Manifesta
P.O Box 204279, Yale Station
New Haven, CT 06520

Dear Readers,

More than a decade has passed since Rev. Pat Robertson issued his notorious warning to upstanding U.S. citizens: "Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians." Eight years have slipped by since the media hailed Ally McBeal as a "post-feminist feminist"; seven years since the Spice Girls championed "girl power" and cried out, "Tell me what you want, what you really, really want!"; six years since the infamous Time magazine cover asked, "Is Feminism Dead?"

The debut of Manifesta is our long-simmering answer to all of the above, and a whole lot more.

It's our rejoinder to the portrait of George Bush Sr. that currently hangs in Commons, Yale's largest dining hall, daily tempting us to replace it with a watercolor homage to Emma Goldman or bell hooks. It's our response to the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that George W. Bush has waged in part in the name of women's liberation, and also to the factions of the anti-war movement that have sidelined a gendered analysis of occupation. It's our riposte to mainstream media that make it ten times easier to learn about Britney Spear's latest battle with butt fungus than to ascertain any substantive information about the real issues facing young women around the world.

But above all, Manifesta is our expression of the fact that feminism's next generation is alive and kicking at the grassroots level. Along with supporting traditional causes such as reproductive rights and equal pay for equal work, young people are embracing a whole host of political, economic, and cultural issues—from immigration policy to transgender rights to anti-war campaigning. They are fighting for universal health care; protesting neoliberal free trade agreements; fighting the prison industrial complex; claiming the right to unionize; and building social justice networks.

In many cases, however, these courageous young activists have been reluctant to fully own the f-word—"feminism"—as a part of their organizing. Surely, some of them fear being mistaken for man-hating, humorless, hairy bra-burners, thanks in no small part to decades of media-espoused stereotypes. But others harbor more complicated reservations about the term and its past: didn't "Second Wave" feminism focus myopically on issues facing white, straight, upper-middle-class women? Hasn't "Third Wave" feminism been too self-indulgent, too corporatized, too obsessed with trivial lipstick liberation?

Instead of abandoning the f-word altogether, we hope that our generation can reclaim and restyle it. In the pages of Manifesta, we aspire to exchange the straightjacket of "Feminism" for the diverse and dynamic terrain of "feminisms"—an approach that allows us to embrace messiness while recognizing and resisting the various oppressions that crosscut feminist constituencies. We want to tackle timely political issues—from globalization to education to health care—and we want to do so through an explicitly gendered lens.

In our first issue, we've decided to take on the theme of "Women and War." Although we initially had other plans, the bombs raining down on Fallujah left us with little choice: as feminists living in the heart of empire, with abundant resources and access to power, we couldn't ignore the urgent call to examine the harrowing effects of militarism on women and humanity; to take responsibility for our own complicity in contemporary imperialism; and to ask you to join us in the search for insight and spirited struggle.

In the 80-some pages that follow, you're likely to find more questions than answers. In "Occupation is not (Women's) Liberation," Huibin Amee Chew asks us to consider the costs of "imperial feminism" in Iraq and Afghanistan. In "Exporting Violence Against Women," Kathryn Temple discusses the School of the Americas and urges us to think about the parallels between overt military warfare, subtler economic sparring, and domestic abuse. And in "I Will Be Forgotten," Clair Kwon invites us to envision various routes to obtaining retroactive justice for Korean comfort women, more than half a century after the horrors of World War II.

Some of the pieces in this issue offer distressing glimpses into war-zones, both literal and metaphorical; others celebrate new modes of rabble-rousing and resistance. Almost all remind us that war—like politics, economics, and virtually every other realm of life—is not a gender-blind arena.

We hope you come to view the pages of Manifesta as your pages—a place where you can join us in discussing, debating, reviving, and reshaping new visions for feminism. Our upcoming issues will address the critical themes of corporate globalization (Fall 2005) and criminal justice (Spring 2006); we look forward to seeing your articles, photographs, poems, letters, and other creative works between future Manifesta covers.

As we embark on this ambitious project, maybe we ought to listen to the Spice Girls after all: it's high time that we, as feminists of all stripes, figure out what we want—what we really, really want—and find the strength to demand it.

        In solidarity,

Sarah Stillman	Jessica Gusberg