Ms. Wonder Awards Honor Young Grassroots Leaders in Anti-Violence, Fair Wage Movements

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Ms. Wonder Awards Honor Young Grassroots Leaders in Anti-Violence, Fair Wage Movements



“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a room with so much personal history, and so much future,” Gloria Steinem opened.

Today, Ms. Magazine and Ms. publisher, the Feminist Majority Foundation, celebrated grassroots feminist activism at the 2014 Ms. Wonder Awards Luncheon and Ceremony.
Know Your IX, Black Women’s Blueprint, the #CarryThatWeight Movement, and End Rape on Campus were all honored for their work to end campus sex assault at colleges and universities nationwide. Fight for $15 and Fast Food Forward organizers representing four cities and the state of North Carolina were honored for their work to raise the wage for fast food workers through direct action and some of the largest labor strikes in recent history.

Feminist Majority Foundation Director of Policy and Research, Gaylynn Burroughs presented Wonder Awards to the organizations working to end sexual violence on campus. “I had the chance to meet some of them earlier,” Burroughs said, “and they are fierce.”

Know Your IX is a grassroots, survivor-run, and student-led campaign to end gender-based violence on campuses across the country. The organization focuses on educating students about their right to an education unencumbered by violence and harassment, and they advocate for stronger federal enforcement to protect that right. The organization takes its name from Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which explicitly “prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.”

In 2013, Know Your IX’s ED ACT NOW Program delivered over 100,000 signatures from organizers, survivors, and student activists demanding that the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights conduct more transparent, timely investigations and issue meaningful sanctions against non-compliant schools – something it had never done for violations of Title IX related to sexual assault. Dana Bolger, Founding Co-Director, and Chandini Jha, the Outreach Coordinator for Know Your IX, accepted the award on behalf of the organization.

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http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2014/11/19/ms-wonder-awards-honor-young-grassroots-leaders-in-anti-violence-fair-wage-movements/