Sidley Park Hermit

[x-posted from my tumblr with light editing for clarity and local style conventions]

Today has me wondering: What if we made a sustained public push on the Mexico City Rule/Global Gag Rule, which has reliably flipped on and off each time the White House switched parties since Reagan instituted it and which most people still don't even know about? Like, what if the feminist marchers went back to the streets soon, which I think most of us have been eager to do since we got home Saturday, and — instead of “make the next march about releasing his taxes” as some fucking dude on twitter is trying to suggest because obviously these were just arbitrary assemblies of people that you can use for whatever and not people showing up about reproductive justice, immigration justice, protecting religious and racial minorities from violence, standing with sexual assault survivors, fucking global intersectional feminist concerns, no it was just about having a march against everything like we were goddamn Occupy or something and you can just decide what the “next march” is about now that we’ve done that woman thing —

ANYWAY:

What if we were to come back on, let’s say, the 21st of next month, to hold demonstrations specifically about the Global Gag Rule? I wasn’t born yesterday, I know it wouldn’t cause the GOP to actully flip their position on this policy any more than the health care rallies are gonna get the new guy to look up what Obamacare actually is and does. But what it can do is bring the issue to the wider public in a way that it generally hasn’t been, and show legislators across parties that Americans are paying attention and holding them accountable for how this discriminatory aid policy harms people around the world.

Are there any groups already working on public demonstrations about this here in the U.S.? I’m gonna look around, but let me know if you know about anything.