On March 7, in commemoration of International Women’s Day, a rally in Fresno was held to raise the voices of local women and to amplify the need for gender equity. The rally was organized by Women Wise, Rad Rags and the Women’s March of Fresno. The event was hosted by All Things Fresno. Aideed Medina, Fresno’s own poet laureate, opened the event with spoken word.
“A good woman, it’s tough work if you can find it, the grinding of bones, the bending back of fingers and twisting of spine.
“You will pull teeth to purse bright red lips, just right, it will make you look pretty, exquisite, with an ivory comb to work on bone, part your hair in a perfectly straight line down to the navel.
“If you bleed, you have done it right. If you tear, you were perfect.
“Pull each side of your hair around and cover your eyes back around and over your mouth, do not flinch, do not disturb the rhythm of it all woman.
“Please do not complain, your protectors will feel betrayed by your unkindness.”
Misha, from All Things Fresno said, “In planning for this event, I asked what kind of energy are we going to have? What’s the vibe gonna be? Are we going to be celebratory?
“For all that we are withstanding, are we going to be in mourning? For what we are enduring, are we going to be angry? We came to the conclusion that we’re going to be all those things.”
Mars Santos of Rad Rags introduced the other speakers. “There’s a lot of conflict. How do we show up to conflict?
“I used to turn away from conflict, trying to avoid it. Now, I want to face conflict and to hold each other accountable.
“We need to be gentle with each other, but it’s okay to be angry. I have anger sometimes, I have sadness.
“Misha talked a lot about feelings. It’s important to know what that means.
“I didn’t even know the difference between feelings and emotions and sensations. They are all different.
“I think we could be better community members, better people, if we accept what we feel and what other people are feeling. And, as long as we are self-reflective, have conversations and just keep trying.”
Following the event, we interviewed Lisa Marie Alvarado (LMA) of Women Wise and one of the event’s organizers.
Q: What was the purpose and theme of the rally today?
LMA: A lot of us were really rageful and we wanted to respond, which is why there was a focus on the ICE processing facility, but there were four women, very different women, creating the event and all four of us were having very different experiences.
Some were responding to the sexual assault happening in the public universe and dealing with those triggers, some were dealing with economics and trying to find stable housing. You know, the theme of a woman’s experience in 2026. We tried our best to encompass all aspects of that experience.
Q: What do you think the most pressing issues are for women these days?
LMA: I think it’s safety. Unfortunately, with the increase in poverty and increasing oppression, the No. 1 thing that happens is violence against women, and so we’re really scared for our lives.
Q: What would be the single most important change you’d like to see happening in this culture?
LMA: Improved economics, economic justice. We live in a capitalist society, and women need economic relief. Relief and support for leaving a violent situation, for instance, and supporting transition for women when they’re being held down by an abusive boss sexualizing them. If women don’t have to worry about their finances, they can transition to a better life.
Q: You mentioned economics. What’s the best way to address the pay gap and workplace issues?
LMA: We would love for people to do an internal audit at their workplace. If people could just ask their co-workers.
Recently, in Visalia, one of my colleagues asked her colleague and found out that there was about a $2,000 difference in annual pay. They were hired at the exact same time and the only difference was skin color.
So, here we were trying to do a study on gender, but we also were able to unveil race discrimination and color discrimination. Apply that same logic to females. We’re talking about the most oppressed gender in society along with our trans women. It’s the women of color who are gender expansive, where we should start triaging care, where we should just start listening. We’re talking about inverting patriarchy and leveling the scales.
Q: What you described raises the issue of intersectionality, the idea that social relations involve multiple intersecting forms of discrimination. How do we address intersectionality and forge more unity around this issue?
LMA: I think people who read the Community Alliance are more likely to do something. It’s going outside of your comfort zone, where the other doers are.
I don’t think we need to be segregated in our justice-oriented works, but that’s just how it happens because we’re speaking from our lived experiences.
Within the justice community, we can begin repairing relationships first, knowing that we’re really building a solid, a real unified force and real security. It means going across cultures, traditional relationships and doing that mending work.
Q: How does modern culture, pop culture, help or hinder feminism?
LMA: I just read a study that Gen Z are the most feminist aligned out of all the other generations in its predecessors. I thought that was a unique perspective. And, I see the Gen Zers rallying on social media so well. In terms of Gen Z and modern culture, they’re really helping us grasp the concept of equity in the physical form.
Q: What is the impact of toxic masculinity on women and men in our culture?
LMA: I feel like this is a death of self first, with men. I think with women, we’re dealing with the denial of existence.
In an indigenous culture, we don’t have a binary view in terms of gender. We believe that every human has the capacity to be masculine, feminine or some degree of both, and, you may have a specific energetic signature. So, people are not seen in terms of gender, they’re seen more in terms of energy.
I think what toxic masculinity does is immediately kills that within a man, so a man is not able to feel his creative energy or even talk about it, because it’s like severed from him, whereas as a woman I’m so used to saying you’re going to hurt me, you’re going to abuse me, I don’t feel safe around you.
For men, they’re almost numb. They first need to be in a safe space to first talk about the death within themselves, so they can remember to feel again.
Q: What does gender equality mean to you?
LMA: True gender equality, gosh, the thing of my dreams. I wish I could visualize it, but it sounds too much like utopia, so I’ll give an example.
At the event, there was a young man who had darker skin, and he had a backpack on so it looked like he was doing some type of security. But, he had a rose in his pocket from one of the activities and then he was blowing bubbles.
There was nobody around him, he was just by himself, and he was blowing it to the trees, and I could feel the fact of like, wow, women made him feel so safe. So safe that he knows to stop and take in the joy and blow bubbles, and he wasn’t worried about being too feminine in expression, he wasn’t worried about being childlike as a grown man.
In matriarchy, women care for everybody.
Q: What can men do in the struggle for equity?
LMA: I believe that men think that they are safe, they know that they’re safe, but they’re always quiet because it’s not safe for them either. I wish that there was some type of rallying cry, where it’s like the louder you are, the safer we are. For example, you’re telling your boss that you’re getting paid more than your colleague, right? The more that you fight for equity, the more you fight for yourself.
Q: What is your vision for the future in the struggle for gender equity?
LMA: I’m also an indigenous woman, right. We’re talking about abolishing a system of oppression, to re-indigenize and to understand the system that built the systems.
Q: How would you describe the terms radical feminism and liberal feminism?
LMA: I feel safest saying the future is indigenous. Why? Because indigenous culture predates colonialism, it predates any of these structures that were created after the result of these dominant narratives, right?
So when I think of liberal and radical, I think liberal and radical are responses that were necessary to address patriarchy. We’re going to need liberal feminists to keep applying pressure. We’re going to need radical feminism because if we did not have radical feminism, we would not have the Angela Davises of the world talking about colorism and why is it that white women got to go first?
And if we know that radical means roots, then why wouldn’t we go for disabled, Black women first because then everybody would have got it, then you could have had your liberal feminism come?
I also feel the future is indigenous, because we think of it in terms of women, but remember, we’re adding men in there too, so what does it mean?
When men get to benefit from that shattering, what does it mean when we get to really live with each other and in relationships as sacred kin? The only places I felt that is when I’ve been in sacred ceremony on indigenous lands with indigenous elders.
