From FAANMail: Women of Color Activists Target UMG, Clear Channel, Media Corporations

FAANMail, which stands for Fostering Activism & Alternatives Now!, is a media literacy and activism project formed by young women of color in Philadelphia.

In addition to their other initiatives like working to protest the Ethnic Studies Ban in Arizona, empowering young women to critique, produce, and distribute media, and being active in the movement to end street harassment, FAANMail also produces a special video series of “Talk Backs” in which women of color respond to media that contributes to their dehumanization and make the call for alternative forms of media that are uplifting and not oppressing.

One of their latest campaigns involves an open letter written by Nuala Cabral, one of the founding members of FAANMail to Lucien Grange, CEO of Universal Music Group in response to “Birthday Song” by the rapper 2Chainz, featuring Kanye West.

“We live in a world where black and brown women’s bodies have been exploited since slavery. Where 19th century European freak shows exhibited the “unusual” body of Saartjie Baartman, a South African woman whose remains were finally returned to her homeland in 2002 after legal battles with the French government. Mr. Grainge, your disregard for black and brown women’s bodies is the same disregard that enabled a history of forced sterilization, the shackling of birthing black mothers in prison. Mr. Grainge, your indifference resembles the indifference of a rape culture that overlooks the men who rape, while blaming the women and girls of color, who experience sexual violence at disproportionate rates.  Research[1] has proven that the objectification of women in today’s toxic media environment has harmful effects on women and girls.”–Nuala Cabral

Read the rest of Nuala’s open letter entitled: For Corporations, When Colored Girls are Degraded: An Open Letter to CEO Lucien Grainge of Universal Music Group

Nuala has also been featured in Notes from an Aspiring Humanitarian’s The People Who Inspire Series.

FAANMail was also mentioned today in the Huffington Post Article: “It’s Time for Women of Color to Talk Back”.

If you are passionate about this and interested in joining the FAANMail team in their efforts, you can follow them on twitter @FAANMail and join their campaign, talking back to Universal Music Group @UMG, ClearChannel, @ClearChannel, and other media corporations.

FAANMail is also looking to hear from you if you are a Male Ally and want to support women of color talking back to these corporations. You can follow them on twitter, and send them a message for more information.

“Moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited… a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and new growth possible… ‘talking back’… is the expression of our movement from object to subject— the liberated voice.”–Bell Hooks

Grace & Peace,

From Aspiring Humanitarian, Relando Thompkins, MSW

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