Intersectional People’s Network of Eugene/Springfield (a newly forming community organizing group), Disrupt! Eugene and So Just Collective invite the community to join them at A Rally for International Women and Women Aligned Day at the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza this coming Wednesday, March 8th at 6:00 p.m. to celebrate “International Women’s Day,” as the groups take time to honor women and transfeminine people across all intersectionalities, as a community.

They gather to celebrate and center the lives and experiences of women of color, transgender, queer, non-binary people who are women aligned, disabled, indigenous and immigrant women. The three groups recognize how these identities intersecting with “womanhood” can directly interfere with a person’s prerogative to identify as simply “woman.” This event will have an anti-racist framework to give voice to people who have been underrepresented or misrepresented.

Ashanti Gilbert, one of the event’s organizers, says, “As an African American woman living in Eugene, I felt there was a need for marginalized women’s voices to be heard and celebrated from our own perspectives, whether immigrant, women of color, Muslim, disabled or woman aligned. Much of the organizing that happens here in Eugene usually is centered on the voices of white women. While I appreciate their efforts, many of us are not afforded the freedom to identify as just ‘woman.’ We are mostly identified by the adjective before woman, that is, Black woman, Muslim woman, disabled woman, et cetera. In conjunction with International Women’s Day, we celebrate those intersections.”