““We are still marching because we have yet to realize the full protections and expansion of voting rights in this country. We are still marching because our communities are over-policed and underfunded. We are still marching because we continue to question bodily autonomy of women… because we have yet to heal from the historic harms of racism.””
On the sixtieth anniversary of the March on Washington — which was attended by an estimated 250,000 individuals and through which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his well-known “I have a dream” speech — a mass digital gathering on Monday highlighted ladies, who for essentially the most half weren’t given the prospect to talk on the 1963 occasion.
The ladies and different leaders in attendance at “She Speaks” on Monday on the Lincoln Memorial and on-line referred to as the nation’s consideration to guarantees they are saying have remained unfulfilled because the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Those guarantees embody voting and reproductive rights, dwelling wages and ending poverty.
Voting and reproductive rights are beneath assault in lots of states, particularly after Supreme Court selections previously a number of years which have both taken away these rights or put them in danger — together with the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Marshall, of civil-rights group Forward Justice, and different feminine leaders from across the nation made it clear that the struggles talked about by King and others six a long time in the past proceed in the present day.
Kelly Brown Douglas, a theologian and creator, referred to King talking on the march in regards to the “urgency of now.”
“The urgency of now begins today,” Brown Douglas stated. “It is compelling us to tell the truth about sexism, racism and homophobia in this country… It is untenable to simply remember what happened 60 years ago, and to stand quietly on the sidelines while books are being banned” and the rights of LGBTQ individuals are being taken away, she added.
In addition, the longtime struggles for dwelling wages and towards ending poverty continues — as proven within the variety of staff who’re hanging or poised to strike across the nation. Racial and gender wage gaps persist.
The Black poverty fee, which was 51% in 1963, had fallen to twenty% as of 2021, in line with the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive assume tank. Yet that was nonetheless two and a half instances the poverty fee of 8% for white Americans in 2021.
Mary Kay Henry, the primary elected feminine president of the Service Employees International Union, spoke in regards to the significance of unions, and stated “we have to link the fights for racial and economic justice. We have to up our demands for good jobs and freedom.”
See: Unions are key to reversing stagnant wages and financial inequality, Treasury Department says in first-of-its-kind report
William Barber, a theologian who’s co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and president of Repairers of the Breach — which was one of many 4 organizations who placed on Monday’s occasion — was the one male voice to talk. He stated there have been “thousands and thousands of missing sounds and voices of women” on the march 60 years in the past, including that civil-rights pioneer Rosa Parks “got 27 words.”
Barber additionally talked about the capturing deaths of three Black individuals at a Dollar General retailer in Florida over the weekend by a white man who police stated made clear in his writings that he hated Black individuals.
“Let us remember right now those who were killed in Jacksonville,” Barber stated. “They were shot down by violence first perpetrated by the mouths of politicians,” he added, which was among the many a number of instances audio system on the digital occasion talked about politicians and leaders stoking racism and discrimination.
From our archives (Feb. 2023): California colleges could sometime require African-American research — a transfer to ‘directly counter’ legal guidelines like Florida’s ‘Stop WOKE’
Source web site: www.marketwatch.com
