For many women, the weeks and months ahead loom like a four-year tunnel of darkness. We anticipate loss of rights, loss of well-being, harm to those we love and erosion of values we hold dear. Fear coats our eyes like an oil slick. What comes next? Will we pull away from one another, like beads of water? From our small huddles, debates ensue.
From all sides, the chatter condenses to one question: How do we move forward? Yet, when examined more closely, this question is as slippery as a beam of light that scatters when reached for. Who is “we”? What constitutes “forward”? These are not questions with solutions, they are dilemmas, as one writer puts it, we answer with our lives. We march for them. The women who will march on Washington have posed a powerful calculation in response to the tasks ahead: “Gender justice is racial justice is economic justice.”
But this movement forward may not be so simple. Finding the strength of our convictions, like any athletic endeavor, requires training and teamwork. In the months ahead, if we find our fear outpowers our courage, we must listen more deeply for the footsteps of those who have come before. Their courage lights our way.
Women who march to insist peace is possible: Palestinian and Israeli Women Wage Peace, 2016
In the summer of 2014, fighting among Israelis and Palestinians rose to new levels of horror. In just 55 days, more than 2,000 people were killed. Half a million people in Gaza were forced to flee the area, and 20,000 people’s homes were destroyed.
Disturbed by the persistent conflict and the lack of women involved in peace-efforts, a group of Israeli women began meeting to organize for pro-peace solutions. In one of these meetings, the members decided to call an activist from Gaza to learn what was happening on their side. As Israeli activist Hamutal Gouri told a Christen Science Monitor reporter, “[We] discovered that although our perspectives differed, we had a lot more in common.“………..
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