Together We Will, a political action group based in Mountain View, held their first International Women’s Day rally on Saturday, March 8 in the Mountain View City Plaza. Idarose Sylvester, the founder of Together We Will and Sally Lieber, Chair of the State Board of Equalization, organized the event. The rally began at 3 p.m. and spanned two hours with an open mic segment where attendees could share personal anecdotes, art or poetry about their experiences as women.
With this being Sylvester and Lieber’s first time organizing a rally for International Women’s Day, they decided to focus on two values — womanhood and community in times of division. Sylvester explains that she and Lieber wanted to avoid a politically charged protest to create a platform where the attendees felt comfortable sharing their experiences.
“We wanted to keep it so that people could feel a part of a community, which is so sorely lacking because getting overwhelmed is really common right now,” Sylvester said. “Overall, the event was incredibly positive and uplifting. Politics did come up but so did the joys of community and womanhood.”
For the first half of the event, a pre-planned set of speakers delivered short speeches on their experiences with womanhood. Local advocate and community organizer Cassandra Magana spoke on the disparities that women in the U.S. and around the world currently face and encouraged younger generations to step up.
“Being a woman in 2025 and especially in the United States, it seems like we have been going backwards,” Magana said. “I’m on the younger side so it’s what I’m growing up into. I thought stating statistics about the effects of abortion laws or healthcare and other issues that we face would show people that we need to be standing up, especially for our trans women who are currently being attacked by the federal government. It was super important to put it out there so people are aware and to make sure that we’re spreading the right messages.”
Lieber believes that the open mic platform was the most successful aspect of the rally, despite it being uncertain when planning with Sylvester. Altogether, Lieber and Sylvester feel that the success of this rally has opened the doors to more events that could be similarly organized.
“The fact that we had so many eloquent speakers coming forward with important messages, had younger speakers and older speakers with the experience and the knowledge who have seen hard times before was so important,” Lieber said. “I was able to look at people’s faces and see their active listening and the change in their emotions. With the way today hit it out of the park, we’re definitely going to continue to try to organize these kinds of rallies regularly and just be able to present more things that people can engage in.”
