From: nyxfer%panix.com@UMCVMB.missouri.edu (N.Y. Transfer)
Subject: NEWS:Women's Struggle Reaches New Levels
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: University of Missouri
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@UMCVMB.missouri.edu>
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 19:46:18 GMT



Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit

Women's struggle reaches new level

By Naomi Cohen

Washington

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited.)

There was a sense of excitement and power in the air as close to
1 million women descended on this city April 5 to protest the
government's mounting assault on women's reproductive rights.
There was also a sense that a whole new generation of women came
to march who may not have even been born when the right to
abortion was finally legalized in 1973.

Young and elderly, lesbian and straight women came with a renewed
sense of urgency about fighting back against the threats to all
women's fundamental rights--from the right to choose whether or
not to have an abortion to the right to have children and raise
them with the knowledge that healthcare, housing, education, and
medical care would be accessible.

While the threat to abortion rights was the focus of the day,
some speakers did raise the multiple other issues that so vitally
affect women and impact on their decisions about whether and when
to have children. Discrimination against women in hiring and pay
scales, racist discrimination against women of color, sexual
harassment of women on the job, lesbian oppression and the rights
of lesbian mothers, rising rates of rape and battering of
women--all these issues were raised.

In fact, Jesse Jackson got a rousing response from the crowd by
linking together many of these issues and showing how poor and
oppressed women do not have real choice if all the things they
need to build a decent life for themselves and their children are
denied.

Yet with all its breadth and size, the April 5 march had some
serious limitations. Most glaring was the inability of the
organizers to reach out into the oppressed communities of Black,
Latin, Asian, and Native women. The many unions that are supposed
to represent millions of women could have made the difference if
the commitment had been there. But it wasn't.

The funds that would have been needed to help pay for
transportation for poor women were not raised. Yet these are the
very women who have been hurt the most by the vicious cutbacks in
social services and cutoff of federal funding for abortion
services and other women's health needs.

A large number of the speeches were also oriented toward getting
women to vote for one or another of the Democratic Party
candidates--a strategy that has proven to be a dead end in the
past in terms of safeguarding women's rights. While there was a
great deal of genuine excitement over the possibility that Carol
Moseley Braun could be the first African American woman in
history to be elected to the Senate, the pervasive emphasis on
voting out Bush, which could only mean to vote for Clinton, Brown
or whoever is the Democratic Party candidate in November, turned
off many of the more militant women who are learning to distrust
election-year promises and want to organize more direct action by
women themselves.

Although it was not reflected on the stage, the actions being
organized by a coalition of women's and community organizations
in Buffalo, N.Y., to stop Operation Rescue from blockading
women's clinics there (see accompanying article) did become a
focus in the march. Thousands of leaflets were distributed
calling on women to demonstrate in Buffalo on April 11 and help
defend the clinics beginning April 20. The Buffalo actions were
recognized by many to be the next battleground where women's
reproductive rights would be on the line.

Like many great civil rights movements of the past, the women's
rights struggle is led by those who put their faith in the system
and hope to win their demands through the normal democratic
processes of electoral politics, petitioning, lobbying, etc.
While all of these tactics can be used at one time or another,
many more politically conscious women in the movement now feel
that the assault on women's rights over the last decade or so,
what feminist author Susan Faludi called the "undeclared war
against American women," have been so widespread and vicious that
we cannot afford to do business as usual.

The struggle today cries out for a more militant, representative
movement of women--African American, Latina, Asian, Native, and
white, lesbian and straight--to put forward their demands for
women's emancipation in all its variety. One woman auto worker
who traveled here with a busload of women from Cleveland, Ohio,
expressed the frustration many were feeling when she said, "Women
have to show that we are serious about defending our rights. If
the politicians won't get the message, then the next time we come
here we should surround Congress and tell them we mean to stay
until we get what we need."

The April 5 demonstration showed that masses of women are moving
and looking for ways to fight back. What they need now is and a
perspective and leadership that doesn't once again leave them
captives of the capitalist parties and the sexist, racist system
they represent.

                               ###

This article originally appeared in Workers World newspaper. A
10-week trial subscription is available for $2. A year's
subscription costs $15. Makes checks payable to Workers World,
and send to 46 W. 21 St., New York, NY 10010.Phone (212)
255-0352. You may contact Workers World editors on New York
Transfer or PeaceNet at "workers."

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