Can protests work?
Ask Icelandic women. They were fed up with unequal treatment in almost every area of life. So what did they do?
Strikes were illegal, but that didn't stop them. Ninety percent of them declared 24 October 1975 as Women's Day Off or Kvennafri. The women didn't go to work. None of them did housework or cared for children. They did nothing that they ordinarily did to be part of society.
25,000 out of a population of 220,000 showed up in the capital Reykjavik for a demonstration. It brought the country to a standstill.
- Schools shut down.
- Air flights were cancelled.
- The telephone system crashed.
- Theaters didn't open
It worked. Not over night, but women's wages, which were 60% of men's in 1975 are now 90% of men's, one of the best in the world. It took a few more Kvennafri over the years. Women hold 29 of Parliament's 63 seats.
Halla Tomasdottir is the current president of Iceland, the second woman to hold the office. Vigdi Finnbogadottir, was not only the first Icelandic woman president, she was the first democratically female elected head of state in the world. She served 16 years and it was said that little boys started asking if a man could be president. To listen to more about what Icelandic women accomplished:
I have a dream not unlike Martin Luther King. Every person who is anti-Trump picks the same day and simply stops working. That is every anti-Trumper in every aspect of society from street sweepers to CEOs. Men and women.
It would shut society down.
If it didn't work the first day, try it one week later, and one week later until the danger that Trump and his followers manifest either resign or realize that they cannot continue to function and stop talking about ballrooms and nuclear reactors on the moon and nullify what has been wiped out since 20 January 2025.
- No more troops threatening people.
- No more endangering the welfare of U.S. citizens with talk of cuts to SS.
- No more destroying benefits and climate change regulations.
- No more concentration camps.
- No more telling private business, media, and universities what to do.
- etc.etc.etc.
Okay, I know it won't happen. Iceland's population is small 391,000. They are a homogenized people with a history going back to 874 A.D. The U.S.A., according to the CIA Factbook is 341,963,408.
But I can dream that my former fellow citizens will be able to stop the destruction of my birth country and the good it once stood for and doesn't now.
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