Global Women’s Strike 2001 Guyana Bi-Weekly Call to Action, Issue #1

A CALL TO ACTION ON INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY, 2001

On March 8, 2000, women in 64 countries of the world held the first global strike of women to call for a world which values all women’s work and all women lives. These were some of the demands that women in other countries made:

• Abolition of the huge debts our countries are said to owe (although our unwaged and low waged work has more than repaid this debt, which prevents our countries from providing human needs).
• Clean drinking water for all.
• Affordable houses for all.
• Protection against violence against women.
• Equal pay for work of equal value for women and men (this will mean putting a proper value to the "caring" work women do in and out the home).
• The recognition of women’s biological work like giving birth and breastfeeding, by ensuring paid maternity leave and breastfeeding breaks as RIGHTS. In other words, an end to penalising women for being women.

In Guyana, a small number of women took part in the strike with our own demands. We demanded that women’s unaged work in the home, in the community, in subsistence farming, be counted. We demanded that after 7 years, action be taken to find Monica Reece’s murderer and to bring him to justice. We demanded justice for all the women and all the young people who had suffered violence at the hands of high ranking men as much as low ranking men – whether the violence was by vehicle – like Alecea, or by gun, like Patricia, or by fist, like Kaloutie. We demanded social security for all Guyanese women. We demanded accountability and high standards from medical services that were destroying women’s lives. We demanded an equal share of power to make decisions about the lives and the future of Guyanese children, women, and men. And we said, we were making these demands as women across race, for women across race.

Not one demand has been addressed.

On March 8, 2001, let us raise up a larger contingent of the global rising up of women! On March 8, let us join the global strike of women.

Mothers in Black, in association with (other names to be added), calls on individual Guyanese women and Guyanese women’s groups to strike with us on International Women’s Day, 2001, so that we can make our individual and collective demands clear and visible.

We want our work and our lives and our love valued!

Global Women’s Strike 2001 Guyana Call to Action, Issue #1

Between now and March 8, 2001, we will issue 3 more calls to action with the latest news from here and abroad. We will say which groups or individuals are joining the strike in our country and every country. We will say what the demands of each group is. This week, we want to tell you the demands of Mothers in Black. We believe that for our demands to be real, they must come up out of our real lives. Here is what came up out of the real lives of the Mothers in Black.

On July 7, 2000, we began a protest against the murder of our children and other family members on the streets of Guyana, and we made a public commitment that every Friday, from 12 midday to 1 p.m., at least one of us would stand in the street opposite Parliament (in the spot we call Karen’s Corner, after Karen de Souza, who staged a one week day and night vigil in that spot in 1999, against violence). And we have kept our commitment.

Why are we out there, every Friday, rain or shine, dressed in black? Because we demand an accounting for the lives of our children. Their lives were precious to us, we want then counted. We want the love and the work we put into raising them counted. That is why we hold up their pictures so that others can see that they were not numbers in a game. They were human beings whom we nurtured with our work and our love.

There is another way we want their lives counted. By making the changing in the laws and the management of the laws governing traffic. By insisting on a renewed culture of respect for human life on the road. In the name of our children, we want no one else’s children to be murdered carelessly, their murderers able to walk away carefree. This is not a simple matter of "traffic". It is about what the society values. Madmen kill our children and walk away – some with short sentences and time off for "good behaviour; some with no sentences at all; some never even arrested. To all those in the society with power, from all sides, from all institutions including political, business, trade union, media, and religious institutions, this is not important.

• The economy is important.
• The political battle is important.
• The work and love of nurturing human life is not important.
• What do they think that economies and politics are made from, except human beings, who did not make and raise themselves?

The work they dismiss as "women’s work" is the work of making and raising human beings. Caring work. Service work. Making things happen work. This work is either unvalued, when we do it for love, or low-valued, when we do it for pay. Look at the wages of domestic workers, of teachers, of nurses! For all that we do, without a wage or for low, low wages, for all that we do as mothers and nurses, teachers and secretaries, shop assistants and domestic workers, subsistence farmers and traders – FOR ALL THAT WE DO – WE WANT OUR WORK AND OUR LIVES AND OUR LOVE VALUED!

CROSSING DIVIDES AMONG WOMEN
Statement delivered by Karen de Souza at the Launching of the GAP-WPA Campaign for Elections 2001, on behalf of WPA women

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