October 19, 2019
On October 19, and with support from the Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, members of WSU’s PERIOD chapter traveled to Seattle, Washington, to participate in the rally for National Period Day. This rally was one of many hosted throughout the US, and participants united to bring awareness to period poverty and demand the end of the tampon tax.
National Period Day supports the normalization of menstruation and promotes access to period products as a fundamental human right. Participants at the event called for clean and healthy period products to be made freely available in all schools, shelters, and prisons. Washington state is currently one of 35 US states that has a sales tax on period products, and still considers these products to be non-essential products.
WGSS student and WSU’s PERIOD chapter President, Aydan Garland-Miner, helped organize the Seattle rally with fellow PERIOD chapter leaders from Kamiak High School in Mukilteo and Northwest High School in Seattle. Garland-Miner founded PERIOD at WSU in January of 2019, after reading Period Power: A Manifesto for the Menstrual Movement, by Nadya Okamoto.
PERIOD is a global, youth powered, non-profit organization that aims to normalize menstruation and provide menstrual products to those in need. The WSU chapter of PERIOD serves, advocates, and educates the local and regional community about period poverty and the stigma against menstruation. PERIOD at WSU has already held packing parties and product drives, and has distributed period packs to homeless individuals and shelters in Pullman, Moscow, Spokane, and Seattle, with over 200 period packs distributed to homeless people throughout Spokane alone.
On November 6, WSU’s PERIOD chapter and WGSS co-sponsored a screening of the 2018 film, Period: End of Sentence on the Pullman campus. Period: End of Sentence is an Academy Award-winning short documentary about women in India fighting the stigma surrounding menstruation and manufacturing menstrual products.
PERIOD at WSU holds meetings every Tuesday at 5 p.m. in the CUB, room 406.
For more information, check out PERIOD at WSU’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/period.wsucougs/
Top photo: Photo taken by Kiera Clubb at the National Period Day Rally.