ABSTRACT
In February 2007, our Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education (CEJE) in Chicago (teachers, high school students, university faculty, graduate students, community activists) invited the Fed Up Honeys to talk about their work. Th e audience, mostly high school womyn of color, responded to their research with shared experience and solidarity. Th ey came from places across the city, small groups organized by or supported by committed teachers, and adult allies. Th ey found themselves in a room overfl owing with other young womyn like themselves who were meeting in schools and libraries and living rooms to critique the racist and sexist stereotypes fi xed to their identities and to act as strong young womyn, some as school and community activists and leaders. Th e Fed Ups’ research spoke back to labels that target them as sexually promiscuous, lazy, uneducated, a burden to society. What does it mean to critically investigate the link between those labels and that labeling and the larger economic and political structures that are redefi ning cities such as New York and Chicago and writing these young womyn, their mothers, sisters, brothers, and grandmothers out of their neighborhoods? What are the possibilities when those who are labeled and dismissed pack a room with others like them and share a common experience that is collectively revealed to be intricately and purposefully linked to processes of displacement, disinvestment, and domination?
