Pro-Women’s March

by Lehua La’a

‘Will the Women’s March put a stop to the Saudi Embassy torture and imprisonment of female rape victims? No? Then the Women’s March in Washington is not really about the equal treatment of women.’

This meme floated around my newsfeed on Saturday during the Women’s March in D.C., shared mostly by conservative-leaning friends on my Facebook feed. This week’s fallacy attempted to downplay the reason why an estimated 3.3 million people marched in 500 cities in both the U.S. and around the world. The Women’s March is the largest protest in U.S. history according to Time Magazine. So why are so many people against it?

“Women are treated as equals here in the U.S. Look at other countries and see how women are mistreated, we have it pretty dang good here,” conservative friends on Facebook said.

 Good news, we don’t have to look around the world to see women being mistreated; we can check our backyard. The U.S. criminal justice system does not always punish rapists to the full capacity. The U.S. has an embarrassingly low record of rape convictions. Nine hundred and ninety four out of 1,000 rapists will not be convicted according to the national sexual assault hotline, Rainn.

What about the high sexually transmitted infections on continents like Africa? Guess what, Indiana had a 70 percent increase in STIs in one year because doctors were not routinely checking for them. This happened after Indiana shut down rural HIV testing centers (like Planned Parenthood) according to Huffington Post under the watch of Governor, turned Vice President, Mike Pence in 2015.

“Child marriages only happen in places like India,” an ignorant Facebook friend may say. Unfortunately, in 2011 it was estimated that 3,000 child marriages took place in the United States according to a Tahirih Justice Center survey.

“People in the U.S. do not experience poverty or being hungry like women in developing nations do,” an uninformed person may say. However, according to a 2015 survey by UC Davis, 43.1 million Americans sat below the poverty line.

So do us all a favor and stop using ‘less fortunate people of other countries’ as an excuse to not care. Those who participated in the Women’s March are not ‘whiny snowflakes,’ but informed citizens using their First Amendment right to protest peacefully.

A different kind of March Madness

by Lauren Heaton

I have seen the brokenness in our world. I see the hurt that lies behind the anger in the faces of the hundreds of thousands of humans who marched all over the world.  We are divided. There is so much anger in our hearts right now that it blinds us.

“Not my president!” you proclaim, but he is.

President Trump has been elected. He won the electoral college vote. And while I am not thrilled he was the final choice, I will support him, pray for him and do my part to take actions in our political system to see that he and Congress makes decisions that work for the good of all Americans. I encourage you to do the same, and I am so glad that the people who used their liberty to protest did so in a peaceful manner.

As Catholic writer Jenny Uebbing so eloquently said, “The freedom to choose whether and when you will take the life of another human being is no freedom at all; it is slavery of the basest sort. To proclaim that the rights of women are founded on the trampled rights of the child is no achievement of civil progress, it is a redistribution of pain and abuse, trickled down to the smallest and meekest ones.”

It has been said by American Bishop Ven. Fulton J. Sheen that, “The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.” And so I ask you ladies, is this how you want to be remembered? As angry women walking around with vulgar posters and vagina hats?

I don’t.

You have made your voices heard, and now it is time for you to follow through with good actions. Be brave women, but be kind. Ask for that raise or promotion, but don’t demand it. Disagree with politicians, but don’t just write an angry blog post. Get involved in your local politics. Most importantly, stop trying to rise by pushing others down. Be women of compassion, not women of anger.