Kshama Sawant calls for rally at Westlake Park on International Women’s Day
Mar 8, 2017, 7:15 AM | Updated: 7:18 am
Socialist Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant is calling on demonstrators to gather for a women’s rights rally at Westlake Park on Wednesday.
The Facebook event – with more than 4,000 people interested – posted, “Fight Trump’s misogyny and bigotry! Come rally for women’s rights on March 8, 6 p.m.”
International Women’s Day, which has been celebrated since in 1908, has inspired activists across the country this year to organize events with a different twist.
Related: Some schools close on ‘Day Without a Woman’
Two other organizations nationwide — the International Women’s Strike and “Day Without A Woman” — are encouraging women to step away from their jobs and take to the streets in a sign of solidarity.
In Seattle, Sawant will speak with leaders from the Injustice Boycott movement, No Youth Jail movement and Martin Luther King Labor Council. Issues to be discussed during the rally range from proposed restrictions on Planned Parenthood to the new presidential administration’s role in immigration.
The Facebook page event’s description reads that the rally builds off momentum from the historic Women’s March in January. More than 200,000 people took to Seattle’s streets in solidarity with rallies around the world the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president.
According to the description, the rally speakers could also talk about the protest action slated for May 1.
Sawant is targeting May Day – a day known for protests in Seattle – as the next massive anti-Trump protest.
In a Feb. 21 column that Sawant wrote for the Socialist publication Jacobin Magazine, titled “Why We Should Strike on May Day,” the councilmember calls for a “wave of protests and strikes” to counter “bigoted” actions by Trump.
“The ‘chaos’ we created at the nation’s airports gives a hint of what’s possible,” Sawant wrote in reference to the protests that immediately followed Trump’s first travel ban executive order. “We need to think deeply about where our strength lies and how to create disruption on an even greater scale.”
May Day is already a day of mass demonstrations in cities across the United States. In Seattle, however, it has become a day known for violent and destructive marches through downtown.
