La Plata, MD – On a windy but sunny day, approximately 50 women picketed in front of the Charles County Courthouse in La Plata as part of “A Day without Women,” a national movement held Wednesday, March 8.
Maggie Mudd, one of the organizers for the local event said she became inspired after attending the recent Women’s March in Washington, DC.
“I am no one special,” she explained at a rally at the La Plata Town Hall. “I am the mother of two little boys. I have zero experience in activism or politics. I just have a thought, that the women of Southern Maryland should have their own day of support.”
Mudd said she was marching for her great-grandmother, Myrtle Virginia Duffy.
“My great-grandmother was forced to marry a man twice her age when she was fourteen years old,” Mudd said. “She had her first baby before she was fifteen. She had sixteen in all. She was 41 when she was pregnant with her last child. One morning when she was close to term she woke up with early labor pains. She got up, put on her clothes, went downstairs and cooked breakfast, went out in the tobacco field and worked until the contractions were too great, wobbled her way back to the farmhouse, got some towels and a basin of hot water, delivered her sixteenth baby by herself. That baby was my grandmother. Oh, and then she cleaned up the mess, put on a new dress and went down and cooked supper for the 20 hungry mouths she knew would soon be coming in from the field.”
Mudd praised her sisters who participated in the day’s event, telling them, “Today, we have each other,” she said. “You do not have to labor alone. None of us have to labor alone.”
The marchers said they were marching for equality for all women, reproductive freedom, an end to inequality in the criminal justice system, parental leave where the family matters most and not tolerating domestic violence.
“Her fight is my fight,” she said. “Her joy is my joy. And when I question why I fight, I remember Myrtle.”
Abria McAllister, who founded Women of Action in Charles County, said she too, was inspired by the recent Women’s March. “I founded our organization as a way to bring back some of that excitement and energy to work in our community,” McAllister stated.
“Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere,’ ” she added.
Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com