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An Open Letter to the Philly Planning Committee: This is not what International Women’s Day is about
We are writing to publicly register our protest against your decision not to provide childcare at the March 8 International Women’s Day program in Philadelphia.
In the planning meetings, we and others repeatedly said that many women in our networks would not/could not come to this event if there was no childcare. In addition, Women Against Abuse said that women in their program would not come, and Arleen Olshan said the same about women in the recovery program she works with. None of this seemed to matter, from which we can only conclude that you don’t care whether grassroots women come or not. As Nancy Carroll of Every Mother is a Working Mother Network eloquently put it, “All people were not thought of” when you took your vote.
It was clear at the February 25 meeting that the decision was not made for financial reasons. This was stressed by the chair Sha'Ifa Malik and others, and the projected budget showed the money was there. The decision was made on principle not to have childcare. What principle was that? While supposed “reasons” were thrown at us – liability issues, we were denigrating the professionalism of childcare workers, women wouldn’t leave their children with strangers – the principle seemed to be that the event doesn’t need childcare and it doesn’t need grassroots women or the issues critical to the grassroots.
Some used the excuse that women had always taken their children to meetings and had managed. Others that “It Takes a village”, from the African proverb that acknowledges how much work is required, primarily by women, to raise a child – an expression that has been appropriated by many (most famously Hillary Clinton) for their own purposes. Now it is being used to justify why childcare is not needed at an International Women’s Day event.
We have been part of the planning and program committees since December, often attending two meetings per week, putting careful thought into our participation. We invested this time – which as women activists we have precious little of – because we thought this event could bring women together and provide a much-needed platform for all women’s concerns and demands. The Global Women’s Strike has been organizing actions on International Women’s Day each year since 2000, the largest one a women’s anti-war march and rally in 2003 that drew 500 people. We were glad to see other organizations and individuals who had not responded for a very long time, taking some action on this day.
But what began as an attempt full of hope became depressingly and increasingly irrelevant to most women’s lives. Time for discussion and to connect with each other on the struggles women in Philadelphia are making was not taken seriously, and pushed aside for an overabundance of “cultural presentations”. We are certainly not against culture – our group includes artists, singers, writers – but not when it is used to crowd out politics. No wonder it finally culminated in the decision not to offer childcare which might bring out mothers who are concerned with daily survival. Numerous women who dropped out along the way told us they were fed up with having their time wasted.
Some people on February 25 tried to convince us that childcare was never promised, but Sherrie Cohen, one of the initiators, admitted in honesty that it was assumed by her and others from the beginning. Sherrie was one of the few who did vote for childcare, but said she was later swayed against by “women who had the most experience” of dealing with childcare. Who is she referring to? CLUW and NOW do not have childcare at their meetings, International Action Center has never had childcare at their events as far as we know. The William Way Center does not. Neither do the unions. In fact the Global Women’s Strike and EMWM were the only ones at the table, as far as we are aware, which consistently offer childcare at meetings and events, even large events, and have the most experience organizing it. We don’t only pay lip-service to grassroots participation; we make it a priority to set things up so it’s possible for grassroots women to participate.
Your decision reflects a disrespect for mothers, beginning with low-income mothers, when you assume that women should – and have the means to – arrange their own childcare, or will come to an event with their children when none is offered. When Pat Albright from EMWM wanted to state for the record that there was no consensus and that women in our network would not be coming as a result of this decision, Betsey Piette from IAC interrupted her with, “Don’t you have men in your network?” WHAT DID SHE MEAN? That it was not the business of an IWD organizing group but our own business, that we should ask men we organize with to do the work.
Your so-called “community model” of childcare – where women at the event would pass the children around like in a village – was laughed at by every mother we spoke to, who asked, “Don’t any of these women have kids?” A woman who used to come to planning meetings said “the organizers don’t have kids and are women who tend to be privileged.”
We cannot help concluding that this is why the issue EMWM raised at every meeting – the desperate fight of hundreds if not thousands of mothers in Philadelphia, primarily low-income Black women, to recover children unjustly taken by the Department of Human Services – has never once appeared in any notes of the meetings. Pat Albright was even challenged by Cathy Scott of AFSCME, who said that she couldn’t support this (and objected to even listing it as an IWD event) because their union represents social workers (who “do their job” of taking thousands of children from mothers with least); others nodded in agreement. Since when is it the job of a union to defend the policies of the employers and the work they impose on employees? We are challenging DHS – their policies and practices – but we also know firsthand the ill-treatment that mothers (and children) experience at the hands of some social workers who have the attitude “I am God” and know they can get away with it because there is no accountability to children or parents or society generally: they are backed by the DHS and by their union. May we remind them that the defense of “just following orders” has not cut it for many years.
Most grassroots women do not identify as feminists for the reason above: because feminists don’t seem to identify with or even want to hear from the grassroots; rather they are often out for power for themselves. The ambitious sector of feminists has always included women of different races and sexual orientations. We are not among those panting for power. We are the ones who are hired so others can have careers. (We begin to wonder if for some women the event is more a career move, a chance to position themselves to be chosen for any Mayor’s Commission on Women which may be re-established, or for a job in the new administration. Nothing to do with a voice or support for grassroots organizing.)
We need an International Women’s Day that gives women a chance to speak to the most pressing issues in our lives and to strategize what to do about them. Women in Philadelphia and around the world are battling for survival and IWD is a chance to let other women know about it, and see how these struggles can support each other. We have already mentioned the fight against DHS. There is also the shocking case of the supposed “feminist” judge Teresa Deni who dropped rape charges in the case of a young Black mother gang-raped at gunpoint because she was working as an escort. Welfare, childcare, housing, pay equity, health care, the military in the schools – all issues that women are battling on. Women are organizing against the war and occupation, which will have its 5th anniversary this month. Women in Venezuela and Mexico are organizing amazing things that need to be publicized. Back to Philadelphia, mothers of prisoners are organizing, as are mothers of children killed by gun violence. This is the kind of IWD we need, and which is nowhere reflected in the flyer or the planning for the day.
Finally, we are also tired of Leftist parties, hiding behind other names, trying to “lead”, i.e. take over. In the 70s the women’s movement had a saying that Leftist women were just Leftist men in drag; it’s still true and so is the contempt they had/have for mothers, for the work of raising children, considering “real” work only what you get paid for – the height of sexism. This influence has been undermining the good that could have come out of this effort. To see it, you only have to look at the flyer – a clone of the one prepared in NY by the same Leftist party, which says nothing about what women in Philadelphia are doing, and has the same tired party slogans that most women want nothing to do with. “Women Rise Up” -- we need them to tell us that?!
We are writing to let other women know what happened and that we don’t agree with it. And to say that there is a strong grassroots women’s movement out here fighting for rights, resources and against injustice, despite the attempts to exclude us.
Every Mother is a Working Mother Network Global Women’s Strike Women of Color in the Global Women’s Strike March 1, 2008
Partial List of Individual signers: Kai Akwei-Bey, mother and grandmother Pat Albright, single mother of one son Tili Ayala, mother of two Ebony Carroll, mother of one Nancy Carroll, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother Barbara Clayton, mother of three, grandmother of three Lawanda Connelly, mother of Lahara age 9 and Khalil age 3 Marie Fitzpatrick, mother of two daughters Eric Gjersten, uncle Carol Hardie, mother of two, grandmother of two, great-grandmother of one Eileen Jones, grandmom; mother; aunt Phoebe Jones, mother of one Mary Kalyna, aunt Dean Kendall, uncle Pamela Thomas, mother and grandmother Tonya Wenger, aunt Nina Williams, mother of six
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