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One heart. One fist. One voice:
Statement by grassroots women organizers of all races,
Friday March 31 2006 |
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1. Who are we? We are Guyanese grassroots women organizers of all races We are 51 grassroots women who are anxious to begin organising or who are already organising in our communities. We met on Sunday, March 19 at the Crossroads Women’s Centre in Georgetown to mark the 7th annual Global Women’s Strike (GWS) coordinated by Red Thread.
We are Indigenous, Afro-Guyanese, Indo-Guyanese and mixed race women.
2. We have heard about the leadership of grassroots women in Venezuela The meeting heard a report from five Red Thread women who recently visited Venezuela for three weeks, where they attended the World Social Forum held in Caracas in January 2006 and met with grassroots Venezuelan women after the Forum. They said that GWS coordinating groups from England, India, Ireland, Peru, Spain, Uganda and the US, along with Guyana, had taken the opportunity of the World Social Forum to meet as an international network in the heart of a revolution led by grassroots women, most of them of mixed Indigenous and African descent.
During the meeting an older Afro-Venezuelan woman in a GWS video called “Talking of Power” taught us what a revolution is: “Before in Venezuela we poor people worked for the rich”, she said, “not for ourselves”; then using her hands, she showed how the people are turning this upside down. When she spoke about poor people working to make the rich richer, all over the room we could hear each other saying, “Is true. Is true. Is true.” We learned that before the revolution, 80 percent of people in Venezuela were poor in that rich country which is the fifth largest exporter of oil in the world.
The Red Thread women described what they had seen in Venezuela: the leadership of grassroots women in land committees spearheading land reform; in health committees working with mainly Cuban doctors to bring free medical care and preventative health and nutrition education to the poorest communities; and in missions expanding literacy to all and secondary and university education to women, men and youth who never had access to it before. They also reported on the work of the Users’ Network, an independent network that springs out of the Women’s Development Bank (Banmujer) which helps grassroots women organize to form co-operatives and apply for small loans from the Bank, using the loans to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. They said that the grassroots women in the various committees, missions and networks whom they were talking about and whom we could see in the video were all women they now know and would be inviting to Guyana to meet us. They also met Nora Castañeda, the head of Banmujer, a professor of economics dedicated to grassroots women who says what no economist or banker has ever said before – that the aim of Banmujer is to build a caring economy in Venezuela, one for the benefit of people, not for money. She also says that 70% of the world’s poor are women and that to eliminate poverty we must start with women.
3. We also heard about the change happening in other countries around us by women and men who were always excluded Other Red Thread women brought news about revolutions in South America and the Caribbean which are changing our world, revolutions in which women are central although not always prominent. In Haiti, the movement that defeated slavery over 200 years ago is demanding an end to occupation of their country by the US and others. In Bolivia, the first Indigenous president, Evo Morales, has been elected by another massive movement which turned back the privatization of water by a US multinational corporation and stopped the sale of gas (Bolivia’s natural resource) to the US at special prices. And right now in Ecuador, Indigenous women and men are leading a mass movement to prevent their government signing a Free Trade Agreement with the US which would make them even poorer. Their slogan should become ours: it says, “One heart. One fist. One voice.”
Imagine that those of us in the meeting who are Indigenous didn’t know about this movement of women and men just like us and what we are winning in other places! Why not here?
Soon there will be a new woman Prime Minister in Jamaica and we are waiting to hear her program.
4. Venezuelan housewives like us are starting to get money for their unwaged caring work None of us knew about what grassroots women like ourselves have been winning in this very region where we live. We didn’t know that there are countries where women are winning what the Global Women’s Strike fights for – a world which “invests in caring, not killing”, where the money squandered on war has begun to be used instead to meet the needs of our communities, beginning with the needs of women who are almost always the carers.
