Help us bring a grassroots delegation & our strategy for change to the US Social Forum

“Invest in caring,
Not Killing!”
Donate now!

 The US Social Forum is happening in Detroit June 22-26 – drawing thousands of individuals and groups from around the country to “build relationships, learn from each other’s experiences, have actions together and share analysis of the problems our communities face”. The Forum will also let grassroots people around the world know that there is a movement within the US actively opposing its policies at home and abroad.

We are fundraising to send a multiracial delegation of 20 grassroots women and men from DCFS and DHS-Give Us Back Our Children, "Kri Fanm Ayisyen" (Haitian Women's Cry-Out), the Global Women’s Strike, Women of Color in GWS, Every Mother is a Working Mother Network, US PROStitutes Collective (US PROS), and Payday men’s network from Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco. This will include mothers and grandmothers struggling to get back children unjustly taken by the child welfare industry; and others involved on a variety of issues from opposing the occupations of Palestine, Iraq and Haiti, to prioritizing resources for the care of people & the planet, and supporting men & women in many countries who are refusing the military.

A grassroots woman from Haiti will also attend, to ensure that the Forum hears of the day-to-day grind of Haitian women’s survival work from post-earthquake Haiti to inner city US; and that, despite this enormous labor, Haitian women are organizing for change, against the UN occupation, and for the return of their elected president – a dramatic story barely known in this country. At the same time, we will have a great chance to connect with other grassroots people who may be doing similar work whose experiences will enrich us.

We want to organize with others, but to get there we urgently need your help. Donate now!

Why are we going to the Forum?

• Meeting and sharing strategies with other grassroots organizers will mutually strengthen us in demanding that society prioritize the care of people and the planet, and end poverty and war
   
• It will help build the movement of mothers for resources to raise our children. National premiere of documentary: DHS: Give Us Back Our Children! by Every Mother is a Working Mother Network. Also collaboration on a Peoples Movement Assembly (see below).
   
• Bringing first hand information on the situation in Haiti will build international support to the Haitian movement against the UN occupation. Collaboration on a Peoples Movement Assembly, The Grassroots in Haiti and the US: the struggles for the return of Aristide and against the Child Welfare Industry.
   
• We will highlight the growing international movement for decriminalization of sex work, prioritizing resources and protection, and prosecuting rapists instead of sex workers. Workshop: Rape, Trafficking, Prostitution—The Issue is Consent (US PROS).
   
• We’ll help build the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel’s occupation of Palestine by taking part in the pre-forum “Assembly of Jews: Confronting Racism and Israeli Apartheid” (which the Strike has endorsed) and the People’s Movement Assembly. Selma James, international coordinator of the Global Women's Strike from London England and member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), will be speaking at the Assembly, as well as at our USSF workshops.

Please help us to get there!
The reality is that the very people most impacted by unjust social and economic policies are least able to afford to attend the Social Forum. We ask for your support to change this. We aim to raise $10,000. If you yourself can’t attend, please give what you can so others who need to be there can attend this important event.

And if you are going to Detroit, please let us know so we can meet up there and work together!

Help support our grassroots delegation!

Women in Dialogue is our fiscal sponsor for this appeal. To make an online tax-deductible donation, please click to Donate now! and designate your gift for “USSF”.

_{Or send check to Global Women’s Strike, PO Box 11795, Phila PA 19101.}
Many thanks!

Name __________________________________________________

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Contact info:
Los Angeles 323-276-9833 la@crossroadswomen.net.

Philadelphia 215-848-1120 philly@crossroadswomen.net

San Francisco 415-626-4114 sf@crossroadswomen.net

Global Women’s Strike Philadelphia/Los Angeles/SF Bay Area is part of an international network of grassroots women with centers in 11 countries whose strategy for change is “Invest in Caring, Not Killing,” to work for society to prioritize the caring of people and the environment. We start with women who do most of the caring work everywhere. The Global Women’s Strike participated in the World Social Forum in Venezuela (2006), Boston (2004) where Margaret Prescod of Women of Color in the GWS was a plenary speaker, and in Atlanta (2007). WOC/GWS went to the 2005 World Social Forum in Brazil as part of a delegation working in opposition to the coup/occupation of Haiti; we have also participated in the European Social Forum. www.globalwomenstrike.net

Women of Color in the Global Women’s Strike Los Angeles/SF Bay Area/ Philly is part of an independent network of grassroots women of color – African, Asian, Caribbean, Indigenous, Native American, Kurdish, and others – within the GWS. WOC/GWS confronts the sexism and racism of social and economic policies, on wages and on all other resources; in military recruiting, war & occupation; in policing, law enforcement and prisons; and points to the heavy workload of women of color, who organize against those policies and protect loved ones from them. WOC/GWS coordinates the Strike’s work with the Haitian grassroots movement.

Payday:a multi-racial network of men which organizes with women and men around the world who refuse the military’s lethal and repressive aggression. We have initiated international campaigns in support of refuseniks in Israel, Turkey and the US; highlighted the key role that women play in supporting conscientious objectors, “deserters”, draft evaders and whistleblowers; and publish news from this growing movement on our website www.refusingtokill.net.

Every Mother is a Working Mother Network (EMWM) campaigns to establish that caring work is work, and that the economic value of raising children be acknowledged in economic and social policy, including welfare. In Philly and LA, we work with mothers struggling to reclaim children taken by social services – their “crime” is their poverty and/or their color. In SF we defend benefits for women who care for elderly or disabled relatives.

DHS and DCFS - Give Us Back Our Children, are sister self-help, multi-racial action and support groups of mothers, grandmothers & supporters working to win back children unjustly removed by the Phila Dept of Human Services (DHS) and the Los Angeles Division of Children & Family Services (DCFS). Child welfare services detain children from mothers & families, particularly those who are of color or poor, instead of helping with housing, welfare, childcare, legal help, etc, putting children at risk of abuse in foster homes or institutions. The groups seek to change this by fighting individual cases, building public awareness, educating the media, and challenging sexism, racism & prejudices against mothers.

US PROStitutes Collective – campaigns for the abolition of the prostitution laws which criminalize sex workers and their families and for economic alternatives to prostitution; and for women’s safety and protection to be the priority. No woman, child or man should be forced by poverty or violence into sex with anyone. www.prostitutescollective.net

Wages Due Lesbians - organizes against discrimination, loss of child custody, police arrests, anti-lesbian violence, & criminalization, as well as having to live an underground existence, and for recognition of our hidden contributions to movements and communities. www.allwomencount.net/EWC LesbianBi/IWDL.htm

WinVisible - a grassroots multi-racial self-help organization of women with visible and invisible disabilities.