International Women's Strike Follows the Money Trail

By Mike Rosenberg for Indymedia
http://www.phillyimc.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/10/2320203

Click here for report from the organisers Mike The strikers gather for a group photo with the Strike Bus at the Newton Friends Center in Camden, NJ towards the end of the day.

HILADELPHIA (8 March 2002) - In honor of the International Women's Day, Philadelphia based groups such as the Wages for Housework Campaign led the local leg of the 3rd Global Women's Strike, boarding a Strike Bus to "Follow the Money Trail."

Endorsed locally by the Greater Camden Unity Coalition, the Philadelphia Coalition of Labor Union Women, Philadelphia Jobs with Justice, Philadelphia National Organization for Women (NOW), PAYDAY, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the strike of 80+ women, men, and children also included 
two van loads of students from NY's Bard College.

Addressing the economic, military, welfare, and pharmaceutical attacks on women, children, and men, the strike travelled to sites where money has been reprioritized to pad wealthy coffers rather than improve livelihoods.

Following the money started led the strike to the Center City Philly offices of Solomon Smith Barney of Citigroup. Speakers showed the connection between Citigroup's destructive influence in the Argentine economy as well as its predatory lending here in Philadelphia. Banging pots and pans, the group carried puppets and signs and handed fliers to the passers by.

Afterward, they marched a few blocks to the Philadelphia Workforce Development Corp, a welfare-to-work organization that forces low- or no-income women to leave caring for their loved ones to take low-paying jobs. One speaker told the crowd how that organization worked to stop her from caring for her elderly parents and her children so she can take a job and hire someone else to do that care.

From there, it was a short march to the Glaxo-Smithkline offices. A global pharmacuetical concern, Glaxo-Smithkline is a major patent-holder of drugs that are denied production in poor countries with epidemics needing them. Speakers talked about its history of suspect testing, often "proving" a drug's viability based on what they want the result to be.

Crossing the Delaware River into one of America's most impoverished cities, the Strike Bus went to Camden, NJ. Here the demonstrators saw the untaxed corporations such as defense contractors with huge waterfront campuses next to bombed-out looking collapsing streets and homes.

Meeting up at a Friends Center in Philly and lunching at another in Camden, the group was led in song by Pat Humphries and Sandy Opatow.