About Us
MAMAS Activating Movements for Abolition & Solidarity
MAMAS
Activating
Movements for
Abolition &
Solidarity
MAMAS is a fiery feminist of color, abolitionist reproductive justice collective hailing from the heart of Chicago. Founded by Black and Arab mother-activists, we center the lived experiences, political struggles, and dreams of mothers & caregivers of color.
MAMAS was born out of community-based gatherings in Chicagoland, where we shared the collective view that mamas of color and indigenous mamas were contributing crucial abolitionist and decolonial strategies to our city’s social movements. Mamas were expanding meeting spaces to become more intergenerational. We were experts at building multiracial coalitions. We bridged reproductive justice, abolitionist, and anti-militarist organizing. We grew mutual aid efforts when comrades were under fire. We filled the courtrooms when judges harmed our people and we knew how to care for each other while organizing. Yet many social movements tokenized mothers, pushed us to the side, and co-opted or erased our work.
MAMAS was also conceived through our connections with movements in Egypt and Palestine where we had worked with feminists amplifying the urgency of mothering forms of labor in revolutions—like keeping people who were camping in Tahrir Square warm to maintain the sit-in or feeding people in the face of genocide. We birthed MAMAS so that mothers and caregivers of color can access the necessary tools and resources to grow our visions and practices of liberation on our own terms, through the framework of radical mothering.
We believe that those who do mothering and carework in the face of white supremacy, colonization, and militarism, offer the wisdom and strategies needed for our collective freedom dreams.
Our Mission
We build collective power among impacted mothers & caregivers- “mamas”- who are mobilizing for social transformation and growing new worlds.
Our Vision
We exist to uplift the interconnectedness of parenting and political work, nurturing and building power, and to cultivate spaces for collective healing, mutual support, and liberation, and to end the sexist marginalization of mothers and caregivers within non-profit organizations and social movements. Entrusted with the sacred tools of Feminist and Queer of Color, Reproductive, and Healing Justice, Abolition and Decolonial movements, we weave the fabric of our collectives, knitting bonds of solidarity, and spark the embodiment of mutual aid, and the nurturing of one another, our resistance, and our visions for vibrant, life affirming futures.
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We believe that mothering is an incredibly potent force for transforming oppressive conditions into radical love and liberation.
In a world that relies on prisons, colonization, and war to further empire building and global capitalism, we declare that mothers are not only the nurturers of life but also the architects of transformation.
We stand on the precipice of a new era, one where the force of radical mothering emerges as a powerful catalyst for dismantling oppressive systems and building a life affirming world rooted in radical love and justice.
Mothers laboring in the face of state violence, hold within them the wisdom, agency, and determination to reshape our movements and communities. As we harness the collective strength of mother-survivors, we envision a future where the chains of prisons, misappropriation, displacement of colonization, and the tragedies of war are but echoes of a past we’ve persevered through.
Our mission is not just a dream, but an urgent and radical call to action. Together, we will rise with the power of radical mothering to nurture our collective power and uproot injustice intergenerationally, for all of our communities, and for the abundant world we have been striving for.
We praise mothering at home, mothering at work, mothering on the streets, and mothering beyond boundaries on our path forward towards collective liberation.
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