Irish Launch of the fifth Global Women's Strike!
Women Organising for Survival and Revolution in Venezuela, Argentina and Bolivia
Argentinian anti-war activist and film-maker leads discussion

The launch of the preparation in Ireland for the fifth Global Women's Strike on 8th March 2004 will take place next Tuesday evening with a meeting on the Venezuelan revolution and grassroots struggle in Argentina and Bolivia. 
The meeting will take place in the National University of Ireland, Galway, on Tuesday, 2nd December 2003 at 7.30pm in room AC203 at the front of the Arts/Science Building (the building opposite the library).  
It is hosted by the Ecology Society, NUI, Galway and will be another chance to view the Strike’s exciting new documentary, Venezuela: A 21st Century Revolution.

The meeting will be addressed by Nina Lopez from Argentina, now based in London, who directed the film and appears in it. She is a co-ordinator of the Global Women’s Strike. She was in Venezuela twice this year, invited by the Women's Institute there and made a documentary with some of the interviews she and others from the Strike recorded there. In September she spoke at the Women's Solidarity Forum and participated in the Congress of the Peoples in Caracas. She traveled to the countryside where she met with many grassroots
people, especially women, to find out about their participation in the revolutionary process and what it is achieving. Ms Lopez is a co-author of The Milk of Human Kindness: Defending Breastfeeding from the Global Market and the Aids Industry (2002), and editor of Some Mother's Daughter - the Hidden Movement of Prostitute Women against Violence (1999) and of Prostitute Women and AIDS - Resisting the Virus of Repression (1992). She is a co-ordinator of Legal Action for Women, a grassroots legal service based at the Crossroads Women's Centre in London, and a member of No School Apartheid which campaigns for the rights of children seeking asylum and their carers. Ms Lopez is fluent in Spanish, French, English and Italian. For interviews with Ms Lopez, please ring Maggie, GWS, Galway, on 087 7838688.

Ms Lopez will lead the discussion, speaking about what she learned when she and others from the Strike visited Venezuela. The delegations from the Strike have included Indigenous, Black and white women from Argentina, England, Guyana, Peru and the US. She will also bring news of the struggles of Indigenous women and men in Bolivia and of organising for survival by grassroots women in Argentina. In Argentina, women have been organising with other grassroots women outside of any party structure in order to continue to feed, clothe and house their families despite the collapse of the economy brought about by globalisation and enforced privatisation. Ms Lopez has been active in the anti-war and justice movements, exposing US involvement in the 2002 coup in Venezuela and elsewhere. On Wednesday, 3rd December at 1pm she will participate with other women in the speak-out at the Strike’s weekly
Anti-Occupation Picket of Mill St Garda (police) Station. All are welcome to join and to speak at the open mic.

‘The Galway meeting will bring out the response of women here to grassroots women of the Venezuelan revolution - what we can do for it and what it can do for us,’ said Maggie Ronayne, from the Wages for Housework Campaign in Galway which co-ordinates the Global Women’s Strike in Ireland. ‘The US has already waged war for oil in Afghanistan, occupied Iraq and is now, via its bullying partner in the Middle East, Israel, threatening Syria and Iran. Fears that the US will attack Venezuela or any country it wishes have led to an enormous
international mobilisation to end war, including in Ireland and the UK,’ she added. The Strike's Bolivarian Circle/Philadelphia is a member of the Coalition to Welcome President Chavez which has had to protest at the US threats of violence, preventing President Chavez from coming to address the United Nations in New York and speaking to the US public.

The Global Women's Strike is an independent and international network of grassroots women in 61 countries, who organise throughout the year, culminating in joint action on the 8th March, to demand the return of the global military budget of $900 billion + under the theme 'Women Say No War: Invest In Caring Not Killing'. While the Strike welcomes support from all
sectors of the anti-war movement, it is independent of all political parties in Ireland and internationally. For more information, email womenstrike8m@server101.com or visit: http://womenstrike8m.server101.com The Strike works with Payday an international network of men. See http://www.refusingtokill.net

In Venezuela, the fifth largest exporter of oil in the world, President Hugo Chavez Frias was elected by a landslide in 1998 to carry out sweeping economic and social reforms to rid the country of poverty and corruption. (80% of the population lives in poverty despite the oil wealth). A revolutionary new constitution created by the people was passed by a 72% vote. It guarantees rights and marks achievements fought for over years by women, Indigenous
communities and others who have suffered discrimination – rights still to be won in many countries including Ireland. These include recognition of housework as an activity that creates social wealth and therefore payment for it in the form of social security, pension for housewives and a Women’s Development Bank which gives credit to women who are organising to improve their communities and situations; land reform, including land to Indigenous people; food security through sustainable agriculture; strong measures to tackle machismo in the justice system; no privatisation of water or oil – the oil revenues going to health care, education and other socially beneficial programmes. The caring use of the military in Venezuela has also been highlighted by the Strike. The army has built schools, houses and carried out other tasks with grassroots communities.

‘If this is what women (most of them single mothers) have won in Venezuela, why can’t we have it in Ireland? Instead, we are fighting savage cuts to social welfare, particularly to single mothers and facing increased spending on security in advance of Ireland’s EU presidency next year. This is all the easier for the government to impose since they can draw on already existing repressive laws and a history of censorship in Ireland as well as the example of the Patriot Act in the US, the Terrorism Act in the UK and the theft, by Bush, of welfare from single mothers and others in order to waste it on war, occupation and environmental destruction,’ said Ms Ronayne.

In April 2002 the racist elite in Venezuela, acting with the US government, imposed a military coup by kidnapping the government and declaring the constitution no longer valid. Women from the poorest neighbourhoods of the capital, Caracas, were the first to descend from the hills and take direct action, blockading the streets by means of sheer numbers and demanding the return of their elected president and their constitution. The army rank-and-file, urged by the population, reinstated their government. Women's courage and initiative in defeating the coup and a subsequent lock-out in the oil industry, is widely acknowledged in Venezuela.

As women and men prepare to blockade Shannon airport here in Ireland on 6th December to stop the illegal refueling of US warplanes there, we are strengthened by hearing from other grassroots people worldwide of their organising against war, occupation and coups. We are also stronger for getting the news out to them that people in Ireland will continue to oppose the use of Shannon for war until we have stopped it and globalised neutrality.

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