Press Release, Global Women's Strike, Galway, 25 March 2003

WOMEN SAY NO WAR --INVEST IN CARING NOT KILLING
IRELAND NORTH AND SOUTH UNITED FOR NEUTRALITY

Women's Picket and Speak-Out at Mill St Garda Station in the city centre, Galway, Wednesday 26th March @ 1pm sharp

The Global Women's Strike calls on women and men to Strike Out Against War with a community picket and non-party political speak-out at Mill St Garda Station in the city centre, Galway. All welcome. Bring relatives and friends!

The Strike welcomes similar pickets at local army barracks, Garda stations and other sites of support for this war - Shannon airport, government offices, the Dail, arms manufacturers and companies making 'dual purpose' materials. Already, women and men in Derry are giving a lead by picketing Raytheon, the giant arms manufacturer, every week.

Last week, non-violent direct action began to sweep the United States, from Washington DC in the east to Los Angeles in the west, against the second war (Afghanistan was the first) aiming for a US military takeover of the world. (The US army calls it 'full spectrum dominance'.)

In US cities and towns, local governments, trade unions, veterans, many of them not recovered from the last war, have declared opposition to war, and survivors and the families of victims of 9/11 have said this war is 'Not in our name.' Above all, women, who with our children make up the majority of  casualties and of refugees, are coming out to say No War. We know that every casualty, every collateral damage, every victim of 'friendly fire', is some mother's daughter, some mother's son.

In Aznar's Spain, a 15-minute general strike was 80% effective.

Maggie Ronayne, co-ordinator of the Global Women's Strike in Ireland, says, 'There can be no business as usual for an  Irish government which cravenly violates the constitution in order to befriend and get us to work for and protect rogue states like the US, a government that ignores what the vast majority of people here and in the world have clearly said: we want NO WAR ON IRAQ.'

On the 8th of March, the 4th Global Women's Strike's caravan to Shannon airport learned that the Gardai did not want to be doing the work of supporting the war effort by protecting warplanes from us. We know that the army are also uneasy about doing this work. They would be supporting an illegal war, a massive racist slaughter, as women of colour at our Strike events described. This support work for war crimes makes them liable for prosecution, along with Bush, Blair and Aznar.

On the picket, women the carers, including mothers, sisters and daughters of soldiers trained to kill and be killed, and of police who protect warplanes from us, will call on them to refuse this job! Men who support the Global Women's Strike are speaking out about men's long but censored tradition of refusing the work of killing. One of the most recent is the refuseniks in the Israeli army, an army which gets over $3 billion a year from the US to keep the Middle East under US/Israeli domination. Truly War is the enemy of the poor, as Martin Luther King was killed for saying.

Therese Maher, a mother who has joined Strike actions for the past three years, said, 'We are demanding to know from Bertie, Bush, Blair and company: why is the work of giving birth to and caring for every precious human being and our planet unwaged, under-resourced and unvalued, when armies are paid to kill and military budgets stand at over $900 billion a year?'

Women on the picket will ask rank and file gardai - is their lousy take-home pay enough to compensate for what the government are implicating them in and putting them against us in Shannon? Our mothers taught us to refuse to do what thugs like Bush and Blair tell us to. 

There has never been a more urgent time to act for life and against mass murder. We are doing this for our children too, so they - along with women and men of every age, race and income level - are more than welcome on our picket. 

Pickets, demonstrations in every city and many towns, non-violent direct action protests, work stoppages, occupations of Fianna Fail offices, indictments of the Irish Prime Minister for war crimes at police stations and more have happened in Ireland since the war began. We will not go away! We are demanding the military budget for caring and we will change the world, in the home and outside; in the North and in the South; in Ireland and everywhere.

Ends

1. For further information telephone: Maggie Ronayne 087 7838688 or maggie_ronayne@hotmail.com
2. This is an independent women's non-party political event called by the Global Women's Strike. We welcome the participation of all other anti-war organisations. The Strike in Ireland is part of a global network in over 70 countries and is co-ordinated in Ireland and internationally by the Wages for Housework Campaign. We welcome non-party political support from all sectors of the anti-war movement who respect the autonomy of grassroots women and what we are organising in Ireland and globally.
3. For further updates, see: http://womenstrike8m.server101.com or email womenstrike8m@server101.com For more information on men's support: payday@paydaynet.org and for information on men refusing military service see
website: http://www.paydaynet.org