The latest series of public political conversations about sexual and reproductive health – specifically abortion and rape – kicked off this month with Missouri Rep. Todd Akin’s now-infamous statements on a local Saint Louis morning show and subsequent non-apologies. Coincidentally, the other massive, hyper-reported story in August involved a Russian riot grrrl collective being arrested, tried, and sentenced for actions taken against the fusing of religion and state in that country. So, what measures of protest and direct action are being levied against the ideological force of right-leaning anti-choicers and opponents of reproductive justice in this country? I’ve rounded up a few from the past couple of weeks that were covered in state and national media to see where and how large-scale protest movements are happening.Most visibly in mainstream media this week have been the protests at the Republican National Convention in Florida. Code Pink showed up in vagina costumes, waved signs, and chanted things. Fine. Someone also got kicked out of Paul Ryan’s speechfor yelling pro-choice slogans, triggering a “USA! USA!” chant from the crowd, because free speech and protest are un-American. Dramatic!Actual garbage heap Todd Akin got 40,000 petitionsdropped on his head by Planned Parenthood action team members the other day. Planned Parenthood is currently on a bus tour, promoting candidates with pro-choice voting records and generally wearing pink shirts and waving professionally-printed signs and looking sort of unenthusiastic.
Slightly more militant than chants and petitions are marches, and some of those also happened last Sunday, for the anniversary of suffrage. A relatively new organization, Women Organizing to Resist and Defend, held marches in several cities to protest the “War on Women” (scare quotes because The Media). From WORD’s promotional materials and online presence, we can deduce this is a group aimed mostly at getting lots and lots of relatively privileged, new-to-feminism folks to show up and march and yell. Fine. They’re not explicitly transphobic, which is more than I can say for certain other faces (that look like Caitlin Moran’s face) of modern feminism.
Looking ahead, it would seem that tactics are changing. Clearly, we in the RJ community have been engaging in direct action such as hotlines, abortion funds, and transport services for awhile. Folks who attended the Take Root conference can probably speak to the current state of direct action and resistance with regards to explicitly RJ-oriented goals eloquently, and I invite you to do so. On a national scale, however, intersectionality and access issues always seem to be overshadowed by gigantic “Keep Abortion Legal” signs that were literally designed forty years ago. But as this letter from the New York Times helps to illustrate, direct action training sessions and camps are on the upswing. Environmental activists in Texas recently trained in blockade tactics, and as the Occupy movement prepares to mark its one-year anniversary, that type of escalation no longer seems so radical and new. This year’s predicted (or rather hoped-and-planned-for) wave of civil disobedience may just decide to focus on achieving and protecting true reproductive justice. Our generation is admirably rage-filled. Some of us just hit the snooze/privilege button on our “shit is fucked up and bullshit” alarm clocks a few too many times.
Pearl just got back from Oklahoma where she died and became a ghost due to being surrounded on all sides by badass OK4RJ contributors for a solid hour or so.
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