Monday 23 January 2017

Still I rise - London

Saturday, in my pussy hat, I marched with five women friends and more than a hundred thousand other women, men and children. From cities around the world our numbers were in their millions. 

Out from the social media echo chamber we came. Out onto the streets. The cry? There were many, but at their core: justice and equality. It was a celebration of diversity and the first mass resistance to the normalisation of the new world order, the new Nazism. Embarrassed Americans marched with us. We embraced them.

There are still so many issues, still so much to do as a second waver reminded us with her placard: I can't believe I am still protesting this fucking shit, and the same from the period dressed Suffragettes: same shit, different century.

Let me focus on just one issue that affects my country women in Northern Ireland and our sisters in the south. The whole island of Ireland is still an abortion free zone. The rosaries are still on their ovaries.

For me the most moving moment of the day was the vociferous reminder of this inequity. The Irish women shouting my body, my choice stopped the march. There was applause. There were tears and cheers.

If you want to do something real, practical and effective, go here. Help them have one thing we take for granted.

Then back to the streets. We are not going away anytime soon, and certainly not for the next four years.

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