Global Women's Strike Calls Women to Shannon Airport on 8th March!

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday January 31, 2003 10:32 by Maggie Ronayne - Global Women's Strike maggie_ronayne at hotmail dot com Wages for Housework Campaign, 10, Galway Bay Apts, Salthill, Galway 087 7838688

Join the Women's Strike Caravan to Shannon. Globalise Neutrality!

Please note in your diaries the first organising meeting for the 4th Global Women's Strike CALL TO ACTION: WOMEN SAY NO WARS -- INVEST IN CARING NOT KILLING 6.30pm Tuesday 4th February 2003 Atlanta Hotel Dominic St Galway At the meeting we will be planning for a women's anti-war event to be held on 8th March in Ireland as part of the growing international anti-war movement. We want to respond to the call of the women's peace camp at Shannon airport for other women to join them there on 8th March. The Global Women's Strike is co-ordinating a women's caravan to Shannon to say: Invest in Caring Not Killing Women Globally Say No Wars Women in Ireland say Globalise Neutrality!

Global Women's Strike Calls Women to Shannon Airport on 8th March!
Join the Women's Strike Caravan to Shannon!
Globalise Neutrality!

January 2003

Please note in your diaries the first organising meeting for the
4th Global Women's Strike CALL TO ACTION:

WOMEN SAY NO WARS -- INVEST IN CARING NOT KILLING

6.30pm Tuesday 4th February 2003
Atlanta Hotel
Dominic St
Galway

We are sending separately the Call to Action for the 4th Global Women's
Strike. As we prepare to take Strike action on International Women's Day
2003 with women from many countries, we face the threat that the US
and UK governments will unleash their weapons of mass destruction on
women, children and men in Iraq. It has never been so urgent for women
to take the lead to:

Stop the World and Change It.

The Strike's key demand is: Payment for all caring work -- in wages,
pensions, land and other resources. What is more valuable than raising
children and caring for others? Invest in life and welfare, not military
budgets and prisons.

In recent months, this demand for the return of military budgets has been
echoed by all kinds of people in 'Third World' and industrial countries.

At the meeting we will be planning for a women's anti-war event to be
held on 8th March in Ireland as part of the growing international anti-war
movement. We want to respond to the call of the women's peace camp
at Shannon airport for other women to join them there on 8th March. The
Global Women's Strike is co-ordinating a women's caravan to Shannon
to say:

Invest in Caring Not Killing
Women Globally Say No Wars
Women in Ireland say Globalise Neutrality!

Join the women's Strike caravan to Shannon from your own place or
come with us from Galway if you're near - pool resources or raise money
to hire a van, get a lift, take your car or caravan, get the Bus Eireann
bus - and bring your reasons for demanding back a part of the $900+
billion dollars in military budgets wasted on death and destruction
globally each year. Make your convoy a colourful event and let other
women know about the Strike in the towns and villages you pass
through along the way. Ask them to join us!

Joining the Strike caravan to Shannon and refusing to do the work,
waged or unwaged, women already at the camp told us would be a
great support for them. But it will also support all of those women in
over 60 countries round the world who will also be refusing that work
and who will Stop the World to Change It on Saturday, 8th March.

If you can't come to Shannon or Strike for the whole day, take off
whatever time you can and before the day itself, post, telephone or email
us your reasons for Striking for those billions - we will collect them all and
make sure they're visible and heard round the world.

All are welcome and have much to contribute: Black and immigrant
women, traveller women, women from the North and South of Ireland,
women with disabilities, pensioners, mothers and children, "veterans" of
women's peace camps, teachers, nurses, waitresses, lesbian women,
sex workers . . . And men who agree with and support our action will also
be welcome.

The more we as women come together from Venezuela to Ireland to the
US to Nigeria to Iraq, the more we break the divisions of race, ethnic
group, nation, religion, language - which divide us to deprive us - the
more grassroots women's needs are visible and our demands heard
against the wars and the trade in arms that soak up our resources.

Please bring your ideas for action to the meeting, including how to
publicise the event in your own networks, your demands for money from
the military budget in benefits and other resources, slogans, visual
effects, and so on.

Come and hear about Strike plans round the world and a report on what
Women have won in the Venezuela's 21st century revolution. Women
from the Strike in Galway over the previous three years will speak out
about their reasons for Striking. Women from Iraq will speak about the
devastating effects of war and sanctions on their families and how they
are surviving through it. We will also have a report about women's
struggle to organise for survival against the Israeli army in Palestine by
Caoimhe Butterly, recently returned from the Occupied Territories.

We look forward to seeing you, and your friends, sisters, mothers,
daughters, aunts, grannies, who would like to participate in organising for
this event.
Please ring in the days before the meeting if you need crèche facilities.

Tel: 087 7838688 for further info
Email: maggie_ronayne@hotmail.com

Power to the sisters to Stop the World and Change It!

Galway Strike Working Group

Email: womenstrike8m@server101.com
Website: http://womenstrike8m.server101.com

Payday, a network of men, is co-ordinating men's support for the Strike
payday@paydaynet.org
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Demands of the Global Women's Strike:

· Payment for all caring work - in wages, pensions, land & other
resources. What is more valuable than raising children & caring for
others? Invest in life & welfare, not military budgets & prisons.
· Pay equity for all, women & men, in the global market.
· Food security for breastfeeding mothers, paid maternity leave and
breastfeeding breaks. Stop penalising us for being women.
· Don't pay 'third world debt'. Women owe nothing, they owe us.
· Accessible clean water, healthcare, housing, transport, literacy.
· Non-polluting energy & technology which shortens the hours we work.
We all need cookers, fridges, washing machines, computers, & time off!
· Protection & asylum from all violence & persecution, including by family
members & people in positions of authority.
· Freedom of movement. Capital travels freely, why not people?