Inspired by This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzuldua in 1981 – which foregrounded the heterogeneity of intellectual frameworks that linked feminism, race, class, and sexuality and also documented and catalysed coalitions – we feel the strength of the bridges we cross, that we are able to cross because of the radical and powerful work of those who we have followed.
We can trace our political, and material intellectual trajectories not only to our families, histories, ancestries, and communities but also a wide range of radical practices/actions and critical scholarship.
Insurgent/resurgent knowledge practices have long-existed in such movements as anti-colonial movements, feminist struggles, Indigenous resistance, class struggles, and are present in climate justice activism, Indigenous and Afro-futurisms, disability justice, migrant justice movements, transformative justice, queer/trans and gender non-conforming mobilizations, abolitionist politics, and many others. Our vision for the Lab is to build upon, and contribute to, such historical and contemporary avenues directed towards radical social change.
As well, our individual and collective intellectual journeys have been informed and shaped by critical race ecologies, feminist standpoint epistemologies; anti-racist and critical race feminists; Black feminists; anti-capitalist and Marxist feminists; anti-colonial and transnational scholars; that feminist body of work that has come to be known as ‘intersectionality’; cultural studies; Indigenous studies, and queer theory.