Tag: International Women’s Day

SAN DIEGO FIST MEMBERS PARTICIPATE IN INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY EVENT IN SAN DIEGO

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Dozens of women and their male supporters including FIST members helped organize a candlelight vigil and rally on March 8th 2023 for International Women’s Day in downtown San Diego. The demonstration highlighted women’s demands for restoration of women’s right to abortion nationally, the registration of the ERA into the Constitution that has already been ratified by 38 states and is being held up by the Biden administration, and an end to male violence against women and girls.

Ann Menasche. a co-coordinator of FIST, spoke at the rally urging that women should utilize their own voices and mobilize in the streets, rather than rely on politicians or judges.  Menasche said, “We have the power to change the world, sisters, and there is no better time than now”, and led the crowd in a chant made popular by Iranian feminists, “Woman, life, freedom.”

Andrea Gabay a grassroots feminist activist and organizer for Femme Fight Club, also spoke and was interviewed by a local TV station.

The coalition of local feminist groups plan to organize other protests in defense of women’s rights in San Diego.

Women Picket DC Event on International Women’s Day

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Feminists in Struggle endorsed and attended the Women Picket DC Event organized by members of the Women’s Human Rights Campaign on March 8th to protest Biden’s Executive Order eroding women’s sex-based rights and his abysmal handling of the ERA, and to proclaim that woman=adult human female and the oppression of women is based on sex, not gender ‘identity.’

Sisterhood is powerful!

 

International Women’s Day 2020

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Today is International Women’s Day and marks Feminists in Struggle’s 1 year anniversary!  We want to thank everyone who has joined us in the struggle to reignite a strong women’s movement in  order to finish the job First Wave and Second Wave feminists began.  We are so grateful for their sacrifices and contributions and we acknowledge all the women working for the global liberation of women around the world.

We particularly want to recognize the women of the #MeToo Movement who took personal risk to come forward to hold sexual predators accountable, the women behind the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, and the efforts of organizations like Equal Means Equal that have worked tirelessly to bring the Equal Rights Amendment to the finish line.  It was 100 years ago this year that First Wave feminists won the right to vote, and 97 years after its first introduction that the ERA reached the milestone of the 38th state for ratification!!

We look forward to many more accomplishments of present-day feminists to fight back against the enemies of women’s freedom and autonomy.  Please join us at Feminist Struggle and help us continue the struggle for the liberation of all women!

FIST and Equal Means Equal on Joy of Resistance Radio Show

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Our own Ann Menasche appeared on the Joy of Resistance show on WBAI hosted by Fran Luck talking about our Feminist Amendments to the Equality Act which make a distinction between rights based on sex and rights based on gender non-conformity and sexual orientation.  Ann articulated the reasons for the feminist amendments as many rights for which women have fought would be eroded under the Equality Act.

Another very important topic was covered on the show–the ratification of THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT BY BOTH VIRGINIA STATE HOUSES TODAY, January 27, 2020!!  Kamala Lopez of Equal Means Equal was interviewed on the show who explained that there is no need to pass legislation to do away with the imposed deadlines on the legislation because no deadline was included in the legislation, it was a separate bill on which the states did not vote, that Congress did its job in 1972, and we should not get mired down in more Congressional action, as some suggest, by pursuing the passage of legislation doing away with the deadline because the deadline does not matter.

She stated that the Alabama Attorney General filed suit asserting that the archivist should not record Virginia’s 38th state ratification, even though the same archivist recorded the last two states, Nevada (2017) and Illinois (2018). Equal Means Equal has filed suit to make sure the ratification is recorded and will be pursuing various cases across the nation to make sure it becomes part of the U. S. Constitution at long last.  It will be making a Federalist Originalist argument outlined in the Constitution, which will be very difficult for the conservative court to rule against.

Kamala Lopez explained that without the ERA, we will never have equal work for equal pay and that strict scrutiny regarding discrimination under the ERA will finally be required on the basis of sex as it has been for religion, nationality, and race.  She urged listeners to go to Equal Means Equal and sign up for their newsletter and to show up in Richmond, VA on March 8, 2020, International Women’s Day and the centennial of women’s suffrage, to march in the ERA Parade to celebrate it’s ratification.

The show also briefly covered the WoLF events which were scheduled at two public libraries, Seattle and NYC, and how NYCPL cancelled their event while Seattle has refused to cancel theirs.

More about this program at WBAI

FIST on WBAI Radio!

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Ann Menasche of Feminists in Struggle (FIST) will be interviewed by Fran Luck on the Joy of Resistance show on WBAI Radio Thursday, April 25, 2019 at 7-8 pm EDT (4-5 pm PDT).

Ann is a Civil Rights lawyer and has been a radical feminist and a socialist activist for her entire adult life. She organized a lesbian feminist group and mass marches in defense of abortion rights in the 1980’s in San Francisco and led a coalition for marriage equality. Recently she became a founding member of a new national radical feminist organization: Feminists in Struggle–or FIST–which was launched on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2019.  The interview will explore why a number of women across the country saw the need for a new feminist organization–including the fact that FIST, unlike other feminist organizations that are gender critical, does not believe in making alliances with the right wing and sees its positions as belonging in a revitalized Left. Its issues also include reproductive freedom, passing the ERA, and an end to men’s violence against women–as well as the abolition of gender.

You can tune in at: Joy of Resistance at WBAI. The show will also feature Taina Bian Aime of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women–CATW) on the fight against legalization of commercial surrogacy in New York State.  There may be an opportunity to call in during the show.

For more information, go to:Joy of Resistance Info

An International Women’s Day Message from Feminists in Struggle

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This International Women’s Day, March 8, 2019 marks the launch of a unique national grassroots network of radical feminists, Feminists in Struggle.  We are unique because we are member-run, member-funded, and with a vision that draws inspiration from generations of feminists that came before us.  Our foremothers a century ago won the vote and the eight hour work day. Women in the Second Wave won abortion rights and got very close to winning the Equal Rights Amendment.  Feminists succeeded in opening up higher education and many jobs and professions previously closed to women. These were long, hard struggles with many obstacles along the way.  But they persisted and they won.

It is time to do it once again.  We females are half the population.  It is time to exercise our collective muscle–the power of sisterhood–to roll back the attacks from multiple quarters that aim to reverse the gains we won during the past half century.   It is time to rebuild a movement for female liberation that will defend our right to our own spaces, programs, and organizations, fight for access to legal abortion, defend lesbian rights, preserve laws prohibiting sex discrimination,  finish the job of winning the ERA, and end violence against women.  We need a movement that will go all the way this time, and dismantle the patriarchal male-supremacist system that oppresses us.  We can’t be erased if we organize and speak out together as one voice!

If you believe like we do that the time for political organizing and collective action is NOW and you want to make herstory together fighting to defend the rights of women and girls, PLEASE JOIN US! As suffragist Christabel Pankhurst declared, “Remember the dignity of your womanhood. Do not appeal, do not beg, do not grovel. Take courage, join hands, stand beside us, fight with us.”