I wish that I could begin this letter by celebrating our victories and recounting how triumphant the last two years have been. I wish that I could start by asserting our position of strength and fortitude, by reminding you how unshakable and unsinkable we are and have always been. I want to start this letter telling you that we are winning and will keep winning–no matter what threats come–until our world is different.

Instead of telling you how we are winning, I will tell you that we are working. We are bridging and building, we are plotting and planning, we are imagining and reimagining, we are connecting and collaborating, we are learning and unlearning, we are deconstructing and decolonizing, we are resting and resisting. Things feel harder today than when I wrote to you two years ago. Things feel scarier today than they were when we last reflected. The challenges we face are not new, but they in many ways feel sharper than before and directed at more of us. So, in turn, we must be sharper too.

As we enter our 50th year of Feminist Center, I look to those who have fought these same fights before to sharpen our strategy. Those who have lessons to share, from across time and place, and can speak to this moment with the clarity and wisdom we so desperately need. I also look to those who are coming fresh into our movements with optimism and openness, who will trouble the things we take for granted and add the necessary grit to polish our tools. I remind myself of the mandate that Atlanta organizer Mary Hooks gave to us in 2020, “… to avenge the suffering of our ancestors, to earn the respect of future generations, and be willing to be transformed in the service of the work!” These past 50 years of Feminist Center have a story to tell, a story we aren’t done writing yet, a story we are telling through our work. A story worth celebrating.

So even though I couldn’t start this letter in celebration, I think I can end it in one. I celebrate the colleagues and comrades who are in aligned, deep, reciprocal, and loving relationship with Feminist Center. I celebrate that courageous Feminists who came before us and built this place in a time of similar uncertainty and fear and danger. I celebrate the clarity and sharpened analysis that we are committed to refining together across generations as we work toward our collective liberation. I celebrate the people who continue to show up for reproductive justice and bodily autonomy every single day, for themselves and for each other and for all of us. Won’t you celebrate with me?