Reflect and Strengthen began in the fall of 2001, when several young women created a group to identify struggles that we face and learn about the systems that impact us. We struggle with such realities as murder, sexual assault and rape, incarceration, poverty and lack of quality, culturally relevant education, health care, and housing. These conditions are symptoms of racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, capitalism, and imperialism.
R & S unites working class girls and women from various ethnicities and cultures to learn to understand and struggle to change these power structures while healing from their effects. We do this through coalition-based campaigns, culturally relevant education and artistic approaches to organizing, self-determination, self-expression and empowerment.