March 14, 2005

International Women’s Day
• Support the Struggle of Women for Another World!
• 6th Global Women's Strike
• End the Twin Terrors of War & Poverty! - Tonya Wenger, Global Women's Strike/Phila
• Honor the Working Women of the World! Continue the Struggle Against Imperialism! - GABRIELA International
• Some Facts on the Conditions of Women

No To US Imperialist Wars and Aggression!
• Resistance to Military Recruiting On the Rise
• Regaining My Humanity - Camilo Mejia

International Women’s Day

Support the Struggle of Women for Another World!

Voice of Revolution salutes the women across the country and worldwide who are together waging a resolute struggle for Another World fit for human beings, a world without imperialist war, without exploitation, without oppression and discrimination. From coast to coast and on every continent, women are in the forefront of these mighty battles to win change that favors the people. Women are forging organization of all kinds at all levels to defend their rights and the rights of all.

Women’s Day 2005 is bringing to the fore the stand of all against imperialist war and the dangers posed by U.S. aggression and repression. The demands worldwide for the removal of all U.S. troops, to end the war in Iraq and all aggressive wars and occupations find their expression in the U.S. with demands for “Troops Out Now!” and “Money for Moms not Bombs.” A major focus of the many actions across the country are military recruiting centers, with everyone uniting to oppose the efforts to use our youth as cannon fodder in aggressive wars. Many of the young soldiers now returning from Iraq or refusing to be sent back are among those speaking and protesting, rejecting the role imposed by U.S. imperialism to commit crimes against the Iraqi people or any other peoples.

The necessity for Another World also finds expression in such actions as the Global Women’s Strike and many others, fighting to “End the Twin Terror of War and Poverty,” and calling on each and all to insure that “survival and enrichment of every life and of the planet’s become the aim of every society and every economy.” In this way, women are representing the One Struggle of our One Humanity for a world that is fit for human beings and is organized to meet their needs.

Governments at all levels, inside the country and worldwide continue to unleash yet greater catastrophes on the people. The anti-social offensive has reached barbaric levels, with the brutality against the peoples aimed at eliminating resistance and humiliating all. The ruling circles are trying to put in place a qualitative change that sends the world backward, eliminating even the concept that society, and governments as their representatives, have responsibility for the well-being of their members. Even the ancient societies placed greater importance on providing for their members than U.S.-style democracy. Indeed, it can be seen that U.S.-style democracy is the weapon being used to wreck the laws and norms and standards humanity has given rise to.

This reality poses the necessity to contend with this rotten democracy and organize to eliminate it as an integral part of the struggle today to create Another World. We need arrangements that serve to empower the people, beginning right with our own collective efforts and including the fight to elect our own representatives to government. As the many actions taking place show, women and all those concerned about the future are rejecting their marginalization, rejecting the fraud of U.S.-style democracy and taking their stand that a people’s democracy is needed and we women will be in the front ranks of creating it!

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Opposing Criminalization of Survival

6th Global Women's Strike

Every year since the 2000 launching of the World Women's March, Global Women's Strike (GWS) has organized actions around the world, now numbering in more than 60 countries. These include countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, South and North and South America, such as India, Philippines, Japan, Kenya, Uganda, Greece, Ireland, Poland, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Canada and the U.S. All kinds of grassroots actions are taken, as the GWS call brings out, "to demand together that society Invest in Caring Not Killing, and that the money squandered on war is spent instead on what our communities need. The Strike has grown stronger in these five years, especially in countries of the global South, and women, and increasingly men, now take action throughout the year. We have seen how working across national boundaries with others in struggles for justice empowers us all.

"Opposing war and ending poverty are inseparable. The recent horrendous tsunami killed almost 300,000 people, but every day many thousands die from starvation, disease, global warming and war — all man-made disasters caused by the rule of money and the market. Governments and their beloved multinationals talk a lot of hot air about ending poverty but they never even mention giving us the money we need. The twin terrors of poverty and war are profitable, so it's against their interest to end either. Only we ourselves, beginning with women the carers who struggle every day to sustain life, working the hardest for least, can make this life-saving change. The Strike is our way of mobilizing for this.

