Press

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, October 31st, 2018
CONTACT: Yasmina Dardari | yasmina@unbendablemedia.com

Ahead of Midterms, Women’s Group Unveils ‘Feminist Future Agenda,’ Microsite 

Women Prepared to Fight for Racial Justice, Reproductive Freedom, Immigrant Justice, and More in 2019 and Beyond

** https://weareultraviolet.org/feministfuture/**

WASHINGTON, DC — UltraViolet, a leading national women’s group, has unveiled its new ‘Feminist Future Agenda,’ outlining an intersectional vision of key battles post-midterm elections that impact the lives of women. As women are running for office, voting, and volunteering in record numbers, UltraViolet’s Feminist Future agenda demands policies that ensure that all people regardless of gender, socioeconomic status, race, ability, or immigration background can live with dignity. The Feminist Future agenda was created with the input of thousands of UltraViolet members across the country, and represents what UltraViolet members are prepared to fight for in 2019 and beyond.

VIEW THE MICROSITE HERE: https://weareultraviolet.org/feministfuture/

UltraViolet’s Feminist Future Agenda includes twelve key principles: 

1. Disability Justice: All people, including those living with a disability, have the right to live dignified, full, self-directed lives. We must create systems of healthcare, education, housing, and employment that care for ALL people and fully address the needs of those with disabilities.
2. End to Gender-based Violence: We demand a world where sexual assault, sexual harassment, and domestic violence are increasingly rare–and when they happen, survivors are supported and perpetrators held accountable. Our children deserve comprehensive consent-based sex education, so they can become adults with healthy, shame-free views on sexuality and relationships.
3. Economic Security for All: We demand a nation where people have what they need to live with dignity. All people, especially women who are most often caretakers for children and the elderly, need their basic needs met. Those include affordable housing, a living wage, paid time off to care oneself or family, a system of equal pay for equal work, and a social safety net for those who cannot work. We envision a world where all work, especially that traditionally done by women, is respected, and where one’s worth is not defined by their productivity.
4. Health Care for All: We must create a system where everyone has access to affordable, quality, and culturally competent health care, including mental health services.
5. Healthy Environments: Today, too many lawmakers are standing aside as corporations make profits off damaging the environment, especially in communities of color and on Tribal lands. We deserve healthy, toxin-free land, clean air, and clean water to nourish our families, communities, and futures. We must implement solutions to protect the environment and our families and to stop the worst impacts of climate change.
6. Immigrant Justice: People have an inherent right to seek better lives for themselves and their families. We deserve an immigration system that includes fair and just pathways to citizenship for immigrants–three quarters of whom are women and children–and asylum-seekers, and that keeps families safe, together, and free to maintain their dignity as human beings without incarceration.
7. Justice in our “Justice System”: From over policing in communities of color to jailing survivors of domestic violence, our justice system is full of inequalities. The result is far too many people in jail away from their loved ones and families, while for-profit prisons make money off pain and isolation. We demand an end to over-sentencing and for-profit prisons. We deserve a system that supports survivors of violence instead of jailing them, and structures that investment in treatment programs instead of jails so our community members can return to their lives, families, and work.
8. LGBTQ Equity: We deserve and demand a society that celebrates and honors a vast diversity of genders and sexualities, and where all people live free from bullying, violence, and discrimination in workplaces, schools, communities, and in accessing healthcare. This is especially crucial for our LGB and trans/gender non-conforming children, who experience violence, discrimination, and self-harm at disturbingly high rates compared to their non-LGBTQ peers.
9. Racial Justice: We must work together to dismantle white supremacy and create racial equity in every basic aspect of life, including housing, employment, education, health care, the justice system, and representation in appointed and elected bodies.
10. Reproductive Freedom: All people deserve access to non-judgmental, complete care to create and raise their families as they choose, regardless of their income or zip code. Reproductive decisions–including abortion–should be accessible, affordable, and affirming. Let’s make it a reality.
11. Safe Communities: We demand safe communities, where no one has to live in fear of gun violence. This is especially important to women and our allies–a majority of mass shooters in the U.S. kill their intimate partner or a family member and nearly all have a history of violence against women.
12. Voting Rights: Voting is powerful and it is a right. We reject all efforts to suppress voting rights or make voting more difficult–especially the rights of people of color, Native people, women, young people, poor people, and the incarcerated or formerly incarcerated. But stopping threats to voting isn’t enough–we support expanded access to voting through automatic registration, early voting, and other pro-voting policies.

“After casting their vote for a record number of women running for office on November 6th, women will continue to fight for our communities beyond the ballot box,” explained Shaunna Thomas, Co-founder and Executive Director of UltraViolet. “What we demand is an end to this country’s unprecedented wave of politicians and policies that are openly hostile to women, and this nation’s deeply-entrenched racism, xenophobia, and economic injustice that has hurt the lives of women of color and poor women for generations. UltraViolet’s intersectional Feminist Future Agenda demands policies—beyond any single election cycle—that center all women. As long as poor women, immigrant women, trans women, incarcerated women, women of color, queer women, and disabled women’s lives are at risk, none of us can be free.”

For more information, or for interview with an UltraViolet spokesperson, please contact Yasmina Dardari by email at yasmina@unbendablemedia.com.

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UltraViolet is a community of more than one million people that drives feminist cultural and political change. Through people power and strategic advocacy, we work to improve the lives of women and girls of all identities and backgrounds, and all people impacted by sexism, by dismantling discrimination and creating a cost for sexism. Find out more at WeAreUltraViolet.org.