, Farheen likes to say, “I wear many hats, but only wear one hijab.” Farheen was born and raised on the north side of Chicago, with her two brothers from immigrant parents. Her parents were small business owners. She graduated from a public high school and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Oberlin College.

LIZA SCOTT  is an activist at heart, and currently works with the homeless at the Harbor Light Center-Salvation Army in Minneapolis. She has worked on a variety of issues that are important to her including, civic engagement in her American Indian community with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, where she was Chair of Native Vote Alliance of MN (NVAM), advancing American Indian women in their communities and mainstream society through the White House Project, and most recently, worked as a community organizer in the exurbs and rural MN for Minnesotan’s United for All Families–the campaign that helped defeat the marriage amendment this past November.

ANDREA JENKINS is a poet, writer and multimedia visual and performance artist. She has been a part of the local poetry community for several years, earning awards, fellowships and commissions during that time. She is a Senior Policy Aide to the 8th Ward City Council Member Elizabeth Glidden and serves on the boards of OutFront Minnesota, Forecast Public Art, and SMARTS. She has one beautiful daughter, Nia, and an equally beautiful granddaughter, Aniyah. Andrea co-curates Intermedia Arts’ Queer Voices Reading Series with John Medeiros. In 2010, Andrea was selected to be a Naked Stages Fellow, supported by the Jerome Foundation, to produce a one-woman show loosely based on her manuscript Black Pearl. She was also a 2010 Intermedia Arts VERVE grant recipient for spoken word poetry.

ROXXANNE O’BRIEN is a community organizer from North Minneapolis. MN NOW connected with Roxxanne through a Facebook page that she created called “Undoing Racism.” Roxxanne tackles the serious problems that plague her community ranging from corporate pollution, police abuse, unjust foreclosures, violence, disparities in education and jobs for people of color and inequities in our justice system.

For more information on the conference, including how to register, visit our website: http://www.mnnow.org/events/2013_conference.htm

Andrea Jenkins’ bio & photo from Intermedia Arts–the rest were provided by the speakers.