Full equality for all women now!

“The women’s struggle needs a revival of militancy and action, with low income and oppressed women taking the lead,” Kris Hamel, a founding member of Detroit Action Network for Reproductive Rights, told Workers World. To back up those words with action, DANFORR has called for an Aug. 24 picket line and rally at 5:30 p.m. at Grand Circus Park, a major intersection in downtown Detroit.

“All women’s rights are under attack,” continued Hamel, “whether it’s abortion rights, the right to raise children if that’s our choice—with everything they need for a decent life—or the right to equal pay with men. Every working-class struggle impacts women the most, and that’s why we need to have our presence everywhere.

“We won’t sit back and let inequality and oppression still be OK in the 21st century. We won’t let the enemies of reproductive justice and women’s equality think they have free rein to push us back. We are not going back!”

DANFORR’s action is part of the national mobilization for Aug. 24-27 called by the National Women’s Fightback Network to demand economic, social and reproductive justice and full equality for all women. The occasion is “Women’s Equality Day,” Aug. 26, a supposed national holiday commemorating the date the 19th amendment passed, giving women the right to vote.

“Because recent Supreme Court decisions banned an abortion procedure and gave the bosses a green light to discriminate against women in pay, we felt women needed to take to the streets to demand real equality,” explained Hamel.

A speakout is planned in New York City on Aug. 27 to “stop the attacks on women at home and abroad.” Kathy Durkin, an organizer there, proposed the day be renamed “Women’s Fightback Day” to more accurately reflect the need to end the deeply entrenched racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic discrimination and economic exploitation of women. Among the diverse issues to be raised at the speakout are the repression against and deportation of immigrant workers such as Elvira Arellano, which will be addressed by Teresa Gutierrez of the

May 1 Coalition, and police brutality by attorney Evelyn Warren, who was recently attacked by racist cops in Brooklyn.

Since the NWFN call was sent out at the end of July, nearly 50 endorsements have come in from all around the country as well as England and Australia. Actions are being planned by NWFN groups in Buffalo, N.Y., Chicago and Boston in addition to Detroit and New York.

A Women’s Fightback Network contingent from Boston will join with anti-war, environmental and labor groups on Aug. 25 in Kennebunkport, Maine, the Bush family’s vacation home, to demand an end to the war and occupation.

“The response to our call has given the struggle for women’s rights a boost,” noted Hamel. “Now people recognize that a new kind of women’s rights movement is being advocated and organized.”