The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Women’s March holds Day of Action
Temperatures hovered near a bitter 20 degrees in New Haven on Saturday morning, but that didn’t stop some 50 people from standing in front of the superior courthouse on Elm Street, for a news conference and rally that was part of the Women’s March CT Day of Action.
Organizers also held conferences in Bridgeport and Hartford, according to a release.
In New Haven, attendees wore “Pussyhats,” pink knit hats with triangular cat ears that were first designed for the 2016 Women’s March in Washington, D.C., according to the Pussyhat Project website, which describes the hats as a “global symbol of political activism.”
On the steps of the courthouse, a hot pink banner read, “I stand with Planned Parenthood.”
Two attendees who stood on the sidewalk were dressed in the red handmaid costume associated with “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a novel by Margaret Atwood that depicts a dystopian postU.S. society where women are stripped of their rights and some are forced to bear children.
The two handmaids looked on as a series of speakers addressed the crowd, starting with Amanda Skinner, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Votes! Connecticut.
Skinner spoke of banding together to take back what the “Trump/Pence administration has tried to take away from us” in terms of reproductive rights.
“We’re standing shoulder-to-shoulder with people across the country to continue to advocate for people in our communities and protect their access to health care, and in 2020, it is about our bodies, our votes and our future,” she said.
Skinner noted the difference that voter turnout made in November 2018, “when women, and particularly women of color, voted for candidates that promised to ... advocate for our rights,” she said.
“When people come together, we are an unstoppable force.”
Once Skinner wrapped up her remarks, Sally Grossman of NARAL ProChoice Connecticut took the podium. As she spoke, she held her 2-year-old daughter, Sadie.
Every Saturday morning, Grossman walks women past protesters and into a health clinic that offers abortions.
“In 2017, a fake women’s health center, also known as a crisis pregnancy center ... opened just 10 feet away from the real women’s health center where I volunteer,” Grossman said, describing how it “changed its names to be almost identical to that of the real health center in an attempt to confuse and trick women into entering the wrong building.”
Grossman said she had seen CPC volunteers grab at women and try to convince them that their appointment is in the CPC.
“I’ve seen the confusion and fear in the faces of patients as they are just trying to access reproductive health care,” Grossman said.
NARAL aims to pass a bill that would regulate CPCs and prevent them from using “deceptive advertising practices,” she said.
“Connecticut has the opportunity to be a leader in protecting women in the state.”
Another woman who took the podium was Eva Bermudez Zimmerman, a former candidate for lieutenant governor who described herself as a longtime volunteer. Zimmerman stressed the importance of activism that includes issues that face women of color.
“If we want to respect Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, we have to include every color of the rainbow.”
Miranda Rector, LGBTQ + Women’s Program Officer at the New Haven Pride Center, also gave remarks, and began by listing injustices that face the LGBTQ+ community.
Rector mentioned the disproportionate rates of homelessness that impact LGBTQ+ youth, violence against bisexual women and barriers to health care that face transgender individuals because of their gender identity.
Though we know all the challenges, Rector said, “we also know what it takes to stop this, and it starts with community.”
Jamie Mill, a four-year New Haven resident, was one community member who stood in the crowd and received Rector’s remarks.
Mill said she has been engaged in advocacy for social justice, workers’ rights and LGBTQ issues for a long time. She said she worked on the Equal Rights Amendment campaign in Florida in 1982; three years ago she went to the Women’s March in Washington, D.C.
Martin Luther King Jr. weekend was an especially important time to engage in “public gatherings of like-minded activists who are resisting what’s happening in Washington,” she said.