FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 21, 2012

Contact:
Jollene Levid, National Chair
chair@af3irm.org
323-356-4748

Sisters! This August 26th, on Women's Equality Day, as the members and allies of AF3IRM take to the streets in solidarity with women worldwide, let us bear in mind that:

•    Now is the time for a dynamic response to the full-scale attack on women’s rights and women’s equality being waged by conservatives and fundamentalists of all kinds.
•    Now is the time to defeat this war against women.
•    Now is the time to demand not only respect for what we have gained through our struggles but for enhancements of not only rights we already have, but for even more rights beyond what we have.
•    Now is the time not only to push back; it is a time to push forward; it is the time not only to consolidate but to advance.

The current war against women underscores the need for the women’s movement to never be static and for us not to rest on our laurels. Our struggle for emancipation and liberation is barely in its third wave, with every wave meeting near-immovable opposition. But we have learned to be an irresistible force and in less than a hundred years, less than a century, we have managed to gain our right to vote and be involved in public discourse; our right to equal education and training; our reproductive rights and access to reproductive justice; our right to unionize and equal pay for equal work -- these were society-altering rights and we have seen the transformation that followed on the heels of each right we gained.

But we need more and therefore, we need to do more – because the point of this struggle is to end that which threatens our societies and Earth itself: societies built on accumulation and profit-generation and societies built on private property, the institutionalization of which took 1500 years of the restriction and eventual eradication of the rights of women, from her physical integrity to her right to public space and political discourse. We need to remove class, gender and race exploitation and to return to the original purpose of the socialization of humans: the preservation and advance of the species as a whole. This means an egalitarian society that nurtures humanity’s children and humanity’s habitat as part and parcel of social responsibility.

It has been a long struggle, sisters, from the time when women became the first form of private property. But we are almost there, as we see civilizations and societies built on class and patriarchy totter and almost come apart at the seams. Let us ensure that we are not cheated of our rights in the coming cataclysmal transformation that looms in the horizon.

Arundhati Roy said it best: “A new world is not only possible; She is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

Push back, push forward!
No give-backs of women’s rights!
Defeat the war on women!
Onward to women’s liberation and the liberation of humanity!
March on, sisters!

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MARCH WITH AF3IRM ON SUNDAY, AUGUST 26th!

Los Angeles
Hollywood & Vine, 1pm

San Francisco
24th & Mission, 12 noon

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