From: Phila Crossroads Women's Center (philly@crossroadswomen.net)
Date: Wed May 08 2002 - 14:56:32 EDT
International Wages for Housework Campaign (WFH) and Every Mother is a
Working Mother Network (EMWM)presentation to
the April 20 National Youth and Student Peace Coalition Rally at the Ellipse
in Washington DC (Sat April 20, 11am).
Covered by Pacifica Radio. Delivered by Phoebe Jones, WFH, on behalf of
Margaret Prescod, Int'l Black Women for Wages for Housework, EMWM and WFH.
For information:
Margaret Prescod at Crossroads Women's Center/Los Angeles:
70742.3012@compuserve.com, 323-292-7405
Phoebe Jones at Crossroads Women's Center/Philadelphia:
philly@crossroadswomen.net, 215-848-1120
Global Women's Strike website: http://womenstrike8m.server101.com
* * * * * * *
I speak on behalf of women who do two-thirds of the world’s work for five
percent of the income. But the work we women do is not valued. – single,
married, lesbian, bi-sexual, older, younger, of every race and nation – we
are the life-givers, the first caregivers, from breastfeeding and
subsistence farming which feeds most of the world, to cleaning, nursing,
teaching. We invest our lives in making and protecting people, from
Palestine to Colombia, from Indonesia to Ogoniland in Nigeria, from
Kurdistan to the Narmada Dam in India, from Chiapas, Mexico, to US inner
cities, rural communities and reservations. Since 2000 our Global Women’s
Strike, in which women from over 60 countries take part, has been demanding
that society INVEST IN CARING NOT KILLING. This demand has come from women,
but it speaks to everyone’s most basic survival need.
Women have always been central to anti-war and human rights movements
because we refuse to see the lives of our loved ones destroyed by a global
market on the rampage and the wars that impose it. While $80 billion would
eliminate the worst poverty and suffering, $940 billion a year is spent
instead on military budgets worldwide, and Bush is asking for more. These
military budgets deprive the planet of its most vital resources, driving us
off the land and destroying farms and natural resources, killing us in our
millions before any bombs fall. Seven million people were under threat of
starvation in Afghanistan before the US bombing – little has been said about
them since. The most sophisticated and expensive technology was used to
kill, not to feed. Israeli tanks in Jenin are the latest technology, but
digging for survivors is done by hand.
The brutality of these priorities that the US inflicts on the world, is also
inflicted on us here, as Native Americans and other people of color are the
first to testify. Here we have the death penalty, the largest prison
population of all countries, and a lack of benefits where either you make it
or you’re homeless and starving in the wealthiest country in the world.
Here we get welfare “reform” which forces mothers to leave our children for
jobs with the worst wages and working conditions, leaving us exhausted,
without time or money for our children. That’s how the country of
motherhood and apple pie treats the relationship between mother and child –
as obstacles to even more obscene profits. And that’s how they diss all
human relationships everywhere. This is the American way of life as we
daily experience it. It is hidden by media myths draped in the flag that
people all over the world are burning.
We march today against this brutality at home and abroad. We demand an end
to all wars. We demand the right of mothers & other caregivers to welfare
and other resources. We are owed that money because we have worked for it.
We do the caring work on which the whole society depends. We demand pay
equity worldwide and affordable and accessible housing and technology which
reduces the hours of work for all of us. We demand a world centered on
enriching EVERYONE’s life, not just enriching a few.
Money that goes to welfare mothers is money that does not go to bomb people
around the world. Money that does not go to Bush’s “endless war” in
Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, that does not fund slaughter in Palestine
and a military coup in Venezuela. In demanding welfare, and demanding the
military budget to fund it, we women defend the wages of all workers,
including caregivers, and the right of everyone everywhere to a caring not
killing society.
INVEST IN CARING, NOT KILLING! YES TO WELFARE, NO TO WAR!
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Mon Oct 28 2002 - 02:52:32 EST