#8M 18 Paro de Mujeres

There’s a crisp air in the barrio this morning…

…a subtle excitement you can almost touch, something that makes you feel part of something bigger. You walk through the streets and you know — today, something is going to happen. It’s not the air of celebration that you breathe, but of occasion. There are no vacant smiles, no flowers or mimosa, no embraces or greetings — only calm gazes, firm yet kind, determined yet gentle.

Today, in Buenos Aires, thousands of buses loaded with people and banners will arrive. At the stations, the already few trains have been tripled, and from the province a silent tide of determined (but always kind) souls will gather this afternoon before the Palacio del Congreso.
Today in Buenos Aires — and across the country — people are not celebrating Women’s Day.
Today in Buenos Aires — and across the country — they take to the streets for the International Women’s Day.

According to organisers, nearly one million people will march in Buenos Aires today: women and men, girls and boys, families with children in tow. Nearly a million people, led by women who have never had rights of their own, by families of women whose very reason for life was taken from them by a crime that in Argentina has a name — femicide — though in its modern legislation that crime still does not exist.
A million people who wouldn’t know what a mimosa is — because they are not asking for flowers, but for rights. Simple, basic rights.
They are asking for a change in the statistics: one woman killed every day in 2017 (CNN source).

It will not be a silent march — quite the opposite, their voices will be heard.
But without destroying a city, without looting shops, without police charges.
In Argentina, demonstrating is a fundamental right; doing it loudly is a joy.

Today, 8 March, I do not wish women a happy Women’s Day. There is nothing to celebrate.
Today, 8 March, I — a man — walk the streets to stand for their right to be women on the International Women’s Day.