{"id":147677,"date":"2018-01-20T07:45:01","date_gmt":"2018-01-20T12:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=147677"},"modified":"2018-01-20T07:45:01","modified_gmt":"2018-01-20T12:45:01","slug":"women-will-march-again-with-aim-to-become-a-political-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/01\/20\/women-will-march-again-with-aim-to-become-a-political-force\/","title":{"rendered":"Women will march again with aim to become a political force"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"(Pixabay<\/a>
A rally Sunday in Las Vegas will launch an effort to register 1 million voters (Pixabay photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Activists are returning to the streets a year after a million people rallied worldwide at marches for female empowerment, hoping to create an enduring political movement that will elect more women to government office.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of gatherings are planned Saturday and Sunday across the U.S. and in places such as Beijing, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Nairobi, Kenya.<\/p>\n

A rally Sunday in Las Vegas will launch an effort to register 1 million voters and target swing states in the midterm elections.<\/p>\n

The 2017 rally in Washington, D.C., and hundreds of similar marches created solidarity for those denouncing President Donald Trump’s views on abortion, immigration, LGBT rights and more.<\/p>\n

Afterward, a wave of women decided to run for elected office and the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct became a cultural phenomenon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe made a lot of noise,\u201d said Elaine Wynn, an organizer. \u201cBut now how do we translate that noise into something concrete or fulfilling?\u201d<\/p>\n

Linda Sarsour, one of the four organizers of last year’s Washington march, said Las Vegas was slotted for a major rally because it’s a strategic swing state that gave Hillary Clinton a narrow win in the presidential election and will have one of the most competitive Senate races in 2018.<\/p>\n

Democrats believe they have a good chance of winning the seat held by embattled Republican Sen. Dean Heller and weakening the GOP’s hold on the chamber.<\/p>\n

Organizers say Nevada is also a microcosm of larger national issues such as immigration and gun control after Las Vegas became the scene of the deadliest mass shooting in modern history.<\/p>\n

Following the October massacre, the Sunday rally is being held at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ stadium 10 miles (16 kilometres) southeast of the famous Strip where a gunman opened fire on a concert, killing 58 people.<\/p>\n

Authorities have kept details confidential about security for the Sunday rally at the 40,000-seat stadium.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the Las Vegas rally, Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains will hold a huge voter registration training effort on Saturday as part of a nationwide effort to register over a million voters in 2018.<\/p>\n

Minnie Wood, a nurse practitioner who participated in the 2017 gathering in Las Vegas, said she was left with a sense of solidarity and \u201cthis feeling of almost a quickening, this resistance brewing.\u201d<\/p>\n

It also laid the groundwork for the recent movement that brought a reckoning for powerful men accused of sexual misconduct, Sarsour said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think when women see visible women’s leadership, bold and fierce, going up against a very racist, sexist, misogynist administration, it gives you a different level of courage that you may not have felt you had,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Many women inspired by last year’s massive marches went on to seek higher office, such as Mindi Messmer, a 54-year-old environmental scientist from Rye, New Hampshire.<\/p>\n

Messmer was a state legislator when she attended the 2017 march in her state capital of Portsmouth. She’s now a candidate for the seat held by retiring U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, a fellow Democrat.<\/p>\n

Other women running for Congress include newcomer Chrissy Houlahan, who hopes to unseat a Republican in suburban Philadelphia, and Sara Jacobs, a former aide to Barack Obama, seeking the Southern California seat held by retiring Republican U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa.<\/p>\n

Democratic officeholders pledging to elect more progressive candidates in swing states will be among the speakers in Las Vegas. Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood also will address the crowd.<\/p>\n

Last year’s march in Washington sparked debate over inclusion, with some transgender minority women complaining that the event seemed designed for white women born female. Some anti-abortion activists said the event did not welcome them.<\/p>\n

The organizers for the Sunday rally are striving for greater inclusion this year, with Latina and transgender female speakers, said Carmen Perez, another co-chair of the 2017 Washington march. Women in the U.S. illegally, sex workers and those formerly incarcerated are welcome, she said.<\/p>\n

Eman Hassaballa Aly, a 38-year-old digital communications manager and activist, said last year’s gathering in the Chicago area prompted two Muslim women she knows to run for office — one for state Senate and one for Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was incredible that all these people came together,\u201d said Aly, who addressed the 2017 Chicago event. \u201cWe realized how powerful this thing could be.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Activists are returning to the streets a year after a million people rallied worldwide at marches for female empowerment, hoping …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":147678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24157,16],"tags":[1402,3596,40236,44096,2000,2846,1930,44097,2415,25207,362],"class_list":["post-147677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-american-news","category-news","tag-argentina","tag-beijing","tag-buenos-aires","tag-elaine-wynn","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-kenya","tag-las-vegas","tag-linda-sarsour","tag-nairobi","tag-nevada","tag-washington","mauthors-michelle-l-price","mauthors-anita-snow","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}