On Sunday, Jan. 21, El Paso women will come together with allies to represent a broad group of unified interests that affect women including the current presidential administration and the importance of voting as they aim to dismantle systems of oppression through nonviolent resistance.

“The mission of Women’s March is to harness the political power of diverse women and their communities to create transformative social change,” organizers of the march said in a statement.

The march will start at UTEP’s Centennial Plaza at 2 p.m. and attendees will head down Oregon Street to San Jacinto Plaza downtown.

UTEP student groups involved in the coalition of sponsors for the march include Texas rising, Ignite and Soñando Juntos.

This Sunday marks one year since thousands took the streets of downtown for the Women’s March on the Border. The march was in solidarity with the 500,000 participants of the Women’s March to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

Lyda Ness Garcia, El Paso’s representative in the State Democratic Executive Committee, founder of Stand with El Paso Women and a family law attorney, is one of the organizers of the event. Garcia walked in last year’s march with her daughter.

“I have always been involved in women and children’s issues since I was a teenager,” Garcia said. “This year has seen an extreme attack on women. From the misogyny of our president to legislation limiting our reproductive choices, cutting off funding for women’s health care, eliminating birth control funding under the ACA, the attack on our transgendered population, on women of color and immigrants and their children.”

This year, organizers plan to use the march as an opportunity to engage voters, along with the work being done by partner organizations, and to bring attention to the urgency of preparing for the November midterm elections. There will be voter registration available on-site. 

Garcia said voting is important because choices are being taken away from women by legislators who don’t represent women’s interests, as diverse as they are.

Organizers of the event want to create a society in which “women–including black women, Native women, poor women, immigrant women, disabled women, Muslim women, lesbian, queer and trans women–are free and able to care for and nurture their families, however they are formed, in safe and healthy environments free from structural impediments.”

There will be a poster-making party and poetry slam on Friday, Jan. 19 at 6:30 p.m. at the law offices of Lyda Ness Garcia, 501 N. Kansas St., B-101.

For more information, visit Women’s March El Paso 2018’s Facebook page.