There will be a Women's March on Chattanooga on Saturday at 3 p.m. Participants will rally at Coolidge Park, 150 River St., where there will be a few speakers before marchers take to the streets.
Chattanooga will be marching along with hundreds of other cities all across the country in solidarity with the historic Women's March on Washington D.C. Chattanooga has two full rally buses headed to the capital for the national march and well over 2,000 people have already expressed interest in the local Women’s March on Chattanooga through the facebook event.
Participants should plan to gather at Coolidge Park prepared with signs, comfortable walking shoes, sunscreen, and water. The march will be approximately two miles long and will end back at Coolidge Park.
Organizers are encouraging all defenders of human rights to join, stating that "women’s rights are human rights and that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us."
Christine Kline, speaker at the march and member of the organizing committee explained, “I march because it is now, and forever will be, one of the most vital symbols of resistance in a world that is still accepting of oppression and hate. I march because it is critical that we still have agency in the current culture that regards women, people of color, the disabled, and lgbtqia as sub-human. I march because in 1975, my father climbed over a wall and missed the last helicopter out of Saigon, but still fought tooth and nail on a boat to come to this country and make sure I never had to encounter the same sort of oppression he did. It’s my duty to show him I refuse to.”
“I march because I strive to stay uncomfortable,” said Sherri Nakamoto. “To stay humble. To remind myself that there is no room in my life for complacency. That if one person is oppressed, then I am oppressed. That there is no safe place to hide from this authoritarian system. I march for partnership. I march for my non-white children. I march for my immigrant great-grandparents. I march for my HIV positive, gay best friend. I march for my son, that he may be the man of his choosing, self-defined. And for my daughter. Especially for my daughter.”
When asked why she was organizing a sister march here in Chattanooga, Patricia Bazemore responded, “I see the real life suffering we endure as a result of gender inequality, here. Pay equity in Tennessee would lift 44 percent of working women out of poverty. Women fill only 17.4 percent of our seats in the state legislature. Women hold only two of the 11 congressional seats we have. Women of color in Tennessee have never had a representative in Congress. For the 7th year in a row, Tennessee has ranked in the top 10 states for women killed by men, the majority of them by current or former partners. This is unacceptable. We must come together and take action in our community.”
To learn more about the Women’s March on Chattanooga and to rsvp, visit https://www.facebook.com/events/1814465958772079/#. Learn more about the Women’s March on Washington at www.womensmarch.com/.