Lauren Jacobs: Cindy, thank you for joining me and for sharing your knowledge with us. As you know, PowerSwitch Action is a network of 21 local grassroots organizations from across the country, who are confronting corporate power and forging multiracial feminist democracy and economies in our cities and towns. Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ) has been a thought leader in organizing for the commons, and we’ve taken so much inspiration from your work. Can you talk about GGJ’s role in engaging with feminist, Indigenous, and grassroots global movements, and why those connections are so important?
Cindy Wiesner: Thank you for asking me to be part of this conversation, Lauren. GGJ’s unique role is to bring together multiracial, multisectoral, multi-gendered, intergenerational working class groups and movements around a common framework: No War. No Warming. Build a Feminist Economy for the People and the Planet. Our task is to connect movements in the US and around the world, and to help people understand their counterparts — from Indigenous people in the Amazons, to miners in South Africa, to feminist movements in Tunisia, to fisher folks from India, to young people in France, to organizers here in the states. Our political and popular education work involves building a shared understanding that our common enemy is a collection of root causes: racial and gender capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism.
Our common enemy is a collection of root causes: racial and gender capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism.
There is immense value for people in the US to learn how different organizations and movements globally have gotten to scale, won state power, and governed. At the same time, there is value for global movements to learn about US-based struggles around police brutality, poverty, water rights, Indigenous sovereignty, and more. From Occupy Wall Street to NoDAPL to the Black-led 2020 Uprisings, there have been important movements that our global counterparts have been hungry to know more about.
Lauren Jacobs: Thanks for that background, Cindy. You mentioned that GGJ’s framework centers around a feminist economy for people and the planet. How does this requirement tie together US-based and global movements?
Cindy Wiesner: We’re fighting for the FARE economy: the feminist anti-racist regenerative economy. All of those words are very deliberate and specific. We need to understand racial and gender capitalism to its full extent; that means understanding how racism and gender oppression are the pillars that function to maintain capitalism. To counter that, we need a gender justice feminist analysis and a racial justice abolitionist analysis incorporated into the economy that we want to build.
We need to understand racial and gender capitalism to its full extent; that means understanding how racism and gender oppression are the pillars that function to maintain capitalism.
The word “economy” derives from the Greek word oikonomia or “management of the home.” Yet, when people originally thought about the economy, it was not about production inside the home. It was work often performed outside of the home. As the capitalist system evolved, it became about competition, domination, and the exploitation of people's labor. When feminists began to have an analysis of the economy, many articulated the role of reproduction, which has traditionally been invisible labor — work that is unpaid, marginalized, and undervalued. What we would call “social reproduction” or “familiar reproduction” is usually within the private sphere. It includes agricultural and domestic work — cooking, laundry, childcare, service work, elder care — all work that is necessary for the maintenance and reproduction of life. Part of the early feminist fights around the economy was for the recognition, valuing, and paying of that work.
What’s more, a feminist analysis of the economy raises the question of how we measure success. What are the standards for how we're living? From an extractive, capitalist sense, the measure of success is based on profit, the stock market, and competition. When you think about that question from a feminist point of view, the measure is whether we are in right relationship with ourselves, other people, and nature. The feminist economy urges us to re-examine how we think about what we need to survive and relate to each other.
A feminist analysis of the economy raises the question of how we measure success. What are the standards for how we're living? The feminist economy urges us to re-examine how we think about what we need to survive and relate to each other.
For me, a feminist economy is about how we center life. How are we centering what the Andean people of Bolivia and Ecuador call buen vivir or “living well”?
Many movements have put forward alternatives: food sovereignty, agroecology, regenerative economy, abolition, the defense of the commons. There has been a redefining of what it means to be in right relationship versus our current economy that centers violence, exploitation, and death. What we're seeing now around the world, with rising threats of authoritarianism and fascism, is the destruction of the state, the redefining of the role of government, and the remaking of our relationships to each other. Our movements are in a fight against a dominant model that is patriarchal, white supremacist, colonial, imperialist, and ableist.
Lauren Jacobs: That authoritarianism is dependent on a patriarchal model of the economy and an exploitative relationship to the natural world, where the planet and its resources are viewed as here for the taking. It’s also dependent on a patriarchal model of the family, where the father figure can discipline and reward. Authoritarianism reproduces a division of labor in the political sphere that is based on very strict, old gender models.
I’m also thinking about the theme of sustainability, both in an environmental sense and in a societal sense. At PowerSwitch, we talk about sustainability in terms of climate justice and in terms of creating good jobs and people having power in the workplace. We envision a sustainable economy where all work is valued. In our current system, we’ve seen how people who benefit from political and economic inequities are often the ones creating judgments about certain types of work, and in turn determining the monetary value of that work. We see this happen with care work, education, restaurant and service work, and other forms of labor that are undervalued and underpaid in our society — typically held by people who often experience gender oppression. With that in mind, can you say more about how sustainability relates to the gendered division of labor?
