Around a hundred protesters gathered at the Clarendon building this afternoon in an International Women’s Day protest entitled “Our Feminism Knows No Borders”. The protest was organised by Oxford Student Action for Refugees (STAR) and the Coalition to Close Campsfield (CCC), a local activist group.
Protesters held banners with the slogans: “Our feminism knows no borders” and “close Campsfield and every IRC [Immigration Removal Centre]”. Placards and posters in different languages were placed on the steps of the building.
Two students sat on the steps held a sign reading “fuck the far right”. They told Cherwell that they believed in “intersectional feminism, anti-TERF [Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism], anti-Farage, anti all of that.”
A young girl standing in the crowd held a sign reading: “Our society is built on the labour and skills of underpaid migrant women. They deserve respect, equality and human rights.”
One of the protest’s organisers told Cherwell: “It feels that women’s rights are genuinely under attack everywhere in the world… I see that communities are hungry for solidarity… we have people across different coalitions who are here.
“Women’s rights is not an issue which is added on to other issues, it is an issue which galvanises, and in which people find common ground. It’s really beautiful to stand here in solidarity with migrants, with the trans community, with workers, and with women across the world.”
Speaking to the crowd, Jabu Nala-Hartley, an activist from a local group Mothers 4 Justice Ubuntu (M4JU) called on attendees to: “Rise, resist, and stand in global sisterhood.” M4JU describe themselves as “a collective of family members and activists directly supporting people who have come into contact with the criminal justice system.”
She said: “We refuse to be silent in a world that benefits from our silence.” Commenting on the scale of the protest, Nala-Hartley told Cherwell: “The issue is so big that this is just a small crowd.”
Today’s protest follows feminist demonstrations against right-wing anti-immigrant politics earlier this week in Oxford. Around ten activists from Oxford Women Against the Far Right (WAFR), a campaigning group within the larger anti-racist organisation Stand Up to Racism (SUTR), held a counter-protest against the British nationalist group Oxfordshire Patriots on Friday. The latter group were staging a protest outside Oxford Crown Court on St Aldate’s, as a foreign national appeared for a plea hearing charged with sexual offences.
An Instagram post by Oxford SUTR accused Oxfordshire Patriots of “hijacking the suffering of a victim of a terrible crime to further their campaign of racialising sexual violence against women”.
Responding to claims that their protest was racist, an Oxfordshire Patriots spokesperson told Cherwell: “Oxfordshire Patriots does not organise protests to target any race, religion or background. Our focus is on justice, community safety and supporting victims.”
Reporting by Oskar Doepke, Mercedes Haas, Archie Johnston, Lucy Pollock, Ned Remington, and Hattie Simpson.
