Women slam war and budget cuts
By Nancy Younassi
Boston
On March 22, the Women's Fightback Network and ANSWER Boston
held a spirited anti-war rally that packed the Cambridge YWCA.
The event was co-chaired by WFN leaders Steph Simard and Erline
Salley and included cultural performances by Puerto Rican
activist Marta Rodriguez and DAGGER, the Theatre Offensive's
Queer Women's Guerrilla theater troupe.
Mahtowin Munro, co-chair of United American Indians of New
England, opened with an eloquent message of resistance to
racism, colonialism, budget cuts and war. She saluted women in
the frontlines of the struggle worldwide.
Speaking of the cutbacks and deepening war at home, Munro
explained, "People of color in the U.S. know first-hand what it
is to be on the receiving end of a relentless campaign of war
and terror. Native people have dealt for centuries with the
terrorism of the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and other colonizing
governments. I urge all of you to consider the knowledge that
we have gained during that time. If we had unified early on,
worked together rather than as separate nations, we may have
prevailed. Now is the time to come together in unity, to speak
with one voice and say NO to war. We have the power within us
to stop this war and to change the world, and we will do
so."
Yoomi Jeong of the Korea Truth Commission had just returned
from visits to both North and South Korea. She told the crowd,
"The Korean people are actively opposed to the U.S. war on
Iraq. Huge demonstrations take place continuously. We know
first-hand what war, economic sanctions and occupation are all
about. We have endured and resisted Japanese imperialist
occupation, the Korean War which resulted in the U.S.
colonization of the south, and more than 50 years of U.S.
economic sanctions against the north.
"When the U.S. started bombing Iraq, we knew that we could
be next. We support the right of North Korea to defend itself
against U.S. imperialist aggression."
Jeong stressed the need to strengthen the solidarity between
the anti-war movement in the U.S. and the Korean people's
struggle against U.S. imperialism. Jeong said that the Korean
people's desire to kick out the 37,000 U.S. troops forcibly
dividing the Korean peninsula is at an all-time high,
especially since the death last summer of two young Korean
girls who were crushed by a U.S. tank.
Minnie Bruce Pratt, a renowned lesbian poet and anti-racist
activist, analyzed the relationship between capitalism,
imperialist war and women's oppression. Her talk helped to
deepen the crowd's understanding of the revolutionary role
women have to play in the liberation of the working class as a
whole. She evoked Marx and Engels in reminding women how their
dual role as laborers as well as reproducers of laborers is
exploited by the capitalist class. This gives women an even
greater reason to fight back and gain control of both their
labor power and their bodies, alongside their brothers in the
struggle.
Pratt also encouraged the crowd to cast aside the ruling
class notion that women are inherently more peaceful and
nurturing than men. War hawks like Madeleine Albright and
Condoleezza Rice quickly disprove this theory. "What matters is
which side of the class struggle one stands on--the side of the
oppressors or the side of the oppressed."
Her carefully woven formulations and passionate agitation
left the audience with an even greater resolve to carry forth
the decisive class struggle as so many revolutionary women have
done before us, "Not just to fight and die, but to win."
Reprinted from the April 3, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe to WW by Email: wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Donate to
support pro-labor, anti-war news.
Email
this article
Printable
page