The International Women’s Strike (IWS) organization is calling for a National Walkout from all work, waged and unwaged, today, October 4, at 4:00 pm to protest the potential appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Several national organizations, including the Democratic Socialists of America and the National Lawyers Guild, have joined with us to organize against this threat.
The overwhelming response to the call has made all of us — and especially those of us who are survivors of sexual assault — feel validated and hopeful. Today people will be demonstrating in more than 30 cities. We have been flooded with solidarity messages from women who are breaking their silence about sexual violence in one of the most powerful ways possible: by taking to the street.
I, along with millions of other women, watched the extraordinarily brave testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford last week. I cried with her and raged for her. But I did not need her to testify on national television, before a hostile group of powerful (mostly white) men, to believe her story.
Christine Blasey Ford had nothing to gain from choosing to appear before the world. Indeed, the death threats and the loss of privacy for herself and her family show that she has suffered enormously because her life and her past have been opened up in this way.
Why is she doing this?
She is coming forward for us, and for every girl and every woman who is to come after us.
The battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination is about his history of sexual violence, but it is also about the future. His appointment would solidify policies that would produce the conditions for continued assault and misogyny on a larger scale. Let us look at just two examples.
Kavanaugh is a threat to abortion rights. In this country 49 percent of those seeking abortions live below the official poverty line, while another 26 percent are low income. These figures are further inflected by race. About two-thirds of those seeking abortion are women of…