Women of Color

Fight Supremacy Protest, Women Of Color Shine As Leaders Of Resistance

August 23, 2017 Eddie Cepeda, www.bustle.com Resist! Boston, Protests, Racism, White Supremacy, Women of Color

By Eddie Cepeda for Bustle - On Saturday morning, Natalie Sanchez arrived at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston well before counter-protesters started trickling in. The morning fog dissipated as Sanchez readied herself, eagerly setting up two cardboard boxes filled with t-shirts commemorating the Fight Supremacy march she volunteered for. Sanchez distributed branded shirts to organizers and activists as they arrived who — overwhelmingly — were women of color, like her. To be in Boston, as an estimated 40,000 counter-protesters marched against white supremacy, was to bear witness to the fact that the leadership of the resistance in the U.S. is female and Black and Brown. The protesters aimed to silence the alt-right “Free Speech Rally” that saw various planned speakers pull out — including anti-semitic Senate candidate Agustus Invictus, “Proud Boys” leader Gavin McInnes, and Russian state-funded newscaster Cassandra Fairbanks. In the end, only Kyle Chapman (a white supremacist agitator who was recently charged with a felony for allegedly beating counter-protesters with a stick) and Dr. Shiva Ayadurai (a right-wing Senate candidate who claims to have invented email) spoke for less than an hour before the chants of the counter-protesters who were already at Boston Common drowned them out.

A Class-Only Approach Will Fail Women Of Color

June 6, 2017 Andrea Flynn and Angelique Roche, www.rooseveltinstitute.org Strategize! Class Struggle, New Economy, Women of Color

By Andrea Flynn and Angelique Roche for Roosevelt Institute - Last week President Trump released a budget that would gut public programs that lift up millions of American women and families. Contrary to its title, “A New Foundation for American Greatness,” the budget is a roadmap to a place where women and their families would be less safe, less healthy, and less economically secure. As we argue in a new report published by the Roosevelt Institute and the Ms. Foundation for Women, women, and particularly women of color, are at greatest risk from the President’s latest proposal. Among all social groups in the United States, women of color experience some of the starkest disparities and inequities across nearly every social and economic indicator: Compared to white women, they have higher levels of unemployment and poverty; they have significantly less wealth; they are more likely to be targeted by and come in contact with the criminal justice system; they are at a much higher risk, regardless of their income or education, of dying as a result of pregnancy and of losing their children in infancy; they are less likely to own a home and more likely to have high-risk mortgages when they do own a home; and they are less likely to attend college and, when they do, tend to carry heavier student debt burdens. They are caught in a web of injustices.

Why I Do Not Support The Women’s March On Washington

November 30, 2016 Brittany T. Oliver, www.brittanytoliver.com Resist! Washington DC, Women, Women of Color

By Brittany T. Oliver for Brittany T. Oliver - My name is Brittany Oliver and I'm a women's rights activist in Baltimore, MD. As a Black woman, I am once again let down by people who call themselves feminists. I have been marginalized by the movement and now, my guard is up. Despite my posts being deleted from the national Facebook event page, I've continued to be very vocal in my disappointment in the political co-optation of the "One Million Women," now known as the "March on Washington" which is scheduled for January 21, 2017 at Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.

Justice For Berta Cáceres Rally Condemns Canada’s Lethal Influence In Honduras

March 18, 2016 A. Splawinski, www.rabble.ca Resist! Honduras, Land Rights, Latin America, Women of Color

By A. Splawinski for Rabble - Activists gathered outside Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland's office in downtown Toronto on March 11 to voice their solidarity with Indigenous activists and environmentalists, as well as to condemn the assassination of Indigenous Honduran activist Berta Cáceres. "The government killed her!" shouted the audience, as people waved signs the read, "Justicia Para Berta" (Justice For Berta) and "Justice for Berta, Safety for Gustavo."

She Helped Save Her Town. Then She Finished High School.

March 17, 2016 Chris Clarke, www.kcet.org Educate! LNG, Pipelines, Women of Color, Youth Activism

By Chris Clarke for KCET - Residents along the Ventura Coast are no strangers to oil and gas development. Oil drilling has been a part of life along the Santa Barbara Channel since 1896, with gigantic oil rigs sprouting offshore in the late 1960s. But when an Australian energy company proposed to build a floating terminal 13 miles off Point Dume into a massive terminal for imported Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), and send the gas through the working-class community of Oxnard via a 36-inch pipeline, that was a step too far.

Francisca Ramirez, A Leader In Struggle To Stop Nicaragua Canal Project

March 15, 2016 Arlen Cerda, www.havanatimes.org Resist! Land Rights, Nicaragua, Women of Color

By Arlen Cerda for Havana Times – The campesino movement demanding the repeal of the law for an inter-oceanic canal in Nicaragua – a project that the government has awarded to Chinese businessman Wang Jing – is autonomous, affirms Francisca Ramírez. It acts in defense of the earth and national sovereignty and isn’t motivated by any political interests. Ramírez, who remains on the land she farms in the community of La Fonseca, Nueva Guinea, serves as leader of the campesino movement. She insists that she doesn’t aspire to any public or party office in this electoral year.

US Jury Sentences Rapist Cop To Over 100 Years In Prison

December 12, 2015 Staff, www.telesurtv.net Resist! Police abuse, Rape, Women of Color

By Staff of Tele Sur - Oklahoma City cop Daniel Holtzclaw was charged with 36 counts of sexual assault involving more than a dozen women. A jury in the U.S. state of Oklahoma late Thursday sentenced former police Officer Daniel Holtzclaw to more than 200 years in prison for charges up to and including rape. Holtzclaw was publicly accused by 13 women of assaulting them while he was on patrol. “He didn’t choose CEOs or soccer moms,” said prosecutor Lori McConnell. “He chose women he could count on not telling what he was doing. He counted on the fact no one would believe them and no one would care.”

How Women Of Color Bear The Costs Of Mass Incarceration

September 21, 2015 Maya Dusenbery, www.feministing.com Educate! Mass Incarceration, Women of Color

By Maya Dusenbery in Feministing - There are a number of ways to put a price tag on the United States’s shameful mass incarceration system. On the most superficial level, $80 billion is how much it costs to keep more than 2.4 million people in our jails and prisons. Then there are the costs to those incarcerated themselves, who often find they’re denied basic civil rights and struggle to find employment, education, and housing for years to come after their release. But that’s really only the beginning, according to a groundbreaking new report from the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Forward Together, and Research Action Design. Surveys of hundreds of formerly incarcerated people and their families in 14 states show that the true costs — emotional and financial — “continue long after incarceration ends and reach far beyond the individual being punished.”

Scenes From Domestic Worker Organizing

June 30, 2015 Rucha Chitnis, www.reimaginerpe.org Resist! California, Feminism, Women of Color, Women's Rights, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Rucha Chitnis in ReImagine - “There is an entrenched devaluation of immigrant women workers. Domestic workers are breadwinners of their families throughout Latin America and Asia. In so many ways they are uplifting the economies of their countries through remittances,” said Katie Joaquin, campaign director of the California Domestic Workers Coalition. “We see this as an international struggle that is critical to the leadership of women,” she said. There are nearly two million domestic workers in the United States, more than 90 percent of them women, mostly low-income immigrant women from diverse ethnicities. Over the past 25 years, MUA has built a worker-center model of sharing power and harnessing workers’ collective bargaining rights.

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