Teamsters help host Int'l Women's Day event

“Women united will never be defeated!” This was the rousing call to an evening celebration of women’s organizing and resistance on March 8, International Women’s Day, in Queens, New York. The event was co-sponsored by the Million Worker March Movement and the May 1st Coalition for Immigrant Rights, and hosted by Teamsters Local 808 and Chris Silvera, president of the Teamsters National Black Caucus.

From left: Iyaluua Ferguson, Christine Gaven-Luthann, Teresa Gutierrez & Charlene Morales.

MWM leader Brenda Stokely chaired the panel discussion. She emphasized building unity, including between women and men, saying, “Here we can find the commonality of our oppression, and the commonality of our resistance.”

Speakers highlighted women’s courageous role in struggles for the survival of their communities, especially when targeted by forces of racist government repression. Christine Gaven-Luthann of the New York Solidarity Coalition for Katrina/Rita Survivors, a former resident of Gulfport, Miss., spoke movingly of how she drew strength from her life experience as a woman fighting against injustice in her home state, and fights now for justice for survivors seeking housing, jobs, child care and other services. Some sources estimate that 80 percent of Katrina/Rita survivors are women. (“Gender Divide,” Chicago Tribune, Sept. 14, 2005)

Longtime organizer Iyaluua Ferguson represented the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee and the Jericho Movement, a national campaign to “gain recognition and amnesty for all political prisoners in the United States.” She called powerfully on participants to remember political prisoners, but especially that evening to honor women political prisoners who have resisted, empowered and protected their families, people and communities from ongoing government persecution.

From left: Brenda Stokely, Neneh James & Chryse Glackin.

She named two former members of the Black Panther Party: Assata Shakur, now in sanctuary in Cuba, and Safiya Bukhari, a political prisoner who helped found Jericho, now deceased. Ferguson also paid homage to the four still-incarcerated women of the Move Nine—Debbie, Janet, Janine and Jasmine Africa—as well as the late Merle Africa and others.

Ferguson presented the current case of the Panther 8, former and current political prisoners and former members of the Black Panther Party recently re-arrested on trumped-up charges from the 1970s. She urged the struggle to free them as especially relevant to women, “as our community and family ties are broken over and over by this persecution.”

Young hip-hop activist Neneh James detailed the creative work of the Grassroots Artist MovEment in building leadership opportunities and providing health care and work alternatives for young people.

In their capacity as waged workers, women increasingly play a central role worldwide in the survival and thriving of their communities. Charlene Morales from Filipinos for Rights and Empowerment and BAYAN documented the dramatic contribution of Filipino women by noting that “the economic burden of the Philippines rests on the backs of immigrant workers, 70 percent of whom are women” who remit wages back to their home country.

Teresa Gutierrez, a leader in the May 1st Coalition, spoke to the special vulnerabilities women face as workers, citing the recent U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement raid in New Bedford, Mass. Of the 350 immigrant workers seized, most are women from Guatemala and El Salvador; many of their children were left stranded with no adult provider.

Gutierrez said, “Whole generations worldwide are being uprooted for no other reason than the U.S. economic policies are forcing them from their homes.” She emphasized the growing women’s leadership in the immigrant-rights struggle. “On May 1st this year we are resisting and fighting back!”

The growing leadership of women in worker struggles was also a theme in remarks by Chryse Glackin of the MWMM, who said: “Women are not the auxiliary to the working class. We are the working class.”

Pointing out that U.S. women’s wages are increasing in relation to men’s wages, but only because men’s wages are falling, Glackin succinctly reminded the audience of the fragile nature of worker gains under capitalism, saying, “We are still fighting for the eight-hour work day.”

She noted that socialist countries like the USSR in its short span achieved far more for women—including universal child and health care—than capitalism will ever be able or willing to do.

Local 808 men provided “bread and roses” for the evening, including flowers for participants and a delicious meal.

The evening also sparked plans for a historic 2008 International Working Women’s Day to celebrate working-class women’s lives and resistance. MWMM leader Brenda Stokely closed by saying: “We have a history of struggle. We are going to stand shoulder to shoulder, sisters and brothers, and we are going to fight and win.”