Fri 8 March: International Women’s Day/Strike

International Women’s Day/Strike

DEFENDING OUR CHILDREN AND OUR WORLD

The Global Women’s Strike (GWS) is hosting this outdoor picket, delighted to be joined by Frack Free Knitting Nanas Lancashire, Stanstead 15, Mental Health Resistance Network, English Collective of Prostitutes, WinVisible, Women of Colour Global Womens Strike and more.  Info below, you are welcome to contact us on win@winvisible.org

Weather forecast is dry and mostly sunny!

Please share the Facebook event on social media and with your networks.

Info from Global Women’s Strike about the afternoon events:

PICKET: 12-2pm outside the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, London WC2A 2LL
 Women’s walking/rolling picket, speak-out, breastfeeding sit-in  All women, children and non-binary people welcome.
Hosted by Global Women’s Strike.
Co-hosted by: women in Extinction Rebellion

Snacks and films: 2.30-5.30pm  in the Junior Common Room, SOAS Students’ Union (School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London, Thornhaugh St, London WC1H 0XG

Films include: Journey with the Revolution and Enter the Oil Workers which the GWS made about the Bolivarian Revolution, and The Revolution Will not be Televised. Hosted by Decolonising Our Minds and Payday men’s network.  All welcome.  Supportive men are invited to contact payday@paydaynet.org

WE ARE FOR: the financial recognition of unwaged/low waged caring work in the family and outside

WE ARE AGAINST: the hostile environment, the forced separation of children from their families, poverty, unequal pay, sexism, racism, Islamophobia and all forms of discrimination, rape and domestic violence, exploitation, detention and deportation, climate change …

WHY THE HIGH COURT?

•  Many injustices are fought out there – destitution, detention, deportation, benefit cuts, zero-hours contracts, criminalisation, pollution, the state taking children from mothers …
• Since the 1970s, Wages for Housework (WFH) which co-ordinates the Global Women’s Strike has defended mums threatened with losing their kids because they were poor, fleeing domestic violence, lesbian, sex workers.
• Children from poor areas are now 10 times more likely to be taken; thousands are forcibly adopted each year. Mothers who are single, of colour, immigrant, disabled, victims of domestic violence are targeted.
• Benefit cuts and sanctions (including Universal Credit), and starvation wages hit women and children hardest – 5m children live in poverty; single mother families are 85% of those affected by the benefit cap; women have shouldered 87% of austerity cuts.  Our efforts for survival are often criminalised.
• Calling poverty ‘neglect’ is one excuse to steal children from their families – love, caring work, even breastfeeding, are dismissed. Families are denied their legal right to resources but millions are spent on placing children with strangers.
• For two years Support not Separation (SnS) has picketed the family court. They will join the protest to demand a living wage for mothers and other carers.

THE INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S STRIKE

•  The first Global Women’s Strike (coordinated by the Wages for Housework Campaign – WFH) was called for 8 March 2000, inspired by the 1975 Iceland women’s Day Off and a strike call by women in Ireland ? In 2016 women in Poland stopped work against anti-abortion laws ? In 2017 they joined with the movement against femicide in Argentina, and coordinated an international strike with women in 50+ countries ? In 2018, 6m women in Spain went on strike ? The strikes highlighted unwaged caring work, unequal pay, rape and domestic violence, exploitation, climate change …

 Global Women’s Strike  gws@globalwomenstrike.net  020 7482 2496

TOMORROW Wed 6 March: Family court on trial for unjustly taking children from their mothers.

Support Not Separation regular picket outside the family court, 12.30-1.30pm First Avenue House, 42-49 High Holborn, London WC1V 6NP