Denton fights for women’s rights

OVER THE last year, the attacks on women's reproductive rights have reached unprecedented levels, and in response, there has been an upsurge in women's rights activism that some say they have not seen since the 1970s. The emergence of SlutWalk and Walk For Choice has brought the movement out of a polite, apologetic pro-choice lobbying campaign led by Planned Parenthood and NARAL, and has taken the fight back into the streets.

For many of the participants in these events, it was their first time to come out to a protest--and the energy that was ignited by workers fighting for their rights in Madison, Wis., and in the Arab Spring met them there, fanning the indignant flames of a previously latent women's movement.

North Texas has experienced a growth in grassroots organizing around women's and sexual liberation.

After Walk for Choice and SlutWalk, members from Denton's Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance and International Socialist Organization wanted to keep the momentum going and began to organize a campaign to counter the anti-choice campaign "40 Days for Life."

We called our working group "40 Days for Choice" and began organizing clinic defense and escorting at Whole Woman's Health in Fort Worth. The "40 Days for Life" campaign started in 2004 and has spread throughout the nation. It is essentially a 40-day marathon of anti-choice activism, entailing 24-hour prayer vigils outside of clinics and harassing abortion providers.

Whole Woman's Health has been extremely appreciative and supportive of our actions, unlike local Planned Parenthood of North Texas (PPNT), which made it a point to tell us the first (and only) time we defended there that they did not appreciate our work.

PPNT has a history of these kinds of responses towards pro-choice activists. PPNT pulled its support from Walk For Choice because they felt that the chant "Free abortion on demand" was too controversial and would alienate people.

After the 40 days campaign had ended, we needed to reassess our goals. Noticing the similarities in growth and radicalization, Denton activists took a cue from Boston activists and adopted the more inclusive name, Radical Alliance for Gender Equality (RAGE).

We not only wanted to focus on defending a woman's right to abortion, but on the broad and radical aim of women's and sexual liberation. This was an important step away from identity politics and spoke of the interconnectedness between reproductive rights and other forms of sexual oppression.

As one of the Denton RAGE members put it so perfectly, "What makes us radical is that we acknowledge that the roots of oppression lie within capitalism, this economic system, and only through collective action can we make real change."

WE HAVE continued our work at the clinic, and anti-choice protesters have grown increasingly aggressive. One anti-choice protestor attempted to shove one of our protesters, and an assault charge was filed. Our numbers have been fairly consistent and we have been bringing about 20 people to the clinic every week to face hostile protesters.

Our action consists of a line of protesters holding pro-woman, pro-abortion, pro-clinic signs ("Abortion is health care; health care is a human right," "This clinic stays open") and a small group of escorts that offer to walk patients from the parking lot to the front door of the clinic, as it can be intimidating walking alone facing an onslaught of vile bigotry and hate simply for trying to access health care.

Members of RAGE have had their sexualities and genders mocked and questioned openly, have been damned to hell, and have been accused of being Nazi-fascist-baby-killers.

Most recently, an anti-choice protester told a young teenage girl that she was being selfish for getting an abortion, even after her mother snapped at him that she was going through chemotherapy, and if she remained pregnant, she and the fetus would die. The heartless bastard couldn't have cared less.

We are unapologetic about abortion rights and emphasize that there is no real "choice" without economic freedom, thus our dedication to the chant, "Free abortion on demand!"

In contrast to our much-needed, but defensive, role at the clinic, RAGE has attempted to protest at local Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPC) to raise attention in the community about their misleading information and tendencies to shame women. In late October, RAGE brought out about 20 people to protest Loreto House, a local CPC, and received enough attention to motivate a student group to cut ties with them.

Denton RAGE is in the process of starting up some new campaigns on campus specifically addressing sexual health on campus, particularly for sexual minorities, with an emphasis on working with organized labor.
Natalie Johnson and Mattie Williams, Denton, Texas