Hi All – Next Saturday Concerned Families of Westchester will host one of more than 100 “Feminists Against Fascism” rallies organized by the Women’s March. Like thousands of others across the USA, we’re taking to the public square to fight back against the fascist takeover. The rally will begin at 12 noon. We will be at Warburton Ave. in Hastings, at the intersection with Spring St. We’ll have an open “mic” so all who wish to can speak. We will also have some good music, and will be a sizable crowd of new and old friends standing up to the Two Dictators.
If you are coming, and to see a map of our location, please register for the event here.
For some background, learn about the origins of International Women’s Day and the goals of this year’s UN women’s actions in the two good articles below.
Thanks and best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
The Surprising History of International Women’s Day
By Sarah Pruitt, History.com [September 13, 2023]
---- The historian Temma Kaplan revisited the first official National Woman’s Day, held in New York City on February 28, 1909. (The organizers, members of the Socialist Party of America, wanted it to be on a Sunday so that working women could participate.) Thousands of people showed up to various events uniting the suffragist and socialist causes, whose goals had often been at odds. … The concept of a “woman’s day” caught on in Europe. On March 19, 1911 (the 40th anniversary of the Paris Commune, a radical socialist government that briefly ruled France in 1871), the first International Woman’s Day was held, drawing more than 1 million people to rallies worldwide. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, most attempts at social reform ground to a halt, but women continued to march and demonstrate on International Woman’s Day. Most dramatically, a massive demonstration led by Russian feminist Alexandra Kollontai that began on February 23, 1917 (according to Russia’s Gregorian calendar; it was March 8 in the West) proved to be a link in the chain of events that led to the abdication of Czar Nicholas II and the Russian Revolution. After the czar’s abdication, the provisional government formed until a constituent assembly could be elected became the first government of a major power to grant women the right to vote. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST – Temma Kaplan, “On the Socialist Origins of International Women’s Day,” Feminist Studies (Spring 1985) https://www.jstor.org/stable/3180144
International Women’s Day 2025 – For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment
From UN Women [December 20, 2024]
—— On 8 March 2025, join us to celebrate International Women’s Day under the theme, “For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment.” This year’s theme calls for action that can unlock equal rights, power and opportunities for all and a feminist future where no one is left behind. Central to this vision is empowering the next generation—youth, particularly young women and adolescent girls—as catalysts for lasting change. The year 2025 is a pivotal moment in the global pursuit of gender equality and women’s empowerment, as it marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 in Beijing, China, by 189 governments, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action remains the most progressive and widely endorsed blueprint for women’s and girls’ rights worldwide. The Platform guides policies, programmes and investment that impact critical areas of our lives, such as: education, health, peace, media, political participation, economic empowerment, and the elimination of violence against women and girls. Addressing these issues, along with emerging priorities around climate justice and the power of digital technologies, is urgent, with just five years left to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
The 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action also comes amid growing insecurity and compounding crises, diminishing trust in democracy and shrinking civic space. Last year alone, 612 million women and girls lived amidst the brutal realities of armed conflict, a disturbing 50 percent increase in just a decade.
Under the banner of UN Women’s global campaign to mark the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, “For ALL Women and Girls”, this year’s International Women’s Day is a rallying cry to take action in three key areas:
Advance women’s and girls’ rights: Fight relentlessly for women’s and girls’ full range of human rights, challenging all forms of violence, discrimination, and exploitation.
Promote gender equality: Address systemic barriers, dismantle patriarchy, transform entrenched inequities, and elevate the voices of marginalized women and girls, including young people, to ensure inclusivity and empowerment.
Foster empowerment: Redefine power structures by ensuring inclusive access to education, employment, leadership, and decision-making spaces. Prioritize opportunities for young women and girls to lead and innovate. [Read More]
Trump is tearing up US women’s rights. The message from your sisters in the Arab world? Don’t give up: resistance works
By Hibaaq Osman, The Guardian [UK] [March 5, 2025]
—— From outside the US looking in, those of us who have experienced the tumultuous years since the Arab revolutions feel a strange sense of familiarity: the chaos of the Trump-Musk administration, the attacks on minority groups, the elevation of men – a number of whom have been accused of violence against women – to cabinet positions. Trump seems to have started his second term with the same ferocity, callousness, violence and ignominy in which his first term so notoriously ended. Amid the shock of the past few weeks, a sense of panic can be immobilising. But that is exactly what such a strategy is designed to do. For women in the US who now feel under attack like never before, who sense their rights, even their bodily autonomy, slipping through their fingers, I bid a weary but warm welcome to the club. You must know that you do not need to look far for solidarity. There are women in the US who have had to fight every step of the way to have their humanity recognised by a bigoted and over-mighty state. African American women, Indigenous American women, Latin American women – their civil rights struggles have been extraordinary and hugely influential across the world. But if I may, there are many examples to be shared of women in the Arab world who have taken on the laws, institutions and cultures of oppression that mired their daily lives – and won. [Read More]
