“This year we wanted to focus on, you know International Women’s Day and start doing something annually,” stated Jennifer Carson, Co-President of the Inland Empire Women’s March. The Inland Empire Women’s March hosted their third annual Rosie the Riveter Rally on March 9th. “To kick off our year round event we wanted to do something to lift morale. Our women are really getting fatigued and we want to celebrate all the gains we had since the first International Women’s Day 110 years ago. So, why not celebrate working women,” said Carson. “We represent the Inland Empire. Inland Empire, San Bernardino county, Riverside county is very, very big. Our goal is to touch base throughout the county to bring together all of the women,” said Sally Sudkol, Co-President of Inland Empire Women’s March.
The event started with an inspirational speech about what changes need to be made for women in America from Carson, “Can we change this country?! YES!” As she got the crowd engaged, Sudkol let us know the agenda for the day. There were raffles, booths to register to vote, booths to pre-register minors to vote, a ‘we can do it’ photo back drop, empowering posters for all to hold during the march, and plenty of women and men dressed in their denim and red scarfs, just like Rosie the Riveter. The Border Kindness booth, which brought a Uhaul and collected clothing for refugee women, had a great impact and was very beneficial to all women. “I help the founder of Border Kindness where he started by walking from Palm Springs all the way to Mexicali to bring attention to what was going on, to educate people, and he started the foundation. He (the founder) is focusing on offering resources to single moms and the children. Clothing, food, lodging, medical services and he supports all of the shelters on the Mexicali side,” stated volunteer Yolanda Brown. The IEWM board urged people to bring clothing as a donation to help support this organization, which seemed to work, “I brought a Uhaul and it is half full and we are excited because all of this I am going to take it home, sort it, label it, bag it and take it down to Mexicali next week,” said Brown.
Women and men from all over the neighboring counties came out to celebrate and support women and their accomplishments thus far, “I love how the women unite, I love how all the camaraderie you know. And since I work in Ontario, one of my coworkers told me about it and anything that can help support women’s rights you know,” stated Linda Haro who came all the way from Baldwin Park to Redlands. Kristin Washington, President of the Redlands Area Democratic Club, came out to show her support to women and the community. “I think it is important for women to come together and I think that events like this help us to remind that we have a lot of things in common,” stated Washington. Washington also mentioned, “When we come together then we start thinking about what can we do and it includes voting and it includes getting together in our organizations and helping each other in our organizations so I think coming together and exchanging ideas is always very valuable.” Another prominent woman who was at this event was Mary Touray, who formerly lived in South Africa and has survived many years of women’s rights struggles and movements, “We need to educate people who are not from here on the constitution and we need to educate the women on what they can do themselves.” Mayor Protem of Redlands, Denise Davis, was showing her full support “I am very excited this event is happening in Redlands because we don’t see events here that often. The Inland Empire does not have as much of a focus on the status of women as other counties across the country do and so I am glad to see more attention given to the status of women and to women’s empowerment events.”
The event took place at Smiley Park in Redlands because of its historical significance for all of the Inland Empire, “We know that this is the heart of where many of our workers began and we are here where there were orange packing plants and so this is just a historic area here and we try to go to different communities.” After all of the empowering speeches and agendas were given out, the empowering women’s music came on and the dancing portion began. The dancing part of the event was to help females realize and be aware of their confidence within themselves, no matter who is around. It was to help realize the picture that women can achieve and do anything they put their minds to in spite of judgement of any kind. Even young girls were encouraged to join in to start gaining their confidence at a young age; among those encouragers was Alexa Sigala, youth ambassador for Inland Empire women’s March and first child nominated for woman of the year in San Bernardino. She meets with elected officials to see what they are going to do to help girls, has met with superintendents of schools, Congress people and she believes all young women have a chance to help their community, “Go to a great school and get informed. . . I go out and protest.” When asked if she met another nine-year-old girl who did not think she could help the community, Sigala mentioned “I would tell her to always try her best.”
The event ended with the Rosie Rally March, where all attendees marched around Smiley Park chanting, “What do we do when they attack? We fight back!” Overall, the 2019 Rosie Rally had a great outcome and it was refreshing to see the community come out to support empowered women across the nation. “It is our time, I don’t care what nobody says,” said Touray.
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