Over 70 young activists and interns assembled at the Feminist Majority’s Los Angeles offices Tuesday for a briefing on Save Women’s Lives – March for Freedom of Choice, to take place April 25, 2004 in Washington, DC. The Feminist Majority interns addressed a diverse crowd of young people, presenting comprehensive information on the devastating effects of current reproductive policy in the US, the logistics of delegation organizing, fundraising, and coalition building, and the mechanics of traveling to Washington for the March.
Amy Exelby of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles kicked off the briefing by underscoring the historical nature of the March for Freedom of Choice as an unprecedented “coalition-based organizational effort” by four major women’s rights and reproductive rights organizations: The Feminist Majority, NARAL Pro Choice America, the National Organization for Women, and Planned Parenthood. “We are the majority,” said FMF field organizer duVergne Gaines. Gaines went on to call on attendees to join in taking the pro-choice message to Washington next April, identifying the young audience members’ participation in the March as a political and intellectual voyage that would become “one of the most incredible experiences” of their lives.
Drawing upon the writings of First Wave feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Feminist Majority Foundation intern program coordinator and researcher Emma Lance O’Toole closed the briefing with a rousing call to massive, concerted “public protest and discussion” in the face of the reproductive health crisis fostered by US domestic and foreign policy on women’s basic reproductive freedoms. Armed with the tools with which to go back to their campuses and organizations and begin mobilizing support and delegations for the March, the L.A. summer interns and young activists brainstormed, networked and caucused to ensure unprecedented student involvement from both coasts in the March for Freedom of Choice, April 25, 2004, in Washington, DC.
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