The Global Women's Strike to the RNC: Invest in Caring not Killing

The Global Women’s Strike to the RNC:
“Invest in Caring Not Killing”

Our multi-racial, anti-racist delegation of mothers, grand-mothers, welfare recipients, women with disabilities, lesbian/ gay people, & other activists, women & men, are in NYC for the protests around the RNC. We also participated in the protests & other events around the DNC. Along with Payday, a network of men who work with the GWS and whose Refusing to Kill website supports military refuseniks around the world, we are letting both political parties know that we stand with women and men around the world to say “No business as usual. We have had enough. We want a total change of priorities.” We will also join the convergence of the movements for change with the rank & file of organized labor in the Million Worker March in DC on October 17. There can be no stronger message to the politicians than to have thousands of us on the street to say “No to War, Occupation and military budgets; Yes to caring for people and the environment.” At this crucial moment when many parts of the movement are taking our stand together, we are working to make sure that the struggles and demands of grassroots women, often hidden or ignored, are heard – including in particular women from the Global South, who pay the highest price for war and military budgets.
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The Global Women’s Strike is a multi-racial, international network of grassroots women in 60 countries taking action on March 8 and throughout the year to demand that the
$1 trillion worldwide military budget go instead to the caring of people & the environment.

Phone in NYC Aug 27-Sept 2: 215-776-1004 or 267-254-4467
In US: philly [at] crossroadswomen.net, la [at] crossroadswomen.net, sf [at] crossroadswomen.net. Payday: payday [at] payday.org

http://www.globalwomenstrike.net

Be part of GWS2005 by endorsing the Strike demands (see back) and taking action on March 8 wherever you are. ● Let us know of your Strike plans, and of demands you add. ● Check out our website for info on the groups/networks who are part of the GWS. ● Order literature, videos, t-shirts, buttons online. ● Go to http://www.refusingtokill.net , the website of Payday men’s network.

Tune in to Margaret Prescod’s “Sojourner Truth” show on Pacifica Radio’s KPFK, Tues mornings (7-8am West Coast) 90.7 FM in
So. CA or on the web http://www.kpfk.org click Morning Review, Sojourner Truth. Margaret is also co-coordinator of the GWS in the US.

To Stay in Touch, Place an Order, Make a Donation
GWS is an all-volunteer, unfunded network working on a shoestring. Every contribution is welcome & needed. Make checks payable to “Global Women’s Strike” & send to Box 11795, Phila PA 19101. Call us for tax-deduction.

___ Yes, I want to be on the GWS mailing list. ___ Please put me in touch with Payday.

___ To order Venezuela: A 21st Century Revolution; or The Bolivarian Revolution: Enter the Oil Workers. (@ $12 incl shipping)

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e-mail: ____________________________ phone _____________ Many thanks!

***Join the Million Worker March in Washington DC on October 17***

About the Global Women’s Strike...

The GWS is a multiracial network of grassroots women in more than 60 countries on every continent who are demanding a total change of priorities. We want a world that prioritizes the caring of people and the environment, not war and profit. Together we demand that the $1 trillion now going into military budgets worldwide go instead towards the care of people and the planet. This starts with resources to women who do most of the caring work, who grow most of the world’s food, who are most anti-war, and who are the backbone of most struggles to win justice for those in their care. We take action on March 8th, International Women’s Day and throughout the year to demand that society “Invest in Caring not Killing”. Our grassroots network ranges from the countryside in Uganda and Chattisgarh India to the indigenous areas of the Andes of Peru to the countries of the Caribbean to the inner cities of the US and Europe.

The GWS demands include payment for all caring work; pay equity for all; paid maternity leave, breastfeeding breaks and other benefits; don’t pay ‘Third World debt’; accessible clean water, heathcare, housing, transport, literacy; non-polluting energy and technology; protection and asylum from all violence and persecution; and freedom of movement.

We welcome your support and participation wherever you are! See contact info below.

Initiatives include

Working with Venezuela’s grassroots against US intervention, by spreading news of the revolution’s gains, including the leadership grassroots women are providing. We have made a video with them: ‘Venezuela: A 21st Century Revolution’; & another just released: ‘The Bolivarian Revolution: Enter the Oil Workers.’ We also organized a six-city speaking tour for Nora Castaneda who heads the Women’s Development Bank (and raised $100,000 for grassroots women’s projects). We are advertising and supporting the implementation of Article 88 in their revolutionary constitution, which recognizes work at home as economically productive, and entitles housewives to social security. The GWS recently participated as official international observers to Venezuela invited by the National Electoral Council to witness the voting in the referendum on President Chavez.

Women of Color in the GWS are organizing with grassroots Haitian women and men to oppose, in this bicentenary year of the Haitian revolution, the US-led coup against President Aristide, the first elected president of Haiti, and the occupation and violence that has followed. We have worked to: mobilize support and resistance, beginning among Caribbean women; bring the voice of grassroots Haitian women to other Caribbean countries; press CARICOM governments not to recognize the illegal government of Haiti; and organize events in Europe and No America to spread the word about the Haitian resistance.

Organizing against the war and occupation of Iraq with weekly and even daily pickets in several countries, women’s contingents in anti-war marches and events, as well as our own successful marches. Our latest initiative has exposed the horrific rape of Iraqi women by US-led coalition forces and the rapes of US servicewomen (and men), drawing out the connections of this violence to sexual violence in US prisons, & the bloody history of rape and other torture by the US military in Central & South America and globally, which has been largely ignored by legislators and media.

From our base of anti-sexism and anti-racism, we are campaigning against welfare reform, making the case that “every mother is a working mother” and has earned the right to economic support for the work of caring for children. We say yes to welfare: no to war & military recruiting in our schools, and the criminalization of our communities. We are mobilizing for the Oct 17 Million Worker March bringing together the waged & unwaged sectors to demand that resources go to the caring of people not to war and occupation.

We are working together as women (and with men from Payday and other men) despite barriers of nation, race, class, language, to win boreholes for water in Uganda and legislation for domestic workers in Peru, as well as advance women’s priorities against arms budgets in every country.

http://www.globalwomenstrike.net

Or call in the US: LA 323-292-7405; Phila 215-848-1120; SF 415-626-4114