At the meeting on Sunday March 19, we saw President Chavez in the GWS video saying openly that grassroots housewives work the hardest and get the least, and heard that during the GWS visit he’d announced that in recognition for their work in the home, the poorest housewives – in particular single mothers – would receive a monthly income equivalent to 85 percent of the minimum wage of 372, 000 bolivares a month (about US$180). 100,000 women will be paid in June, another 100,000 in July and then up to half a million women in all. Announcing this money he said: “They work so hard raising their children, ironing, washing, preparing food, cleaning, caring for their children, giving them a direction…This was never recognised as work, yet it is such hard work!...Now the revolution puts you first, you too are workers, you housewives, workers in the home.”
We learned that following President Chavez’ announcement, housewives – women workers in the home - wrote him an open letter calling for the money to be paid through Banmujer to guarantee that it is not stolen by government officials, for the pension not to be temporary, and for their revolutionary community work on health, education, land, food co-operatives, to also be recognized as productive work and for women who do it to be paid for it. After he received the letter, President Chavez met with 1,300 women from the Users’ Network of Banmujer and paid public tribute to their work and the work of Banmujer, saying they were a model for others to follow, and that in order to avoid corruption these same grassroots women should be involved in the census that will decide which women are to get this money.
5. In Venezuela and in Chile, the value of caring work, which is mainly women’s work, is being recognized! The payment that housewives in Venezuela are receiving is related to of Article 88 of the Venezuelan Constitution which women in Venezuela fought for and won, although legislation to implement the Article hasn’t yet been passed. For the first time ever in any country, the Venezuelan Constitution recognizes what all women know – that caring for people may be unwaged but it is work: Article 88 says that housework is work that creates wealth and social value, entitling housewives to social security.
The new woman president in Chile, a single mother, knows this too. During her campaign she said, “Of course housewives deserve a pension. Who more to say so than me? I'm a professional and a life-long housewife. I know it's hard work.” Now she has announced that she will raise the government’s public pension and guarantee it not only for housewives but all seniors and people with disabilities.
6. In the face of the fear and sense of defeat in Guyana we can gain power from what women are doing all around us After hearing all this information we discussed what it means for us. We know we in Guyana are not in a revolution, but we know we can gain power from these women who are just like us and who are making change and revolution.
If the discussion about Guyana had been the first item on our agenda our mood would have been defeated. We would have said that the rising level of violence in the country is unstoppable. All around us, in many of our communities and in the capital, Georgetown, there are rumours that more violence is coming. Some even talk of a coup. No one seems to know which murders are organised by druglords, which by men claiming a political purpose; or how the two are connected or at war with each other. All we are certain of is that our loved ones are being slaughtered. Even our children. Gunmen looking for adults they are sent to kill, kill children in their place. Some of the gunmen are themselves young: We are making children for others to make them into child soldiers.
7. We can fight the violence as other women have, by coming together in our common interests as women who give and nurture life But the violence can be stopped; it must be stopped. We can take strength from the women in Liberia whom we learned about from an article posted up in a wall exhibition at the Strike meeting on Sunday which said: “It was the Liberian women who crossed class, ethnic and political lines to organize and sustain marches for peace and change over the past two years. Market sellers, students, farmers, professionals - women from all walks of life - marched daily in drenching rain and searing sun, often with their children on their backs, to demand the exit of their former leader, war criminal Charles Taylor, indicted by a special court in Sierra Leone, and to insist on an end to civil strife. Their efforts ushered in a period of peace that has now lasted more than 2 1/2 years and opened the door to democracy.”
If they can unite and win peace with justice in the midst of violence and chaos, why can’t we stop any more chaos from hitting us? We know we can. In the meeting on March 19 we discussed without hiding the dangers and difficulties of women organising independently across race, including the obstacles some of us face in our homes, communities and political parties. But one after another, women of all races at that meeting said “Yes, we can.” An Indo-Guyanese woman said: “Some people give up when they don’t win what they want immediately but if we stick to it we can win.” An Afro-Guyanese and a mixed race woman said: If we continue what we are doing we will win a lot of things …. If we stick together we will win a lot.” An Indigenous woman added: Before I was doubting my ability to be a leader; now I’ve seen these women in Venezuela I know I can.”
