The Everyday Feminist

2Leading Social Movements for Sustainable Impact

As I await the endless clearances to enter the Peace Corps/UN Volunteer program, I am inducted into the Georgia state bar for lawyers, I end my consulting jobs in Africa, and I get a call from a friend asking if I am interested in a consultancy with the MS Foundation. The timing is perfect. They want me to coordinate and join a group of Black American activists to a women's conference in China. In speaking with the program director there, it is the opportunity of a lifetime. I like her, the organization, and its founder, Gloria Steinem. Plus, I've never been to Asia, so I'm in. It is impossible to know the implications this split‐second decision would have on my life. It only hits me later that having a specific delegation of African American women is groundbreaking, one of many innovations that the MS Foundation is known for, then and now.

The Fourth World Conference on Women held in 1995 and the accompanying NGO gathering introduced me to the concept of the everyday feminist and the connected work they do around the world. I am motionless listening to the speeches and waiting for Hilary Clinton. I am marginally aware of the political opposition in my own country to her appearance at the conference. My instinct is that Americans are uncomfortable with a strong first lady. I don't get the impression that she cares. I like her. And when she utters the overall conference theme in her remarks, women's rights are human rights, it ...