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Winnipeg Free Press

Recalling a far different dream in Trump's America

Opinion I continue my calling, as it were, reaching out to various organizations that conceive U.S. President Donald Trump has been anointed by God, coincident, of course, with his own sense of being divinely appointed. When I call evangelical circles that support Trump's 'ministry,' and note, as so many have done publicly, the destruction of democratic freedoms that distinguishes Trump's American Dream, I provoke nothing more from believers than 'we are praying for the president.' No engagement with the Trumpification of America, no grasp of how women's lives — along with many other lives — are being diminished, supervised by obscene patriarchal visions that would maintain or return them to servitude. To reverse the declining American birth rate, for example, Trump announced that women are to be rewarded with $5,000 for producing babies, contingent on a live birth after delivery. In this Trump has named himself the 'fertilization president.' Another recent proposal would gift $1,000 to American babies born as part of a 'Trump account.' Such campaigns are shockingly similar to the Mother's Cross of Honour program in Nazi Germany initiated to reverse the sinking German birth rate by rewarding suitable Aryan women for producing 'Hitler's children' and thus ensuring the proliferation of the 'master race' and its dream of world domination. I recall a far different dream in which I participated — the April 25, 2004, March for Women's Lives in support of women's reproductive rights and access to health care. I joined 1.3 million humans intent on reigniting the activism that had played critical roles in earlier rights and justice marches demanding the vote for women, economic equality and the right to life without fear, condemnation and oppression. Not a moment of strife bruised this 2004 gathering at the Washington, D.C. National Mall, even though opponents stood along the march route damning our advocacy of diversity and liberty. Women atoning for past abortions were positioned on their knees beside standing clergy; others hoisted huge images of stockpiled corpses from Nazi concentration camps as if that infamy provided accurate correlatives for women's right to reproductive choice. We marched with an intention that could not be disfigured by false compare, with a shared vision of community, and care for those who could not join us, but who found in our movement protection for their life choices. Some of us held photographs of mothers and grandmothers who had lived under the menace of patriarchal control and censure, constrained through rules and regulations fed by misogyny. As I stood in the midst of this remarkable moment, I thought of my mother, who had lived hampered by norms that determined her second-class status, dictated her contribution exclusively in terms of marriage, mothering and domestic service. I stood for and with her. Tearful, yet jubilant, I called my Aunt Helen, in her 80s and living in Southfield, Mich., an inner-ring suburb of Detroit. She had always claimed her right to independent thought and action, found inventive ways to balance career and motherhood, refused to apologize for her choices and resisted those forces that would have required her to do so. Her spirit and my mother's guided my understanding of what this 2004 dream meant. I walked through the crowd, cellphone in hand, describing as best I could the energy and integrity of those gathered, devoted to my aunt's enduring presence and the women who had come before me in my family. Thirteen years later, the Jan. 21, 2017 Women's March on Washington, D.C. protested Trump's first inauguration, an event perceived by many as a continuing threat to women's rights, health care, immigration and civil liberties. More than 500,000 people marched and over five million joined in sister marches throughout the nation and beyond, including here in Winnipeg where many wore the bright pink pussy hats of protest. Four years thereafter, at Biden's Jan. 21, 2021 inauguration, the 22-year-old poet laureate Amanda Gorman spoke loud and clear in favour of a country that might 'never again sow division'; commit 'to all cultures, colours, characters, and conditions.' Trump's 'fertilization' and related fascist dreams, denounce and betray such a vision. To deny women reproductive choice, monetize them for invigorating the birthrate, relegate them to the backwater slime of defective nuclear family compounds comprise part of his comprehensive attack on the minority, immigrant, gender-expansive, poor and refugee peoples living in America. On Aug. 28, 1963, during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic I Have a Dream address from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and spoke of his people 'exiled' in their own land. Today, over the course of little more than 100 days, the second Trump administration is deploying its Republican Dream playbook, bringing a turbulent, threatening and tragic era to the United States, which now is, for so many, a nightmare that demands we keep on calling, marching and protesting. arts@ Deborah Schnitzer Winnipeg writer Deborah Schnitzer explores life lessons from women in their Third Act. 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