Feminist Summer Camp Begins!

Hooray! Feminist Summer Camp 2010 has begun! The week-long activist bootcamp led by the writers of Manifesta, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, includes hands-on adventures in New York City to learn different approaches, strategies and skills of social justice organizing.

Baumgardner and Richards started the project with college students and recent graduates in mind. Feminist Summer Camp provides an opportunity to practice your skills before you put that degree to work, plus meet like-minded people . . . and, we assume, make s’mores.

Wish you were there? Us too. We’ve got the next-best thing: Ms. will track the adventures of Sara Myles, from Sylvania, Ohio, who was the first camper to arrive in New York City.

Sara is 20 years old, majoring in social work and minoring in women’s studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. She’s a senior and the community outreach chair of her college’s feminist collective, the Organization for Women’s Issues.

You can read all about her experiences at her blog This Is An Old Fashioned Revolution. Here’s a sample:

Jennifer [Baumgardner] and I drove around Manhattan a bit, she showed me some things and almost got into a few accidents. NYC is a definite culture shock, people drive super aggressively, but they are really nice. Jennifer lives in Greenwich Village, so she drove me there and dropped me off at THE STRAND BOOKSTORE, then went to do other feministy-type things. That store is amazing, I was in heaven, it was lovely. I managed to get out of there and only bought one book! Yes!

So stay tuned as we live vicariously through Sara and her fantastic feminist summer vacation.

ABOVE: Girls Scouts toasting s’mores from Flickr user woodleywonderworksCC 2.0. under

Above: New York City skyline. Courtesy of Eva Abreu.

About

Kate Noftsinger is currently an intern for Ms. Magazine, making the move from the Heartland to LA. She is a Journalism major and a Women’s Studies minor at Bowling Green State University where she writes a weekly column for the BG News. She’s a Pisces. And a Feminist.