Thousands Marched To Protest Trump’s Supreme Court Pick at Washington Women’s March
New
Age Islam News Bureau
18 October 2020
• Thousands Marched To Protest Trump’s Supreme Court Pick at Washington Women’s March
• Oman’s First Lady Makes Debut Appearance on Omani
Women’s Day
• A Group of Activists Protest Imprisonment Of
Egyptian TikTok Women
• Bangladesh: Age Old Traditional Artisanship Is Being
Carried Forward By Female Artisans
• Trump Continues Bizarre Appeals to Suburban Women As
He Campaigns In Covid Hotspots
Compiled by New
Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/thousands-marched-protest-trumps-supreme/d/123183
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Thousands Marched To Protest Trump’s Supreme Court Pick At Washington Women’s March
By: Reuters
October 18, 2020
Women's rights advocates say they fear Amy Coney
Barrett, US President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, will restrict
abortion access in the US [Erin Scott/Reuters]
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Thousands marched to the U.S. Supreme Court in
Washington on Saturday to commemorate the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and
protest President Donald Trump’s rush to push through Amy Coney Barrett as her
replacement.
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled an
Oct. 22 vote on the nomination of Barrett, a conservative appellate judge, over
objections from Democrats that the confirmation process comes too close to the
Nov. 3 presidential election.
More than 26 million Americans have already cast their
ballots for who they want to sit in the White House for the next four years,
Trump or his Democratic rival Joe Biden.
Demonstrators at the Women’s March said they were
angry that Republicans appear ready to confirm Barrett’s nomination so close to
Election Day after refusing to move forward Merrick Garland, the pick of former
President Barack Obama, a Democrat, more than six months ahead of the 2016
election.
“The fact of the matter is that we are powerful and
they are afraid,” said Sonja Spoo, the director of the reproductive rights
campaigns at UltraViolet, a feminist advocacy group, one of the speakers at the
protest. “They are on the ropes and they know it and we are about to give the
knock-out punch.”
Ginsburg, a liberal champion of women’s rights, died
on Sept. 18.
Prudence Sullivan, 49, from Lake in the Hills,
Illinois, near Chicago, and her sister Kelli Padgett, 47, from Jacksonville,
Florida, flew in to join what they described as an energizing and empowering
event.
“We’ve had losses from COVID and we’ve clashed with
family members over racism, Black Lives Matter,” Sullivan said. “So this is
something where I can put my money where my mouth is.”
Sullivan said she and her husband, an IT expert, were
looking at options for moving overseas if Trump was reelected.
The protesters marched through downtown Washington to
the Supreme Court steps. Hundreds of marches and demonstrations were planned at
city halls, parks and monuments across the country.
In confirmation hearings this week, Barrett
side-stepped questions about presidential powers, abortion, climate change,
voting rights and Obamacare, saying she could not answer because cases
involving these matters could come before the court.
https://indianexpress.com/article/world/thousands-protest-trumps-supreme-court-pick-at-washington-womens-march-6767136/
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Oman’s First Lady Makes Debut Appearance on Omani
Women’s Day
ARAB NEWS
October 17, 2020
Dr. Fatima Mohammed Al-Ajmi receives her medal from
Ahad bint Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Busaidiyah. (Supplied)
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LONDON: Oman’s first lady made her first appearance on
Saturday when she bestowed royal awards to a number of women on the country’s
women’s day.
Ahad bint Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Busaidiyah hosted a
ceremony at the Seeb Palace during which she awarded the Royal Commendation
Medal to several women.
Among the recipients of the award was the Omani
Ministry of Health’s Undersecretary for Administrative, Financial, and Planning
Affairs Dr. Fatima Mohammed Al-Ajmi.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1750261/middle-east
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A Group of Activists Protest Imprisonment Of Egyptian
TikTok Women
By Brittany Henriques
October 17, 2020
A group of activists gathered in downtown Montreal on
Saturday to demonstrate against the imprisonment of nine Egyptian women for
videos they posted online.
The women, who have been jailed since April 2020, were
arrested for posting videos to the platform TikTok of themselves dancing and
singing along to songs.
“I cant believe this is happening,” said organizer
Dalia Tawfik who was among the demonstrators asking for the release of the nine
women. “I can’t believe that we’re in 2020 and that we have to fight to able to
post things that we want to post (online).”
“I was really shocked. This is not a matter for the
courts,” said Ehab Lotayef, member of the Egyptian Canadian Coalition for
Democracy.
Five of the nine girls have already been sentenced
with fines and two years in jail for violating family values.
Haneen Hossam, Mawada Al-Adham’s and three others who
assisted them with their social media have been charged with inciting
debauchery and immorality, according to Al-Jazeera news network.
“They have fines up to US $19,000 each. They have to
pay (that) on top of the sentence,” said Tawfik.
Protesters said these women have been stripped of
their freedom and basic human rights.
