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Women for Wages for Housework AFRICAN ANTI-WAR & ANTI GENOCIDE CAMPAIGNERS TARGET WORLD BANK Thank you to ALISC for inviting us to speak at this African Liberation Day demonstration and rally. ALISC’s work is unique. No other organisation in this country highlights the situation in Africa, not only as victim of the genocidal drive for profit and power, but as struggling peoples despite all the odds. And it does that without grants or posts, because this work is not fundable. Which is why so few people attempt it. It is done because it is work that needs doing. That’s the kind of political work BWWFH respects and is itself attempting. We are not going for careers but to change the world from the bottom up. BWWFH is African, Asian, Caribbean, Indigenous, Latin American, campaigning for unwaged caring work to be valued and paid for. Since 2000 we've taken part in the Global Women Strike, together with women in over 70 countries. The Strike demands the world INVEST IN CARING NOT KILLING. That is, money for life and caring instead of for the annual $900+ billion now squandered on military budget. The slaughter in Africa organised and promoted by the West, is so horrendous that it is hard even to grasp, with women and children paying the highest price. The racist media mostly shows African people as victims, hiding the heroic efforts for survival and the tremendous movements for change on that continent, many organised and spearheaded by women. African women struggle every waking hour to care for and sustain families and communities. They grow 80% of the food, but women and children are most likely to die of starvation. Women are the first carers but the poorest of the poor everywhere. We and our children are 70% of the victims of armed conflict, 80% of displaced people worldwide. This year the GWS confronted the global war machine which invaded Iraq, and we have tried to use the massive movement against that war to call attention to the decades of poverty, tyranny and murderous conflict, imposed especially on the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America. In this effort ALISC has been our point of reference. The lost lives of 4 + million women, men and children in the Congo alone, constitutes a holocaust, only recently given media coverage. Military conflict and Western-backed dictators kill us and force us to flee our homes. Many people spend their lives in camps, living at the edge of starvation, with women carrying the burden of poverty and violence perpetrated by soldiers, peacekeepers and others paid to protect us. It was finally reported yesterday that hundreds of women in Kenya are taking legal action against the British army for rapes and violence perpetrated by them for over 20 years. This is the tip of the iceberg of violence that women especially have suffered at the hands of every imperial power. The military sanctions rape and props up corrupt governments so that multi-nationals can exploit us, killing us with overwork, starvation and pollution. Even before bombs drop, 1 1/2 million children die every year, many in Africa, from the global market pushing formula milk to replace human milk, the first food of humanity. And yet we are supposed to believe them when they tell us AIDS is the threat. We believe nothing they tell us, nothing, not if they are doctors, or scientists, or NGOs, but especially if they are politicians, and white supremacist genocidal maniacs like Bush, Blair and their partners in global crime of every variety. Our sisters in rural Uganda, where 75% of the budget goes to the military, have to dig for water that is unfit to drink. Like women everywhere they struggle daily to survive and change the world. Like women in Iraq, they lack water to drink and to sustain life. They write:
Ignoring and hiding women's work goes hand in hand with the Western destruction of life itself and the racist lie that African lives are worth less, or that the massacre of civilians is 'collateral damage'. When we have been able to claim our wealth where it is accumulated – in the West – we face problems with other people of colour: divisions have been promoted between those of us who just arrived and those of us settled here, and in many other ways. We as people of African descent and people of colour generally must lead the way in refusing government-inspired attacks on asylum seekers and immigrants. These attacks are one way the West covers up their responsibility for our being forced to seek asylum. We are also up against the voluntary sector: women asylum seekers fleeing rape by soldiers and other torture, are made destitute, and turned onto the streets by the very groups who we are told are funded to help. So-called Black leaders like Rev Sentamu and Baroness Valerie Amos collaborate with the most brutal legislation ever, in the same way that Condeleeza Rice and Colin Powell give a multi-racial face to Bush's military dictatorship aiming for world domination. Despite horrendous defeats, women the carers, especially from the Third World, have had to organise to save their children, their communities and themselves. Their heroism, like their struggle, has been hidden, but is growing, and it takes many forms: Ugandan women used the GWS to win some free health care for everyone. In Guyana, Afro, Indo and Indigenous women used it to confront divisions that promote violence and profits for the few. Indigenous women from the Andes of Peru and Bolivia are demanding the military budget for Indigenous mothers and other women who keep the Indigenous community alive and fighting back. Tanzanian women with disabilities are pressing for tricycle wheelchairs adapted for their needs, their "Encourage development not war" call highlights how war causes disability – if people survive. We are also connecting with Nigerian women who are confronting oil companies and have won some resources for their community. We can't forget Palestinian women, Iraqi women, Eritrean women and women from many other communities facing genocidal wars. The GWS has been supporting the women in Venezuela, a country which is mostly people of African and Indigenous descent. We made a video of interviews of people in this amazing 21st century revolution. When President Chavez, leading the revolution there, was kidnapped by the US-backed white elite, millions took to the streets led by women. With the grassroots military, they brought him back to power. President Chavez always calls attention to the need of the grassroots of the whole Third World, in fact the whole world, to come together. He knows that Venezuela needs Africa. Africa also needs friends like the revolution in Venezuela. The Strike is starting a Bolivarian Circle to spread information about this revolution, what we can do for it and what it can do for us. The GWS organised a daily Community Picket opposite Parliament even before the bombing of Iraq started as it gave a platform for grassroots women and men to get together and voice our opposition to war and all that is being done against us, and our determination to end it. Getting together sharpens our focus. If any of us are to survive, we must come together across divisions of skin colour, nation, tribe, religion, language, and with women and communities everywhere. The GWS is our weapon against war and for life, beginning with African life everywhere in the world. Men in Payday work with the Strike and are highlighting how women and men around the world are refusing to do the imperialist killing that is traditional for the macho man, of whatever race. The Strike welcomes their work. The participation of men is welcome, and is co-ordinated by Payday. We demand that society Invest in Caring not Killing. And to that end globally we say Stop the World and Change it! Black
Women for Wages for Housework For addresses in the WOC - WinWages network go to our Website: http://allwomencount.net Men’s
support and participation welcome – email: payday@paydaynet.org |