8. We have done it before; we can do it again Whenever poor people in Guyana have organized across race in the interests of all, we have made advances. This happened in a big way in 1953 and began to happen again in 1979. Both times those who profit from our divisions worked to divide us. When we have organised ourselves as women across race – for example in the organizing we did after the 2005 floods, we have won some of what we demanded. We won because we came together as women of different races and different sectors and united for one cause. Organising across race does not mean ignoring our differences or ignoring discrimination against any race group. It means that we know that when we turn our fight against each other, only those who want to keep us all down win. In the violence that is eating Guyana up, every child hurt or killed is some mother’s daughter, some mother’s son. Our daughter, our son. Indigenous. African. Indian. Mixed.
We can take strength from the Dalit and Tribal women in Chhattisgarh, India, who we saw in a video organizing together in Strike actions and marching in their thousands to demand an end to violence against all of them as women, an end to the poverty they shared as women, an end to their bonded labour for landlords who enslave them and their whole families for generations and rape them.
We have had enough of being defeated because we are divided.
9. We call on other grassroots women in Guyana to join us in refusing the violence We call on other grassroots women in Guyana to refuse to be silent victims any longer. We have a right to make this call because we ourselves refuse to remain silent any longer. We call on women who have more than us and on anti-racist men to support us because there can be no liberation from violence and exploitation for any of us when most of us are down. We will have support for this call here in Guyana. We will gain wide backing for this call on the continent, in the Caribbean, and globally. Red Thread, as part of the Global Women’s Strike, has a close international network it works with all the time. Our call will be publicized everywhere, including in the US where one of our members has a popular radio programme. We are not alone. We are not powerless. We can make a country where all our children can live and eat and grow.
One heart. One fist. One voice.
Signed: Elizabeth from Buxton Excina from Mahdia Peggy from Annandale Jackie from West Bank Demerara Suzanne from Good Hope Alexis from Georgetown Joycelyn from Red Thread Nicola from Red Thread Halima from Red Thread On behalf of the 51 participants in the March 19 action
If you are ready to organize against the violence and other serious problems facing us, contact us at Crossroads Women’s Centre, 72 Princess and Adelaide Sts, Charlestown, Georgetown, telephone 227 7010, email red_thread@gol.net.gy. Ask for Joycelyn, Halima or Nicola or if they are not there, Karen or Andaiye. LEAVE A MESSAGE IF YOU DO NOT GET THE PERSON YOU ASK FOR. Look out for announcements later about what we and other women are planning.
Report on our visit to Venezuela By Halima Khan, Joycelyn Bacchus and Nicola Marcus Dated: April, 2006 (Note: Andaiye helped us put our thoughts down; Karen is out of Guyana for 2 months)
Introduction: Why we said we were going to Venezuela When Red Thread wrote in January this year to ask you to contribute towards the costs of five of us going to Venezuela, we gave three aims of the visit:
Following is a report on how far we succeeded in meeting these aims.
The Global Women’s Strike contingent in Venezuela was made up of over 60 women and men from the coordinating groups of the Strike in England, Guyana, India, Ireland, Peru, Spain, Uganda and the USA, and from Payday, a multiracial network of men who coordinate men’s support and participation internationally, and organise with women and men refusing to take part in the military in many countries, including in the US, the UK, Israel and Turkey.
The WSF opened with a march in which the Strike, including Red Thread, participated. Here, as later in a march of millions on the 10th anniversary of the defeated coup led by President Chavez, we had a huge impact. People were drawn to our contingent because we were a combination of women and men of different races and cultures (some women had on national dress) - together in the same struggle to bring about a global change. Women from the Strike in India led the rest of us in chants in Hindi including “Naya Jamana Aiga” – “A new age is coming”, and women from Uganda in chanting “Venezuela Itasi” [Peace], “Guyana Itasi”, etc. At the WSF march participants were excited, and many Venezuelans and people from other countries came over to join us and to chant with us. They also interviewed us because they wanted to know about us, the work we do and how we network. The Strike contingent was covered in two of the Venezuelan newspapers.
