Men join women to demand “Invest in caring not killing”
for the 3^rd Global Women’s Strike on 8 March 2002

statements from men in support of the
Global Women's Strike & women's opposition to wars

Every mother I've ever known, starting with my own, has worked her ass off raising her kids, doing whatever the thousand things her particular situation demanded of her.

×From childhood, back in Ghana, I saw my mother and the other women overworked to keep things going in the community and families.

× As a rural queer who does caring work for my at times ailing mother (who nonetheless also does much caring work for me!), I personally have a direct stake in the Strike’s #1 demand that caring work be recognized as work and paid for…

× My mother who did much of the housework and untiringly cared for us is today disabled, while the role played by one of my sisters as a single-parent in devoting most of her time in caring for her children lies unrecognised, let alone paid for.

× My sister is a nurse in a hospital and has also been a nurse in the home looking after my parents and elderly relatives' health, as a result I did not have to do it...

×  My girlfriend is a hardworking, conscientious and committed disabled woman, helping her disabled sisters to claim their rightful benefits entitlements, as well as campaigning for the extension of civil rights to disabled people.

×  I watched my mother ruin her health bringing up us four children, virtually on her own. If she had been paid for all the work she did unpaid, she could have spent more time with us instead of running off to her next part-time job to earn today's dinner.  

× The closing and equalisation of the pay gap would benefit both women and men. Lower wages for women creates the yardstick by which men are paid.

×  I know a woman who was deported back to her country and she left her daughter of two years old behind. In my own experience, as an asylum seeker, I know it is extremely painful to be separated from your child or family.

× My father died back in 1970 due to a bullet wound in Kenya and my mother brought us up single handedly toiling from morning to evening.

×    As a mental health nurse, I think it is really important for those women and men I work with and who carry out the childcare, cooking, cleaning, shopping etc, that this work is recognised as essential.

× If we can really get enough of the real workers, the mothers and carers and underwear-washers, to STOP WORK, even for an hour, maybe we begin to bring the whole sick juggernaut to a halt. Then (…) the poor deluded men who depress themselves by trying to live up to a set of work values can learn again to be themselves and not someone else.

MOTHER WAS PACIFIST  
What they have been doing bombing in Afghanistan is terrible, indiscriminate. From that height and in the dark, there’s no way they can be accurate. 90% of the people killed are not even involved in the fighting.

My father went in the army at 15. He came out of abject poverty, had to steal his food from market stalls and shops. He came out of the army to marry my mother, but the 1^st World War started, he was called up. Professional soldiers were in demand. There were most casualties in the first six months of the war, it was vicious, and he was one of them. In France he was blown up and was hospitalised for the rest of the war. He was discharged with a disability pension. Mother said he was a different person when he came home, his whole personality had changed. He couldn’t ever stop shaking. They used to call it shell shock. He was alcoholic from then on. She said the army ruined her life. Mother was bitterly pacifist, always urged me to keep out of the army. She said “I want my son to live not to die” – typical woman’s point of view. 
Ernie Longstaff, UK

EVERYBODY BECOMES A SUSPECT  
As an immigrant, I am shocked how fast the vicious policies the government uses against us are being spread to everyone since the attacks in Afghanistan. Asylum seekers have been detained on “suspicion” that they are fraudulent. Now all kind of people are suspected of all kind of things even when they've done nothing. This is time for resistance and survival, something many women have said for a long time. They are absolutely right.
Benoit, immigrant, UK.

CARING OR KILLING  
We men have to recognize that the caring work that keeps us alive and together is done primarily by women.  Without this work the opposition to war will hardly survive.

When I visited a colleague activist, it was clear that people who do political work with him were not phoning or visiting him in hospital, nor keeping a grip on his health needs.  Men dominate his organization – and it showed.

When he told his GP that he was in pain, he was told that he was fine and to go away.  He had cancer.  When we last saw him he cussed the US and UK governments for bombing Afghanistan, and the local council for their cuts in services – a great example for the need to invest in caring not killing. 
Michael, on welfare, UK.