“The government doesn’t want any free expression on
any level,” said Lotayef. “They don’t want people to speak (on platforms) that
they can’t control.”
“We are here because we have privileges, we have
rights, we have freedom of speech — where I can be here today, I can protest,”
said Tawfik. “I can say this is not right — lets do something about it, whereas
these women don’t have that. They don’t have that voice.”
Some say the government is afraid its people will
start to use social media platforms like TikTok to speak out against it.
“Today maybe they’re only talking about dancing or
dresses or fashion, but in the future one of them or more might talk about
social or political issues,” said Lotayef. “And that’s what freaks them out.”
Lotayef says Egypt controls all forms of art, but when
it comes to social media, they have little to no power. Instead, he says, they
insight fear in people that if they follow in these young women’s footsteps,
they too could be imprisoned.
Many demonstrators feel the arrests were misogynistic
and targeted towards controlling women.
“Imagine that you live in a country where a man can
hold a woman’s future in the palm of his hands,” said demonstrator and lawyer
Marlene Tawfik.
Marlene, a Canadian-born woman of Egyptian descent,
says she feels a sense of guilt when looking at her freedom and privileges.
“Women are being jailed for doing things that we here
in Canada are allowed to do,” she said. “I’ve never been to Egypt and that’s a
conscious decision. I don’t feel its safe there.”
According to some, it’s even hypocritical of the
Egyptian government to claim the videos go ‘against family morals.’
“The hypocrisy of it all is what really gets to you,”
said Lotayef. “When you’re Egyptian, when you know the society and know how
many belly dancing videos are out there…”
Montrealers at the protest are asking Canada to take a
stronger stance when it comes to the issues in Egypt.
“Egypt is being treated so delicately by the Canadian
government,” said Lotayef. “(We) ask the Canadian government to take strong
positions, like they take strong positions regarding Belarus or Ukraine.”
“I feel like no change can happen without a fight and
we’re tired of being silent,” Marlene Tawfik said.
https://globalnews.ca/news/7403681/montreal-egyptian-tik-tok/
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Bangladesh: Age Old Traditional Artisanship Is Being
Carried Forward By Female Artisans
October 17th, 2020
Syed Zakir Hossain
The country’s age old traditional artisanship is being
carried forward to the postmodern world thanks to these Bangladeshi women.
Millenia old techniques, craft, and skill are passed down from generation to
generation for centuries over. A few women are making Shitol pati, a mat made
from bamboo fibre in Sirajganj. Some women are weaving carpets from wool in
Rangpur, called Shatranji. Nakshi katha, fans, baskets are also produced by
these women. These items have great value and recognition at home and abroad
and support these women and their families in rural Bangladesh
https://www.dhakatribune.com/image-gallery/2020/10/17/female-artisans-of-bangladesh
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Trump continues bizarre appeals to suburban women as
he campaigns in Covid hotspots
by Maeve Reston
18-10-2020
(CNN)If President Donald Trump loses his reelection
bid in November, it will be in part because of his fundamental misunderstanding
of the beliefs of "suburban women," whom he has tried to win back
with a series of bizarre and racist appeals that seem more targeted to a
stereotype from the 1950s and 1960s than the American women who actually live
in those areas today.
Many of the female voters who have abandoned Trump
recoil from his divisive language and disapprove of both his handling of race
relations and the pandemic. But he has tried to convince them to support him
through a campaign of fear and xenophobia, with claims about the Democratic
agenda that plunge deep into the realm of the ridiculous and would be believed
only by the most naïve, low-information voters.
His speech Saturday night in Michigan exemplified
those political miscalculations when it comes to women he has referred to as
the "suburban housewives of America" as he tried to create fear about
crime from immigrants and argued that Joe Biden will upend life in the suburbs
by putting public housing projects in the middle of leafy neighborhoods -- a
reference to an Obama-era housing regulation aimed at ending segregation.
"Would you like a nice low-income housing project
next to your suburban beautiful ranch style house? Generally speaking,
no," Trump said in Muskegon. "I saved your suburbs -- women --
suburban women, you're supposed to love Trump," he said.
The President went on to make the ludicrous claim that
Biden and Democrats want to overwhelm Michigan neighborhoods with refugees from
Syria, Somalia and Yemen, and "poorly vetted migrants from jihadist
regions."
Continuing his long-standing pattern of mocking women
he perceives as opponents in sexist or misogynistic language — a tactic that
does not go over well with women in either party — Trump attacked Democratic
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer during the same rally, along with his 2016
opponent Hillary Clinton, and NBC's Savannah Guthrie, who moderated his
Thursday night town hall.
Trump accused Whitmer, whom he has previously called
"a dictator," of unnecessarily locking down her state as she fought
the pandemic. That led his crowd to break into a chant of "Lock her
up!" a little more than a week after federal authorities revealed a plot
by extremists to kidnap Whitmer and overthrow the government.
