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PAYDAY Men are joining the 5th Global Women's Strike from 6 March 2004 Dear friend, For the last five years, the Global Women's Strike (GWS) has co-ordinated actions around the globe on and around the 8th of March, and has invited men to join them to demand a world that invests in caring, not killing (see the GWS's call below and at www.globalwomenstrike.net.) In these five years, men have increasingly acted in support of and solidarity with women who are demanding that their caring work - which enables their communities' survival -- be recognised and paid for from military budgets. We have had to refuse military priorities in order to begin to care, for example, for the civilian women and children who are the majority of victims of war. Although not every man is a soldier, in almost half the countries of the world military service is compulsory. And with almost 40 wars currently going on in the world and governments' budgets further drained in arms expenditures, all our lives are shaped by the military, which almost always is the budget priority of governments. Over the last year, through our www.refusingtokill.net website and in other ways, Payday has helped a growing movement of refuseniks to be visible, a movement of women and men around the world who refuse to join the military and choose instead to join their communities which are increasingly anti-war. Stephen Funk, a gay Native American/Filipino who was a US marine has just spent five months in jail for refusing to serve in Iraq. Our international campaign in its support helped to prevent more severe punishment sought by the military. Stuck in a war against their year-old Iraqi occupation, many soldiers are now considering a few months in prison as a better alternative to hell and death. In Venezuela, the Bolivarian revolution is transforming the army. Forced to maintain a military by the continuous threat from US Government, the Venezuelan people are using soldiers for much needed work, building schools, houses, roads and helping with agricultural work. This and Stephen's refusal concern all of us whether we're soldiers or not because there are many ways in which we are led to kill or destroy our communities and as many ways in which we can refuse. Israeli refusenik Shimiri Zameret spoke for all of us: "Already for years I know that I am not going to join the army. I know it with as much certainty as I know that I will never kick a homeless person lying on the sidewalk, never rape a woman, and when I will have a child - never abandon it." By refusing to kill, by affirming our refusal to kill each other, to rape each other, to destroy each other, we also affirm our refusal to destroy ourselves. By joining the movement that the Global Women's Strike has spearheaded and sustained, many men are breaking away from their unsustainable uncaring. Men are discovering, or rather rediscovering, our will to fight for life. The Strike has brought us together against the killing ordered from us by the military-industrial complex, making possible not only a unity between women and men, but also among men. In this year's call for the Strike, women have said how they can count on each other: "We feel as if something happens in Guyana the Strike will fight with us internationally," said our Guyanese sisters. This has to become true for men too. Payday is co-ordinating men's participation in the Strike internationally. We invite you to make the movement yours, and to support Strike actions wherever you are, by offering your time and/or sharing any other resources. Please circulate information about the Strike and let us know what you have already done and what you intend to do. We all need to know how and where the movement to refuse to kill is expanding, from Venezuela to Britain and from Uganda to the United States, in fact everywhere. Power to the sisters and therefore to us all, |
Refusing to kill: An evening with refuseniks from around the world