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Planned Parenthood and Women’s March Rally Cal Anderson Park **Seattle DSA will have a table at the rally |
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There is a clear and present danger that Roe v Wade will be overturned. The right wing of the Supreme Court is determined to roll back the past hard won gains of the feminist movement. This is the culmination of a decades old strategy to not only overturn Roe but to decimate the foundation that other rights rest on, namely gay marriage, the right to use contraception, and trans rights.
This is a full frontal assault on our rights. The only way we can stop this is with a mass mobilization of the 69% of people who support Roe. And that starts this Saturday, May 14th, 11am at Cal Anderson park with Planned Parenthood and others joining the call for a nationwide day of action. It’s essential that we return to the mass movement tactics of the past that won the abortion rights in the first place: mass rallies and marches, occupations, and strikes. Please join us at the rally and invite your friends, family, and co-workers!
Roe v Wade has not been overturned. Yet. It is still the law of the land. However, it will definitely be overturned if we do nothing. We have a fighting chance if we all turnout in the streets and demand our reproductive rights. Unfortunately we cannot rely on the Democratic Party. They’ve had 50 years to codify abortion into federal law. Most recently Biden promised to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act. Obama said in 2008, if elected, he would immediately fight to make abortion federal law. This has not and did not happen. To win this, we can only rely on our own strength.
Here in the US and across the globe there’s a rich history of mass movements winning the right to bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. In the US, in 1992, a million person march descended on Washington DC as the Supreme Court was deliberating the Casey v Planned Parenthood case, where they were forced to reaffirm the right of abortion. |
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We must wage a determined struggle against these attacks but until we take on the rotten system of capitalism, we will be building reforms on a foundation of sand. You can’t have capitalism without sexism. Women and LGBT+ people have been under ferocious attack and reproductive rights are only one stone in an edifice of gendered oppression:
As socialists, we should stand shoulder to shoulder with everyone fighting for reproductive rights. However, the dominant politics in the abortion rights movement is often a liberal framework that accepts capitalism and seeks to blunt the sharper edges of capitalism by fighting in the courts or electing Democrats. All failed strategies that have led us down a dead end.
As socialist feminists we have a different approach. We connect the fight for reproductive rights to the fight against capitalism and for a class struggle approach to winning a full spectrum of reproductive rights. The potential exists for May 14 to be a launching pad for a million person march in DC in June and for mass student walkouts and workplace strikes. The groups with the most authority to call such actions are Planned Parenthood, the Women’s March, unions, elected politicians (especially progressives and socialists in office), and we urge them to boldly call for these kinds of mass actions.
We demand:
To more effectively build the feminist movement to defend and advance reproductive rights, we need to build the socialist feminist wing of the movement. This takes resources. Please make a donation today to help us print posters, fliers, buttons, and banners so we can spread socialist feminist ideas in the movement and to recruit people to Seattle DSA. |
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