The Wages for Housework Campaign in the US has been coordinating Strike activities for 2001. In the summer we were involved in demonstrations against the Republican & Democratic National Conventions (R2D2)
*************************** Speech made at Protests
against the My name is Phoebe Jones Schellenberg. I am with the International Wages for Housework Campaign which is sponsoring the Mothers, Partners, Daughters, Wives, Marching for Our Loved Ones’ Lives march on August 2 at 12 noon at Welcome Park, 2nd and Walnut. I am also a member of the R2K Network. I was asked to speak today on who is protesting and why. The protests against the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles this summer are a culmination of previous protests:
and thirdly we come out of the protests in Seattle and DC, and to the massive S26 protest planned for Prague where the IMF is meeting this fall. The international mobilization against the global state of the World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization is growing and spreading, and it is unstoppable. Our demonstrations oppose the US policies which support them. In Philly, we are young people, low-waged workers, unwaged mothers and grandmothers, family farmers and farmworkers [Black Farmers will be participating in the protests]. We face discrimination based on gender, race, sexual preference, disability, and age, as well as poverty, nationality and immigration status. We are people having to work so many jobs or such long hours to make ends meet that we have no time with our loved ones and we are protesting against having to live the life of a robot. Many people will be visible in our demonstrations whose needs are hidden most of the time and we are rejecting a society and a economy where that is the case. We are protesting against the priorities of both political parties that support and nurture a global market that is increasing people’s workload while cutting wages beginning with women and people of color, creating massive ill health while depriving us of health care, lowering the standard of living during this so-called economic boom that for most of us has been a bust, and destroying the environment. We are protesting the $800 billion a year spent on military budgets worldwide, when the UN Development Program estimates that $80 billion – one tenth of the military budget – is needed to satisfy basic human needs, including a basic income for people worldwide. The political parties have no defenders except those who directly profit from their policies. We have a mandate, not the parties. The press has been asking a lot about potential violence at the protests. But what about the everyday violence most of us face in our lives, from birth to death – a lifespan by the way that is only 30 years now in Africa which is the result of globalization but is being blamed on a virus. What about the violence of being separated from infants as young as 6 weeks old, because of welfare reform or because there is no paid maternity leave in the US; or the violence of illness, disability and even early death from exposure to toxic chemicals, lead, pesticides, the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink. Or the huge numbers of people in prisons, workfare, corporate farms, and sweatshops working for far less than the minimum wage? You know farmers in India who have been committing suicide by drinking the pesticides that have made them dependent on American corporations. One economist estimated that as many as 13 million people have died each year from the impact of globalization since it began its relentless – but stoppable – march. Women know this violence because it is often taken out on us. Same if we are Black or gay or children. And to this list of violence we add police violence caught on videotape once again. We who are protesting stand with other vulnerable communities in calling for prosecution of the police involved in beating Thomas Jones. We in the cities of Philadelphia and Los Angeles, two cities with some of the most documented cases of police abuse, we who have been under surveillance, denied permits to march and subjected to harassment and raids take statements by LA’s Mayor Riordan and Philly’s Mayor Street of a ‘tough stand’ against protesters as a serious threat. Riordan has actually threatened with rubber bullets, pepper spray, stiff fines and long jail sentences for those exercising their first amendment rights. We call on the press to take that potential violence seriously. We call on the press to ask Phila officials why they are not abiding by Federal Judge Feess‘ ruling that similar actions by LA police and officials are a gross violation of the right to free speech and to assemble. In conclusion, we are protesting because we tired of having our worth as human beings based on whether we are good for the market, with whole sectors of us considered in the way of production, from breastfeeding mothers to children to people with disabilities to those having worked a lifetime are now ill or disabled or just poor, not to mention the low status and value and wages of those of us who care for them. We are calling for a different set of priorities, for people and the care of people to be the end and aim of the economy. The priorities for society and the economy must be based on human need, not corporate greed. |
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| International Wages for
Housework Campaign As unwaged and low-waged women and caregivers of all kinds who have seen much of what the US military has done to prop up military dictatorships abroad, we are appalled at the staging of the military trade show for Republicans in Philadelphia. This amounts to a military ‘declaration of independence’ from the government and a violation of the subordination of the military to political control. It is not the elected who are in charge, but the corporations peddling their military ware, and the Pentagon which gets so much money – from one third to one half the US national budget – that it is acting like a law unto itself. In a recent round of Congressional spending, the military got more than what it asked for! $800 billion a year is spent on military budgets worldwide, while the UN estimates that $80 billion, one-tenth of the military budget, would satisfy all basic human need worldwide, including the need for a basic income for all. As women doing 2/3 of the world’s work for 5% of the income, we object to this use of funds. We have paid a heavy price in increased work and lower pay for government spending going to the military instead of for human need. Those of us who are Black or from the Third World have paid the heaviest price of all. And those of us who are mothers don’t want our children to be cannon fodder for armies to prop up dictatorships or to protect the interests of the global market. Yet administration after administration of both political parties has prioritized the military over the needs of the population. With over 6000 US soldiers receiving wages so low they are on food stamp support, when we say ‘Pay Women, not the Military’, we don’t mean don’t pay the soldier. We mean don’t fund the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about, and which this trade show is a frightening example of. |
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International Wages for
Housework Campaign My name is Phoebe Jones Schellenberg from the International Wages for Housework Campaign, a network of women including unwaged and low-waged caregivers of all kinds, mothers, grandmothers, housewives, women on welfare, women working on the land, and in the community. We are domestic workers, lesbian women, Black and other women of color, immigrant women, prostitute women, farmers and farmworkers, bonded laborers, and others who have the least resources in the world. Those of us who work without wages are the majority of the world’s workers. As women we do 2/3 of the world’s work for 5% of the income, and 2/3 of our work is unwaged.
