"Women and Resistance: Alive and Inseparable"
Nancy Reiko Kato, US Radical Women
Imagine Revolution Conference, Seattle
9 November 2002
I want to share a line from one of my favorite poems, written by my good comrade Merle Woo. She writes, "When you're backed into a corner the only way out is to fight." Women have been pushed into a corner for centuries, forced into second-class status and treatment by a system that profits form our labor enormously. We are a caste within our class -- paid less for our work in the public sphere and paid nothing for our work in the home. Our husbands (if we have them) are often assigned the role of the master of the family and by default are allowed to make decisions on our behalf. Given this arrangement, we have two choices--fight back or give up. I think it's safe to say that everyone here today is in the fight back camp.
Whether we live in the richest country in the world, or the poorest, capitalism hits women the hardest. In the Philippines, the former president heralds women who are forced into the sex trafficking industry as heroes because the money they send home is being used to pay the interest on the foreign debt. In Southern Africa, poverty has been exacerbated by drought and many women are forced into selling sex in order to feed their families. The price they pay is an epidemic increase in HIV infection and AIDS cases. Palestinian women are forced to give birth at Israeli checkpoints, then stand by as their babies die for lack of medical attention because they aren't allowed access to a hospital.
Even in the most prosperous nation, women and their children are hard hit by corporate globalization. The number of women in jail has increased 138% over the past decade and 54% of women in prison are of color. The crimes they commit are usually non-violent and stem from poverty. Women still make less money than men and up until the year 2000, the leading cause of death on the job for women was murder. The $2.4 trillion health care industry increases its profits by kicking Medicare patients off the rolls. Since 1998, 2.4 million elderly and poor have been dropped. The safety net lies in tatters, and the welfare programs that are left are being slashed.
With the Republican sweep in this week's elections, women in this country know that Bush and his Republican and Democratic Party buddies will step up the attacks at home and abroad. It's important to remember that it's not just a Bush-thing, or a GOP-thing. It's a capitalist thing. The Democrats have swiftly been moving to the right and have aided and abetted the conservative agenda for years. The Congressional vote to give Bush unilateral power to declare war on Iraq is just the latest example of this rightwing bipartisan alliance. There is going to be an onslaught against birth control, abortion rights, a deeper merging of Church and State interests, increased attacks on our civil liberties and a quickened pace to war against Iraq. We need to be prepared to go into battle.
In the present climate, building an effective international feminist movement is the order of the day. Interest in feminism and solidarity was accelerated after the 1995 U.N. Conference of Women held in Beijing, where global consciousness was born and important collaboration between groups got started. However, the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that proliferated after the Beijing Conference have become part of the problem, not the solution. They turn women into objects of rescue rather than leaders in the struggle for fundamental social change.
NGOs focus on single issues and reforms. They are designed to address a small part of the problem by providing aid to a limited number of people. Because they are ultimately beholden to their reform-minded funders -- often foreign governments and private corporations -- they play the role of limiting the objectives women may strive for and still get funding. They become the powerbrokers whose role is to provide some services/reforms, but never rock the boat nor address structural change. Their role has become more and more controlling. Sometimes they are simply moneymaking operations set up to look like they're doing something. Earlier this year an Afghan women's summit was organized by NGOs and the gifts that were presented to the Afghans were bags of make-up!
Other mainstream liberal groups aren't much better. The National Organization for Women has lost credibility among working women because it is too busy apologizing for the Democrats, especially the female ones. The Fund for a Feminist Majority has proven itself bankrupt in my estimation for supporting the bombing of Afghanistan. Their myopic reasoning coincided with George Bush's ludicrous assertion that the U.S. was saving Afghan women from the Taliban. I hope they don't buy into a possible, "Let's bomb Iraq because Saddam Hussein is rotten to Iraqi women" scenario. If they do, our opposition must be fierce. They don't represent the world's majority, so our voices need to shout out the truth.
The leadership of the "respectable ladies" just won't do in 2002. I'm thinking along the lines of BIG, BAD, AND BOLD. I'm envisioning women leaders like the female-led Zapatistas who inspired the world and started the modern day anti-globalization movement when they began their battle against NAFTA on New Years Day 1994. I'm thinking that the militancy of the 600 Nigerian women who shut down ChevronTexaco this past summer, and got a commitment from the oil giant to provide basic utilities and jobs to the surrounding communities is what we're after. We can take heart from the courage of the Kvessa Shchora -- Lesbians and Gay Men for Peace -- who organized this year's West Jerusalem Pride March and highlighted the need to challenge the borders keeping Jews and Palestinians apart. Getting the trade union movement involved in the anti-corporate globalization struggle, as was done in the "Battle of Seattle," will also be a key component.
Women, along with people of color and queers, are a worldwide force to be reckoned with. Why? Because we have our fingers on the keyboards of the financial and communications industries. We keep the cities, counties, states, universities and schools running. We do the backbreaking work of the service industry. We are exploited, underpaid, sexually harassed and intimidated, but without our labor, capitalism can be shut down.
In Radical Women, and our sister organization, the Freedom Socialist Party, we know that the most important leadership we can provide to the movements is to build them and to train other revolutionary feminist leaders. In San Francisco, we worked with other radicals, Jews and independents in the Town Hall Committee Against War and Hate to adopt a "U.S. Out of the Middle East" demand. Thanks to the principled union brothers and sisters in the Seattle area, you all were able to get the Washington State Labor Council to reject the mandated constitutional language from the AFL-CIO which could easily be used to persecute union radicals. I was able to take your success and duplicate it in my local union, UPTE-CWA 9119 at University of California, Berkeley. Unfortunately, my Labor Council did not follow suit, but I may still be able to get them to send a letter of protest to the AFL-CIO.
In Portland, the Ballot Access Case Defense Committee won a stunning victory against the State of Oregon by repealing a law that prevented minor parties from being able to be on the ballot. This coalition effort helped not only the Freedom Socialist Party, which filed the lawsuit, but also other organizations who may want to run candidates under their own name. One of the many highlights of the case was getting the endorsement of the Oregon State AFL-CIO, on September 11, 2001, no less!
As the international profit-driven system continues to push us further into a corner, we must link arms with our sisters and brothers throughout the world to stop the destruction inflicted upon the environment and us. And I know we can do it. Eighty thousand people marching in the streets of San Francisco against the impending war against Iraq is proof. As is the 450,000 who marched in London, the 100,000 to 200,000 who marched in Washington, D.C.
Working people know that we must take action and they are willing to do just that. By building an inclusive movement that seriously addresses and fights for the needs of women, people of color, immigrants, refugees, gays, lesbians, transgenders, children, elders and the poor, we can kick some capitalist butt! Let's get back some of the money that the Enrons of Wall Street have stolen from our pension funds by demanding that the multi-nationals pay high taxes to fund increased Social Security payments, free childcare, free health care (including prescription drugs!) and job training programs. Use the Pentagon's $393 billion budget to pay for quality government subsidized housing programs for the poor and elderly and for free abortion on demand. Instead of putting bond measures on the ballot, take Big Business off of corporate welfare and use the money to rebuild and improve schools, roads and public transportation systems.
No more being shoved into a corner, or back into the closets, or to the back of the bus—we're coming out fighting and we're going to reclaim the room, the house, the hood and the world for the betterment of all.