25 November will be the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls. Socialist Feminist Alternative is calling for action coalitions to be formed across the country, which can call major protests. If you would like to be involved, please get in touch. Below is a model email, which can be used to build support for this in your local area.
Dear [NAME OF UNION/CAMPAIGN]
We are writing to you to ask if you would participate in a coalition of feminist organisations to organise a protest in [NAME OF TOWN] to mark the International Day For The Elimination Of Violence Against Women And Girls on 25 November.
In recent years we have seen huge feminist waves in countries around the world – some have won significant victories like the right to abortion. Here in Britain there have been sizeable protest waves, for example after the murders of Sarah Everard in 2021 and Brianna Ghey earlier this year. Socialist Alternative believes that the feminist and workers’ movements urgently need to go on the offensive – organising protests not only in response to immediate outrages but fighting for the type of change needed to end gender violence once and for all.
That is why we are calling for the formation of coalitions in the run up to 25 November this year to organise local protests against gender violence, which in particular take up some of the key issues facing our movements in this period. In our view these include:
- Trans Lives Matter – the transphobic murder of Brianna Ghey brought into horrifying light the consequence of the reactionary rhetoric of the Tories and the ‘debates’ in the media over trans people’s very right to exist. The fight against gender violence means the fight for trans rights.
- Make our schools safe places for all – using age-old scare tactics about the need to ‘protect children’, the right are using our schools as a battle ground in their culture wars. That includes proposals to attempt to force education workers to out trans and non-binary pupils to their parents, as well as many schools holding transphobic, racist and misogynistic uniform policies, and generally being hostile places to be for many young women and gender non-conforming people.
- Fight back against the right and the Tories’ culture wars – their system is in crisis on all fronts, and as always their response is to attempt to turn the blame on the most marginalised and oppressed in an attempt to distract from the cost of living, climate change and Tory in-fighting. From the moral panic about trans people’s participation in sport, to vile racism against refugees, to the archaic prosecution of people procuring abortion outside of the stringent outdated laws, it is disproportionately women and gender non-conforming people paying the price with our lives and our right to bodily autonomy. Capitalist institutions will never keep us safe – reports have exposed that many police officers themselves are abusers, leaving little wonder at the low prosecution rate for rape. The whole system is violent against women and LGBTQ+ people.
We want to discuss these issues and any others you think are relevant and see where we can work together on demands and action. We would provisionally propose an organising meeting on [TIME AND DATE] at [PLACE] to begin to discuss what we could organise for 25 November (though please also get back to us if you would like to participate and cannot take part at that time). Your members’ participation as individuals, or – even better – with official mandate by your organisation would be a big asset to this campaign.
In solidarity,
[NAME]
