SisterSong
The SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, also known as SisterSong, is a national activist organization dedicated to reproductive justice for women of color.
Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, SisterSong is a national membership organization with a focus on the Southern United States. They include and represent Indigenous, Black, Asian and Pacific Islander, Arab and Middle Eastern, Latinx, and queer women and trans people. SisterSong says that they strive to center the needs of the most marginalized people of color, such as people with low incomes, young mothers, people with criminalization experience, people with HIV/AIDS, sex workers, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ people. Membership also includes White and male allies.
SisterSong has built a movement that now includes many independent organizations across the country, and they remain a movement thought leader, trainer, convener, organizer, and collaboration facilitator. Monica Simpson has served as executive director since 2012.
History
Origins of reproductive justice
In 1994, just before attending the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, a group of black women gathered for a conference sponsored by the Illinois Pro-Choice Alliance and the Ms. Foundation for Women. Their goal was to create a statement about the Clinton administration's proposed Universal Health Care plan. In the process, they coined "reproductive justice" as a combination of "reproductive rights" and "social justice." The women who created the reproductive justice framework were: Toni M. Bond Leonard, Reverend Alma Crawford, Evelyn S. Field, Terri James, Bisola Marignay, Cassandra McConnell, Cynthia Newbille, Loretta Ross, Elizabeth Terry, Mable Thomas, Winnette P. Willis, and Kim Youngblood. They launched the reproductive justice framework by publishing a full-page statement titled "Black Women on Universal Health Care Reform" with over 800 signatures in The Washington Post and Roll Call using the concept of reproductive justice in a criticism of the Clinton health care plan.These women believed that the creation of reproductive justice was necessary because they felt that the mainstream women's rights movement was led by and focused on the needs of middle class White women and did not meet the needs of women of color. In their view, the pro-choice framework focused on maintaining abortion rights and did not take into account the many ways that women of color and other marginalized women and trans people have difficulty accessing abortion even in places where it is legally allowed. The creators of reproductive justice also felt that the pro-choice framework did not align with the experiences of women of color, who often feel that the impact of systemic oppression limits their possibilities, so their reproductive lives are not guided by the self-determination that is taken for granted in the word "choice". In addition, they asserted that the mainstream women's rights movement did not center other pressing issues in the reproductive lives of women of color. These issues included sterilization abuse, forced and coerced promotion of LARCs, high maternal mortality, difficulty accessing birth support choices, unsafe drinking water in family homes, police brutality, and parents being separated from children through racially biased immigration and incarceration practices.
Reproductive justice advocates say that the framework strives to center the needs and leadership of the most marginalized people, rather than the majority, and to focus on how multiple oppressions intersect in the lived experience of marginalized people. The creators of the reproductive justice framework rooted it in the international human rights framework, asserting that reproductive justice is an inalienable human right.
SisterSong’s forerunner
In 1992, six national women of color organizations came together seeking to increase their impact on the mainstream women's rights/pro-choice movement and on US policy: Asians and Pacific Islanders for Choice, National Black Women's Health Project, National Latina Health Organization, Latina Roundtable on Health and Reproductive Rights, National Coalition of 100 Black Women, and Native American Women's Health and Education Resource Center. Together, they formed Women of Color Coalition for Reproductive Health Rights.Their first action was to encourage women of color to attend the 1992 March for Women's Lives organized by NOW, while also publicly critiquing NOW for their lack of inclusivity in planning the march. NOW's decision-making included only organizations able to make large financial contributions, which they claimed effectively excluded all organizations led by women of color, as these organizations generally lacked access to resources.
WOCCRHR's second action was to organize women of color to influence the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, in 1994 – the same conference that helped inspire the women who created the reproductive justice framework. WOCCRHR worked with other women of color to form the US Women of Color Delegation Project for the conference, and wrote a "Statement on Poverty, Development, and Population Activities". which they presented there. It connected the status of women of color in the US with that of women in developing countries and brought international attention to the issues faced by US women of color.
WOCCRHR also helped women of color participate and influence the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Afterward, the coalition disbanded because their funding sources were focused on international work, and they were not able to find funding to continue their work within the US after the international conferences ended.
SisterSong’s founding and history
SisterSong was founded in 1997 by 16 women-of-color-led organizations representing African American, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Latinx, and Indigenous women, the same populations represented in WOCCRHR. They received funding from the Ford Foundation. The organization emerged from a series of symposia in New York City and Savannah in 1997-1998 convened by Reena Marcelo, then a Program Officer at the Ford Foundation's Reproductive Health Program, and Luz Rodriguez, then executive director of Latina Roundtable on Health and Reproductive Rights. The purpose of these gatherings was to convene women of color reproductive health educators, activists, and policymakers to identify the key challenges grassroots organizations of color were experiencing in reproductive health work. Attendees decided to use the opportunity of these convenings to form a national collective of independent organizations that would help them all to achieve greater impact, and SisterSong was born with Luz Rodriguez as its first leader. The original name of the collective was SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, and the original mission was to advocate for the reproductive and sexual health needs of women of color.In its early history, SisterSong expanded to include other organizations led by women of color and to include individual women of color members. Organizational members focused on issues including HIV/AIDS services, midwifery, support for incarcerated women, health screenings, advocacy for abortion and contraception, research, teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol treatment, and treatment and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. After several years of work to develop the collective, SisterSong hosted its first national conference in November 2003 at Spelman College in Atlanta with over 600 women of color in attendance.
SisterSong was a volunteer-run network until 2005, when they opened a national office in Atlanta and hired their first staff with funding from the Ford Foundation and the Moriah Fund. The first staff leader was Loretta Ross, who served as National Coordinator from 2005 to 2012. One of the women who created the reproductive justice framework, Ross came with a long history of starting new organizations and programs related to human rights, violence against women, and anti-hate work. Instead of a board of directors, SisterSong was led by a Management Circle of leaders from each ethnic community in the Collective: Indigenous, Black, Asian and Pacific Islander, and Latinx.
In 2006 SisterSong incorporated as a 501 nonprofit. In 2007 the collective officially changed its name to SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective and purchased The Motherhouse in Atlanta, the historic first home of the National Black Women's Health Project, which remains the organization's headquarters today. SisterSong is strategically sited in the Deep South because they feel that this is where the rights of women of color are most threatened.
In 2012, National Coordinator Loretta Ross decided to return to her roots as a scholar and thought leader working within academia. With Ross's exit, SisterSong shifted from the Management Circle model to a conventional Board of Directors model and named Monica Raye Simpson, then the organization's Development Director, as Interim Executive Director in 2012 and executive director in 2013. Monica Simpson had previously been the first staff person of color at Charlotte's Lesbian & Gay Community Center and won awards for organizing the first Black Gay Pride in the Bible Belt. She remains SisterSong's Executive Director today.
In 2014, SisterSong selected four strategic priority areas:
- Reproductive justice training to build the capacity of reproductive justice advocates and groups and to bring the framework into mainstream use
- Centering black women's leadership and issues because SisterSong believes that black people are the most maligned in the US
- Building Southern synergy to increase reproductive justice collaboration across the region, which SisterSong asserts is critical because the South has powerful opponents of reproductive freedom linking their agenda to Southern culture, while Southern reproductive justice advocates are under-resourced and stretched thin working across large geographical areas
- Using arts and culture to reach new audiences and eradicate bigotry within US culture