by Alice Wilder
Being a feminist in the south often means being largely in the minority. It means expecting restrictive legislation with every new
legislative session. This summer though, it also means that you might find yourself on a lawn with thousands of protesters. It means running out of “politicians make crappy doctors” pins in a matter of minutes. It means watching the older folks in the crowd being arrested as they practice civil disobedience.
This is the summer of the southern activist.
In North Carolina the GOP majority legislature turned down Medicare expansion and is denying thousands of unemployed North Carolinians federal benefits. The legislature also intends on banning insurance coverage of abortion on the state insurance exchange and provide a quarter million dollars in funding to “Crisis Pregnancy Centers,” which deliberately misinform women and prevent them from accessing care. CPCs especially impact poor and rural women.
In response, the NC NAACP and local faith groups organized Moral Monday, are weekly protests that have been growing each week. June 24th, the 8th Moral Monday was the largest yet, with senators attending and speaking, over 2,000 attendees, and 120 arrests.
Meanwhile, at this very moment, the Texas legislature is trying to pass SB 5, an extremely restrictive anti-abortion law. It includes a 20 week abortion ban with no exemption for rape and would close all but five clinics in the state. The majority of Texans don’t support this bill–80% of Texans think that it should not be being discussed right now, and 63% think abortion law in Texas is strict enough as it is–but the legislator is attempting to push it through anyway. As a result, earlier this week activists organized a 15-hour “citizens’ filibuster” outside the Capitol building.
For Jessica Luther, a reproductive justice activist in Texas, the temperature rises every day. Right now, Texan feminists are in the gallery of the legislature supporting Wendy Davis as she conducts a thirteen hour filibuster, and Luther is livetweeting the whole thing.
There’s a common thread between Moral Monday and the Texas demonstrations: they were not overnight developments. They are not random outbursts of anger. They’re organized, they’re strategic, and there have no end in sight. (Well, the filibuster has an end in sight–the action of Texas activists? Nope.) “There are a lot of people who have worked for years relentlessly, and they have put everything in place so that we could have this moment. There’s a history of that here. The south has a very proud history of fighting back,” Luther said.
The struggle against oppression in the south is real, and the response from activists is beautiful. Luther said that TX legislators “thought most people wouldn’t care,” but now, food is being sent to the protestors from all over the country and carpools are bringing in activists from all over the state to protest SB 5.
One Moral Monday speaker noted that the GOP’s plan for North Carolina was to “divide and conquer.” He said that they wanted to use NC as an example of how it’s possible to buy a progressive southern state and turn it ultra-conservative. But on the lawn in front of the statehouse there was nothing but unity. I was surrounded all races and ages, representing different causes, demanding justice together under the hot southern sun.