International Women's Day March in Seattle

On Saturday March 6 we had an amazing march. We walked for over two hours and went to a recruiting station, the King County Jail, the ICE Immigration Center and Seattle Human Services, with a rally/ speaker in front of each place. We ended at Occidental Square where the Duwamish were there in spirit. We had all ages, all ethnicities, all issues, all political positions joining together. Radical Women were well represented. Also Amnesty International, as well as National Organization of Women, and Pinay, Gabriela, CARA, photographs below and more information. It was exhiliarating and inspiring.
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Pinay Filipina group. Gabriela was also represented, a mass solidarity group that is politically leftist and really activist.
They led us in chants.
This child is left behind after his parents were deported. He is an American citizen so he got to stay here all by himself. He looks like he is about four years old.

These are Iranian women offering us information for supporting the women of Iran

This is Margo Heights speaking in front of the Jail and across the street from ICE ( Immigration Detention Center). 1 our of every 3 women on the planet who are in jail is locked up in the United States.
Most women are imprisoned for economic crivmes. The majority of women convicted for violent crimes were defending themselves or their children against abuse. In the U.S. a woman is raped every six minutes.

These are people listening to the speaker from Real Change about homelessness in front of the Seattle Human Services.

These are women from CARA, Communities Against Rape and Abuse

This is a general photograph of us taking over downtown.

Seattle Labor Chorus


Raging Grannies

The Duwamish watching over us in this space that used to belong to them, although they didn't make the totem pole and totem poles are not a Duwamish art form, at least it is a reference to the Indigenous people who lived in Seattle.
No explanation needed


A young feminist ready to play songs for us.

Art and Activism

This last weekend I went to two amazing fundraisers that both featured art and activism. The first was a collaboration between Chaya, an organization that helps domestic violence victims from South Asia that live in the Seattle area. and Tasveer, a non profit that sponsors South Asian independent film festivals . They presented films, dance, non fiction readings, and an amazing performance piece called Yoni Ki Baat based on the Vagina Monologues from a South Asian perspective. Ten woman told their stories with dignity, drama, and humor, ranging from childhood traumas to adult dating.

The second fundraiser was CARA, Communitites against rape and abuse. They also emphasized the intersection of art and activism, with hip hop performers, many of them quite young offering inspiring lyrics about their lives and the street and their losses. The audience was mainly African American, but the keynote speaker, Andrea Smith, was a Native American activist and she said CARA was also organizing around justice for Indian boarding school victims. The boarding schools introduced sexual abuse and drug abuse into native communities. Andrea is the author of INCITE: Women of Color Against VIolence.

The contrast between the two groups was dramatic. The first, Chaya, featured only women performers, many of them elegantly dressed although one was a Tibetan transgender who wore a suit and necktie. But the performances were on a stage with sophisticated projections, sound and music.

The second group was very grass roots. We met in a room that felt like an old defrocked store with wooden floors and big windows. We had a wonderful dinner and everyone was relaxed and chatting. The performers wore various low key clothes like the street related low pants look.

But the biggest difference was for Chaya the focus in the performances was on domestic violence related to specific South Asian cultural practices and prejudices. The dance performance focused on the selling of young girls into the sex trade. The dancer adapted traditional Asian dance to tell the story of one young girl who was sold into sex, but then was able to escape.

At the CARA event the focus was on communities in a more public sense, the problems of instiutitonalized violence, jails, police, and gangs. We have had a lot of gang murders in Seattle lately.

Both of them were reaching out to the community though. And both embraced young people being given a way to express themselves through creative words, music, dance, film. In both cases we saw the power of art to give a means of expression to people.

Both are great groups.