We are not asking for charity but demanding what we have earned: A Living Wage for All our Work."

As the many actions planned show, the Strike aims to bring women (and men) together across many divisions. As the statement says, "It begins with those of us who are invisible as workers: mothers and other caregivers, grassroots activists; subsistence, migrant and family farmers; those struggling on disability benefits, welfare, social security; child laborers; immigrants with or without papers; bonded laborers; domestic and homecare workers; sex workers; prisoners and ex-prisoners; refuseniks; students; rape survivors & others working for justice; community volunteers and more; whatever our sex, race, nationality, religion, age, sexual choice."

We salute the efforts of Global Women's Strike and all the many and valiant organizations coming forward to defend the rights of women and take their stand to change society. As the statement concludes, "Many of us are shocked that Bush and his genocidal henchmen are in charge of the largest military machine in the world for four more years. But as Joe Hill, a great working class fighter, said when he was framed for murder by the US police and got the death sentence, `Don't mourn. Organize!'

Power to the sisters and brothers to stop the world and change it!"

A petition to All Governments

Invest in Caring Not Killing!

We, the people of the world, demand that:

• The `war with no end' and the arms trade and genocide it imposes, be brought to an end.

• The over $900 billion now spent on military budgets worldwide be invested instead in the care and welfare of all the people and our planet.

• All caring work, now done mainly by women, be valued and paid for, and a pension paid to all those whose decades of work have never been recognized.

• Caring, and therefore the survival and enrichment of every life and of the planet's, becomes the aim of every society and every economy.

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Global Women's Strike in Phila, LA, SF, and Worldwide

End the Twin Terrors of War & Poverty!

- Tonya Wenger, Global Women's Strike/Phila -

Global Women's Strike (GWS) actions in Philadelphia brought together women, men, and children for events on March 5 and March 8, International Women's Day, which are part of the sixth annual actions by women on every continent demanding that governments "Invest In Caring Not Killing," the theme of the Global Women's Strike. An added theme this year was "A Living Wage for All Our Work, Pay Equity in the Global Market." Other actions in the US this week took place in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Cruz California. (For information on other actions around the world, go to www.globalwomenstrike.com.)

GWS actions in Philadelphia kicked off on Saturday March 5 with an event called "Gathering Our Forces Against Poverty and War." Chester High School parents, a school where the majority of students are Black, described how after police from every district maced students after a food fight, the students marched to Edison (the private company that helps run the school district) to protest the conditions and neglect of the schools. The parents and students together now have an on-going campaign demanding accountability from Edison, the school board, and the state government. Welfare mothers and grandmothers described their work caring for children and people with disabilities and demanding welfare as a right for this survival work. A former Marine described the sexual abuse he suffered while in the service and how he has been refused justice up through the chain of command as well as on Capitol Hill. The mother of a woman in prison for life described the life sentence it is for her, and the efforts of "Fight for Lifers" to change the "life without parole" law.

The event premiered the new video "Refusing to Kill," on women and men military refusers around the world which describes the courage of young women and men, including US, Israeli and other soldiers taking drastic action to refuse the work of killing.  Produced by Payday, a network of men which works with the Global Women's Strike, it includes vintage footage of Vietnam Veterans instructing people on different ways to get out of the draft, because "any way to get out is a good way."  

Phila-based Phoebe Jones, coordinator of the GWS in the US, said "Black, white and Latina, older and young, gay and straight, with disabilities and not — we came together to demand an end to the twin terrors of poverty and war."

Then on a snowy, blustery March 8 a determined band of women and men marched and rallied from Phila Police Headquarters to the Federal Building to "Strike Against the Racist Criminal `Injustice' System — Our Children Don't Want their Mothers in Jail!" They protested that half the City's budget — a total of $1.1 billion — is now going to the criminal justice system while there is supposedly "no money" for schools, libraries, public transit, welfare and other community needs. In near-blizzard conditions, they chanted "No more prisons no more war" and "Pay us women, Pay us moms, Give us the money, Not more bombs", and other slogans. An award was given to honor Philadelphia activist journalist and death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal. His wife Wadia, unable to accept the award on his behalf because of illness, sent a statement to express appreciation. Mumia has written statements of support for the GWS for the past two years.

