Women’s March hopes to bring out suburban women against Donald Trump

STAMFORD — Tucked away in an old warehouse space, a group of Stamford women this week planned their own revolution.

The S.W.A.T. Team — Suburban Women Against Trump — were hosting a phone-banking and poster-making party in a former rockclimbing space, now a children’s arts and crafts location called Best Time Ever.

They met Wednesday in anticipation of the Stamford Women’s March to Save Democracy, scheduled for Saturday at the Stamford courthouse. It is planned as part of a coalition protesting President Donald Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hundreds of virtual and physical marches are planned for Saturday across the nation, endorsed by the national Women’s March organization. The Stamford event embodies the efforts of local organizers, who said they all are trying to “do the work” of mobilizing potential voters to cast their ballots for former Vice President Joe Biden in the presidential election.

“To me, ‘doing the work’ means really activating, making phone calls to voters, really getting out the vote in any way we can,” said Shira Tarantino, one of the organizers for the march.

Tarantino and organizers often hold phone banks targeted toward voters in swing states, including Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio.

The groups PinkWave and the Stamford Women’s Talking Circle are also involved with coordinating the march, the patchwork coalition that is the brainchild of principal organizers Tarantino and Brook Manewal of Stamford. The pair has been speaking out against Trump since before he took office.

After he was elected president in 2016, they both decided it was time to do more.

“I would say our fundamental mission [for] all three [groups] is to encourage women [and] femaleidentifying [people] to be engaged in the political process and their communities and to promote equality and social justice for women, LGBTQIA+ and people of color,” said Manewal.

Manewal founded the Stamford Women’s Talking Circle shortly after the 2016 election. The lawyer and mother of four joined forces with Tarantino for PinkWave and the S.W.A.T. Team in the following years.

Tarantino has a professional background in fundraising and development, but her roots in community organizing go back to 2012. Along with 12 other Fairfield County mothers, Tarantino helped found the Enough Campaign, a gun violence prevention group sprang up in the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook School shooting.

S.W.A.T. is the largest and most recent of their organizing efforts, with more than 9,000 members across 35 states. Despite its national scope, S.W.A.T.’s heart lies both in

Fairfield County and Connecticut at large.

During the recent poster party in preparation for the march, the group also called voters in the Fifth Congressional District, served by U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, to ensure that they would go out to the polls.

S.W.A.T, they said, was born in the wake of Trump’s recent comments about suburban women.

“The ‘suburban housewife’ will be voting for me,” the president said in an Aug. 12 tweet. “They want safety & are thrilled that I ended the long running program where low income housing would invade their neighborhood. Biden would reinstall it, in a bigger form, with Corey Booker in charge!”

In part, organizers said S.W.A.T. and its sister organizations want to redefine the term of “suburban housewife” and instead present a multi-racial group of women and mothers channeling their energy into getting Biden into the Oval Office.

“All of our groups are just focused on getting women involved in the conversation,” said Manewal. “Because, I think when that happens, priorities shift.”

S.W.A.T.’s primary organizers reflect a diverse vision of suburban womanhood.

At the poster-making event, Marie Roach and Zareen Husain made signs in big bubble letters with catchy slogans such as “The Future is Female.” Both Stamford women immigrated to the United States, and both make up part of the S.W.A.T. Team’s leadership.

Rocha arrived in New Jersey from Haiti as a young woman. She explored many pursuits, including organizing around food insecurity and working as Realtor. She landed eventually in Stamford, and now owns Realist Ventures, a company that makes internet, technology and software investments.

Her tendency toward organizing and activism come from her Haitian roots, Rocha said.

“I’m always worried about us leaving other people behind,” she said.

The Stamford Women’s March to Save Democracy will start at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at the Stamford courthouse.