EWOCC: The Empowering Women of Color Conference

by Zeli Rivas, Women of Color Initiative Project Coordinator

The Empowering Women of Color Conference took place March 8, 2008. The Empowering Women of Color Conference (EWOCC) offers its participants the opportunity for discussion, exposure, and empowerment through awareness. We embrace women of different generations, ethnic and racial groups, socioeconomic levels, sexual orientations, gender identifications, spiritual beliefs and physical abilities. Our goal for the conference is to build bridges between graduate academic and community women of color, to assist them in sharing resources, strategies and visions that will empower them in their various realms of existence: individual, communal, national, and international. This process demands that we share our visions in order to build networks that empower women of color at all levels of society.

This year's theme, "decolonizing creativity: FIERY WOMYN, FIERCE EXPRESSIONS," explored the theme of creativity by focusing on art as an expression of a woman's life and identity. The 23rd Annual EWOCC Committee hoped to inspire and highlight the work of women of color who share their personal, political and professional voices through the arts. These women continuously put their effort towards building a world in which their work is foregrounded and esteemed.

The main conference included a panel of acclaimed Bay Area activists and leaders in community art discussing women's issues, as well as vendors, cultural performances, workshops on a variety of creativity and art-related topics. The keynote speakers, Climbing PoeTree, the tag-team, two-spirited, boundary-breaking artistic duo, Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman were billed as "Delivering explosive lyrics that leave listeners outraged and inspired… on a mission to overcome destruction with creativity." They did not fail in this promise and even preformed at the end of the day.

The committee felt that their vision of creativity and art meant movement toward: an understanding of art that redefines the connection for women of color among mind, body, and spirit; artistic expressions as cultural resistance to oppression; a unity among women of color that allows for identity difference; exposing and exploring the ways in which institutions shape our access to art; listening to and advocating for the artistic needs of queer, intersex and transgender people; research and scholarship on artistic issues that are particularly significant for women of color; individual and community models of using artistic forms to heal from systemic violence and trauma; understanding the intersections among issues of art, poverty, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, militarism and imperialism; advocating for balance within personal and professional artistic boundaries; exploring the ways in which artistically minded amateur artists can transition into the professional world of art; and embracing women of color's familial roles and supporting the mother, wife, girlfriend, partner, daughter, niece, grandmother, and friend that is found in all of us.

EWOCC is recognized to be one of the longest running conferences in the nation that addresses the needs and concerns of women of color. The conference brings together cutting edge women of color activists with Bay Area community leaders and academics (especially students) to discuss and strategize ways of impacting the current issues facing women of color. EWOCC was founded in 1984 by a group of undergraduate students as their semester project for a DE-Cal (Democratic Education at Cal) class. The project, entitled "Women of Color in the United States," received an overwhelmingly positive response, and students decided to organize another event with the help of the Graduate Assembly (GA), Berkeley's graduate student government. In 1986, with the formation of the GA's Graduate Women's Project (GWP), it was decided to institutionalize this event and make the conference and annual project under the auspices of the GWP. EWOCC was one of the first conferences to present women of color with an opportunity to address the racial, class, and gender issues facing American Indian, African American, Asian American, and Chicana/Latina women.