By SDFP Editors
Can you imagine a day without a woman?
50% of the SDFP editorial board and 50% of SDFP volunteer contributors are women. We join with Barbara Zaragoza, our Wednesday daily editor, in the strike for women on International Women’s Day 2017.
Women’s work, paid and unpaid, is essential to our families, our communities and our planet. When women do not actively participate in our civic, social and economic life, our individual and communal lives are diminished. [Read more…]
By Lauren McCauley / Common Dreams
Women’s healthcare providers are readying for a fight. Refusing to back down from its commitment to women’s choice, Planned Parenthood is now at risk of losing nearly 40 percent of its funding—and is calling for a massive mobilization to resist the attack on women’s health.
Ahead of the official release of House Republicans’ the American Health Care Act (AHCA) on Monday evening—which guts funding for any healthcare organization that “provides for abortions”—Planned Parenthood reportedly rejected an offer from the White House to stop terminating pregnancies in exchange for the group to continue receiving federal funds for other essential services.
“Offering money to Planned Parenthood to abandon our patients and our values is not a deal that we will ever accept,” said Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, according to the New York Times. “Providing critical health care services for millions of American women is non-negotiable.” [Read more…]
An open letter to Jessica Hayes, (Chair, San Diego Democratic Party) and Dale Kelly Bankhead (Secretary-Treasurer for the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council), from Sara Kent.
Over the past two months, I have hoped for brave action from each of you. As women who hold positions of power in San Diego who should be stalwarts of fundamental Democratic ideals, instead of being proud of your leadership, I am gravely disappointed.
Not only for you, but for all of us. [Read more…]
By Deirdre Fulton / Common Dreams
The next phase of the resistance as embodied by last month’s Women’s March may come in the form of a general women’s strike—a day inspired by feminist movements in other countries, during which women don’t work (in the office or at home) or go to school.
Meanwhile, a coalition of feminist academics and activists is separately calling for “an international strike against male violence and in defense of reproductive rights” to take place Wednesday, March 8. They reference President Donald Trump in their call, but their vision goes far beyond one man or one administration. [Read more…]
Four years after the Bob Filner scandal, little has changed with the leadership culture in the centers of power on the left in San Diego–namely labor and the Democratic party.
The enablers and apologists for workplace sexual improprieties, gender discrimination, and retaliation continue to use the political clout and cash flow of their organizations as a shield, preventing them from answering for their behavior or learning from their mistakes.
Engaged women are leading the resistance to what portends to be an era of oppression and repression. They can’t fight the good fight locally or nationally if women within this movement are subjugated by abusive men in powerful positions. They cannot be expected to roll up their sleeves to make changes only to realize the institutional power they need amounts to more of the same. [Read more…]
with additional photos by Lisa Mix, Judith & Wayne Starker, Patty Jones, Byron Morton, Linda Taggert
January 21, 2017, was a historic day in San Diego – and around the nation and world – with the Women’s March. According to San Diego Police, the crowd in downtown San Diego at the rallies and the march down Broadway was 40,000 women, men, and children of all ages and all hues.
It was definitely one of the largest demonstrations in San Diego’s history – matched probably by the huge immigration march of nearly a decade ago.
Here are photos from yesterday’s march – taken by this reporter and by a number of friends who sent them to us. [Read more…]
In 1913, thousands of women took to the streets of Washington DC on the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration calling for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. More than twenty parade floats, nine bands, and four mounted brigades followed activist Inez Milholland riding on a white horse marching from the U.S. Capitol toward the Treasury Building.
Despite physical attacks by angry spectators hospitalizing more than 100 women, the parade, organized by Alice Paul and the National American Woman Suffrage Association, finished the route. [Read more…]
Adrianah Moreno / Women’s Museum of California Blog
Gay bars in the ‘60s were some of the only places members of the LGBT+ community could go to, and be themselves without guaranteed prosecution, so it makes sense how the LGBT+ movement was ultimately founded right inside one called the Stonewall Inn, located in New York City. Bars like Stonewall were prone to police raids, where cops would shut down the bars for disobeying regulations targeting LGBT+ people. Most raids went down simply, cops would shut the building down and arrest anyone who wasn’t wearing “gender appropriate” clothing or dancing with someone of the same gender – but most raids weren’t like Stonewall. [Read more…]
The Women’s March on Washington is a women-led movement bringing together people of all genders, ages, races, cultures, political affiliations and backgrounds in our nation’s capital on January 21, 2017, to affirm our shared humanity and pronounce our bold message of resistance and self-determination.
Recognizing that women have intersecting identities and are therefore impacted by a multitude of social justice and human rights issues, we have outlined a representative vision for a government that is based on the principles of liberty and justice for all. As Dr. King said, “We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”
Our liberation is bound in each other’s. The Women’s March on Washington includes leaders of organizations and communities that have been building the foundation for social progress for generations. We welcome vibrant collaboration and honor the legacy of the movements before us – the suffragists and abolitionists, the Civil Rights Movement, the feminist movement, the American Indian Movement, Occupy Wall Street, Marriage Equality, Black Lives Matter, and more – by employing a decentralized, leader-full structure and focusing on an ambitious, fundamental and comprehensive agenda. [Read more…]
Editor Note: This article was originally published on March 15, 2016. The effort to erode women’s reproductive rights and access to health services here in San Diego was one of the under-reported stories of 2016.
The County of San Diego and the City of El Cajon are considering a proposed settlement with anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers, amounting to a pledge not enforce the Reproductive FACT Act.
In response, local pro-choice activists are presenting El Cajon City Attorney Morgan Foley and San Diego County Counsel Thomas Montgomery with petitions signed by 25,000 Californians urging them to enforce the letter and the spirit of the law.
NARAL Pro-Choice California, UltraViolet and Courage Campaign have been gathering signatures since the anti-choice organizations offered to remove local authorities as named defendants in lawsuits if they agree not to apply the law. [Read more…]
By Jill Richardson / Other Words
From his campaign rhetoric to his transition appointments, our next president has placed himself squarely in a conservative movement calling itself the “alt-right.” That movement, the Los Angeles Times reports, “generally embraces and promotes white nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny.”
As a privileged, white, and heterosexual woman, I’ve never considered my rights under attack to the same degree as the other groups in that list. But to this incoming bunch, feminism is a dirty word. [Read more…]
By Lynn Stuart Parramore / AlterNet
It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. We were said to be approaching the demise of a certain type of swaggering, predatory masculinity: let’s call him Homo Obnoxious.
As men like Roger Ailes, Bill Cosby, Anthony Weiner, and Billy Bush scrambled unsuccessfully to find cover in the old-boy bastions of privilege, Homo Obnoxious appeared to be lumbering around like a dinosaur under the weight of his own cultural baggage. His habitat was shrinking: it seemed as if men who defined themselves by devaluing women, putting down men who didn’t think like them and treating sexual relations — and most everything else — as power-tripping performances might be ready for mounting in a Museum of Masculinity Past. [Read more…]
