Uninvited from GWU Feminist Union Meeting featuring Terri O’Neal pres. of NOW, UNACCEPTABLE
Re-posted from stoppatriarchy.org | January 26, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
So last night, Stop Patriarchy was uninvited from the George Washington University Feminist Union meeting. REALLY!? We were initially invited to this event, in fact enthusiastically invited, but tonight, after being out in the streets fighting for abortion rights all week and challenging the status-quo on what needs to be done in terms of abortion rights and the entire war on women, the GWU Feminist Student Union—in consultation with their speakers, it seems—deemed us too radical, and shut us out entirely. This is completely unacceptable. The president of NOW, the National Organization for Women, Terri O’Neal was the featured speaker at this event, and she plays a recognized leading role in the fight for abortion rights, however what she is putting forward is for women to become the law makers, the senators, the congress-women of the nation. She believes that adhering to the terms of the country as it is, will ultimately allow women to rise up through the system, and eventually take over. She also vehemently supports the Obama administration and does not hold it at all accountable for the lack of countering against the record number of restrictions on access to abortion in this country.
Stop Patriarchy projects something very different. We are not mobilizing people in an effort to put pressure on politicians or to get anyone into the ruling class. We do not have illusions that this strategy will actually work—in fact, we recognize that this dead-end is a big part of how we have lost so much ground in the fight for women’s fundamental right to abortion and liberation more broadly. We are fighting to actually change the terms in society. We are fighting to get people out into the streets, challenging people, questioning the ways this system comes down on women, and then blames them for their second class position because we are supposedly post-feminist and can now do anything we want. The fact of the matter is, the GWU Feminist Student Union did not want us at this event because they did not want to be challenged. They wanted to deny those students attending their meeting out of a concern over the war on women the chance to be exposed to our critique and program. We represent a movement that is fighting for the full liberation of women and we get into the true realities of why things are the way they are, and why things don’t have to be this way. This strategy clearly does not sit well with the feminist union at George Washington University. This is unprincipled and does serious harm to the movement to defeat the war on women. This does a disservice to those who attended your meeting, this does a disservice to women, and this is truly unacceptable. Our message for you is that when you want to get serious about digging into the real questions about this war on women, and want to work at actually defeating it, let us know. To those who attended that meeting and all others on the college campuses who are being denied a truly radical and liberating critique and strategy, you need to check us out. To those “leaders” who continue to insist that we rely on the Democrats and attempts to become part of the very system that is oppressing women and escalating this assault on our rights, get out of the way. In the mean time, we will continue to go out very broadly, spreading this our understanding and calling forward the many who can be won to see that it is on us to defeat this war on women. We are just getting started.
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