Pat Albright of the Every Mother is a Working Mother network, one of the cosponsors of the Philadelphia events said, "We spoke out against the `criminalization of survival' — including the locking up of women for crimes of poverty."

Strike actions in Los Angeles and San Francisco each drew more than 300 people, with many people of color including youth. In Los Angeles most of the attendees were people of color, the majority of whom were youth. Speakers and performers ranged from Military Families Speak Out; People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, Veterans Against the War, Congress of Racial Equality, A New Way of Life, Critical Resistance/LA, International ANSWER, The Million Worker March, The International Action Center, The No New Jails Coalition, several neighborhood based anti-war vigils, USPROStitutes Collective, Wages Due Lesbians, and more. Performers included Billionaires for Bush, and GJ, a Haitian rapper. The LA march was led by a troop of Aztec dancers. All demanded an end to war, poverty, and the `criminal injustice system,' in particular their affects on women and entire communities.

Los Angeles-based Margaret Prescod, one of the US coordinators of the Strike said: "It was an unprecedented coming together for Los Angeles. When we arrived at Twin Towers Jail, prisoners knew we were there and waved to the crowd as we demanded money for mothers and communities, not Guantánamos and war."

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On the 95th commemoration of International Women's Day, created by women engaged in the struggle for women's rights against monopoly capitalism, we call on the women of the world to recognize and honor the women who create the greater share of the profits of imperialist globalization. Often unpaid or paid at less than subsistence level; barely recognized in large sections of the world as human beings; bought, sold, traded and enslaved, deprived of their rights and freedoms, and oppressed, these women nevertheless bear the greater burden for the survival of families, communities and even entire nations economically and spiritually. They are the finest expression of the nobility of the human spirit even as the conditions of oppression and exploitation under which they live constitute the worst expression of humanity's rapacity.

This International Women's Day comes in the midst of two wars of aggression (in Afghanistan and Iraq) and threats of more (Iran, North Korea and Syria) wars. It comes in the midst of the continuing impoverishment of peoples — whether in the developed or undeveloped countries — and the continuing enrichment of transnational corporations and their shareholders. Truly, we live at a time when monopoly capitalism is engaged in a rapacious re-casting of the world after its own image. Power and profit are reserved for a few while the rest of us have only a lifetime of wage-slavery, if not outright slavery, and powerlessness to look forward to. As in the corporate structure, the most hierarchical and most tyrannical organization created by humankind, those who work the hardest and longest earn the least while those who sit in air-conditioned rooms fatten themselves on multimillion-dollar salaries and dividends.

The violence that this acute contradiction breeds in the world today must be ended. We have seen the steady constriction of rights, freedoms and public space for women the world over. We have seen women suffer both collateral and enduring damage in wars launched by imperialism. Women and children constitute 70% of collateral damage, while enduring damage is done through the creation of the breeding grounds for the traffic of women and children, religious fundamentalism and violence against women. We have seen conditions inimical to women legitimized "ostensibly" for the good of the women -- from capital's assault on the human body in prostitution to the removal of overtime pay under the so-called "flex-time work." We have seen gender oppression in the household transferred from the well-off women of the First World to the women of the Third World, who have been impoverished by the bloodsucking International Monetary Fund/World Bank and the World Trade Organization. We have seen women's knowledge of plants and medicines patented for the exclusive use and control of transnational corporations. We have seen women's bodies experimented on medically to generate profits in an entertainment world that caters mainly to male fantasy. We have seen women murdered when they choose to protest and speak out, whether at home, in the workplace or in countries contending against globalization.

Time to end this. We call for women of the world, especially poor and working women, to unite and finally shatter the conceptual link between women and private property. Let us not wait another hundred years for political, social and economic equality. Let us start by reclaiming March 8 as the International Working Women's Day from the cooption of the U.S. and other imperialist states through United Nation-sponsored and government-sponsored celebrations. We call on the women of the world to strengthen and expand the women's anti-imperialist front. Continue the struggle for women's liberation, class emancipation and national liberation. Let us forge on in militant sisterhood!

