More than 50 Villagers, their daughters, granddaughters and male friends rallied for women’s rights Saturday with a golf cart caravan from Spanish Springs to Lake Sumter Landing.
The parade was in honor of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who both as a justice and as a lawyer had a major impact in the fight for woman’s equality.
The rally participants carried signs and had cart decorations emphasizing equal pay for equal work, living wages, reproductive rights and the right to have the word “No” be respected.
The Villages event took place in solidarity with similar events across the United States. The activists who planned the original Women’s March the day after President Trump’s inauguration, this time were motivated by Justice Ginsburg’s passing, which prompted them to stage this year’s event prior to the Nov. 3 election.
Rachel O’Leary Carmona, the executive director of the national Women’s March said that “the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg reset the whole country. So the Women’s March organizers helped organize hundreds of marches and events around the country.”
Many of the signs in The Villages event were opposed to the rush to fill Ginsburg’s seat with a conservative justice before the presidential election. The Republicans had refused to approve President Obama’s Supreme Court choice seven months before the election, but are now rushing Trump’s pick through with less than three weeks until Nov. 3.
Summer Holtzhower of Lady Lake used a sign to re-state Kamala Harris’ most memorable phase from the recent vice presidential debate, “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking.”
Several of the participants wore RBG’s trademark lace-style chokers, including Patricia Story, who organized the parade along with Jeanette Cunniff.
After the golf cart parade, the participants held a short march along the Lake Sumter Landing boardwalk.
