Damn right we’ll fight
VOW NOT TO BE BULLIED
Afew weeks ago I wrote that in today’s America, it’s not only about women’s right to choose, it’s now also about women’s right to live. I was talking then about the GOP’s desire to defund Planned Parenthood — which only receives federal funding for life-saving tests and exams, not abortions.
Just weeks later, as many as 1 million people came out to shout and march not just for women’s right to choose, but our right to live, to speak up, to immigrate, to fight back against the overwhelmingly white pack of right wing men in D.C. who want to bring us back to the bad old days before women began the uphill fight for rights.
Foolishly we thought we’d turned that corner even though we still don’t even have an Equal Rights Amendment.
So women, men and kids around the globe came out the day after President Trump’s swearing-in, to announce en masse that it’s our right to live, to choose, to have health care and — unbelievably in 2017 — to have equal rights with men, all of which might be endangered under this new administration.
As a mom who raised a daughter on my own, a child now grown into a woman who was recently featured on the cover of Inc. magazine as the CEO of the best, most human and caring place to work in America, Arkadium online games, I know — really know — what’s in danger. We’re in danger of losing our freedom to grow a new generation of daughters who will have the freedom to succeed.
Another single mom, who raised three daughters alone and has risen to become the president of the School Construction Authority, a female leader in a man’s world, Lorraine Grillo, put it this way: “I never thought I would feel the need to do this again after marching against the war in Vietnam and marching for the environment on the first Earth Day. But I feel such a need to do something and I think this may energize our young people.”
Emmy Award winning producer and attorney Connie Simmons, who also knows what’s at risk and marched in New York Saturday, said, “At the end of the march, a female NYPD officer came up to me and said, ‘It’s the end of the march but not of the struggle.”
As divisive as Donald Trump’s candidacy and platforms have been for America, these wondrous, massive rallies of Americans and want-to-be Americans of all colors, races, genders, sexual orientations, beliefs, hopes, terrors, economic means, talents, dreams, fears, problems — we all hold the solution. We will continue to unite against oppression in Trump’s divided nation.
We’re not going to take it sitting down. We’re standing up. So don’t even think we’ll allow anyone to put us down again.