On March 14, the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) at McGill and the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) hosted Women of Diverse Origins (WDO-FDO) for an event titled “Are You Outraged? Organize Collectively: A History of Women of Diverse Origins and the Militant Women’s Movement in Montreal-Tio’tia:ke and beyond.” The two-hour workshop drew nearly two dozen students, with WDO-FDO organizers Zaïnab El Guerrab, Dolores Chew, and Dina El Sabbagh leading the discussion.
The event began with a presentation from El Guerrab, in which she outlined the history of WDO-FDO. The organization brings together networks of grassroots anti-imperialist women’s groups and consists of women of diverse ethnicities, religions, ages, and sexual orientations who unite in their “struggles against patriarchy, racism, capitalism, colonialism, fascism, and imperialism.”
“Colonialism and racism didn’t stop during the pandemic,” El Guerrab said. “Women are still resisting war, colonialism, and capitalism, and [now] we are united in demanding justice, equality, quality, and integration [….] These [global struggles] are a reflection of how we take both current and global struggles, and we try to bring them here.”
WDO-FDO is a member of several international alliances, including the International Women’s Alliance, the International Migrants Alliance, and the International League of Peoples’ Struggle. El Guerrab also shared that WDO-FDO has organized activities to mark International Women’s Day, March 8, since its inception in 2002 and remains involved in various other initiatives throughout the year, such as showing solidarity with Palestine, fighting militarization, and participating in “Don’t Touch Syria” protests in 2017.
“Whether it’s snowing, whether it’s a global warming winter, […] we take the streets, but we are also very keen to learn and to share our learnings and to speak up,” El Guerrab said. “Reading lineages between different groups, different struggles, finding ways to strategize, to learn from each other.”
The workshop then turned to an open-floor discussion with the audience members, in which attendees were encouraged to ask questions. Alex*, an attendee and WDO-FDO member, encouraged audience members to share their own experiences of being outraged over the patriarchy. Alex also emphasized the inclusive nature of the organization, recalling their own experience joining WDO-FDO after just moving to Montreal.
“Because of this perspective that FDO has, that they welcome people, regardless of how long they’ve been around,” Alex said. “It allows someone like me to take over an elder who was previously involved. So I think those principles are what guide the day-to-day work. So that when objective conditions change, individuals fall sick, or they move or something else happens, the work still persists.”
El Guerrab hopes that students will see the importance of taking collective action in the face of a capitalist system that encourages separation and competition.
“[Thinking and acting collectively] offers these kinds of fresh air to think differently and try to build in an anti-imperialist, feminist, anti-racist [space],” El Guerrab said.
In an interview with The Tribune after the event, Chew explained that she enjoys coming to the McGill campus to engage with students of all ages who have never heard of WDO-FDO and to reflect on how far she’s come from when she was a student and later a secretary at McGill.
“Looking at faces with people who are in their twenties and remembering myself at that time […] what a great impression it made on me to hear women who were older, who had been doing things, and like thinking, ‘Oh, really, that can be done. I can do it,’” Chew said.
