We Were There: An Archive of Activisms to Counter an Erasure of History on International Women’s Day in Vancouver, 2023

Abstract

This article is based on a Facebook post I wrote and posted March 8, 2023, about the erasure of the history of International Women’s Day (IWD) movement organizing in Vancouver. I’ve transformed it from a rant among Facebook friends to a first-person point-of-view article. For me, IWD has always been a day about reflecting on the struggles of our movements; this year, the need to look back was made more urgent by shit that unfolded with dangerous consequences a few days before March 8, when news media proclaimed the 2023 march as the “first-ever.” Even after the media learned it had printed untruths that erased the existence of the Vancouver women’s movement, those stories remained online, uncorrected. An erasure of the women’s movement in Vancouver, no matter how unintended, is now official on-record history. Easily Google-able.[1]
 
 [1]At the time of writing this updated article, those stories have still not been corrected, despite outcries by many women since March 8, 2023.