I'm learning a lot.
March 8 is #InternationalWomensDay, and began as International Working Women's Day.
In a world where women are still fighting for the right to care for our own bodies, to work and live and love how and who and in a context we choose, to be paid equally for our contributions and to free from violence, oppression, and the damaging cocktail of white supremacy, capitalism and patriarchy: in this world, on this day I choose to make my voice heard and make great sacrifice in pursuit of my own and our collective liberation.
#IStrikeFor equal pay for equal work; I sacrifice a day's wage, though I can't afford it, for my sisters and fam who want to strike and can't; I strike for women who must lose money to stay home and care for their families, who sacrifice their wage to travel hundreds of miles to access health care, and for those who lack access to the care they need; I strike for the sisters who are bright and sharp and yearning to deepen their education, who run into oppression when they attempt to do so, and who rarely see reflections of themselves in the halls of history (even that word is probelmatic, can you see it embedded within?); I strike for the white women who still don't see or understand that their feminism must include an intersectionality that makes space for all women, because without it their liberation is incomplete, and will never come.
“Often in my lectures when I use the phrase “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” to describe our nation’s political system, audiences laugh. No one has ever explained why accurately naming this system is funny. The laughter is itself a weapon of patriarchal terrorism.”
Today, I avoid spending money however and wherever I can, excepting small, women- and minority- owned businesses. Today, I wear read, and I lift up the names and words of my teachers and my inspiration. Today I care deeply for myself without explanation or apology. Today I celebrate other workers and women who fight for our collective liberation. Today, I make choices that support my growth, my goals, and my resilience. Today, as much as it is within me, I refrain from paid and unpaid work. I rest. I will rejoice. I act, and listen, and learn.