I speak on behalf of women who do
two-thirds of the world’s work for five percent of the income. But the
work we women do is not valued. – single, married, lesbian, bi-sexual,
older, younger, of every race and nation – we are the life-givers, the
first caregivers, from breastfeeding and subsistence farming which feeds
most of the world, to cleaning, nursing, teaching. We invested our lives
in making and protecting people, from Palestine to Colombia, from
Indonesia to Ogoniland in Nigeria, from Kurdistan to the Narmada Dam in
India, from Chiapas, Mexico, to US inner cities, rural communities and
reservations. . Since 2000 our Global Women’s Strike, in which women
from over 60 countries take part, has been demanding that society INVEST
IN CARING NOT KILLING. This demand has come from women, but it speaks to
everyone’s most basic survival need.
Women have always been central to
anti-war and human rights movements because we refuse to see the lives
of our loved ones destroyed by a global market on the rampage and the
wars that impose it. While $80 billion would eliminate the worst poverty
and suffering, $940 billion a year is spent instead on military
budgets worldwide, and Bush is asking for more. These military budgets
deprive the planet of its most vital resources, driving us off the land
and destroying the subsistence farming with which women feed the world,
killing us in our millions before any bombs fall. Seven million people
were under threat of starvation in Afghanistan before the US bombing –
little has been said about them since. The most sophisticated and
expensive technology was used to kill, not to feed. Israeli tanks in
Jenin are the latest technology, but digging for survivors is done by
hand.
The brutality of these priorities that
the US inflicts on the world, is also inflicted on us here, as Native
Americans and other people of color are the first to testify. Here we
have the death penalty, the largest prison population in the world, and
a lack of benefits where either you make it or you’re homeless and
starving in the wealthiest country in the world. Here we get welfare
"reform" which forces mothers to leave our children for jobs
with the worst wages and working conditions, leaving us exhausted,
without time or money for our children. That’s how the country of
motherhood and apple pie treats the relationship between mother and
child – as obstacles to even more obscene profits. And that’s how
they diss all human relationships everywhere. This is the American way
of life as we daily experience it. It is hidden by media myths draped in
the flag that people all over the world are burning.
We march today against this brutality at
home and abroad. We demand an end to all wars. We demand the right of
mothers & other caregivers to welfare and other resources. We demand
pay equity worldwide and affordable and accessible housing and
technology which reduces the hours of work for all of us. We demand a
world centered on enriching EVERYONE’s life, not just enriching a few.
Money that goes to welfare mothers is
money that does not go to bomb people around the world.
Money that does not go to Bush’s "endless
war" in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, that does not fund
slaughter in Palestine and a military coup in Venezuela. In demanding
welfare, and demanding the military budget to fund it, we women
defend the wages of all workers, including caregivers, and the right of
everyone everywhere to a caring not killing society.