My top five quotes of the conference thus far have been:

5. “We are going to explain this from the least expensive way possible. Now, who has a MAC laptop?” – Session 2, Workshop on Vlogging

4. “I am predatory and I don’t tip well.” – BFP

3. “Part of that I did just do for theater effect, but seriously, do you want anything while I am up?” – Blackamazon during lunch in the cafeteria, after dramatically pushing herself away from the table and walking away

2. “We’re in the Midwest for this conference, so of course we are going to have a bowling party tonight.” – Conference Announcer

1. “‘In my former life, I was a woman of color.'” – Ubuntu, retelling a story

Pretty

freaking

awesome,

huh?

I couldn’t post this picture vertically, but there is definitely no shortage of Bush dissenters.

Neither is there a shortage of amazing conversation…

Or amazing resources…

Or unbridled enthusiasm for promoting ART and POETRY as the most accessible and truthful mediums for social change.

The first workshop: Popular Media Education

Led by Skott Kurashige, this workshop kicked some serious ass as we deconstructed the marketing strategies of Nike and then shifted into brainstorming how to strengthen community based activism and points of resistance.

Another workshop, Vlogging 101 was giving me some pretty good ideas! Watch for further updates in the future…

We are HARDCORE grassroots, as illustrated below. Yes, that is grass garlend strewn across the bodyware of a bike.

So I have finally arrived and dined in Detroit, gearing up for a fantabulous weekend with my fellow women of color bloggers. I have already met Blackamazon and No Snow Here and they are a trip – brilliant, easy-going, and so laid back. I think I’m going to like it here. (“Annie” reference, if you didn’t catch that)

My suite reminds me of college.

That and how I already had to make a midnight run to CVS for toilet paper, which was not provided.

I’ve already delved into a three hour conversation about WOC feminism, thrusting myself even further into the stratified layers of this complicated Movement. I listen. I absorb. Then, I reflect.

I don’t have much to write just yet, there’s much my brain is processing. What I can report is that so many of women I have just met give me a sense of hope. I have hope because they travel, skin and bone, in overheated cars and on rollerblades to discuss topics that we know we cannot fully comprehend or solve. It’s pretty incredible to meet the eyes that gave birth to the ideas I have steadily followed over a computer screen for several months.

Tomorrow the conference officially begins.

I feel like I’ve been here a lot longer than what I have. I mean that in the best way.

Viva Detroit!

I’m heading to the Allied Media Conference to finally meet some of the brilliant WOC bloggers with whom I have found so much inspiration, humor, and poignancy.

Not sure what my capabilities for blogging will be, in terms of time and my laptop deciding to cooperate, but I’ll try and live blog for as much as I can!

After that, I’ll be back home for two days before I leave for the Nat’l Women Studies Conference in Illinois.

THEN

I’m going on vacation.

THEN

I’ll be back.