(Gallery) Pro-Choice Protestors Rally for Abortion Justice in Durham Saturday
Durham, NC – Yesterday afternoon (Oct. 2), hundreds of pro-choice protestors converged on Durham’s CCB Plaza for a Rally for Abortion Justice. The event was organized by engineering student Courtney Beckwith. Beckwith, “super angry” at recent news anti-abortion legislation, made a plan for Saturday’s protest with the Women’s March organization and a cadre of volunteers. Roughly 450 people registered to attend the rally, and even more showed up. (Please scroll down to view the gallery of event photos.)
A rabble-rousing speaker named Ellie thundered against the “white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy.” Skyscraping Art Deco shrines to the same loomed imposingly over the assemblage, as did the specter of anti-abortion jurisprudence. Warm, autumnal sunbeams were overcast by palpable human fear. There was fear of reactionary legislation, of course – but also fear of violent counter-protest. Some organizers described “shaking” in their trepidation. Such fears were not unfounded; this year, conflicts over abortion access have devolved into arrests and/or physical altercations in cities like New York, Salem, Ore., and San Antonio. Fear of the pre-Roe vs Wade bad old days afflicted the mind and escaped the mouth of many a marcher, even those born long after January 22, 1973.
Speaker Jennifer Albright informed the crowd of the North Carolina General Assembly’s monetary support for crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs). CPCs are nonprofit (often religious) organizations that dissuade people from seeking an abortion, sometimes through disinformation. Albright estimated there to be around 250 such centers in North Carolina.
Though a majority of Durhamites are non-white, the marchers were overwhelmingly Caucasian. There were more dogs than people of color; if that tells you anything. The pale-faced horde laid claim to the sidewalks, clogging the brick-lain arteries of historic Black Wall Street. It was tempting to draw analogies to the ongoing gentrification (read: ethnic cleansing) of the old tobacco town. The pro-choice movement, notwithstanding its positive aspects, has been tinged by racism from its inception. Even the CEO of Planned Parenthood has publicly disavowed the federation’s controversial founder, Margaret Sanger.
According to a 2017-2020 survey by Gallup, Black people in the U.S. tend to be more pro-choice than white people. Among millennials, Black women are slightly more likely than white women to identify as feminists. Yet ostensibly pro-women demonstrations continue to be dominated by a particular race.
The rally was rife with energy and passion, but it was also rife with contradiction. There was a contradiction between the trans-inclusive language of certain speakers and the trans-exclusive signage of demonstrators. People with uteri – including transgender, non-binary, and intersex individuals – rely on safe, legal abortions. There was also a contradiction between earnest efforts to create a racially inclusive environment (for example, by discouraging Handmaid’s Tale iconography) and the reality of a de facto segregated space.
The Durham Rally for Abortion Justice was held in concert with hundreds of similar events nationwide.
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(Gallery) Rally for Abortion Justice in Durham, NC (Photos: Bibi Miller):
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