Again I am grateful that Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday falls in the beginning of each new year so that we will not be disheartened for the work ahead.
Nearly a year ago, in response to the inauguration of one of the most vile men elected to any office, women along with men from all over this country marched to defend the dignity and common decency that our democracy should embody.
We must not be disheartened in our fight for the right to health care, when Baltimore security men were allowed to push a sick woman in her hospital wrap, unable to afford the medical attention she needed, out the door onto frozen concrete late at night. As women, we must not be disheartened in our fight for decency when many other women vote for a political party who would be represented by a child molester. These things are not America’s destiny.
Instead, we are inspired by black women who organized with complete abandon to defeat that political party in Alabama. Many of those women learned to do it decades ago walking with Martin Luther King who taught: “We need not follow the do-nothingism of the complacent…” The rest of us will not be disheartened, because we will follow the black women of Alabama. They organized and they won. This is America’s destiny.
Women march again this January 20th in the midst of a flurry from white men crying “I didn’t hear that.” “Not those words.” We will walk in the cold and we will not be disheartened. We will carry Dr. King’s letter from the Birmingham jail in response to a public statement of concern issued by eight white religious leaders. He wrote “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”
2018 will be another marching year. It is the year we start crawling out of the hole that the Republican Party dug for us. We will stand up for the Dreamers. We will organize like the black women in Alabama and the like the brave first-time candidates who got elected to the Virginia Legislature. We will organize like Fannie Lou Hamer who desegregated the Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention in 1964. We will march for every woman who has been sexually abused and harassed and called out “Me Too!” Like women of the Old Window Workshop Cooperative we will fight to keep our safe work place and to own our own labor. We will fight for health care as a human right and WE WILL VOTE.
This year Springfield Women Organize will march on International Women’s Day. Go to the Facebook group to stay informed and join us.
With gratitude for Martin Luther King Jr. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
Nearly a year ago, in response to the inauguration of one of the most vile men elected to any office, women along with men from all over this country marched to defend the dignity and common decency that our democracy should embody.
We must not be disheartened in our fight for the right to health care, when Baltimore security men were allowed to push a sick woman in her hospital wrap, unable to afford the medical attention she needed, out the door onto frozen concrete late at night. As women, we must not be disheartened in our fight for decency when many other women vote for a political party who would be represented by a child molester. These things are not America’s destiny.
Instead, we are inspired by black women who organized with complete abandon to defeat that political party in Alabama. Many of those women learned to do it decades ago walking with Martin Luther King who taught: “We need not follow the do-nothingism of the complacent…” The rest of us will not be disheartened, because we will follow the black women of Alabama. They organized and they won. This is America’s destiny.
Women march again this January 20th in the midst of a flurry from white men crying “I didn’t hear that.” “Not those words.” We will walk in the cold and we will not be disheartened. We will carry Dr. King’s letter from the Birmingham jail in response to a public statement of concern issued by eight white religious leaders. He wrote “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”
2018 will be another marching year. It is the year we start crawling out of the hole that the Republican Party dug for us. We will stand up for the Dreamers. We will organize like the black women in Alabama and the like the brave first-time candidates who got elected to the Virginia Legislature. We will organize like Fannie Lou Hamer who desegregated the Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention in 1964. We will march for every woman who has been sexually abused and harassed and called out “Me Too!” Like women of the Old Window Workshop Cooperative we will fight to keep our safe work place and to own our own labor. We will fight for health care as a human right and WE WILL VOTE.
This year Springfield Women Organize will march on International Women’s Day. Go to the Facebook group to stay informed and join us.
With gratitude for Martin Luther King Jr. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
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