Cindy Wiesner: Big question, Lauren. The feminist economy centers around the sustainability of life. Part of forging this paradigm involves centering the care of human life and nature, and understanding that we are interdependent with each other and eco-dependent on our planet. This perspective asks: what is our relationship to our body? What is the construction of autonomy? How do we get to self-determination, not only for women, non-binary people, intersex and trans people, but for all people?
I think this is where the movement needs to get sharper. If we’re considering what serves the commons and our wellbeing, then we need to understand that things should not be commodified — that our bodies, and the natural world shouldn't be commodified. We should not put prices on oil, water, land, food, or air. All of these things are necessary for the wellbeing of the commons, and they can't be turned into merchandise. We’ve got to figure out how we place life and wellbeing as the goal and the centrality of domestic, food production, and care work.
If we’re considering what serves the commons and our wellbeing, then we need to understand that things should not be commodified — that our bodies, and the natural world shouldn't be commodified. We should not put prices on oil, water, land, food, or air.
In GGJ, we talk about the re-socialization of all people, including cisgender men and male-identified folks, and the reorganization and re-socialization of care in a dramatically different way. That means domestic and care work are seen as the co-responsibility of all people, communities, and states. That begins to offer a different paradigm. We can ask: what are the policies for care and the reorganization of spaces of life? How do we redefine work in relation to this paradigm around sustainability? There's also a question of how we confront the financialization of life, of debt, and the economy. What does it mean to live in harmony?
Right now, millions of people are taking to the streets and demanding divestment from war and militarization, from guns and military ammunition, and from aiding the genocide in Palestine. At the same time, we must ask: what are we investing in? What is in service of humanity, harmony, and wellbeing? Going back to the notion of buen vivir: how do we have a feminist, abolitionist, reparative model to deal with conflict and with what happens after?
So many of our movements are envisioning alternative systems to justice; they’re exploring how to design justice systems that are not based on oppression or the reinforcement of a patriarchal punitive model. When we think about restorative, transformative justice where the objective is re-socialization, that in itself is a core component of feminist praxis.
When we think about restorative, transformative justice where the objective is re-socialization, that in itself is a core component of feminist praxis.
Lauren Jacobs: Beautiful. That’s such a powerful answer to the rise of a carceral feminist approach that gained ground in the US during the 1970s and '80s. I began as an organizer, and I’m sensing now that there is a growing yearning in people to be in right relationship. If you look at the vast outpouring of action, empathy, and solidarity with Palestine, that is another call to be in right relationship with each other.
To shift gears, I think it's important to look at bright spots because there is a lot of grief and hardship in the world right now. Can you point to some moments and movements that could provide inspiration and hope for folks organizing right now?
Cindy Wiesner: I'm a daughter of a domestic worker and I come from a family of mostly domestic workers. I would definitely lift up the decades-long work that the National Domestic Workers Alliance has been doing to make visible the labor of women, particularly Black, migrant, and queer women, who have been historically exploited and marginalized. Domestic workers have been leading a counter-hegemonic campaign to center and build power for the people who are the backbone to many middle class and rich, elite families, as well as society writ large. I take a lot of inspiration from that work.
I also think about the Green New Deal and how it sparked people's radical imagination. It opened up a conversation about relief, recovery, and jobs, as well as the role of government and private-public partnerships in job creation. The THRIVE Agenda expanded this idea of having jobs that avoid replicating the harms of the past — jobs that aren’t extractive and don’t create new oil pipelines. In fact, we can have and should demand good-paying, union jobs that better our communities. Those are two examples that come to mind in the United States.
Internationally there has been a lot of work around mutual aid, which is also known as cocinas comunes or “common kitchens.” In these spaces, people are self-organizing in many different ways and coming together to meet each other's needs through food, clothing, basic necessities, and even employment. All over the world, we can see examples of strong feminist articulations and models of sustainability.
The seeds are germinating, and they will show us what an alternative is. What is required is the political space for small-scale experiments to become large-scale programs.
We are living in a phase where we have to experiment. Those experiments start small, and then we must figure out how they can go to scale. If we’re feeding 50 people on a daily basis, how do we think about feeding 50 million people? If we’re able to localize and distribute food within a community or a particular geography, how can we localize food for an entire state or territory? Those are some of the conversations that movements are having here in this country, and also around the world. The seeds are germinating, and they will show us what an alternative is. What is required is the political space for small-scale experiments to become large-scale programs.
Lauren Jacobs: I want to thank you for this conversation today, Cindy. I have learned so much from you. This has been a re-deepening of my own practice and commitment to thinking about what we are doing, why we are doing it, and how we are centering life, sustainability, and right relationship in our work.
