Fresno Branch Celebrates National Women’s Equality Day on August 26, 2020

WILPF Fresno Branch members celebrating Women’s Equality Day on August 26, 2020. Back row, from left: Nancy Hatcher, Joan Poss, Bev Fitzpatrick, Teresa Castillo. Front row, from left: Ann Carruthers, Evonne Waldo, Jacinda Potikian, Jean Hays. Photo by Bev Greene.

By Nancy Hatcher
Member, Fresno Branch 

October 2020

Neither the extreme heat of the San Joaquin Valley, the air thick with smoke from California’s tragic wildfires, nor the COVID-19 pandemic could keep Fresno WILPF members from celebrating National Women’s Equality Day, and urging the community as a whole to VOTE. With several months of detailed planning and preparation, under the leadership of our Fresno Branch Membership Chair, Evonne Waldo, we celebrated Women’s Equality Day 2020 in a very special way. 

On August 26, we gathered in the parking lot of the Fresno Center for Nonviolence, to put the finishing touches on our decorated cars before enthusiastically embarking on a car caravan. Traveling on Fresno’s main thoroughfares, passing through a popular shopping center, and crossing major intersections, we rallied The Vote. Our cars decorated with banners, buntings, printed posters, streamers, and handmade signs promoting The Vote and Equality Day, we passed other drivers, pedestrians, shoppers, and those out for a morning walk who waved and cheered us on.

View a slideshow of photos from the day here ».

As our caravan completed its well-planned 45-minute route, we lined our cars up and gathered for group photos. In addition to our cars being decorated, Evonne and I dressed as suffragettes, while others wore their Jane Addams “dangerous women” T-shirts, and Evonne made us all custom-made WILPF Fresno face masks. I also wore a 100+ year old hat my grandmother wore when the Connecticut Women’s Suffragette Association came together to urge the ratification of the 19th Amendment.  

After pictures, our day continued as we split up to go on individual assignments. Wanting to honor our longest and strongest members as well as inspire new Fresno WILPF members, and urging all of our members to VOTE, we departed with handmade totes off to the homes of 40 members who were ‘sheltering in place.’ Evonne and her team filled the totes with Women’s Equality Day, suffragette, and 19th Amendment memorabilia recognizing WILPF’s long-standing commitment to speaking up for peace and social justice, following the trailblazing work of WILPF founder Jane Addams.

With this caravan, Fresno WILPF honored and paid tribute to those brave and tireless suffragettes who fought so long and so hard to assure women had the right to vote, and we also recognized the continued struggle women of color faced in gaining the right to vote. As the posters and banners proclaimed, “Suffragists were protesters too, they won the vote for me and you!” The caravaners and members of Fresno WILPF stand strong together in recognizing that suffrage is yet unfinished business, until true equality exists for all people! We will continue the fight for justice.