For the second day in a row, hundreds of people gathered in downtown Dallas to protest Rowe’s cancellation of Wade – but with less emphasis on emotion and more on action.
“It’s time to stop playing well,” said Christy Noble, chairman of the Dallas County Democratic Party, over speakers in Main Street Garden to kick off the Rising Together Rally on Saturday morning. “We have to become vicious, we have to become loud and we have to fight for our rights.”
Noble was the first of many Saturdays to call on the crowd to vote – in elections at all levels. She cites Dallas County statistics from 2020, when more than 400,000 registered voters did not show up. If something needs to change, she said, those numbers need too.
“What we need to do is get to work and get every vote,” Noble said. – Talk to everyone you know.
Supreme Court ruling 6-3 in Dobbs v. Jackson The Women’s Health Organization overturned nearly 50 years of constitutional protection against abortion, leaving the states to establish their own abortion laws. In Texas and 12 other states, trigger laws will ban or almost completely ban abortions.
In June, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law that would ban abortions within 30 days after the verdict becomes final for Friday’s ruling, which could take several weeks. The law will make those who perform or assist in abortion punishable by life imprisonment and $ 100,000 in fines.
An abortion rights activist puts up a sign in front of a mural by Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a former Supreme Court judge, during a rally in downtown Dallas on Saturday. (Elias Valverde II / full-time photographer)
Call for change
As the crowd marched down Main Street, chanting “Vote for him,” many people wore T-shirts and hats that read “Beto for Governor” for Democratic candidate for governor Beto O’Rourke.
“We need to focus on how to overcome this and ensure that every woman in Texas can make her own decisions about her own body, her own health care and her own future,” O’Rourke said in a video posted. in Friday. on Twitter.
“The only way to do that,” he continued, “is to win in November. O’Rourke was in Houston on Saturday, working to knock on 30,000 doors to register more Texans to vote.
A similar mood was shared at a protest in Taranto County Court in Fort Worth, Fort Worth Star Telegram reported, with those present summoning Abbott, Senator Ted Cruz and Attorney General Ken Paxton.
There were no counter-protesters in Dallas, but a small group showed up at Fort Worth.
“You are killing innocent babies,” one is heard saying in a video posted by a reporter. “You repay the Lord with wickedness and murder.”
“Far from giving up”
Elected Democrat officials and candidates came to show their support for Texas Became Blue, including State Senator Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas. Johnson said the first person he called after seeing the news of Friday’s decision was his 16-year-old daughter, adding that he was “afraid of the environment she enters.”
“I really don’t understand the environment in which some people are more afraid of their daughter competing on the track against a transgender child, but they are not for their daughter to be forced to give birth to her rapist,” he said, followed by loud applause from the crowd.
Johnson said that while local and state elections are important, he believes nothing will move forward until there is a significant change in leadership at the federal level.
“We will have to do it [abortion] federal law, “he said.” You will have to vote for people who recognize this as a constitutional right. Don’t rely on the courts, people, there are no courts. “
Proponents of abortion rights wear signs on stage behind a speaker during a rally at Main Street Garden Park in downtown Dallas. (Elias Valverde II / full-time photographer)
Shelby Miller, 52, said that despite the disagreements between the leaders on the best way forward, “everyone agrees that we just have to act.”
“I feel I have no choice but to do my best to turn these hesitant independents and these stubborn Republicans in a new direction,” Miller said.
He holds a sign reading “Why are we going back?” Miller spoke emotionally about the agreed opinion of Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas, which called on the court to reconsider previous decisions protecting contraception and same-sex relationships.
As a strange woman, Miller said she was “tired of being terrified,” but “she didn’t give up.”
“I cannot change the Supreme Court. I’m just one person, “Miller said. “But I know I can help change the neighborhood, the community and the city. If people on the other side of this want us to feel defeated, to give up, rest assured that they won’t get that from me. ”
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