PERMANENTLY AGAINST WAR   
In the opinion polls, the fall in the support for the so-called war on the side of women was about 20% greater than that of men, which is very significant. Long before this so-called war, women of the Wages for Housework Campaign have been talking about their opposition to anything being put into the military budgets. It has been an effective anti-war struggle even before the gatherings which we are seeing today, which people call anti-war, but are led by people who appeal to us to vote for Blair into power every four years so he can wage more wars on people.

If you know that in Angola, thousands of people die every day because of war, then you know that there is not “a” new war that we are talking about. Even using the word “war” is wrong because it gives the impression that there are two sides fighting. This is not an issue of two sides fighting. This is an issue of the USA and its allies invading and killing people, which I call global terrorism, which is carried out across the world.

Sisters, mothers, grandmothers, all women keep up the fight. We have to be proud of the women of this country for showing clearly that their attitude to the war differs from that of the men.
Explo Nani-Kofi

PAY WOMEN NOT THE MILITARY   
My mother used to bring food to two of her brothers who were fighting in the Resistance against Nazis and Fascists in Northern Italy during the Second World War.  Much as my mother supported her brothers fighting in the Resistance, I know she would have done anything to prevent me taking part in a war.  She cannot physically be here with us now - she died two years ago - but in the demand "Pay women, not the military" I recognise what she stood for and taught me. It is the most valuable inheritance she could ever have given me. 
Giorgio, immigrant to the UK

ROBBED OF SECURITY FOR OURSELVES  
I am disgusted with the actions of my government. They bomb the hell out of one of the poorest countries on earth and expect us to pay for it and shut up. They say we are paying the price for security, while in fact we are being robbed of the very means of security for ourselves, our families and communities. I support women's weekly antiwar picket because it is a way of refusing to shut up while we begin to collectively figure out what to do, beginning with the perspectives of mothers and other caregivers.
Eric, US

MORE DISABLED PEOPLE  
As a disabled person, I am appalled at the way war is seen as a tool for resolving 'business' matters. In the drive to give disabled people better recognition and more rights, why is it that more disabled people are produced as a result of war? Land mines, cluster bombs, etc. Remember Angola? Perhaps it is a cynical ploy by governments to give businesses new market openings in equipment and aids for disabled people?
Roger, UK

WOMEN, THE REAL ECONOMISTS  
The wealthy west refuses to recognise or ameliorate the poverty they create as a result of their relentless programme of globalisation of trade, politics and culture. They force loans onto countries plunging them deeper into 'debt'. Never do they turn for advice to the real economists within the countries, the women.  The very people who produce most of the food; rear the children; tend to the sick; and 101 other everyday tasks. . .
Sean, UK

IMAGINE BEING IN AFGHANISTAN 
It has fallen to me to live with and care for my elderly mom – and that’s ok with me, it’s not a one-way street.  But imagine being in those shoes in Afghanistan, with a drought that’s left nothing to eat, driven from shelter by the bombing, with power supplies destroyed, alongside millions of other innocent men and women, children and elders in the same predicament.  I cannot imagine the reality of that.  But looking from that angle it’s very clear to me which side I’m on – WITH THE CARERS, NOT THE KILLERS!, to paraphrase one of the slogans of the women’s antiwar picket. 
Dean Kendall, subsistence farmer,  PA, US.

DEVASTATION AT HOME & ABROAD 
Massive layoffs occur in the US, yet the Government is giving money to the military ($40 billion) to kill people in Afghanistan, and huge tax breaks to multinational corporations under the guise of reviving the economy. For the rest of us, we get further impoverished and overworked with the burden falling most heavily on women and people of color, those who have least.  Working for a labor union I am shocked at how the AFL-CIO has given Bush a blank check to suck up resources desperately needed by working families everywhere to bomb other working families in Afghanistan, and then has the nerve to whimper when no money is put into “caring” for our members.  To quote a firefighter in New York, “This mayor loves us only when we're dead." Americans are finding that Bush, Powell and Delay care even less.  Defeating the US-UK war machine will require the broadest possible movement, and in my experience if women are not part of the movement in their own name, they become invisible and we’re all diminished.
Sam, US                                                                

Payday is a network of men organising with the International Wages for Housework Campaign
PO Box 287 London NW6 5QU, UK
Tel: 020 7209 4751  Fax 020 7209 4761
PO Box 11795, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19101, USA
Tel: (215) 848 1120 Fax:  (215) 848 1130
payday@paydaynet.org