On Saturday, July 2, Texas Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights held a powerful rally and march in downtown Austin. These were in response to the call from Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights for July 4th protests. We raised the demand for the federal government to restore nationwide legal abortion, and the slogans:

“When Women Are Not Free, No One is Free”
“When Millions of Women Are Not Safe—There Are No Real ‘Safe Havens’”
“What Happens to One of Us Happens to All of Us”

Several speakers kicked off a powerful, angry, and deeply emotional rally. Coco Das of Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights opened it up by laying out how “A fanatical Christian fundamentalist majority said Roe was wrongly decided. And women all over the country got the message. That they are not free. That their bodies are not their own. That their destinies would be shaped by the state, by the church, by men.” She continued, “Let’s not pretty it up as something else. Something we can get used to. Something we can find our way around. Society has been transformed.” (from “We can turn this around, not as the people we are now but as the people we become through this struggle.”)

A Black gay man spoke about how this attack on women is enough for him to fight the end of Roe, grasping the fundamental truth that this is an attack on women even while it has grave implications for LGBTQ and other groups of people. Others spoke powerfully, including drawing on intensely painful personal experiences that concentrate why we have to fight Roe’s overturning—how women will be trapped, brutalized and enslaved, for real, without the right to abortion. A revcom challenged people to not only continue this fight, but to dig deeply into the sources of the oppression of women and all the other howling injustices and crimes of this system, and to get into the work of Bob Avakian and get ready for revolution. 

Vic, a Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights organizer and rally emcee, continually injected great energy and important analysis into the crowd. By the time we marched, the crowd had swelled to about 1,300. We marched over the two main bridges in downtown Austin—first taking over the Congress Avenue Bridge and returning to the rally point over the First Street Bridge. This came two days after we had organized picket lines at the federal courthouse and led a large group to block an intersection for a short time. Giving people leadership to disrupt, to “dare” to bring society to a halt in the fight to stop this war on women, continues to be part of our mission.

Fighting to Defeat This Attack on Women, Repudiating Attempted “Cancellation”

In the midst of all the turmoil, rage, and anguish felt by millions when Roe was overturned, Texas Rise Up also had to deal with being "canceled". Based on the disgusting attack on Rise Up and the RCP that came out of New York, a group of self-proclaimed local “organizers” (more accurately, would-be dis-organizers) jumped on the bandwagon that originated in New York.

They launched a vicious, outrageous campaign of lies, disinformation, gossip, and personal attacks against the leaders of Texas Rise Up, as well as the local and national organization. This has confused and distracted many decent people who don't know what they're being pulled into.

They did this at a crucial time, aimed at achieving maximum damage. A time when truly massive, disruptive outpourings to defend abortion are needed, and when we were gaining momentum in Austin (about 10,000 people came out to a rally we called the day Roe was overturned, and thousands came back out the next day), and a coalition had formed here to model the kind of unity needed to defeat the fascist assault on Roe.

We have had to struggle through this to reset the terms, and to an important, if still unsettled degree, terms have been reset, through focusing on the millions of women and girls who have just been reduced to breeders and incubators. Refusing to be deterred from our mission even in the face of attempts to intimidate us and drive us out of the movement has continued to bring people out into the streets with us. Sharing and getting guidance from the Rise Up response to the slander, as well as the response from revcom.us, Texas Rise Up did not let this attack go unanswered. They sent out an email with a sharp refutation of the lies and misinformation in the local “denouncement” and its damaging and unprincipled methodology and approach, and the group of haters did have to withdraw most of its argument and “evidence.”

Still, members of the denouncing group have continued to circulate their attack on social media, even as their “evidence” falls away and has been reduced to a few screen shots and memes that they claim supports their bullshit anti-communist charge of transphobia and homophobia. What seems to be the main remaining weapon in their arsenal now is a quote from BA: “It is not more ‘inclusive’ to use terms like ‘people who get pregnant’—it is more diffusive: it dilutes and weakens the point that, in its essence, denying the right to abortion is about the patriarchal enslavement of women: Forced motherhood is enslavement of the half of humanity that is female. This is the main and essential thing going on with the attack on the right to abortion.”

Yet this very attack points to the truth of BA’s statement. The haters attempts to destroy the one organization that has been bringing people into the streets to save Roe have served to undermine the fight for the emancipation of women, at least for now. For the leaders of Texas Rise Up, this struggle has been clarifying, and has strengthened their resolve and commitment to the main mission and slogans of the national movement.

Becoming a People with a Fighting Spirit

At the July 2 rally, Coco Das also passionately addressed what can happen to people and movements in the face of such defeat, and issued a call and challenge for all of those there and many more everywhere to become a different people, through the struggle to win back nationwide legal abortion—a people with a fighting spirit, moral courage, and higher sights and principles.

Her speech concluded: “So let’s do it. We can stop them. We can win this right to legal abortion back for the millions of women, girls, and others who cannot be free without it. We can turn this around, not as the people we are now but as the people we become through this struggle.”