During the Forum, the Strike held several full-house workshops in both English and Spanish. These workshops were organised to make the different countries of the Strike visible and also to make the different sectors of grassroots people in the Strike visible: we were women and men of different races, different sexual choices and different disabilities.
Red Thread made presentations at the following workshops:
a) Invest in caring not killing: the struggle for survival is the struggle for change. Women’s uncounted struggles to sustain life against poverty, global warming, wars, occupations and other Empire-made disasters
This workshop was held twice at two different dates and venues. The first was on January 25 and the countries presenting were India, Uganda, Peru, Guyana, and USA. Halima spoke about how Red Thread organized grassroots women across race to fight to get back our lives and livelihoods after a massive flood in January and February 2005, and what we won as a result. The second was on January 27 with India, Uganda, London, California, and Guyana presenting. Nicola spoke the racial conflicts in Guyana and the upsurge in violence, and described the experience of a time use survey carried out by Red Thread (see below) - who participated, how it was done, the difficulties including the racial fears and how we dealt with them. She emphasised how the work coming out of the time use survey is helping us build a network of grassroots women of all races.
b) Building unity by confronting the sectoral divisions among us, to defeat rape and other sexism, racism, and other discrimination based on nation, income, education, rural/city, age, language, religion, disability, sexual preference
This workshop was on January 27 and the countries presenting were Peru, USA, London, India, Uganda, Venezuela and Guyana along with men from the Payday network in the UK and US. Karen spoke about racial fears and conflicts in Guyana today as compared to the 1960’s. She described how in 2002, we organized a multiracial march of women in a community called Linden, marking International Women’s Day by reclaiming Linden for Indo-Guyanese women who had been driven out of that community during the 1960’s riots after brutal incidents of rape.
c) Globalizing Article 88: how Venezuela’s recognition of women’s unwaged caring work in the constitution can advance the building of a caring economy against poverty and overwork, and for food security and pay equity everywhere.
Andaiye introduced the panel presentations by giving a history of the Global Women’s Strike, starting with its origins in the formation of the International Wages for Housework Campaign by Selma James in 1972. The countries presenting at this workshop were India, Uganda, Peru, Guyana and Venezuela (women from the autonomous Banmujer Users Network) along with Payday men’s network. Joycelyn spoke about the work that Red Thread does to cross race divides in Guyana, starting with 100-plus grassroots women of all races doing time use diaries. This uncovered how much work we do, helped us recognize the value of the work, and showed how similar our workloads and conditions are across race. She also spoke about the methods we used and about the actual results, and said that making our work visible in this concrete way will help us in campaigning for an Article 88 in Guyana.
The Strike also organised two other workshops:
d) Grassroots self-activity in the Bolivarian Revolution, starting with women, the majority and driving force against coups and referendum, and in the Missions, Urban Land Committees, Co-operatives, Banmujer’s Users Network, Electoral Battle Units, Bolivarian Workers University, alternative media .
e) Refusing to kill: supporting the global movement of ‘refuseniks’, soldiers and conscientious objectors and their families against militarism, and for military budgets to come back to the community to end war
At the first, held in a massive hall which was packed with people, presenters were from the very grassroots organizations whose work we were able to see first-hand later in the visit (see below), while at the second, a smaller hall but also packed with people, presenters were from the Payday men’s network from the UK and US.
The Strike, including Red Thread, also attended several workshops organized by other groups, paying special attention to workshops on Haiti. Andaiye spoke at one workshop on Haiti along with another Caribbean woman from the Strike’s Women of Colour Network, Margaret Prescod (Barbados and Los Angeles); a report on this workshop is attached.
