#Blackprotest as weak resistance: On recent women’s mobilizations in Poland and globally

The #BlackProtest, which started this September, and led to the Women’s Strike on the 3 October 2016 and now inspires the International Strike of Women, planned for the 8th March 2017, was about reproductive rights. The Polish government currently plans degrading women to the role of incubators, mere equipment for the prolongation of the species. In this necropolitical perspective the life and health of women are totally instrumentalized, reduced to the role of supportive elements of „national reproduction”. The #BlackProtest started as an internet campaign, invented by Gocha Adamczyk, a member of the Razem left wing party. She suggested, that women should wear black on the 21 September, and that photographs of people wearing black should be collected in social media, together with words of support and solidarity. The black and white photographs of women from all social contexts started to fill the #BlackProtest’s social media and became a massive mobilisation of some 200 000 people alltogether, for many the first political gesture in their lives. Than, the General Women's Strike was announced and some 150 000 women in cities big and small stepped in the streets, demanding respect for women, rights and safety and expressing solidarity. It was by far the biggest social mobilisation in Poland after 1989. Later, women in Argentine, Mexico and Corea went on Strike. On the 26 Nov women in Itali held massive demonstrations. Now, a plan for an International Women's Strike was set up and on the 8 March 2017 we expect women from at least 20 countries to go on strike.

The next revolution we look at will be a feminist one. It demands basic rights and resepect, expresses international solidarity, welcomes political activists and women who never participated in politics before. In the simplicity of this mobilisation the commonality – of the participants, of the protest, of the internet activities, of the demands leads to a conclusion, that the common in revolt is the common of the non-heroic, of the ordinary, of the weak. Women and those, who support us, challenge the patriarchal conceptualizations and political practice of resistance, practicing heterogeneity without paternalism, solidarity without hierarchies and politics without exclusion. It is time to discuss and verbalize these strategies, these aims and needs. Let's do it together.

Dr. Ewa Majewska – feminist philosopher and activist, currently lives in Warsaw, where she works at the Artes Liberales Department of the Warsaw University. She published several monographs, collected volumes, articles and essays on politics, culture and women, she was active in queer, feminist, anti-border and antiglobalist movements and in the art scene. Her recent publications include: So Far, So Good and La Mestiza from Ukraine? Border Crossing with Gloria Anzaldúa.