The organizing team will take time for more outreach
Ah I found the source of the Eureka march story.
The below PSA has just been released. Thank you to the women and men who helped make this decision.
Humboldt County organizers and supporters of the annual Women’s March have decided to not hold a rally in Eureka on January 19th. This decision was made after many conversations between local social-change organizers and supporters of the march.
The local organizers are continuing to meet and discuss how to broaden representation in the organizing committee to create an event that represents and supports peoples who live here in Humboldt. Up to this point, the participants have been overwhelmingly white, lacking representation from several perspectives in our community. Instead of pushing forward with crucial voices absent, the organizing team will take time for more outreach. Our goal is that planning will continue and we will be successful in creating an event that will build power and community engagement through connection between women that seek to improve the lives of all in our community.
The group is exploring holding an event in March to celebrate International Women’s Day. Anyone interested in helping organize these events are welcome and encouraged to attend.
The Eureka Women’s March organizing committee encourages local supporters to attend the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration in Eureka on January 21, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
One commenter strongly approves:
I applaud the decision… I have boycotted the march since the beginning as it has been a process that by default has incorporated institutional racism, transphobia and a lack of support of sex workers…This group LISTENED to community members. This march has unfortunately, intentionally or not, become an event that silences any voice that is not a cis white woman’s voice. White woman voices are NOT the only voices and I intend to support a group that is trying to create space and voice for those not included.
How, I wonder, does a march become a process that by default incorporates transphobia and a lack of support of sex workers. How does the commenter know, for instance, that the march and the organizers are not rich in trans people and sex workers?
In all fairness, I agree that the organizers shouldn’t all be white; I agree that the march should be rainbow as hell. I just don’t think cancellation is the way to go, because I don’t see how they can tell the march itself will be all white or too white simply because the organizers are.
Putin is probably putting these stories in his scrapbook.
So who’s up the most these days on scoring own goals? ‘cuz if it isn’t these narcissistic morons I couldn’t tell you the answer…
I don’t believe that an ideologically pure march serves much purpose beyond entertainment and belief reinforcement for its participants.
Surely to make real impact, people have to build coalitions with groups with whom they may not agree on all points, but with whom they share common interests.
Aiming for racial, ethnic, and sex representation that matches your demographics is great. Insisting on ideological uniformity is something else. How about encouraging a little intellectual diversity, social justice warriors?
I bloody knew that the be-penised ladies (aka ‘men’) would figure in this.
Comment #5 http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2018/the-future-participants-are-the-wrong-sort/
So transness trumps whiteness? If you’re trans then your whiteness disappears or something? And this is showing more diversity than having plain ol’ vanilla white men marching how exactly? Or (god forbid) white women? I see more and more what trans “centering” means. I do not welcome our new, shouty, asbestos snowflake overlords.
[…] Monday: Updating to add: I did find the Facebook group later in the day. […]
YNNB – don’t you know that trans are the mostest oppressedest ever? They are the mostest abusedest ever? Women are the most privileged, being born women and feeling comfortable in the role which women are expected to fill, so they are the leastest oppressedest. Trans people are oppressed so much that no one has ever been oppressed as much as they are! Why, being called by the wrong pronoun is just the absolute worst that could happen, don’t you know? Being put in chains and forced to work on plantations is bad, of course, but…oh, no, nothing to compare to misgendering.
As for women? It’s a wonderful life being able to spend your whole day taking care of men and babies, and watching soaps, and doing laundry, and cooking and cleaning and not getting paid equal…being beaten and killed, being raped and molested? Nothing to that…sign of privilege, that’s all. We get to enjoy all those perks, all those wonderful experiences, from birth.