Arkansas Period Action Day: Closing Speech 2019
"I went to yoga this week for the first time ever and at the end of the class the instructor said this quote: 'strong people stand up for themselves, but stronger people stand up for others.' That is why I am here before you today. Just like Emmarie, last year, I started reading Period Power: A Manifesto for the Menstrual Movement by Nadya Okamoto, the creator and president of Period, and it opened my eyes to a human right’s issue I knew nothing about. Period poverty is defined as the inability to purchase or access period products. This is not just an issue in India or African countries. This is an issue in our own community. The homeless woman you passed on your way here, she didn’t have enough money to buy a pad, so she used cardboard that she found. The incarcerated woman who can’t afford to buy period products in the commissary, she had to use stuffing from her mattress. The single mother that you sat next to in church last week, she had to choose betw