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Women are part of the 99%: JASS Weighs In on Occupy

  • JASS

Women involved in JASSā€™ movement-building everywhere are connecting with and buzzing about the US-driven Occupy Movements. Inspired by and learning lessons from the tactics and strategies the organizers are using, JASS nevertheless looks for the voices and inequality agendas of women in all their diversity. In her piece for OpenDemocracy about old, new and contradictory forms of movement organizing against injustice and inequality Lisa VeneKlasen, JASS ED, asks, ā€œHow is it that the whole world is seemingly mobilizing against inequality and injustice at the same time that the global consensus about womenā€™s equality is cracking and a steady rollback of womenā€™s rights is underway?” She argues that womenā€™s movements are not only vital to the 99%, but have lessons to share with Occupy about surviving cooptation and backlash.

Following the news that women are part of the 99%, Occupy Wall Street had to set up a women-only safe-space sleeping tent because of growing sexual assaults ā€“ including one alleged rape. JASS Mesoamerica‘s Alda Facio reflects on the Occupy Movementā€™s lack of discourse around womenā€™s rights, womenā€™s bodies and violence against women- ā€œWhat makes me despair most is knowing that if the Occupy Movement, or any other social justice movement, were to achieve its goal or dream, womenā€™s bodies would continue to be raped because ending male violence against women is not part of the hoped-for transformations.”

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