Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness…. — Mark Twain I’ve seen this quote everywhere, but it has never felt very convincing to me. As most of the West…
From Filming to Interacting with Law Enforcement: How to Stay Safe at a Protest Abroad or at Home
We’ve talked about what to do when you go to a demonstration, but sometimes, even if you plan carefully, not everything goes according to plan. By their very nature, political…
Empowered Voices: How You Can Respond to Street Harassment
Image courtesy by Flickr user Ted Eytan. Not only is April Sexual Assault Awareness Month, but last week was International Anti-Street Harassment Week. While street harassment has been around a long time,…
Isolation and Opportunism: Price Gouging in Rural Canada
After months of nose-to-the-grindstone, no-me-time work obligations, this past weekend I packed my bags and road tripped it to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with my beautiful bride-to-be besty, Heather…
Girl Rising – Beauty, Hope, and Perseverance
If you have the chance to see Girl Rising, you must! A beautifully shot film about the value of educating girls, it doesn’t have a wide distribution. In fact, most…
When games become reality
Remember when you were eight years old? You had such few worries in your world and and even those were more often than not forgotten when something easily distracted you….
Regaining the “Fucks”
I’m sure that, by now, our readers around the world have gotten an earful about U.S. Congressman Todd Aiken and his unbelievably medieval remarks about rape and biology. I’ve spent the…
Africa, Alive: A Toast To Nature, Dlamini-Zuma and Snow days
There are a multitude of things that the African continent has yet to experience. The most liberal form of freedom, economic independence and the true end to neo-colonialism would probably be at…
VAWA from the trenches: why we need to do something
Intimate partner violence is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart for a lot of reasons, one of the biggest being that I’ve been working on the ground…
Thankless: attachment parenting and the Time Magazine debacle
For those of you who haven’t been reading Internet news lately, Time Magazine recently ran an “article” with the cover line “Are You Mom Enough?” and a breastfeeding photo that…
Politics, Politics, Politics
Dia ar sábháil! Since my article a few weeks back about vaginal protests and politicians attempting to legislate idiocy, very few things have changed. We have some victories- such as…
Snatchels
I have a long history of struggling with strong feelings for my country and trying to balance my loathing for its incredible capacity for stupidity with a deep…
Travel, Activism, Girls’ and Women’s Empowerment? Find it all with Stirring the Fire.
In honor of Women’s History month, I want to highlight a project that is doing transformative work on girls’ and women’s empowerment around the world. Based out of Washington State,…
An Open Letter to Kenneth Roth (Let’s Talk About It)
http://womensenews.org/story/equalitywomen%E2%80%99s-rights/120227/human-rights-groups-blur-issues-women-rights If you could write a letter to a human rights worker, what would you say? Would you thank them for their hard work, write words of encouragement, maybe even…
Midnight Mass meets Occupy London
I’m celebrating Christmas this year in London with a few friends from undergrad. It’s our first holiday away from home. Working with a student’s budget, we rummaged presents from…