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Some Facts on the Conditions of Women

Internationally

• It is estimated that women's unpaid household labor accounts for about one-third of the world's economic production (US $40 trillion). When unpaid household and agricultural labor are included, women are estimated to work 30 percent more than men. (1)

• Women produce half the world's food, but own only one percent of its farmland. (2)

• Women hold about 3 percent of top executive jobs and one percent of top labor union jobs worldwide. (3)

• Women are heads of state in only eight countries and are less than 14 percent of the world's lawmakers. (3)

• While young girls have increased their school enrollment almost 80 percent, of the 300 million children without access to education, two-thirds are girls. Two-thirds of the world's 880 million illiterates are women. (1)

• Women now account for almost half of all cases of HIV/AIDS. In countries with high prevalence rates, young women are at higher risk of contracting HIV than young men. (2)

• In Palestine, an area where women are playing a significant role in the struggle and in defending the rights of women, children families and society, the UN reports that:

— 52 pregnant women gave birth at military checkpoints since 2002;

— 19 women and 29 newborns died at military checkpoints between September 2000 and December 2002; and

— 37.9 per cent of mothers reported that access to health services became difficult. Of the mothers reporting these difficulties, 44.3 per cent noted that these difficulties were due to the Israeli siege and curfew and 27.9 per cent due to a lack of money to pay for such services.

United States

• 70% of part-time workers are women. More than one million women earn poverty wages, below the Federal minimum wage of $5.25.

• Women working full-time year-round are still paid considerably less than men — only about 76 cents for every dollar paid to men. (4)

• Two thirds of people living below the poverty line in the US are women with dependent children who also get the lowest pay when they work outside the home. (5)

• In 2002, the number of Americans living in poverty increased to 34.6 million, with the majority women. The number of unemployed has increased by 2.4 million people — of which 1.1 million are women. (6)

• The Census Bureau reported that in 2001 the median earnings for women were $29,215, compared to $38,275 for men. For minority women, the wage gap is even more pronounced: African-American women earn 69 cents compared with white men and Hispanic women earn only 56 cents.

• In 2001, women's average monthly Social Security benefits were $756, compared to average monthly benefits of $985 for men. While less than 1/3 of workers have private pension funds, men are twice as likely to have one than women. In 2000, less than one in five retired women received income from pensions. (4)

• While women are in the front ranks of all the major struggles occurring across the country, whether it be the anti-war movement, the fight against profiling and detentions, for education, healthcare and more, they are excluded from the existing political set up. There are only 79 women nationwide serving in statewide elective executive offices. Five of them, or 6.2%, are women of color. (7)

• Women hold 79, or 14.8%, of the 535 seats in the 109th US Congress. They hold 14 of the 100 seats in the Senate (14 percent). They hold 65 of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives (14.9 percent).

• In 2002, the number of Americans without health insurance increased by 2.4 million to an estimated 43.6 million. Overall, 13.9 percent (20.2 million) of women in America were uninsured in 2002. Of all women who lack health insurance, 35% work full-time and 23% work part-time. (4)

• The US is one of only six countries out of 152 surveyed by the United Nations that does not have a paid maternity care policy for women. (5)

• Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women in the United States. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Women in the United States are in nine times more danger in their own homes than they are in the street." Unfortunately, leaving a violent situation typically brings on more extreme violence. In the United States, 74% of the murders committed by domestic partners occur after the woman has obtained a restraining order or filed for divorce (Seager, 1997).

Sources

1) "Lives Together, Worlds Apart," The State of World Population 2000, United Nations Population Fund, New York, 2000]
2) www.careusa.org
3) Wirth, Linda, Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling, International Labor Organization, Geneva, 2001
4) www.bpwusa.org
5) www.payequity.net
6) www.bls.gov
7) www.cawp.rutgers.edu

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No To US Imperialist Wars and Aggression!

