Important Dates in the Month of August

August 23rd is International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.

August 26th is Women's Equality Day.

I had never heard of the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. I visited the UNESCO site and read about the countries where it was first celebrated in 1998 and 1999. I was disappointed, though not surprised, when I checked out the Strategic Advisory Board for UNESCO and the board was lacking Black womxn. Black womxn have been fighting for peace, equality, and justice but are not credited or elevated to positions of leadership that they deserve. See below.

According to the National Women’s History Alliance site, “At the behest of Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY), in 1971 and passed in 1973,  the U.S. Congress designated August 26 as ‘Women’s Equality Day.’ The date was selected to commemorate the 1920 certification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote.”As I read about Women’s Equality Day, the Sincerely, Lettie podcast episode “Your Heroes Are Not Mine: The Problematic Whitewashing of Women’s Suffrage” from March 4, 2020 kept coming to my mind. I also thought of Ijeoma Oluo’s words in So You Want to Talk About Race as I reflected on the chapter “What is intersectionality and why do I need it?” Oluo wrote, “How do our social justice efforts so often fail to help the most vulnerable in our populations? This is primarily a result of unexamined privilege. Because of how rarely our privilege is examined, even our social justice movements will tend to focus on the most privileged and most well represented people within those groups. Anti-racism groups will often tend to prioritize the needs of straight men of color, feminist groups will tend to prioritize the needs of white women, LGBTQ groups will tend to prioritize the needs of white gay cisgender men, disability rights groups will tend to prioritize the needs of disabled white men. Imagine where this leaves a disabled Latinx trans woman on any group’s priority list.”

I am committed to learning, financially supporting activists, advocates, authors, and educators who challenge and broaden the narrative, and dismantling systems of oppression under their leadership.

#August #August23 #InternationalDayfortheRemembranceoftheSlaveTradeanditsAbolition #nowhitesaviors #August26 #WomensEqualityDay #equality #intersectionality #intersectionalitymatters #intersectionalityisessential #whitefeminismisnotfeminism #seekjustice #socialjustice #justice #enddiscrimination #dismantleALLsystemsofoppression #peace #nojusticenopeace #knowjusticeknowpeace #research #support #love #loveyourneighbor #challengethenarrative #broadeningthenarrative