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Call
for Students to join the Global Women's Strike,
8 March 2002 Plans for the 3rd Global Women's Strike (GWS) are well underway, and we invite all students to take part -- last year women in over 60 countries took up the call. The Strike is a women’s anti-globalisation, anti-war action against low pay, no pay and overwork. We are pressing for military spending-- well over $800 billion a year -- to be invested in caring and life, beginning with women and girls who work hardest for least. We are calling on movements for change to recognize "Invest in Caring, not Killing!" as a perspective for winning. The Strike includes students from different backgrounds – schools, 6th forms, colleges, universities -- plus lecturers and staff. Students have used it to protest against tuition fees and cuts in grants and services, which particularly attack those of us who are single mothers, on low incomes, immigrant or refugee women. Fees and debt shut the door to higher education for many, forcing others into courses profitable to the military and corporations, including learning to be managers over others. The Strike can be a way to protest against education being used to divide students by race, class, income, course and more, and to oppose the agenda imposed by military, pharmaceutical and other corporate funding. Some of what’s been won so far: University of East London Student’s Union – women used the GWS to win paid annual holiday on International Women’s Day for women staff and sabbatical officers. Rural Ghana -- pupils took the day off to march with their "precious mothers". Barcelona -- university cleaners, students and lecturers got together on the Strike day, as 1,500 women gathered in the city's main square. Sheffield University -- did a statement protesting tuition fees (available on the website) for the Shut-down of Higher Education, 2001, and held an event bringing together women from on and off campus. In London this year we are organising a Whistle-stop Tour & Cacerolazo (pots and pans protest) to Sweep Out the Global Killers, with a giant puppet and drummers -- starting at the Shell Centre, Waterloo tube and ending at the World Bank in Haymarket. All welcome. Perhaps you’d like to join us, or organise a protest highlighting the impact of fees on women students outside the Department for Education & Skills (DFES) in Westminster as part of the Whistle-stop Tour. We will also be at:
We invite all to join us, or call your own action -- for 10 minutes, an hour, or the day. Most of all we'd like to hear from you. Send us your striking statement, and let us know what you are planning to do so we can help publicise it. Any action, big or small, is welcome. Payday men's network is co-ordinating men's support. See the website (address below) for more information. If you have 10 minutes . . .
If you have 30 mins:
If you have 1 hour:
If you have an afternoon or a day:
Don't forget to send us e-mail addresses. Whatever action you take we ask you to publicise all the Strike demands (see below). Yours to stop & change the world, Jenny Hautman and Sara Callaway Striking Statements from Students 2001The Global Women's Strike is coordinated
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