Resistance to Military Recruiting On the Rise

Across the country — in schools, colleges, malls, parking lots, at recruiting offices and elsewhere — students and youth are increasing their resistance to military recruiting. This is particularly significant in light of the military's dramatically stepped up efforts to enlist and retain more people as cannon fodder for imperialist wars and aggression. The military is spending hundreds of millions of additional dollars; adding nearly 1500 more recruiters; continually using "stop-loss" orders, bribes, and threats; preparing plans for the draft; and more, to shore up increasingly unmet enlistment and retention quotas, especially in the Army and the Marines. The result? More resistance!

At Senn High School in Chicago, parents, students, youth, educators, religious leaders, residents, activists and others have sustained a year-long campaign to oppose the establishment of a military academy at their high school. Despite their legitimate and ongoing demands, city and schools officials went ahead recently and imposed a military academy on the school, which is supposed to open Fall 2005. Opponents have vowed to continue to fight every inch of the way.

In their most recent victory, military recruiting opponents organized an "opt-out" campaign, against the handing over of student information to the military. Providing this information is required by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). While most people are not aware of it, students and parents can demand that the schools not provide their names, known as "opting out." The Senn "opt-out" campaign compelled the Chicago school board to agree to make available to every student easy to read forms (though in English only) explaining the right to opt out of having military recruiters get their names, addresses, and phone numbers; to accept opt-out forms signed by students only, in accordance with wording of the NCLB law; and to extend the deadline from March 15 to April 15.

In Minnesota, members of Youth Against War and Racism (YAWR) at Kennedy High School recently refused to succumb to the pressures of the military, the American Legion, and school officials to stop them from setting up an anti-war information table at lunch and when military recruiters are around. Responding to efforts to stop them the youth brought out that, "This was not the first time Kennedy students had to battle the administration. In fact, this repression followed months of negotiations to get the right to set up a table. A school district lawyer finally confirmed we had equal tabling rights to the recruiters," reports the Pulse. Last December YAWR collected more than 100 signatures on a student petition to oppose military recruitment at their school.

Despite being threatened with suspension, YAWR members collectively developed an action plan to resist the efforts to silence them and affirmed their rights to assemble, organize, and speak. Specifically, they drafted a flier and petition to hand out to students asking them to support their free speech rights. They sent a solidarity appeal to progressive groups across the country and worldwide asking them to call the superintendent and principal in protest. They also called a press conference after school in the cafeteria. Although school officials ended up physically removing anti-war tables and materials, students garnered broad support and eventually succeeded in getting all their demands met.

In related news, in January several hundred students at Seattle Central Community College chased army recruiters from their spot in the Student center. Actions against recruiters also took place at a job fair at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) as well as several California campuses. At dozens and dozens of recruitment centers and military efforts on campuses, youth are taking their stand to refuse to commit the crimes of U.S. imperialism.

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- Camilo Mejia -

On February 15, Camilo Mejia was released from prison. As many may know, Camilo spent more than 7 years in the military, 8 months fighting in Iraq, and when he came home for a 2-week furlough, he decided that he could not — in good conscience — return to Iraq. He applied for Conscientious Objector status, and was declared a Prisoner of Conscience by Amnesty International. But the U.S. military convicted him of desertion, and sent him to serve a one-year prison sentence in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  This happened the same day that Spc. Jeremy Sivits was court-martialed and sentenced to a year in prison for abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, an order Camilo had refused to obey. For more information on Camilo go to: http://freecamilo.org/. We post his essay below.

* * *

I was deployed to Iraq in April 2003 and returned home for a two-week leave in October. Going home gave me the opportunity to put my thoughts in order and to listen to what my conscience had to say. People would ask me about my war experiences and answering them took me back to all the horrors—the firefights, the ambushes, the time I saw a young Iraqi dragged by his shoulders through a pool of his own blood or an innocent man was decapitated by our machine gun fire. The time I saw a soldier broken down inside because he killed a child, or an old man on his knees, crying with his arms raised to the sky, perhaps asking God why we had taken the lifeless body of his son.

I thought of the suffering of a people whose country was in ruins and who were further humiliated by the raids, patrols and curfews of an occupying army.