Rather than condemning the derailed plot — which led
to terrorism, conspiracy and weapons charges against more than a dozen men — or
discouraging that kind of divisive language, Trump essentially endorsed the
cheer with his authoritarian rhetoric about jailing his political opponents by
adding Clinton and the Biden family into the mix.
He complained that Whitmer said publicly that his
refusal to denounce White supremacists, extremists and hate groups has
emboldened activists like those who allegedly planned the foiled attack against
her.
"I guess they said she was threatened,
right?" Trump said, seeming to doubt the specifics of the case and
underplaying the violence it could have entailed. "She was threatened, and
she blamed me — she blamed me, and our people were the ones that worked with
her people, so let's see what happens."
Whitmer immediately responded on Twitter: "This
is exactly the rhetoric that has put me, my family, and other government
officials' lives in danger while we try to save the lives of our fellow
Americans. It needs to stop." Her staff echoed that plea. "Every
single time the President does this at a rally, the violent rhetoric towards
her immediately escalates on social media. It has to stop. It just has
to," her deputy digital director wrote on Twitter.
On Friday at a campaign event in Detroit, Biden
condemned Trump for refusing to denounce White supremacist groups at the first
debate and for criticizing Whitmer after the kidnapping plot was revealed.
"What the hell's the matter with this guy?"
Biden said. "Attacking Governor Whitmer on the same day this plot was
exposed. It's despicable."
At his rallies Friday night and Saturday, Trump also
attacked Guthrie as angry and overly emotional during the NBC town hall.
"Her face -- the anger, the craziness," he
said, describing how he viewed the dynamic during a speech to his supporters
Friday night. As he doubled down on the trope of the hysterical woman, he added
that he told Guthrie to "Take it easy. Relax."
Later in Janesville, Wisconsin, Saturday night, the
President tried to undermine the credentials of the next female debate
moderator, NBC News White House Correspondent Kristen Welker, by claiming that
he'd known her "for a long time" and that "she is very
unfair." The final presidential debate, which Welker will moderate, is on
Thursday in Nashville, Tennessee.
It remains unclear if the President simply does not
understand how those attacks on women could backfire at a time when millions of
female voters are deciding whether to give him a second chance, or whether he
simply can't resist engaging in those tactics because they rev up his crowds.
Biden was up by 25 points among women voters in an average of the last five
live interview polls, according to an analysis by CNN's Harry Enten. In the
final pre-election polls in 2016, Hillary Clinton only had a 13-point edge
among likely female voters.
"The fake news keep saying that suburban women
don't like me because I don't sound nice," the President said. "I
don't have time to be nice. I got a lot of work to do for you."
But his remarks have gone far beyond the limits of
acceptable political discourse: he has referred to Democratic vice presidential
nominee Kamala Harris as "a monster" and recently said of Clinton,
"the glass ceiling broke her."
While returning to some of his old lines from the
summer about how the radical left plans "to erase American history, purge
American values and destroy the American way of life," Trump tried to
revive the debate Saturday night over removing monuments that glorify American
historical figures who were slave owners.
"This election will decide whether we preserve
our magnificent heritage or whether we let far left radicals wipe it all
away," he said. "They constantly smear America as a racist country.
... America is the most magnificent, most virtuous nation that has ever
existed."
At one point, he described his joy in watching law
enforcement authorities move in on crowds to prevent violence in Minneapolis
after the protests against racial injustice.
"I don't know, there's something about that —
when you watch everybody getting pushed around — there's something very beautiful
about it. I don't care what I'm doing. Not politically correct ... But you
people get it."
Trump campaigned in Wisconsin and Michigan on Saturday
while scarcely mentioning the coronavirus pandemic, despite the fact that cases
are rising in a majority of states across the country.
Michigan's case count on Friday was the state's
highest number of positive test results reported in one day, according to the
state's Department of Health and Human Services.
Wisconsin also reported a new record high number of
cases on Friday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The state's
positivity rate was at 23.91% as of Saturday morning, according to the COVID
Tracking project.
On Friday, US Surgeon General Jerome Adams said
Wisconsin is one of the Covid-19 "red" states that federal officials
are watching closely.
"Your positivity rates are over 10% and going in
the wrong direction. Cases are in the red, going in the wrong direction,"
Adams said during a news conference in Wisconsin Friday. "It is critical that
we actually understand where this virus is circulating so that we could get
cases under control and reverse positivity."
Without laying out any specifics, Trump claimed
Saturday that his plan "will crush the virus" and said his teams are
working toward a safe vaccine and a "very rapid recovery."
He acknowledged at one point that some states are
currently seeing spikes, but then downplayed those increases in cases as part
of a typical pattern for the virus.
Trump said there had been a recent spike or surge in
cases in states like Arizona and Florida, but then insisted that it went back
down.
"You've got to open up," he said in
Wisconsin. "You've got to get your place going."
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/18/politics/donald-trump-women-gretchen-whitmer/index.html
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