Price, Kimala. “Forging NEW ALLIANCES: Mobilizing Hip Hop Activists for Reproductive Justice.” Off Our Backs, Inc., January 2006.
Annotation
This article addresses Kimala Price’s work on implementing and developing a new organization called the Progressive Women’s Caucus (PWC) of the National Hip Hop Political Convention. While women of color and young women are historically often underrepresented and unheard through the mainstream pro-choice movement, the author shares how her work, along with others who identify as “hip hop feminists,” has allowed the reproductive justice activists and advocates to educationally engage with minority groups such as African American women and women from marginalized communities. While the mainstream pro-choice movement may have its own allies, Price recognizes that there is room and potential for more allies with different civil and political concerns and issues with PWC. The intent of this organization and its convention is to welcome more allies to the reproductive just movement and other areas they feel are important to address and discuss. Since the earlier 2000s, Price has noticed an increase in support and participation in the reproductive justice movement from organizations like the NAACP and even California voters, who have shown their opposition to legislation like Proposition 73. This proposition would have restricted abortion rights for girls under the age of eighteen, by notifying their parents or legal guardians of a minor’s abortion 48 hours before the procedure. According to Price, for many individuals, including young women of color under the age of 25, hip hop has been a starting point to examine and speak out against “racial, ethnic, gender, class and sexual oppression within the United States” (25). As a founder of PWC, which began in 2004, she has worked with a core group of ten women to establish the convention’s five point national agenda focused on “education, economic justice, criminal justice, health care and human rights” (26). PWC mobilizes to educate women about reproductive justice and the reproductive movement while increasing awareness and participation through lectures, workshops, and public forums. The first convention was held in Newark, New Jersey. PWC serves as an organization to gather, welcome, and encourage women of color to understand their biological and reproductive rights within society. In relation to reproductive justice, PWC offers women from different organizations the room and opportunity to discuss issues of importance to them, including reproductive rights and justice and other civil and political concerns about their communities. Price concludes that the reproductive rights movement needs everyone’s voice, not just the typical pro-choice mainstream voices, because decisions need to be made since they impact, “Our bodies, Our lives, and Our communities.”