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Women
Say Scrap the Bye-Laws or We'll Have to Break the Law!
Women
oppose the bye-laws that Galway city council is threatening to introduce.
Imposing these laws is a further encouragement to those who always want to
shut us up. We have already been threatened at our weekly anti-occupation
picket that these bye-laws will deal with us.
But we give notice that, whatever happens, we intend to ensure that
our needs and demands as grassroots women are heard, and acted on, and our
opposition to war and occupation will continue.
- The
Galway City Council's Draft Litter Pollution Bye-Law proposes to make
it illegal to distribute advertising material in a public place.
This can include community leaflets - the only way most women
can let others know what is happening to us and to invite them to
organise with us for change.
Most of us women cannot afford to take out adverts in the print
media and don't have the time or money to set up or even access
websites.
The media always censor us because we tell too much truth about
what we and our families are denied so that wars can be waged and
profits made.
Silence has been forced on women for long enough!
Now Galway city council want to silence us even further.
- The
law proposes to exclude only election and referendum material from
this ban on leaflets.
Electioneering by political parties using their lies and broken
promises is OK but grassroots self-defence is not.
This is an outrageous attack on all community organising, much
of which is done by women. It is another way of devaluing women's work
of campaigning to protect the community, most of which is done
unwaged.
Our leaflets telling our truth are not litter!
- The
Galway City Council Parks and Open Spaces Bye-Laws 2003 would require
groups to apply for written permission to hold public meetings or
religious services of over 100 people; assembly could be permanently
banned in some areas.
This is not only contrary to international law, it is against
the Irish constitution!
In any controlling of who protests and who doesn't, women will
come off worst…it's hard enough to make our point at the gatherings
that do take place now!
- Busking
and many leisure activities like swimming will be impacted and the
placement of notices, tents, camps, temporary structures and
advertisements will also be prohibited except in certain areas.
This city has a historic reputation for dissent and the free
and creative use of public space.
We will not allow that to be destroyed by this new social
control.
Some parts of this law may, for example, criminalise placards
expressing demands during a protest - again one of the main means we
have to express our demands.
This
is a US-inspired move to quell the growing anti-globalisation and anti-war
movements, which have mushroomed in Galway in recent years.
It is part of a much wider repression of our right to protest and
organise - shutting up carers who demand an end to US wars across the
world, and that society invest in caring, not killing.
As women we are always confronting efforts to keep us invisible even by
those who claim to be our allies. We
are issuing our own statement because women were again left out of the
DFSAA [Defend Free Speech, Assembly and Activities] leaflets and
statements. Asked to add our name to this campaign, we were then told that
there wasn't room for even a sentence on how such laws would affect women
– they had the word ‘women’ on the leaflet when they listed
women’s organisations; they thought women should be satisfied with that!
The
Left should not believe the Right when it says that feminists have made us
equal. Neither Condoleeza
Rice nor any of the (very few) women in power has even tried to end our
low pay, unwaged overwork, and resulting poverty, any more than racism has
been eliminated - look at the occupation of Iraq!
That's why grassroots women of every race and nation demand the
right to speak out and act on our own behalf, including within the
anti-war, anti-repression movement.
Women Will Not Be Silenced by Repressive Laws!
Scrap the Bye-Laws!
Issued by: Global Women's Strike, Galway.
Tel: 087 7838688
Email: womenstrike8m@server101.com
Website: http://womenstrike8m.server101.com
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