And I realized that none of the reasons we were told about why we were in Iraq turned out to be true. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. We weren’t helping the Iraqi people and the Iraqi people didn’t want us there. We weren’t preventing terrorism or making Americans safer. I couldn’t find a single good reason for having been there, for having shot at people and been shot at.

Coming home gave me the clarity to see the line between military duty and moral obligation. I realized that I was part of a war that I believed was immoral and criminal, a war of aggression, a war of imperial domination. I realized that acting upon my principles became incompatible with my role in the military, and I decided that I could not return to Iraq.

By putting my weapon down, I chose to reassert myself as a human being. I have not deserted the military or been disloyal to the men and women of the military. I have not been disloyal to a country. I have only been loyal to my principles.

When I turned myself in, with all my fears and doubts, it did it not only for myself. I did it for the people of Iraq, even for those who fired upon me—they were just on the other side of a battleground where war itself was the only enemy. I did it for the Iraqi children, who are victims of mines and depleted uranium. I did it for the thousands of unknown civilians killed in war. My time in prison is a small price compared to the price Iraqis and Americans have paid with their lives. Mine is a small price compared to the price Humanity has paid for war.

Many have called me a coward, others have called me a hero. I believe I can be found somewhere in the middle. To those who have called me a hero, I say that I don’t believe in heroes, but I believe that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

To those who have called me a coward I say that they are wrong, and that without knowing it, they are also right. They are wrong when they think that I left the war for fear of being killed. I admit that fear was there, but there was also the fear of killing innocent people, the fear of putting myself in a position where to survive means to kill, there was the fear of losing my soul in the process of saving my body, the fear of losing myself to my daughter, to the people who love me, to the man I used to be, the man I wanted to be. I was afraid of waking up one morning to realize my humanity had abandoned me.

I say without any pride that I did my job as a soldier. I commanded an infantry squad in combat and we never failed to accomplish our mission. But those who called me a coward, without knowing it, are also right. I was a coward not for leaving the war, but for having been a part of it in the first place. Refusing and resisting this war was my moral duty, a moral duty that called me to take a principled action. I failed to fulfill my moral duty as a human being and instead I chose to fulfill my duty as a soldier. All because I was afraid. I was terrified, I did not want to stand up to the government and the army, I was afraid of punishment and humiliation. I went to war because at the moment I was a coward, and for that I apologize to my soldiers for not being the type of leader I should have been.

I also apologize to the Iraqi people. To them I say I am sorry for the curfews, for the raids, for the killings. May they find it in their hearts to forgive me.

One of the reasons I did not refuse the war from the beginning was that I was afraid of losing my freedom. Today, as I sit behind bars I realize that there are many types of freedom, and that in spite of my confinement I remain free in many important ways. What good is freedom if we are afraid to follow our conscience? What good is freedom if we are not able to live with our own actions? I am confined to a prison but I feel, today more than ever, connected to all humanity. Behind these bars I sit a free man because I listened to a higher power, the voice of my conscience.

While I was confined in total segregation, I came across a poem written by a man who refused and resisted the government of Nazi Germany. For doing so he was executed. His name is Albrecht Hanshofer, and he wrote this poem as he awaited execution.

GUILT
The burden of my guilt before the law
weighs light upon my shoulders; to plot
and to conspire was my duty to the people;
I would have been a criminal had I not.

I am guilty, though not the way you think,
I should have done my duty sooner, I was wrong,
I should have called evil more clearly by its name
I hesitated to condemn it for far too long.

I now accuse myself within my heart:
I have betrayed my conscience far too long
I have deceived myself and fellow man.

I knew the course of evil from the start
My warning was not loud nor clear enough!
Today I know what I was guilty of…

To those who are still quiet, to those who continue to betray their conscience, to those who are not calling evil more clearly by its name, to those of us who are still not doing enough to refuse and resist, I say “come forward.”  I say “free your minds.”
 
Let us, collectively, free our minds, soften our hearts, comfort the wounded, put down our weapons, and reassert ourselves as human beings by putting an end to war.

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