At the start of the WSF we met women from the Strike in Peru, domestic workers (all) who fought for and won a Domestic Workers Act which recognises domestics as workers who have the right to 8 hrs a day work and 15 days off duty per year with pay. We also met a woman from Mexico who said that she first learnt about the Strike from the internet and had been organising Strike actions with a group of women for three years, hoping all the time that she wasn’t lying when she told the women that the Strike was happening all over the world. She was very delighted to meet us and to know that what she had said about the Strike was indeed the truth, and we were delighted to meet her.
In our letter to you we said:“The biggest obstacles we face (in our work in Guyana) are the sense of isolation and defeat pervasive in Guyana and a perennial shortage of money to do the organising work which we see as desperately needed and which we have made ourselves increasingly skilled in doing. Making this journey to Venezuela could transform Red Thread. Two of us are working class women in our early thirties who grew up at a time when the movement for change in Guyana seemed to be overwhelmed by the country’s racial and political divides. While we have a wealth of knowledge from experience (ours and others), we have not had the chance to exchange experiences with grassroots women engaged in similar and similarly difficult struggles in other countries. Few women in Red Thread have.”
Joycelyn had never met anyone from the Strike before except the two international coordinators, Selma James and Nina Lopez, while Karen, Halima and Nicola had attended just one international meeting in London. For all four of us especially but also for Andaiye, the visit to Venezuela provided a great opportunity to interact with women and men from all the different countries and sectors of the Strike, many for as long as three weeks. Listening to each other during the Forum was also an opportunity to learn first-hand about each other’s work. The many meetings held both during the WSF and after to evaluate how our work in Venezuela was going allowed us to see and contribute to how the Strike works as an International. Several of us found the experience a challenge: we didn’t always handle it well. For example, when we didn’t agree with how a Strike member was organising an activity she was responsible for, we became dismissive instead of finding an appropriate time and way to make our suggestions to her. This caused us to come across as being rude to other members of the Strike. Another difficulty was dealing with the language “problem”; translations had to be made between English, Spanish and Hindi (two of the women from Chhattisgarh India didn’t speak English though they understood some). But we learned from the whole experience, including the problems. We think that the work we’ve done since we came back from Venezuela shows that we are stronger and the reasons for that is that the Strike network and the Venezuela revolution are both more alive for us now.
Outside of the World Social Forum Red Thread were able to meet with the grassroots women and men who are taking leadership in making the revolution happen. They have formed several committees, missions and programmes to address different issues but they are all accountable to each other and work together. Here are the ones we had the most interaction with:
Land committees: These committees are working to make sure that grassroots women and men have titles to land and housing which they have squatted and have worked hard to make liveable. For example, one community we visited in Las Teques had about 250 abandoned houses and through the Land Committee grassroots women and men were able to get access to those houses and the land they are on.
The Land Committees are grassroots, made up largely of women, and it is the women who are taking the leadership role. The measuring and surveying of the land are done by these same grassroots women and none of them have University education. Some don’t even have secondary education but they trained themselves to do this technical work. They were confident about their skills and committed to their work.
Health, water and sanitation committees: These committees work voluntarily with the health clinics to ensure people get the health care services they need, not only treating illness but teaching methods of prevention. The committees are based in the communities and educate people on hygiene (personal and surroundings). They also work actively to find out and address the food, housing and other needs of people in the communities since these will affect their health.
Support groups are also in place where people with a particular illness meet with others with the same illness to have discussions so they learn including from each other about the illnesses they have and how to deal with them. The community health committee is there to help the doctors and ensure they stay accountable to the community: if they don’t do what they are supposed to do they are disciplined. In Los Teques, a doctor who was not doing his work efficiently was reported by the committee and when investigations proved the complaint to be true he was fired.
