prairie fire organizing committee

MARCH 8TH, 2001, INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

Last December, the women of Prairie Fire Organizing Committee said this year, we want to have a good demonstration for International Women’s Day (IWD) in Chicago. We also want to help contribute to building an activist women's movement in Chicago that will srtuggle for women's liberation. To that end, we invited individual women and women’s organizations to join with us in planning a march and rally for IWD. We worked with a wonderful group of women including women from GABRIELA Network-Chicago, the Filipina women’s organization, S.O.U.L., Sisters Organizing for a United Leadership, a project of the Southwest Youth Collaborative, First Defense Legal Aid, 8th Day Center for Justice and the National Lawyer’s Guild among others.

Our meetings were fun and productive. We decided to have a march through the Loop, stopping at places that oppress us as women. We worked collectively on the pre-leaflet, we sent out press releases and we jointly prepared a leaflet to hand out during the march.

At our last meeting, we all made signs together, and helped each other come up with short and pithy slogans. We already had our beautiful IWD banner. We made up chants, and divided the tasks of the day between ourselves.

March 8th dawned and, not to our surprise, it was cold. But, at noon, as the time for the demonstration approached, it warmed up and the sun came out. We interpreted this as a good omen for our march.

We met at the federal building shortly before noon, and women began to arrive. Lots of women we had never seen before! Lots of young women, and girls! We were excited. We started off with our MC, Annie Statton, of Prairie Fire warmly welcoming everyone and telling us about the history of IWD. She said that IWD is based on a fire in a shirtwaist factory in New York City. Women workers were locked in to ensure that they didn’t take breaks and thus many died in the fire. Since the early 1900s IWD has been celebrated around the world. Prairie Fire has been organizing demonstrations since the mid-80s here in Chicago.

To set the tone and bring smiles to us all, the Radical Cheerleaders led us in spirited cheers that celebrated us as women. They continued to lead the march, adding humor and fun the whole way.

Next, we had Rhoda Rae Gutierrez of GABRIELA Network-Chicago who gave a rousing speech on the trafficking of women and the impact of U.S. militarism on women around the world. We marched, chanted and made a lot of noise to the corners of Jackson and State where Michelle Morales from the Puerto Rican Cultural Center talked about the impact on women of the U.S. bombing of the small island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. We celebrated that the struggle of the Puerto Rican people has forced the U.S. Navy to suspend bombing there. Next, we heard from Muslim lesbian from Khuli Zaban who spoke in support of women’s right to control our sexuality.

We marched north on State to Old Navy, where Jamie, a student from United Students Against Sweatshops, spoke about the abuse and exploitation of women sweatshop workers. We crossed the street to Marshall Fields, chanting, We’re here, we’re women, we’re not going shopping. Margaret Power of Prairie Fire started off saying, "All women are beautiful – no matter what size or shape we are!" The radical cheerleaders then cheered, "Vogue magazine, what a bore. Ladies, ladies, let’s eat more.

We marched to the Daley Plaza. Quintana from S.O.U.L. talked about the need for summer jobs for youth and Pam Alfonso, the director of Metropolitan Tenant’s Organization, and a native American woman, talked about women and housing. A native American woman then spoke about the pain and hurt caused by the use of Chief Illiniwk.

We ended saying we want to continue with our activities for and about women and women’s liberation all year. We plan to call for an open meeting to plan future activities. Contact us if you would like to get involved.