Gagged but not silenced – community anti-war picket and open mic Parliament Square, London

Parliament Square community picket

NO TO WAR, NO TO OCCUPATION
Invest in Caring Not Killing!
Community Picket & Open Mic
Join us Every Wednesday 5.30-7pm in Parliament Square
Anti-war speakers, poets, musicians, singers, street theatre welcome

Since the bombing of Afghanistan and then Iraq, we've had a picket, joining forces with the three-year-old 24-hour "Ministry of Peace". The picket is called by women, but many men join us. Women are the first carers, 70% of the world's poor and pay the highest price for war. We and our children are 80% of people displaced by armed conflict, 70% of it's victims.

We picket to bear witness and save lives and to give a platform to the unrepresented. the Iraqi Women's League are regulars: "We fear the threat of fundamentalist religious movements, which an occupying army inspires ... The Iraqi people have not been liberated by the US ... 'Reconstruction of Iraq' is now a euphemism for the daylight robbery of our resources".

We highlight the hidden struggle women make for the survival of families and communities, and the direction it gives to movements against war, coups, occupations in Iraq, Palestine, Chechnya, Colombia, Congo, Haiti, Kashmir, Venezuela ... This year Bolivian women went on hunger strike against "war and the extreme poverty that kills us"; thousands of women in Uganda marches for "accessible clean water" and in India for abolition of child marriage; women in the US protested the US/France coup in Haiti and backed Venezuela's revolution "creating a caring economy, an economy at the service of human beings, not human beings at the service of the economy".

Women in 60+ coutntries take Strike action to claim back for basic survival needs the $1 trillion spent on military budgets (over half by the US).

Tel: 020 7482 2496 www.globalwomenstrike.net womenstrike8m@server101.com