French
Spanish
The
4th Global
Women's Strike
A
call to action for 8 March 2003
Invest in Caring Not Killing
As we invite you to take action on International Women's Day 2003 with women from many countries, we all know that it has never been so urgent to stop the world and change it. We live in terror that the US government will use its weapons of mass destruction, unleashing who knows what violence on people and environment. At the same time, media censorship can't hide an unfolding anti-war movement of millions, South and North, including in the US itself, a movement increasingly not only against war in Iraq, but against all wars.
It's not as though we've been living in peace. For millions of us, economic plunder has been enforced by military genocide from Congo to Kashmir, Palestine to Colombia, Chechnya to Sudan, Yugoslavia to Afghanistan. Behind every headline are women fighting for the life of communities traumatised by terror and destruction.
As deadly as weapons is the starvation millions of us face. On top of food scarcity imposed by killing economic priorities, are floods and drought imposed by climate change. Women work endlessly trying to feed families enough to survive for another day. For carers, organising for survival is inseparable from organising for change. But our survival is not an economic priority, so our survival work is invisible and uncounted.
Every 8th March, Strike actions in over 60 countries on every continent broadcast our demands, which are rooted in our international experience. The more we as women come together to break the divisions of race, ethnicity, nation, religion, language - which divide us to deprive us - the more grassroots women's needs are visible and our demands heard against the wars and the trade in arms that soak up our resources.
Over half of world military spending is by the US. It is this military might that enforces US economic supremacy. It imposes oil - the prime pollutant - as the main energy source. With its European and Israeli allies, the US promotes and sells weapons to governments everywhere to make war with each other and to defend their power against us. That's how 75% of the budget of, for example, Uganda and Pakistan is devoured by military spending.
Demands of the Global Women's Strike
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The Strike's key demand is:
Payment for all caring work -- in wages, pensions, land and other resources. What is more valuable than raising children and caring for others? Invest in life and welfare, not military budgets and prisons.
It is addressed to all governments and institutions that form the hierarchy of power against us.
In recent months, this demand for the return of military budgets has been echoed by all kinds of people in Third World and industrial countries. They have agreed that even the threat of war is an attack on every life on this planet: from mothers demanding clean accessible water, food and welfare, to veterans among millions of others in dire need of health care, to waged workers forced out of work without means of survival or struggling against low pay and long hours, to people with disabilities and pensioners deprived of a dignified income, to children denied basic education and students denied grants, to homeless people . . . All point to the $900+ billions world spending on weapons of mass destruction and demand to know:
Why must the military be the priority for which each of us must do without?
This is a new and holistic protest, against not only war but the draining of our collective wealth and resources for war. The consensus global priority is to reclaim the military budget. To this end, people are working out new ways of organising based on each sector being accountable to other sectors, and rejecting political ambition and parties whose priority is their own power. Though men may be the most prominent, women are always the backbone of anti-war activism.
Throughout the year, the Strike has done many kinds of organising: weekly anti-war pickets in a number of countries, and daily work to defend our right to welfare, healthcare, asylum from deportation, rape and other violence . . . Our JOURNAL and ANTI-WAR PETITION have gathered momentum for 8th March by carrying news of Strike activities in many countries. The Journal is now in Spanish, English, Swahili and Portuguese, and the Invest in Caring Not Killing international petition is also in many languages.
The Strike network has also taken part in a number of important international events.
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Venezuela In July, at the invitation of the government's Women's Institute, we sent a sister from Guyana, one from Peru and one from the US. Having voted in President Hugo Chavez to head their movement, Venezuelans began to reclaim their oil revenue to eliminate the poverty of 80% of the population. They soon faced a military coup, engineered by the US and the racist Venezuelan elite that had been electorally overthrown after over 40 years in power. But hundreds of thousands of grassroots people ? led by women who risked their lives first ? came into the streets and defeated the coup. Now their government, acting on the growing conviction that none of us can win without international support, was calling women activists to build an international network of solidarity. The
Strike is telling the story of women and this 21st
century revolution ? the story that is never told about revolutions
? and acting in its defence. Venezuelans,
and above all grassroots women, are forming their own organizations
to replace the traditional political parties based on corporate
interests, personal ambition and corruption.
We are spreading the news that CNN and Fox hide about what we
are winning in Venezuela against overwork and poverty, which is a
lever for everyone. Argentina IMF/World Bank policies of privatisation and corruption have reduced half the population to poverty. In August, five sisters from Santa Fe attended the Social Forum in Buenos Aires, spreading the news of how women in some of the poorest neighbourhoods have formed assemblies to organise communal food, win emergency benefits and challenge corruption in the distribution of subsidies. They made valuable contacts for the Strike in the exploding Latin American movement for change. Tanzania Three sisters from England joined a sister from Uganda at a conference of breastfeeding advocates and Unicef in September. We went to continue to defend mothers and infants from manufactured formula that kills at least 1.5 million infants a year, mainly in Third World countries - truly a weapon of mass destruction. But we found that, like the rest of the UN, Unicef is now part of the global market, working with McDonald's and Coca-Cola, and corrupting NGOs with funding and careers to support its genocide.* It is itself distributing formula, using HIV/AIDS as the excuse. We raised the desperate, crucial need for food security for nursing mothers. It was a subject the conference refused to discuss. And local African mothers, who know best and should have been central to these discussions, were absent. Uganda We then travelled to meet the Kaabong Women's Organisation. Our sisters there are forced to work desperately hard as global warming brings drought, which leaves them always on the edge of starvation. They walk miles to dig for water that is not even safe. They build the houses, grow what food they can and prepare it, care for children . . . Every year they walk three days without food to be part of the Strike and let the world know that they are organising for change: to clean the water, to plant an orchard, to build their women's centre, to demand more than bare survival and endless work. Some men support this organising; they know the community's survival depends on it. Bolivia In November, Aymara sisters from Peru carried the Strike demands when they joined with Quechua women to mark the day of non-violence against women. Brazil A sister from England and one from the US attended a conference, also in November, to help plan a march against US domination from the World Summit in Porto Alegre to Caracas, Venezuela. |
Our network of struggles is stronger and extends further, connecting us with what women are making happen all over the world. Women in Nigeria joined across tribal affiliation and occupied the offices of Shell Oil, which had exploited, corrupted, polluted, killed and maimed for profit. They demanded some of these lavish profits for food, schools, healthcare - for caring. Such struggles for survival and change are points of reference for the rest of us, enabling us to see our own pain in the experience of others, but also to find our own power in the victories of others.
To gain independence, we have often had to 'prove ourselves': to suppress our needs, adopt macho values, work harder than men, play down our unwaged caring work, spend less time with our children and families, and even look down on our mothers (while 'professionals' look down on us). With the Global Women's Strike we bring women's priority of Invest in Caring Not Killing to every initiative for change.
Striking to reclaim the world military budget for caring is a strategy that could only come from women the carers but, like caring itself, is central to everyone's survival: so social wealth is invested in caring, not in killing; so life and the care of it once more becomes society's priority, and the work women do to protect life is finally recognised as the basic work of society, to be shared by all; and so we stop the oil for war and war for oil that makes war on all of us every day.
Power to the sisters against war. Stop the world and change it!
Selma James
*Our book The Milk of Human Kindness: Defending breastfeeding from the global market and the AIDS industry (S Francis, S James, P Jones Schellenberg and N Lopez-Jones; Crossroads Books, London 2002) counts the vital work mothers do providing breast milk, exposing how humanity's basic food is under attack. Before this, the Strike had worked with the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action, which had invited us to the conference. But, funded by Unicef, it refused to dissociate itself from this genocidal policy.