Alysia Colón, a junior at the University of Pittsburgh, showed up Saturday for her second rally this week to support abortion rights.
The first was organized by a socialist group, she said, and they marched around the university’s Cathedral of Learning talking about the importance of abortion and tying the issue into the group’s larger concerns about class struggle.
Colon decided to come out again on Saturday, in part because the group putting on that rally, SisTers PGH, advocates especially for trans and nonbinary people, and people of color.
“I have a lot in common with [the group],” she said. “I felt this was a space with like-minded people.”
After the leak Tuesday of a draft U.S. Supreme Court decision that would allow states to outlaw abortion, local supporters of abortion rights have held several rallies as they try to figure out how to respond.
The rally on Saturday at Freedom Corner in the Hill District pushed the issue far beyond the boundaries of abortion to encompass larger issues of sexual and reproductive justice, as well as fair wages and free health care.
Organizers and speakers led a crowd of 100-150 people in chants focused on demanding change:
“What do we want?”
“Abortion rights!”
“If we don’t get it.”
“Shut it down!”
Speakers advocated for health care and social justice issues that included everything from free health care for all to decriminalizing sex work. The speakers also demanded local leaders support legislation to protect LGBTQ people and legislation to provide free menstrual products for college students.
But Jordan Malloy, an organizer for Radical Youth Collective PA, and others also cautioned rally-goers not to count on politicians.
Many of the attendees were young, like Malloy.
Riley Jackson, 19, of Mars, said the rally Saturday was her first for abortion rights, but she had attended a number of marches in 2020 to support Black Lives Matter.
Annabella Zgurzynski and Catherine Wallace, both students from Allegheny College, drove down from Meadville. Zgurzynski wants to be a gynecologist. “I got passionate about it growing up in a conservative family where you don’t talk about that kind of stuff,” she said.
Elise Silvestri, a senior at Pittsburgh Obama Academy 6-12, said she believes many more people need to show up at future rallies if they want to protect abortion rights. “I’m talking thousands of people in the streets,” she said.
Ilyas Kahn, a senior at Winchester Thurston Independent School, said he came to the event as an ally of Silvestri and other women but he sees the abortion issue as part and parcel to his and everyone’s freedom.
“I believe it’s important for folks of all genders, all sexual orientations and political orientations to recognize that any threat to anyone’s rights is a threat to all of our rights,” he said.
