Katz-Fishman, a sociology professor at Howard University and an organizer of DC Metro Social Forum, received the Another World is Possible Award at the Washington Peace Center’s Sixth Annual Activist Awards Grassroots Gala last week. She was one of 10 area activists honored.
What does this recognition mean to you?
I have been an activist and living in the Washington, D.C., community for 40 years. … I just feel really honored and humbled to be recognized, especially by a younger generation of activists, in the Washington metropolitan community that I’ve been working with.
Talk about the DC Metro Social Forum.
It’s really a global process and we have a local D.C. metropolitan aspect of it. … It is a coming together of social movement and social struggles. It began in 2001 formally in Brazil. … We began to organize here locally around 2005, and it’s to bring together all our struggles ?– workers’ struggles, women’s struggles, youth struggles, every conceivable struggle.
Why is activism important?
Because really the future is up to us. If we don’t become active in solving the problems that we confront day today then we will not have an active role in transforming history and transforming our society. … I really do think it’s up to us. It’s up to ordinary people who rise to the occasion, as they say, to do extraordinary things.
What other ways do you participate or encourage activism on a daily basis?
I work with younger people and they’re all ages … and so as a sociologist, you study society. It’s that theory and practice, the study and that practical activity, that really puts into practice a vision of a better world for humanity and the planet. … I think on a day-to-day basis, it’s really my students that I see everyday — and that’s important. Students have really risen to the occasion whenever they’re being a part of a social movement.
Anna Waugh
