I’ve been thinking about the WAM! Conference for a few days now, attempting to wring out a post or two about it. I wrote a little bit about  before and after the conference at MMW.

I met some wonderful people at the conference, including Latoya from Racialicious, Samhita from Feministing, and Jill, Cara, Jack from Feministe. I met a lot of feminist writers whose names I’ve seen over the years, including Jennifer L. Pozner, Lisa Jervis, and Rebecca Traister. It was fulfilling and exciting to put faces and voices to people I’d “cyber-known” for years, and exhilirating to meet new faces. I met some wonderful activists, writers, and media makers, including Jean Stevens of Code PINK, Rebecca Spicuglia from Women’s Media Center, and Linda Kay Klein from The Sister Fund.

But it’s not all rainbows and ice cream cones. Since WAM! is about feminism and analyzing privileges and oppressions, I appreciated Renee Martin’s criticism of the conference at GlobalComment:

When women seek to come together we need to consider if the conditions allow for a multiplicity of voices to be heard. In the end, what happens is that you have women of privilege speaking about the marginalized rather than speaking to them and this only serves to support the hierarchy of bodies that has existed since the beginning of feminism.

Renee has a great analysis of class and ability issues; definitely check out her critique.

I’m in Boston this weekend for the Women, Action & the Media (WAM!) conference. If you’re around, come say hello.

At Muslimah Media Watch, I ponder about this year’s theme, Inside/Outside:

I feel this theme is applicable to the position Muslim women often find themselves in: sometimes we are insiders in our faith, sometimes we are outsiders.

Wander over and join the discussion.

It’s Persian new year! According to the Persian calendar, it’s 1388. I’d like to wish everyone a happy and healthy new year.

Norooz mobarak!

It’s up right now. Check it!

I’m updating all this week on what others in the Muslim community are putting forth about this at Muslimah Media Watch. My contributors and I will have a roundtable discussion on it next week.

I’m also part of a group advocating for swift action against domestic violence by spreading the word to imams, community members, etc. This Friday, we’re pushing to get all local imams to speak on domestic violence at Friday prayers.

May Allah guide us.

Latoya and I have been putting together some pretty excellent link lists over at Racialicious. Check ’em out here, here, and here.

I am now a member of the Muslim American Journalists Association. Coolness!

Check them out. If you’re a Muslim American journalist, you might also want to consider joining. Wink, wink: registration is currently free.

This last weekend, I was in Denmark for the Danish Journalism Association’s FagFestival 2008. Yes, that’s really the name of the conference. It’s held every two years, and its been around since 1997.

The Danish Journalism Association is pretty cool: a vast majority of Denmark’s media people are members, and this doesn’t just include journalists, but also camera operators, cartoonists, etc., and they all converge upon this festival every two years. Everything (the printed programs and most of the workshops) are in Danish, but you can see my little “blurb” in English here.

It’s a pretty exciting environment, and even more so because the organizers often bring in international media people (like myself). I met some interesting people, including Mark Briggs (author of the concept/book Journalism 2.0), as well as Solana Larsen and Amira Al Hussaini of Global Voices Online. It was really nice to put faces behind a blog I come into contact with so often.

My presentation at the conference went well, despite the fact that the organizers put me up against Seymour Hersh. Author, Pulitzer Prize winner, investigative journalist, holy-crap Seymour Hersh. Yeah. He stayed in the same hotel as I did, too. I faired very well at the conference, despite being slated at the same time as an American journalism icon, and actually had to turn down a few interviews!

Speaking of interviews, I’ll post the interviews I did agree to as soon as I get video of them and upload them to YouTube.

I had a great time in Denmark and met some lovely people there. Everyone was incredibly wonderful, and I want to give my warmest thanks to Nanna Mielche and Mariann Vasbo for all their graciousness and kindness before and during my stay.