Video of the Day: Watch these high school feminists be amazing

School is back in session across the country, and I was thrilled to learn about the great work of the Sacramento Young Feminists Alliance here in California.  

As the Sacramento Bee reports, high school student organizers have established a multi-high school alliance of feminist clubs across the region. Started by senior Inga Mantica, the Alliance brings together young feminists to discuss issues that they face in their own schools and communities — from online shaming and unequal pay to the importance of intersectionality. They are even making their own feminist zines (#swoon). And they organized their first conference last spring.

Am I the only one who is super jealous that I didn’t have this in high school and is feeling feelz at the brilliant youth? Check out the video below created by Ashiah Scharaga. And wish all the young feminist in your life a great, bad-ass start to their school year!

Video: Sacramento-area students organize for social change

Transcript: 

Ina Manticas: The feminism that we are practicing, in the alliance, is to look at the way women and people of genders experience social inequality. 

Jaelyn Singleton: People are kind of afraid of feminism because of the general vision of feminism is that they are always white, they always smoke cigarettes, they always hate men. But as an Afro-feminist, I personally believe in the equality of sex, social class, and race. You can’t be a feminist and be a racist. It just doesn’t make sense. 

Melody Genre: What I think people don’t understand is that feminists don’t want to be better than men or more than men. 

Lucy Giles: We want to be on the same page. 

Melody Genre: Yeah! 

Mac Harrington: When you say to someone, “Hey I’m a feminist.” They think “Oh you don’t like me.” They don’t understand and they think that I’m siding with the other side. 

Cora Kerr: You see a lot of high school boys being belligerent towards high school girls. In an academic setting, you see high schools boys cutting girls off and talking over them. You see girls tend to raise their hands less. We always try to make our presence unapologetic. 

Header image credit: Jose Luis Villegas/The Sacramento Bee