images Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in handcuffs, they bypassed social networks. On July 19, a Democratic congresswoman was arrested during a peaceful protest against the repeal Rowe vs. Wade, a ruling that guaranteed the right and access to abortion throughout the country. The AOC and other progressive representatives of the movement, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Corey Bush, marched to the Supreme Court shouting “our bodies, our choice” and “we will not return.” The bandanas they wore around their necks clearly did not go unnoticed: green represents the color of the choice movement, but its history began a few years ago..
Birth in Argentina
According to Washington Postthe idea was born in Argentina and draws inspiration from Mothers of the Plaza de Mayoa group of women who in the 70s (during the military dictatorship and Dirty War, a repressive program to eliminate dissidents and subversives) gathered outside the presidential palace in Buenos Aires to protest the disappearance of their children, wearing white scarves as headdresses. Decades later, Martha Alanis, founder of the movement Catolicas por el Derecho de Decideand her colleague Susana Chiarotti came up with the idea to repeat the Plaza de Mayo gesture, turning scarves into bandanas and taking on the color green; other than white mothers and from purple, traditionally associated with feminism. Green represented nature, growth, life; a direct insult to the Pro-life movement. “The term ‘life’ must come back to us,” Chiarotti said. At a rally in Rosario in 2003, a green wave marched through the streets of the city, demanding the decriminalization of abortion and the right to contraception.
The photos of the bandanas on the front page of the local newspaper are fake, and within a few years they began to circulate throughout Argentina. activists Ni Una Menos they wore them in 2015 and 2016 during the feminicide protests. Two years later, “green bandanas were exploding in the streets, you could see them everywhere,” Alanis recalls. Meanwhile, the anti-abortion movement uses the color blue; but this is of little use: in December 2020, the Senate, in a historic decision, decriminalizes abortion, making it legal throughout the country. A new life begins for Argentine women.
South, North America and Europe
Since 2020, bandanas have begun to appear in other Latin American countries: in Chile, Peru, Colombia. Wherever they traveled, Argentine activists took them with them. Each country re-adapted them to their own affairs or battles, changing slogans but never forming a coalition. In Brazil they recited: “No prison, no death”, in Colombia they were called the breakfast for abortions: Cause of Khust. Second bloomberggreen bandanas have also appeared during protests in Poland against a near-total ban on abortion that went into effect in January 2021. The green tide has also reached the United Statesafter the Supreme Court’s (now Conservative majority) proposal to strike down Roe v. Wade was covered in national and international media. The color also appeared in the halls of Congress.. Nydia Velasquez, Democrat of New York, wore a green bandana at the Capitol in May; instead, her colleague, Washington Democrat Pramila Jayapal, was photographed wearing a green sash on her blazer. “We must be ruthless,” Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez shouted on June 25 last year on the occasion of a rally in New York, “and restore and guarantee all our rights”; there was no shortage of background green (hopefully).
Source: Elle