DePaul University’s Women’s Center is hosting a series of free events  March 5 in commemoration of International Women’s Day, including a luncheon featuring Ida B. Wells Barnett University Professor Laura Washington, a panel discussion on the unjust treatment of women in Mexico and a talk by Native American activist and scholar Andrea Smith.

 The luncheon will be held from noon to 2 p.m. in the Student Center, 2250 N. Sheffield Ave., Room 120. Washington, who teaches courses in the College of Communication and the African and Black Diaspora program at DePaul, will address the topic  “Was Gloria Steinem Right About 2008 Being a Watershed Year of History-making in Politics and Social Justice and, if so, Where do Women Stand in 2009?” An award-winning journalist and columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, Washington has distinguished herself for more than two decades in print and broadcast journalism, urban affairs and issues related to social justice.

 From 4 to 6 p.m. in Room 314 of the Student Center, a panel of survivors and activists from San Salvador Atenco, Mexico, will talk about the crackdown on protests by activists from a local peasant’s organization. Some 45 women were arrested without explanation recently, and dozens of them have been subjected to physical, psychological and sexual violence by the police. This presentation will be in Spanish with translation.

From 7 to 9 p.m. in Room 120 of the Student Center, Andrea Smith, a Cherokee feminist and a leading voice of Native liberation theology, will speak on “Another Politics is Possible: Women of Color Organizing.” She is co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence as well as the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations, and she has represented the American Indian Law Alliance and the Indigenous Women’s Network at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism. She is the author of “Conquest: Sexual Violence and the American Indian Genocide” and “Native Americans and the Christian Right: The Gendered Politics of Unlikely Alliances.” She has a doctoral degree in history of consciousness from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

The events are free and open to the public. For more information call the Women’s Center at (773) 325-7558.