Report of picket 4 April 2003
The daily community Picket & Open Mic opposite Parliament, called by the Global Women’s Strike, has been protesting wars against Iraq and against other people of colour around the world with the slogan Invest in Caring Not Killing. This includes ‘proxy wars’ such as those in Africa organised by the West to promote its interests, slaughtering millions.
Women’s Weekly Pickets started in October 2001 to protest the threatened bombing of Afghanistan. They built to the 8th March, 2002 Global Women’s Strike Day, when women took actions in over 70 countries on every continent. Our key demand is that the $900+ billions squandered every year on military budgets, half by the US, should be spent instead on caring, and thus on the essentials of life: supporting the needs of mothers and other carers on whose survival work we all depend – and therefore on food security, clean accessible water, decent housing, health care. We demand to know: Why is war the priority for which we must be deprived of our right to live, and to live decently, in this wealthy world?
The picket is called by women, the first carers and the poorest of the poor everywhere, who pay the highest price for war. Women with our children are 70% of the victims of armed conflict, 80% of displaced people. The impact of war is heaviest on rural women who often walk miles to fetch water, or who live in shanty towns on the outskirts of cities – the money which should support our caring work has gone to wars and weapons. No wonder women are the hidden backbone of anti-war activism, and even more women than men oppose war.
But since our survival is not an economic priority, women’s agonising and endless survival work is ignored. Hiding and ignoring women’s work goes hand in hand with Western destruction of life itself and the racist lie that Iraqi lives are worth less than the lives of US or UK soldiers, or that the massacre of civilians is ‘collateral damage’ for ‘liberation’.
In response to war against Iraq, our Women’s Weekly Picket became a daily Community event. At the Open Mic anyone can contribute views learnt from experiences – no party lines are allowed. A core of about 50 come regularly, rain or shine – Iranian, Kurdish, African, Chilean, Irish, Argentinian, Pakistani, Palestinian, Jewish, along with British and North American – with passers-by stopping to join in. Iraqi women speak regularly. People listen intently to information as well as personal, often inspiring, testimonies, punctuated by powerful chants, poetry and songs. More than one described it as ‘real democracy’ – a rare opportunity to learn the truth from each other.
The growing anti-war movement worldwide, nowhere faster and vaster than in the US, is regularly reported. During the Commons debate, anti- war MPs like John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn used our open mic to let hundreds of protesters outside know the votes inside.
Other Picket highlights include: the true story of US/Israeli genocide, and why we chant ‘Women/Children/Men of Palestine, We are with you’ in support of the peace movement of both Israeli and Palestinian mothers and others, and the Refusenik movement of their daughters and sons refusing to police and kill in the Occupied Territories. Eritrean and other refugee women speaking of fleeing rape in dictatorships and war zones, only to be refused refuge by a UK government that backs and profits from both. A nine-year-old Asian girl putting questions to Bush and Blair about the morality of bombing children. An Iranian woman reporting her grandmother’s comment on the US/UK invasion: ‘My dear, we are all Iraqis now.’ Benjamin Zephaniah reciting dub poetry. A Congolese man spilling the beans on Clare Short's complicity in Congo’s war which killed five million people. Regular reports of what women are doing and winning in the Venezuelan revolution and how last year’s US-backed coup was defeated. A Native American woman describing how people on some reservations in the US, the richest country in the world, live without electricity and running water.
A speaker from African Liberation Support Campaign spelled out the connections between the legacy of slavery and the attack on people of colour across the globe; women from Spain reported a groundswell of protest: nightly candlelight cacerolazos, where people take to balconies, roof tops and streets to bang their pots and pans, and 15-minute general strikes that are 80% effective; an Irish woman described protests by people North and South focussed on Shannon airport, which the US uses for refuelling warplanes and troop carriers, in violation of Ireland’s constitutional neutrality. She also brought news from Kurdish women in Northern Iraq, where thousands were displaced or killed under cover of the last Gulf war. Bush and Blair tried to make a deal: in exchange for active support to their military, the US would allow Turkey’s invasion of Northern Iraq and their widespread slaughter of Kurdish people there.
Payday, the network of men working with the Global Women’s Strike, has meanwhile been gathering news of men everywhere who are Refusing to Kill for their website of that name. Both an Iraqi telling of their revolution defeated by the US, which put Saddam Hussein in power, and a Falklands veteran who refused to go to the Gulf, moved many of us to tears.
Women in the Philippines sent news of their month of protest and their government's clampdown; while Indo-, Afro- and Indigenous Guyanese women reported their coming together across divisions of race, religion, language, to protest war.
The many issues have deepened our understanding of the implications of this war, and our determination to end it. We don’t lose our focus; we sharpen it.
The Picket is part of worldwide protests, every minute, every hour, opposing slaughter in Iraq and Palestine particularly. People rejoice that a Women’s Strike provides a platform bringing so many sectors of people together, starting with grassroots women who are so often invisible; pensioners; school children involved in anti-war walkouts; veterans and military families, and all of many races and nationalities. Most seem dedicated to this coming together, deeply aware that this is the route to halting war, perhaps glimpsing the possibility of together making another world, one without sexism, racism, nationalism and other segregations, and without the military budgets that defend them.
Iraqi woman
Iranian woman whose granmother said
"We are all Iraqis now!"
Native American woman
Maggie Ronayne reporting from Galway, Ireland
Congolese man
Sonia, 9 years old
The Global Women's Strike picket joins
protesters living at the peace camp in Parliament Square, including Brian
who has been there 24 hours a day for nearly 2 years
Teresa is also living at the peace camp
Benjamin Zephaniah
Regular speakers, poets and singers include Darren, an ex-soldier, and Edwin, a gulf war veteran, both
live at the peace camp
MP's John McDonell and Jeremy Corbin
