Women's March in Cape, March for Life in Jackson scheduled for Saturday

Cape Girardeau’s first Women’s March is set for this Saturday at Capaha Park, and Immaculate Conception will hold a March for Life in Jackson.

Seventeen speakers will present at the Capaha Park bandshell during the Women’s March rally, which will include poetry and music in addition to speeches, beginning at 10 a.m. The Rev. Renita Green of St. James AME Church, SEMO Campus Violence Prevention Program director Donna St. Sauver and Southeast Missouri State University student Mahala Pittman, an advocate for Planned Parenthood, will be among the speakers.

Following the presentation by speakers at the park’s bandshell, participants will march to the park’s Freedom Corner at the intersection of Broadway and North West End Boulevard.

About 20 volunteers met in early January to plan the Cape Girardeau march. Organizers said they anticipate around 100 people to attend the event, but volunteer Sarah Simas, who was also involved as a sponsor of the first Cape Pride festival om May, said she expects more. When she volunteered with Cape Pride, Simas said the preliminary estimates of attendees were similar but surpassed expectations despite rainy weather conditions.

Planned Parenthood volunteer and event master of ceremonies Carly Huddleston said the changing attitudes in Cape Girardeau, especially with the influence of the Women’s March in St. Louis, has allowed the community to be more receptive to the Cape Pride event and the Women’s March.

While this is the first year a Women’s March will take place in Cape Girardeau, St. Louis has joined cities across the country in hosting an early January Women’s March every year since 2017.

“I see so many women in our community that just are not empowered and feel the need to conform to gender roles,” organizer for Planned Parenthood Aaron Lerma said. “We have so many wonderful women in Southeast Missouri that I wanted to be involved in this in a way that just lifts those women up.”

Ramona Bailey, music director at St. James AME Church, will perform several songs. She said her involvement in volunteering for the Women’s March is closely tied to her own personal faith.

“God put women on this earth, he put men on this earth, and he put animals on this earth, and rain, and trees. I can’t go around saying ‘No more trees’ — I didn’t plant them,” Bailey said. “I don’t see how anybody can put themselves in a position to tell anyone else what to do with their body.”

The Cape Girardeau Women’s March is sponsored by the Planned Parenthood Advocates in Missouri, NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, SEMO Campus Violence Prevention Program and Cape Pride.

In this Friday, Jan. 19, 2018 file photo, Brother Tomasio Venditti of Steubenville, Ohio, right, holds a Trump-Pence campaign sign as he and Lis Kelly of Notre Dame, Ind., background, wear white gowns depicting the Lady of Guadalupe during an anti-abortion rally on the National Mall in Washington during the annual March for Life. The annual march to protests the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 decision that declared a constitutional right to abortion. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

March for Life

Jan. 22 is the 47th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, which established abortion as a constitutional right. Also on Saturday, Immaculate Conception Church will be hosting a March for Life at its Jackson location. The event will begin at 10 a.m. with a rosary in the church’s sanctuary and will continue with a march into uptown Jackson. Immaculate Conception group Students4Life will host the march, which will begin around 10:30 a.m. following the prayer. Participants will then meet in the church’s fellowship hall for hot drinks and doughnuts. Organizer Meg Garner said the march provides a way for students and community members to become involved without traveling to a national march in Washington D.C.

“It’s open to anyone committed to protecting life at all stages,” Garner said. She said the parish has hosted a March for Life the past several years.