E The Magazine For Today's Female Executive August 2018 issue

Other social movements include labor,
feminism, environmental, gay and lesbian,
animal rights, and disability. Movements
provide an important context for
activism in several ways. They constitute
a network of individuals and groups that
is a source of communication, advice
and inspiration. They provide a learning
environment, with activists drawing on
the experience of other groups to discover
possible solutions. They provide a
framework or perspective for understanding
society, its problems, possible
futures, and ways of bringing about
change. This framework, or belief system,
develops out of the experience of
activists, combined with the ideas of
Page 151 E The Magazine for Today’s Female Executive
writers and leaders; some who are part
of the movement and some who are
largely independent of it.
For example, the feminist movement has
supported activism through the network
of individuals and groups, has fostered
learning about tactics, and has offered
an understanding of the problem of patriarchy
through women sharing their experiences
and through feminist writers presenting
ideas that illuminate and inspire
their readers.
The Women’s March on Washington was
unprecedented in scale as a social
movement, not just in sheer volume of
attendees, but in the array of issues it
encompassed, and the diversity at all
levels of leadership, from national to local.
The executive director of the Arab American
Association of New York, Linda Sarsour
— a Brooklyn native, mother of
three, and now one of the national cochairs
of the Women’s March on Washington
held this past January, has been working at
the crossroads of civil rights, religious freedom,
and racial justice for 15 years. Once an
aspiring English teacher, she joined the Arab
American Association in its infancy, succeeding
founder Basemah Atweh, her mentor, as
executive director with Atweh’s death in 2005.
In a recent interview with Katherine Cusumano
for W Magazine in the article, “The Women of
the Women's March: Meet the Activists Who
Are Planning One of the Largest Demonstrations
in American History,” “I grew out of the
shadow of 9/11,” Sarsour said. “What I’ve seen
out of bad always comes good, is that solidarity
and unity, particularly amongst communities
of color who feel like they’re all impacted by
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the same system.”