In a vast church complete with flying buttresses, rows upon rows of fabric-coated pews, a magnificent organ and a slew of hot pink feminist rally posters, a dozen senior women sang protest songs loud and clear in front of a crowd of attendees, taking a stand against the patriarchy. They called themselves “The Raging Grannies.”
The grannies were raging about the same thing as everybody else in the church that evening – it was the first International Women’s Day since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court. The participants in the rally wanted abortion rights for all women in the United States. The Western Massachusetts chapter of a feminist group called CodePink arranged the rally on March 8 at First Church Sanctuary in Northampton from 6 to 8 p.m. There were a couple of dozen in-person attendees and 35 more joining via Zoom call. The theme of the event stood true to the anger that the raging grannies and other guests felt: “Women’s Voices in The Struggle for Our Bodies, Our Lives.”
In 1970, when many of the rally attendees were young women, a woman under the alias of Jane Roe sued a Texas district attorney over her right to a safe and responsible abortion. Roe won the lawsuit 7-2 in 1973, guaranteeing women the right to legal abortions across the U.S. However, in June 2022, this right was once again stripped away by the Supreme Court in the Dobbs v. Jackson case, outraging feminists across the country.
Themes of modern women having little control over their bodies continued as activist guests of the event took to the podium and began discussing their experiences with discrimination through speeches, art and performance.
The first speaker, Iranian immigrant activist Hakimeh Zadeh, told the story of her quest for community in America, and how being a minority immigrant woman excluded her from many social scenes. As she traveled, she noticed one common thread throughout everything: the discrimination faced by women on a daily basis. She found her community in feminism and fighting for minority rights. The crowd cheered for Zadeh as the next speaker, Native American artist and activist Nayana LaFond carried one of her paintings to the front and center of the church.
LaFond paints portraits of Native American women that have been murdered, raped, kidnapped, or otherwise gone missing due to the discrimination and over-sexualization of Native women. Since she began these paintings in 2020, she has painted over 100 of them completely for free, and doesn’t expect the commissions to stop anytime soon. She closed her speech by encouraging the audience to stay strong and persevere in their fight for equality.
After the speakers, protest songwriter Pamela Means began a set of original protest songs which she sang throughout the rest of the evening in between other guests. Means had one song that seemed to strike a chord with a significant amount of attendees. The song was called “SCOTUS the low,” a short ballad about a girl who had to carry her rapist’s child to term due to the decision of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe.
Means sang the song confidently at first, but as she continued, the lyrics became shaky and her voice quivered.
“Clarence, and Bret, Sam, Neal and Amy, think a child who was raped should be forced to carry a baby to term,” Mean sang as tears rolled down her cheeks, “though it grows in a child that’s too small to have their pelvic cavity dilated.”
Silence swept over the audience. “Too real to applaud,” whispered an audience member. This is why the people at the rally were there, to fight for the women that won’t have the same rights that the women before them had. To seek equality and power over their own bodies and lives.
After a few more speakers and events, the rally ended at 9 p.m, and audience members shuffled out and mingled amongst themselves, talking of the speakers and their thoughts on the event.
“I think it’s really important for us to gather, to really mobilize against what’s happening to women everywhere,” said event attendee Carol Shay, “I think the solidarity here helps us keep going and fighting for our rights.”