By Beatriu Cardona (Intersindical Valenciana)
We seldom have the opportunity to be a small piece of a global event with unprecedented echo which will undoubtedly have major importance in events and actions following afterwards. It is not strange to see on television and read in the press that a wonderful thing happened in an either neighbouring or remote country and we feel glad for it. But this March 8th, joy became bliss: we were there, we were part of it.
Such a historical day is not improvised: it is the result of many months of shared, transversal, diverse, class-based, cooperative, intense and, above all, group work. It shows that the expression "from below" has the full meaning and that horizontality in decision-making, although slow, is clearly effective. It is the triumph of an assembly-based movement. When many people think, mobilize and decide together, each one of them becomes a multiplier: we spread the struggle to other groups, which will end up spreading it to others... The feminist movement has been like a large-scale epidemic: the focus has emerged and every day different people have simultaneously shared the “contagion” in different places around the world.
No one will keep us silent
And as in any epidemic we have had to face the attempts of extinction, control and reduction. The powers that be have tried that current status quo remains and that women’s voices are silenced, as always. That was what we expected. But what for many of us has been a great disappointment was to see how some trade unions and political parties (which were allegedly close to the cause) felt very uncomfortable with a movement they did (and could) not control. So uncomfortable they felt that they cut down on the demands and actions that hundreds of assemblies had decided around the world. After the unquestionable success of this March 8th, the only option they have is admitting to the historical mistake they have made. An office cannot correct what thousands of women have freely decided. Nobody has the right to highjack the work somebody else has done, work that you should have done in the first place.
The other side of the coin is the vast majority media, a great deal of mainstream ones, but especially alternative media and social networks, valuable allies of the feminist movement from the beginning, because they understood the importance of the work displayed since 9 March 2017. Last year social networks broadcast images of hundreds of thousands of women in feminist rallies, whereas the establishment media avoided informing about them. This year, the show of force by the feminist movement has even prevented those media close to the hidden powers from silencing the unanimous roar of millions of women.
From the feminist movement, we are currently working the way we have been, keeping the same line: “weaving” complicity, reinforcing our assemblies, focusing on social and grassroots movements, seizing the visibility we deserve everywhere. We are more and more empowered so that everyday becomes March 8th.
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