Our Story

Building Multi-racial Coalitions Through Women’s Culture

Founded in 1978 as a multiracial coalition by Bernice Johnson Reagon and Amy Horowitz, Roadwork’s original mission was to “put women’s culture on the road.” The name Roadwork was chosen because we felt that in order to put radical, and primarily women of color, artists on the road, we would have to build the roads. Driven by the idea that culture is the lifeblood of struggle and survival, Roadwork created intersecting access roads and opportunities for artists with roots in social change and justice movements including Black civil rights, lesbian-feminist (and later LGBTQIA), environmental, indigenous peoples, anti-nukes, and many others. Through tours, concerts, house parties, workshops, protest rallies, and the signature Sisterfire Festival, Roadwork forged paths that provided women of diverse backgrounds a platform for sharing their voices, their skills, and their spirits.

Roadwork’s genesis was brewed up on the back porch of a Washington, D.C., row house. Many late nights were filled with heated discussion about what the organization would be. Was it possible to launch an organization based on the concept of coalition, of women working together, sharing power and responsibility across racial, cultural, and class lines to produce, promote, and discover women’s culture as it exists on a global level? The concept of coalition was not new; however, most coalitions were formed by a coming together of various organizations working around issues where a common thread could be found. There were very few models for an organization that was, in itself, a coalition. The name Roadwork expressed the vision that was developing: the work of building roads for women artists and the search for our historical links to women’s cultural contributions missing from history books and from White feminist herstories.

Roadwork emerged during a period of great hope and great frustration. Consciousnesses were being raised via second-wave feminism and zeitgeist moments in pop culture like the airing of Roots (viewed by more than half of the U.S. population). Technology promised wonders as illustrated by the premier of Star Wars, the Apple II home computer, and the world’s first test-tube baby. Peace even seemed fleetingly at hand with the Camp David Accords.

But the hard work of achieving equal justice and equal power for all peoples was being met by powerful oppositional forces. Widespread, covert, U.S. intelligence operations acted domestically against Black civil rights, Black power, and anti-war movements and globally against progressive movements in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Chile, and the Middle East. Anita Bryant started “Save Our Children” and campaigned against lesbian and gay rights across the country (1977-1980s). Civil rights’ gains faced challenges in the courts, while the Prison Industrial Complex targeted and disappeared Black and Brown communities for profit. A conservative movement, fueled by Jerry Falwell and the so-called Moral Majority (1979-1989), led to the election of Ronald Reagan 1980.

The music and entertainment industries were no exception to society’s  entrenched racism, sexism, and homophobia. Opportunities for women, especially women of color promoters, recording engineers, and independent artists were severely limited. Despite these obstacles,  grassroots women’s cultures of poets, visual artists, filmmakers, and musicians flourished, finding their voices in coffeehouses, independently produced concerts, festivals, and protest rallies. In this cauldron of local, national, international, multi-racial, cross-cultural issues, Roadwork wove together a coalition effort based on artistic collaboration among diverse communities. We worked with many networks of independent producers, distributors, and thought leaders, such as Olivia Records, Redwood Records, the Women’s Music Distribution Network to build alternative economic models and challenge mainstream cultural industries. Roadwork’s efforts reset the margins of discourse and the means of production.

Through our work, we challenged people to see art and politics as inextricably linked. After all, the idea that culture could be a strategy of resistance lay at the heart of Roadwork’s mission. Roadwork concerts brought activists and artists into collaboration, inspiring tens of thousands of people to generate social change in reactionary times. We trained a generation of organizers, producers, and women leaders to recognize that domestic politics in the United States are integrally tied to global struggles for justice. We mobilized diverse audiences and built lasting coalitions across the lines of race, gender, sexual orientation, and economic class.

It wasn’t always an easy path.

Coalition is, by definition, uncomfortable because it presupposes meeting across difference. That’s why it is called coalition and not home. It is not easy to build a coalition because, although we “share” experiences of hurt, pain, anger, disappointment, and transgression, we often do not recognize the hurt in others. Forming coalition with others implies seeking common ground while identifying issues of divergence and disagreement. These “disputed territories” coexist within each of us. We each bring multiple identities and disputed inner territories to the coalition table. Being in coalition means getting comfortable with the discomfort of disagreement. Coalition is best approached as a place to do some good work with others with whom you may not completely agree. It is not a place to find an intimate friend circle where the expectation is deep resonance. It’s complex.

During the early years of Roadwork, we were activists  in our twenties and early thirties, and we were making the organization up as we went along. On the one hand was our concrete work of booking tours and producing concerts, while on the other hand was our work with organizations throughout the United States and globally in how to work across difference — even as we tried to do so ourselves — and providing support for organizers of D.C.-based marches. We were trying to build a multiracial coalition structure. For a leadership model, we sought guidance from Roadwork co-founder Bernice Johnson Reagon’s work in the southern Black civil rights movement as a singer, activist, and organizer and we sought lessons from our own work in anti-war collectives, women’s health centers, and women’s and gay rights movements. Roadwork has been successful because we were first and foremost a coalition of learners.

Sisterfire  was one of the clearest manifestations of the principles of Roadwork. The festival began as a one-day fundraising event in 1982 to offset the traumatic cuts to grassroots arts that were crushing us as Ronald Reagan’s policies took hold. The annual festival grew to be a concentrated celebration of the booking, production, and coalition work that we carried out year-round. In addition to the Roadwork staff, Sistersparks (volunteers) were the backbone and heart of the forthcoming fundraiser, resonating with the inclusive, urban, multiracial mission of the Festival.

Roadwork transformed audiences at Sisterfire and other events into activist participants in a congregation devoted to fighting racism, sexism, homophobia and other regressive social forces. We bought a particular voice and focus to the equation — an attempt to face racism within the women’s movement, the left and the labor movements and homophobia and misogyny through a focus on building coalitions across difference.

Roadwork was and continues to be at the forefront of today’s intersectional activism. In recent years, we supported the organizers of the Women’s March in 2017 and in 2018, we bought Roadwork’s unique cultural-political message to the National Mall for thousands to hear as we produced Sisterfire at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

We are inspired by a new generation of artists, volunteers, and audience members who are committed to Roadwork’s mission.  We look forward to continuing our work as an incubator for cultural initiatives aimed at advancing social justice, curated by women and queer artists/activists; partnering with others to produce cultural arts events to drive voter registration and voter participation; and collecting and documenting the oral histories of the women and men who, years ago, defined the power of intersectional activism and helped invent Roadwork.

Roadwork is moving forward. We hope you can join us!