Women provide more health care than all health care industries combined. Yet our voices are rarely heard and ‘workers of the world unite’ rarely refers to us. Until we speak, the full truth about globalization does not emerge, nor does the opposition to it. Every time a hospital is closed we pick up the slack; every time a social service is cut, we make do; every time wages are lowered we take on more waged work to make ends meet, and every time someone is imprisoned it is the mothers, daughters, sisters, partners and wives who trudge back and forth between offices and jails to make lawyers do their job, families keep together, and the accused gets the support he or she deserves. We are the invisible adjusters in structural adjustment programs, including in welfare reform which denies us the right to be with our own children, to breastfeed them, and the right to money for the work of raising them. Our movement for valuing caring is the movement for valuing people against an economy which claims success while millions go to bed hungry, and all of us never know when we’ll be on the street too. Women have been the backbone of most movements for social change. Not only the invisible adjuster, the invisible worker, but the invisible fighter. We are here today to demand a total change in priorities, from the production of profit to the care of people. We haven’t raised our kids to be commodities in the global market or cannon fodder in their armies to protect that market. While $800 billion a year is spent on military budgets, the UN says that $80 billion - one tenth of the military budget - would satisfy all basic human needs, including a minimum income for every person on earth. We demand pay equity not just between women and men but women and women – globally including decent pay for all caring work. Money for women and children is money for all the workers of the world! We are saying no to electing not the President of the United States, but the CEO of the world. We are well aware of the millions in the streets in Peru today blocking that election fraud, and indigenous people in Chiapas and elsewhere refusing the army the US trained and the Ogoni in Africa opposing US oil companies. We are well aware of the thousands in Seattle and DC before us, and in LA and Prague S26 coming up. We are aware that it was the Mothers of the Disappeared who led the opposition to the dictatorship in Argentina. And we are aware of the majority in this country who don’t vote, casting a vote of no confidence in either party. We represent them today. We are the majority and we not they have the mandate for change.
Speech given on Monday, 14 August 2000 to the rally "Human Need Not Corporate Greed – March for our Lives". Lori Nairne of International Wages Due Lesbians was one of the key speakers at this opening event of the four days of protests against the National Democratic Convention, Los Angeles 14-17 August 2000 My name is Lori Nairne of International Wages Due Lesbians. I speak today for women in 64 countries who took part in the first-ever Global Women's Strike on March 8, 2000. Unwaged and low-waged caregivers, mothers, grandmothers and daughters, in villages and cities, most of us women of color –most of the world is not white – stopped our work as housewives, farmers and farm workers, bonded laborers, domestic workers, sex workers, nurses, teachers, students, with and without disabilities, many of us immigrant . . . to demand a total change in priorities, from the production of profit to the care of people. As women we do 2/3 of the world's work for 5% of the income and 2/3 of our work is unwaged.
And we are the first defenders of loved ones who are persecuted and imprisoned because of racism, 'crimes' of poverty and/or protest. Many of us are lesbian. And we do the same work as other women caring and earning. On top of that we confront hostility and discrimination in housing, employment, healthcare and the legal system. The majority of lesbian women in the world can’t afford to live openly, so we're forced to live double lives or face violence, imprisonment, torture or death. We women are not only the invisible workers, but also the invisible fighters and leaders. We’re not only the hidden backbone of every economy but of most movements for social change. We haven't raised our kids to be commodities in the global market or cannon fodder in the armies which protect the market. We are here to tell the government of the USA that we oppose military spending of $800 billion a year while the UN says that $80 billion -- one tenth of world military budgets – would provide water, sanitation, basic health, nutrition and education, and a minimum income for every individual. While we’re denied money for survival, both parties now want to spend $500 billion more of our money on Star Wars 2. Every time a hospital is closed we pick up the slack; every time a social service is cut, we make do; every time wages are lowered we take on more work to make ends meet. We are the invisible adjusters in structural adjustment programs, including in welfare reform which denies us the right to be with our own children, to breastfeed them and to money for the work of raising them. Our movement to value caring is the movement to value people against an economy which claims success while millions die of hunger and/or are homeless, including here in the richest country on earth. We are with the Indigenous women in Mexico resisting the US-trained army, and with the Ogoni people in Nigeria opposing US oil companies, and with the millions in India stopping the Narmada dam which will flood their homes. We are with the Mothers of the Disappeared in Chile trying to bring Pinochet to trial, and with the millions in Peru resisting another dictator the US supported because repression is good for ‘American interests’ – which Americans? Not most of us. We out here represent the majority in this country who don't vote or vote without conviction, and the rest of the world who can’t vote. Our vote is no confidence in either party and in the Market they serve. We demand recognition of all caring work. Every life is of value, and every carer deserves a wage. Men are increasingly aware that money for women and children is money for the workers of the world. We demand pay equity not just between women and men but among all women and all people globally, so we can say to the market: nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no slave labor nowhere. On behalf of the thousands in Seattle and DC before us, the thousands preparing for Prague S26 and the second Global Women's Strike on March 8, 2001, we demand that the government of the USA which rules the world without any mandate: Invest in Life, Not Death, Not Prisons. This is the Globalization We Want! To all
women and men opposed to Bush’s Endorse a 2-hour lunch break for women Trade Unionists speak out in support of the Global Women’s Strike |
