Oviedo/Gijón/Mieres (EFE).- Thousands of people have taken to the streets this Wednesday in the different mobilizations called throughout the Asturian geography to commemorate an International Women’s Day that, on this occasion, has been marked by the division of the feminist movement.
The Principality has once again mobilized to commemorate 8M with various activities, demonstrations and rallies and with an institutional act organized by the regional government in Gijón, from which Podemos has distanced itself.
The purple formation has not come due to the criticisms leveled by those responsible for Equality of the Principality towards the minister of the branch, Irene Montero, confronted with her socialist partners in the Government for the reform of the law of only yes is yes, as assured by her internal coordinator, Rafael Palacios.
Barbón rejects enclosing feminism in acronyms
In the institutional act, the president of the regional Executive stressed that the coincidence “of the greatest social power of 8M with its greatest political division” is a “paradox”.
“Everything, because of a serious mistake: trying to patrimonialize feminism, obsessed with shrinking it and enclosing it in a few acronyms, trying to bend it to a party strategy,” he pointed out.
Barbón has valued that feminism is the movement “with the most transformative force of the 21st century”, for which reason he has appealed to their union in the face of the “obvious fragmentation” that exists due to a “useless dispute of identities”.
The 8M has acquired an “unthinkable dimension just a few years ago”, but, as he has warned, this reality “coexists with an evident fragmentation of feminism”.
“To deny it is to close your eyes, a useless effort. I’m not talking about discursive heights, about complex theoretical constructions. At these peaks it is understandable, and even healthy, that there are differences. I am referring to the parliament and the street, with all the letters ”, he pointed out in this regard.
In his opinion, this “artificial division is irresponsible, when the extreme populist right has set its first target on equality.”
Demonstrations in Gijón and Mieres
International Women’s Day in Asturias has been marked by numerous activities, concentrations spread throughout the Asturian geography and two demonstrations held in the afternoon as a climax to this commemoration.
The feminist movement integrated into the Asturies 8M Platform has called its demonstration, for the first time, in Mieres, while the Student Union and the Libres y Combativas collective have made their own call at the same time but in Gijón, considering that “excludes” in the first the trans collective.
In Mieres, several thousand protesters have left after 7:00 p.m. from Pozo Barredo, under the slogan “Compañera, give me a shot”, to travel more than two kilometers to the Polytechnic where a manifesto will be read in which the ” unity” and “sorority”, in the face of “hate speech”.
More than thirty buses arriving from various parts of the Principality have responded to the call of the Asturies Feminista 8M collective, which has demanded an end to “institutional violence, patriarchal and systemic justice” and “labour exploitation and economic violence” that women suffer in the form of temporality and precariousness.
In Gijón, around 200 people have attended the alternative demonstration that has started from the Plaza de El Bibio, with the forecast of culminating in El Humedal, shouting “You fascists are the terrorists” and “Patriarchy and capital, criminal alliance ”.
In addition to calling for this march together with other union groups, the Student Union and the Libres y Combativas collective have organized marches in Oviedo and Gijón at noon on a student strike day.
Hundreds of young people have participated in both actions that have walked some of the main streets of the urban center to demand a “class, revolutionary and anti-capitalist” feminism in which the trans collective “has a place”. EFE