Feeding programmes: The feeding programme we visited is controlled by women of the community who did a needs assessment survey and after finding that a soup kitchen was needed, started one which is funded by the government
Literacy programmes: We are all aware that it’s poor people who cannot afford to pay for a lot of things, including education. In Venezuela there are different missions responsible for various services. These missions have nothing to do with any church. There is one mission called Mision Robinson whose aim is to help people become the best that they could be through free education. In most countries, if poor people are able to complete high school they cannot afford to go to university. Through this mission it is now possible for Venezuelans who are poor to have a higher level of education and it’s poor people teaching other poor people. They have organized to use a school building in the evening as a university to teach each other. There is also a community library where the public can go and make use of the service free of charge; the library also has an internet and website service where the public can go and surf (look for information), also free.
Users network of Banmujer, the Women’s Development Bank: Banmujer, “this Bank” is different from the banks we know. It does not give credits to individual women but to groups and cooperatives of women. We met Nora Castañeda, the President of the Bank, a very different kind of bank president. We also met many women from its Users’ Network, a grassroots women’s network which is independent of the Bank. We saw them at work. If a group of women need a loan to start a business the network will check to see whether the same business exists within the community and advise the group on whether it makes sense to do that and provide other options if necessary. They do skills training to make other women eligible to apply for loans and assist them in writing the proposals. The Bank is not about making a profit but about empowering women. As Selma said in her introduction to Creating a Caring Economy: Nora Castaneda and the Women’s Development Bank of Venezuela (edited by Nina Lopez): “Banmujer’s combination of awarding micro-credits for income generation as part of building a women’s movement [is] very different and very ambitious. Women are funded to lift themselves out of poverty in collective, socially responsible ways that contribute to shifting the basis of the economy and of the whole society. Its procedures, the training of its personnel, especially those in the field, its pay scale, and its relationship to the movement and to the government it serves, all were freshly thought out to achieve that.”
During this period we also met and interacted with the Mayor and other representatives from the municipalities in Los Teques and Bolivar State.
Other meetings While we were in Venezuela we had other meetings that showed us more about the connections between struggles in different countries:
Follow up work Upon our return, we reported back to the Red Thread core members who had not made the trip. Our first report lacked something – we weren’t able to convey what we had experienced. However, by the time of our Strike action – held this year on March 19 – we were more ready. We made excerpts from a Strike video on Venezuela called “Talking of Power” and put in a voice-over (Karen) reading out the sub-titles, since most of the women we work with either can’t read or read very slowly. With the help of Strike colleagues mainly Lisa in London, we prepared an exhibition of photos and flyers depicting Strike actions around the world and grassroots organizing in Venezuela. We prepared presentations on what we had seen, trying to put ourselves in the place of the women who hadn’t seen what we had. We also made short presentations on other work we are doing in Guyana – for example, on literacy and domestic violence, showing how that work is a taste, although small, of what grassroots women are working for and achieving in Venezuela. We brought participants up to date on the changes happening all around in this region, in Bolivia (the Indigenous women in the room had not heard that they had won in Bolivia!), in Ecuador, in Haiti, in Chile. We said we were waiting word of what the new woman Prime Minister in Jamaica was planning.
We did not want a “public” meeting for our report-back, which we intended to serve a practical organizing purpose. Instead, we invited grassroots women who were new and potential organizers of all races that we have been working with. Most – almost 50 – came Indo-Guyanese, Afro-Guyanese, Indigenous, Mixed race. This time we came close to sharing the experience we’d had of mainly grassroots women making a revolution. At the end of the meeting, we agreed on points for a statement, and the finished statement is attached.
The visit to Venezuela has really strengthened us. The fact that grassroots people especially women could organise together and achieve so many victories, taking up leadership and committing themselves to working to better their living conditions – this opened our eyes to know that although we don’t have a revolution in Guyana, unlike Venezuela, there is a lot that we could do and a lot we can achieve. The visit has given us the courage to commit ourselves to working to bring about change.
RED
THREAD
72 Princess
& Adelaide Sts., Charlestown, Georgetown, Guyana
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