Girls and young women are participating in unconventional forms of political participation through Ladyfests. The first Ladyfest took place in 2000 in Olympia, Washington, United States. Ladyfests are activist-oriented festivals that include art, spoken word, music, workshops, artisan
fairs, and other performances. Since the first Ladyfest there have been approximately one hundred and twenty spanning the globe. I argue that Ladyfests provide the organisers and attendees alternative communities to network, educate, share information, and build offline and online communities.
This form of contemporary cultural activism relies heavily on engaging culture as a means of both commentary and action. The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) by girls and young women is on the rise, including as activist and networking tools. Ladyfesters are web savvy
and use ICTs to organise the events, share information about their Ladyfest and others, as well as build networks after the event.
At the start of the twentieth century, more than 30 states in the United States offered free elementary education for children, and within 50 years these numbers increased. It has been only 65 years since the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, and Keisha Lindsay's work In a Classroom of Their Own demonstrates that we still have much work to do to ensure public education at the K-12 levels for black children. Public education remains highly complex, political, and fraught with problems. There is no shortage of books that examine single-sex education, and most examine how single-sex education positively affects girls. Lindsay's book is a much-needed contribution to the examination of education for black children. Her book is impactful with the focus on black boys and the support for all-black male schools (ABMSs). The book is divided into four chapters, with an introduction and a conclusion. Lindsay describes the backdrop to the support for ABMSs and how there are progressive possibilities for black boys at ABMSs. However, some of the arguments in support of ABMSs are problematic, and Lindsay uncovers these problems within her book. Black children in the United States are more likely to face suspension from school compared to white children, yet they constitute a smaller percentage of the school-aged population. In a Classroom of Their Own offers statistics and more, as Lindsay details the ways in which ABMSs
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.