The rally kicks off at noon at Chelsea Manning (Justin Herman) Plaza. There will be speakers, free childcare at the plaza park, and materials for making signs – please bring extra materials to share if you can!
PARTICIPATE WITH YOUR CREW – SELF-ORGANIZATION, SELF-DETERMINATION!
At 2pm we will march from Justin Herman Plaza to I.C.E headquarters. In the spirit of direct action and participation, we encourage folks to form affinity groups: come with your family or friends, form your own bloc, or join one of the several blocs that will be coordinating. For example, there will be a feminist bloc wearing all pink & black, with pink balaclavas or other face coverings, distributing condoms & feminist propaganda. We call on self-organized groups of neighbors, coworkers, or other kinds of community members to march together, pick a color or a theme, get creative, and bloc up!
Once we reach the I.C.E. headquarters building, we will “build a wall around I.C.E.” Bring banners, signs, drawings, poems, posters and other materials to contribute to this wall and to SHUT DOWN I.C.E.!
STRIKE AGAINST GENDER
In solidarity with the International Women’s Strike, which has called for militant action, strikes, blockades, occupations, and disruption of business as usual, we call for an all out strike against gender and all its forms of oppression, and against all systems of capitalist, racist, xenophobic, and fascist domination.
On March 8th we propose a feminist strike which will not be content to pinkwash the bombs on Baghdad, or to knit crowns honoring biology as our destiny. Instead, we propose a different strike, a strike against all forms of gender exclusion, exploitation and domination. A gender strike from below.
DAY OF ACTION – SHUT DOWN ICE!
As feminists, we see the struggle against ICE, against deportations, against borders, imperialism, and nationalism, as deeply intertwined with and crucial to the struggle for gender liberation.
We call upon antagonists to these systems of oppression in the Bay Area to come out for a day of action to shut down ICE and demand the removal of any and all ICE operations from San Francisco and the wider Bay Area. If this is truly to be a sanctuary city, if sanctuary is to be more than an ideal or a convenient phrase, we must act decisively to make the concept a reality.
We call for this as one step toward fighting for a world we can survive and want to live in.
ICE is a direct manifestation of the worst forms of oppression faced by the most vulnerable women, queer and trans folks. Last week, ICE arrested and deported a trans woman on the steps of an El Paso courthouse just after she had filed a protective order against her abusive boyfriend. Aggressive ICE raids have been reported around the country, and in the Bay Area they have shown up at social services agencies such as the WOMEN’S BUILDING, at grocery stores, and at other public places, terrifying the local community and causing people to avoid going to work or to school.
THE FUTURE IS NOT FEMALE, IF IT IS TRULY FEMINIST
Our actions will honor a different feminism, a feminism which refuses to collaborate with elite power brokers, naked capital and imperial interests, opportunists, managers and tepid reformists of every pink stripe.
Our feminism will never opportunistically invoke the hollow praises of “intersectionality” because we actually *live* intersectional violence, on our bodies and in our communities daily.
We must act on our own behalf: we will not be spoken for and co-opted by upwardly mobile, white, establishment “feminists” with designs on appropriating and exploiting our labor, our struggles and our formidable strength.
THE FUTURE IS NOT GENDERED, IF IT IS TRULY REVOLUTIONARY
Ours is a feminism that always fights, uncompromisingly, in defense of all who are oppressed by gender: trans women, undocumented migrants and domestic workers, refugees, black and brown people subjected to daily harassment and murder by police, and all who are situated at the intersection of life and death, surviving so many deadly forms of racialized, feminized and gendered exploitation.
Ours is a feminism that is anti capitalist; that is antifascist; that is against all forms of white supremacy, racism, imperialism, and nationalism; ours is a feminism that must destroy every patriarchal wall or border built between us and *our future*. We proclaim, the future is our total liberation! and nothing less.
AGAINST STATE VIOLENCE AND REPRESSION
Necessarily, our strike will not call upon the police to protect our “safety” because our feminism opposes state violence, absolutely.
Police do not make everyone safer. When women, especially those of color, call the police seeking protection from abusive partners, they are met with violence from the police. When people call the police for help in a mental health crisis, they are met with fatal violence from the police.
We will rally against ALL forms of oppression! Because ALL of these oppressions deepen and contribute to patriarchy, and to all that genders us & subjects us to gendered violence, exclusion, exploitation & oppression.
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The words of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution were supposed to guarantee that slavery and involuntary servitude effectively were outlawed. The exception of punishment for a crime where the “party shall have been convicted” is the loophole. As detailed in Ava DuVernay’s “The 13th”, the injustice system in America has not changed all that much since the earliest days of slavery. The statistics DuVernay puts onscreen say it all: African-Americans make up 6.5% of the U.S. population but a whopping 40% of the prison population — in a country with the highest level of incarceration in the world; up more than tenfold since 1970 and existing mostly to put away black and Latino men.
Join us to discuss options for the community to put pressure on Phil Tagami to drop his lawsuit. Tagami filed suit in federal court after the Oakland City Council unanimously voted to ban the storage of coal at the marine terminal that Tagami is planning to build on land he leased from the city, Still in its early stages, the lawsuit could make it difficult for local communities to protect themselves from toxic pollutants if it is ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court. We will discuss what we can do to stop this, as well as hear an update about the current status of the lawsuit.