On January 21, women from across Nova Scotia will be rallying in front of Halifax City Hall as part of a world-wide day of support for the Women’s March in Washington. These events come one day after the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States.
According to the organizers of the Washington event, marchers are standing together “in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families - recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country.”
“Our whole goal is to support people in the U.S.,” said Jackie Barkhouse, a former Halifax City Councillor and one of the organizers of the Halifax rally. “We are making a statement about our concerns about Trump as a world leader and our fear of the hatred that his whole campaign hinged around. We want to stand with sisters and brothers.”
Organizers have applied for a permit to rally on the Grand Parade in front of City Hall from 1pm to 3pm on January 21. “We decided to make it a rally and not a march because we want people of all ages to be able to participated,” Barkhouse explained. “We were concerned about the dangers of icy sidewalks.”
The Halifax rally will be one of more than a dozen events in Canada, and groups of Canadians have already chartered buses to make the trip to Washington. Worldwide, people have organized rallies and demonstrations in more than 25 countries.
“People everywhere are recognizing that Trump’s election is not just a problem for people in the U.S. to deal with,” Barkhouse said. “This is a world view. What Trump has said he’s planning to do will have a huge impact worldwide. We just can’t afford to sit back and take the view that Trump is someone else’s problem.”
The January 21st rally comes on the heels of the opening of “Walking with Our Sisters,” an exhibit at Mount Saint Vincent University that runs from January 14th through February 1st in the MSVU Art Gallery. According to a press release from the organizers, "Walking With Our Sisters is a commemoration honoring missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people through ceremony, community and reflection.” The exhibit featured more than 1800 pairs of moccasin tops (vamps) made by artists across the country to symbolize the more than 1,180 missing or murdered women and girls over the last 30 years in Canada and the U.S.