Somethings happening ... How the Womens March inspired a new era of resistance

[malaise]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/06/somethings-happening-how-the-womens-march-inspired-a-new-era-of-resistance
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It was towards the end of her seventh decade when Connie Burkhart attended her first protest march. The journey on this icy day from her small, rural community of Hope, Idaho (population 86), to Sandpoint, the city where the Women’s March was being held, wasn’t easy. As she gritted her driveway, she told the friend accompanying her that the Republicans should be scared by the effort they were prepared to make.

Women at many of the marches – including the one I attended in London, alongside an estimated 100,000 others – found themselves in an unusual state of enthusiastic stasis, a sea of people, many in pink “pussy” hats, stretching out around us. Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, who attended the main march in Washington, says it was one of the most exhilarating days of her life. “It was also a day of standing for an hour and a half in total human gridlock.”

Perhaps the reason the central event in Washington attracted such global support is that Trump seems the face of a broader backlash against women’s rights. It has been two years since the Women’s Equality Party (WEP) formed in the UK, and its leader, Sophie Walker, tells me that in the past six months she has seen a significant shift backwards. Whereas, at first, people would challenge her to make the case for why a party for women’s equality was necessary, she now finds herself being challenged to make the case for why women’s equality itself is necessary. “There is this extreme language of division and hate and racism and sexism and misogyny that is being normalised by Trump and by elements of rightwing populism in our own country,” she says. This has happened since the Brexit referendum, “but increasingly so since Trump, because that has emboldened those similar elements in this country”, she adds.

The backlash has prompted a backlash of its own. The WEP saw a jump in membership after the Brexit result, a jump after Trump’s win, and the four days following the women’s march brought a spike of about 1,000 new members. “I’ve had so many conversations,” says Walker, “with people who say: ‘Oh, up until now I would sit and say, Oh God, someone should really do something about this. And now I’ve realised it’s me. I have to do something about this.’”


For International Women’s Day on 8 March, the Women’s March and the International Women’s Strike are calling for women to go on strike in a major action against economic inequality, male violence and attacks on reproductive rights. On that same day, says Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance in the US, there is going to be a march on the Department of Labor then, in the week of 10 April – spring break for many US schools – families will be taking action together, with plans for a caravan of children to travel from Florida to Washington DC to deliver letters to the administration. Walker is currently organising a Women’s Day Off for 2018 to coincide with the centenary of women first being given the vote in the UK. There are also tax marches planned across the US on 15 April and three upcoming marches in DC: the March for Science on 22 April; the People’s Climate March on 29 April; and an Immigrants March on 6 May.
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Lots more at link

[Lucinda]

1. KNR Thank you!

[malaise]

2. You're welcome