8-M WOMEN’S MARCH: ELOQUENT WORDS THAT TELL THE STORY

“I don’t want flowers, I want respect, not for just a day but every day”

Accompanying the sea of voices and faces were the posters that silently mocked our
oppressors, abusers and violators. For the murdered and missing, beaten
and bruised, our voices and our words rose up through the
night to call for justice and reclaim our rights

Text & pics by Sierra Chardonnay Jackson

I’d never attended the International Women’s Day marches in New York City, so I had no idea what to expect when I traveled to Atocha with a group of friends to participate in Madrid’s March.

Women young and old huddled together on a crisp night as cigarette smoke floated up towards the streetlights. (Yes, in Madrid you can still smoke outdoors.) Behind me, three girls with boisterous voices and short bob cuts chanted No es no, lo demás es violación (“I mean it when I say No. If you still insist, that’ll be rape”). Within seconds, the chant was echoed by thousands of other women. As the chants got longer and louder, I struggled to follow along in Spanish, occasionally missing a word or replacing it with another one.

Despite my difficulties understanding the chants at times, the novelty of walking past some of Madrid’s most iconic structures while screaming Madrid será la tomba del machismo (“Madrid will be the tomb of male chauvinism”) was not lost on me.

We were a cacophony of mostly female voices shouting our defiance to the heavens. And we dared the world not to listen.

Accompanying this sea of voices and faces were the posters that silently mocked our oppressors, abusers and violators. For the murdered and missing, beaten and bruised, our voices and our words rose up through the night to call for justice and reclaim our rights.   

Here are a few posters from that night that best encompass what the march meant to all those who attended.

If we women stop, so will the world

Left: “On my way home, I want to be free, not brave (in allusion to the hazards a woman must endure with bravery as she walks through life )”

“We are the granddaughters of the witches you couldn’t burn at stake”

“The dress  I wear doesn’t say what I’d consent to”

“We’re fed up right down to the ovaries with all the balls around.”  Right: “They took away so much from us that they ended up taking away all the fear from us”