Peoples Assembly Women’s Dinner: Black August, Solidarity With Prisoners

By Shera Phillips

I am increasingly more and more excited for each Women Dinner’s Wednesday. This past one set fire down in my soul. August is famous for solidarity with the incarcerated in the form of black august. There have been prison strikes all over the country in which the incarcerated demand to be regarded as human beings.

I learned a great deal and we had a host of dynamic speakers educate us on various topics from mass incarceration and its connection to slavery and racism, the enormous capitalistic gains of private corporations and individuals made by the prison complex, what a world could look like without prisons and a powerful testimony of how the prison industry has affected the institution of family made by Fox Rich, as well as spoken word.

The power in the room moved many to tears. We sang, we shouted and we cried. We found community, empowerment and ways to engage in this much needed work for liberation of all.

Join us in our next Women’s Dinner Wednesday where will be hosting a community sing. Singing negro spirituals fuels us, encourages us, purges us, and rejuvenates us. We are reminded of the state of being and passion of our ancestors as they endured and fought for non-negotiable progress.

Peoples’ Assembly Women’s Dinner Wednesdays

The New Orleans Peoples Assembly Organizing Committee meets every Wednesday. The first Wednesday of every month is dedicated to our monthly Women’s Dinner Wednesday. On Women’s Dinner Wednesday, we gather as working class women to connect, build in strength, and become informed about the specific systems that affect our lives most, and how to overcome oppression that hinders and harms our abilities to be healthy and whole. We are bold in the fact that we center working class women, which includes those impacted by homelessness.

During our first two meetings, we focused on the history of International Working Women’s day and what it means to us now, and also the “Work Week Ordinance” that the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Committee is advancing on behalf of the 88,000 hospitality workers and all other workers in the city. This is important because women make up such a large force of the working class, and the impact on our lives, children and families is straining and oppressive.

Audre Lorde said, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” This is why we call out to all working class women to join forces to organize on behalf of our collective liberation.

Contact us at:
Facebook.com/NewOrleansPeoplesAssemblyOrganizingCommittee/