Hollins Women Making Change: Laura Boutwell
There was a lot of things that I really loved about where I grew up but some of that real white real conservative real Christian real “we’re all the same and if you are different there’s something wrong” a lot of that was pretty difficult for me. And I didn’t have language for that growing up there was just this sense of 'this isn't me and I don’t know what’s wrong here but this is not quite right something needs to change.'
-Laura Boutwell
How do you define activism?
A friend of mine this summer who is like this amazing community activist. She does youth organizing on a national level. We were talking and she said, “Do you ever get tired?” And I said, “Yeah and I am not willing to have my life only become what I do.” And she said, “Some of my elders keep telling me that if I move back to Mexico and I help raise my nieces and nephews that’s activism that’s being in the movement, that’s social justice, that it isn’t just this work… but it is me being who I am in my life. That is social justice.”
And I keep that in mind because I kind of think that activism, there is a definition that engages social justice and engages working for equality, working for transformation, But there is also a lot more simple way I approach my life that’s the way that I do what I need to do to be the person I’m committed to being. And that kind of activism I think is ultimately more transformative… you go to a peace rally and then people get all angry on the way home because they are trying to get on the metro and they can’t work the change machine. Like, what’s peace? Is peace our movement or how we interact with each other when we are all cold on a January day and we’re all trying to get back on the metro. So I think activism for me is a lot more about how I approach my life and the equality that I try to bring to every interaction.
About the Interviewer: Benita Bobo