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Indybay Feature

International Women's General Strike on March 8: Walk Out, March and Demonstrate

by Women of America
Women of America: we're going on strike. Join us so Trump will see our power
sm_women-trump_erik_mcgregor_pacific_barcroft_3100.jpg
The massive women’s marches of 21 January may mark the beginning of a new wave of militant feminist struggle. But what exactly will be its focus? In our view, it is not enough to oppose Trump and his aggressively misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic and racist policies. We also need to target the ongoing neoliberal attack on social provision and labor rights.

While Trump’s blatant misogyny was the immediate trigger for the huge response on 21 January, the attack on women (and all working people) long predates his administration. Women’s conditions of life, especially those of women of color and of working, unemployed and migrant women, have steadily deteriorated over the last 30 years, thanks to financialization and corporate globalization.

Lean-in feminism and other variants of corporate feminism have failed the overwhelming majority of us, who do not have access to individual self-promotion and advancement and whose conditions of life can be improved only through policies that defend social reproduction, secure reproductive justice and guarantee labor rights. As we see it, the new wave of women’s mobilization must address all these concerns in a frontal way. It must be a feminism for the 99%.

The kind of feminism we seek is already emerging internationally, in struggles across the globe: from the women’s strike in Poland against the abortion ban to the women’s strikes and marches in Latin America against male violence; from the vast women’s demonstration of last November in Italy to the protests and the women’s strike in defense of reproductive rights in South Korea and Ireland.

What is striking about these mobilizations is that several of them combined struggles against male violence with opposition to the casualization of labor and wage inequality, while also opposing homophobia, transphobia and xenophobic immigration policies. Together, they herald a new international feminist movement with an expanded agenda: at once anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-heterosexist and anti-neoliberal.

We want to contribute to the development of this new, more expansive feminist movement.

As a first step, we propose to help build an international strike against male violence and in defense of reproductive rights on 8 March. In this, we join with feminist groups from around 30 countries who have called for such a strike.

The idea is to mobilize women, including trans women, and all who support them in an international day of struggle – a day of striking, marching, blocking roads, bridges, and squares, abstaining from domestic, care and sex work, boycotting, calling out misogynistic politicians and companies, striking in educational institutions. These actions are aimed at making visible the needs and aspirations of those whom lean-in feminism ignored: women in the formal labor market, women working in the sphere of social reproduction and care, and unemployed and precarious working women.

In embracing a feminism for the 99%, we take inspiration from the Argentinian coalition Ni Una Menos. Violence against women, as they define it, has many facets: it is domestic violence, but also the violence of the market, of debt, of capitalist property relations, and of the state; the violence of discriminatory policies against lesbian, trans and queer women; the violence of state criminalization of migratory movements; the violence of mass incarceration; and the institutional violence against women’s bodies through abortion bans and lack of access to free healthcare and free abortion.

Their perspective informs our determination to oppose the institutional, political, cultural and economic attacks on Muslim and migrant women, on women of color and working and unemployed women, on lesbian, gender nonconforming and trans women.

The women’s marches of 21 January have shown that in the United States, too, a new feminist movement may be in the making. It is important not to lose momentum.

Let us join together on 8 March to strike, walk out, march and demonstrate. Let us use the occasion of this international day of action to be done with lean-in feminism and to build in its place a feminism for the 99%, a grassroots, anti-capitalist feminism – a feminism in solidarity with working women, their families and their allies throughout the world.

— Linda Martín Alcoff, Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, Nancy Fraser, Barbara Ransby, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Rasmea Yousef Odeh, Angela Davis
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by marlene garcia
A friend and I are flying from Mexico to San Francisco on March 7 to participate in marching in the women's strike. We are not familiar with the area, and I cannot find anything that indicates where the march will be held. Can you help? Thanks, Marlene Garcia
by Helper
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The location is at Justin Herman Plaza. Address: Steuart St and Market St, San Francisco, CA 94111

San Francisco – Gender Strike! Bay Area
March 8 @ 12:00 pm - 5:00 pm

In solidarity with the International Women’s Strike, which has called for militant action, strikes, blockades, occupations, and disruption of business as usual, we call for an all out strike against gender and all its forms of oppression, and against all systems of capitalist, racist, xenophobic, and fascist domination.

On March 8th we propose a feminist strike which will not be content to pinkwash the bombs on Bagdad, or to knit crowns honoring biology as our destiny. Instead, we propose a different strike, a strike against all forms of gender domination. A gender strike from below.

DAY OF ACTION – SHUT DOWN ICE!

As feminists, we see the struggle against ICE, against deportations, against borders, imperialism, and nationalism, as deeply intertwined with and crucial to the struggle for gender liberation.

We call upon antagonists to these systems of oppression in the Bay Area to come out for a day of action to shut down ICE and demand the removal of any and all ICE operations from San Francisco and the wider Bay Area. If this is truly to be a sanctuary city, if sanctuary is to be more than an ideal or a convenient phrase, we must act decisively to make the concept a reality.
We call for this as one step toward fighting for a world we can survive and want to live in.

ICE is a direct manifestation of the worst forms of oppression faced by the most vulnerable women, queer and trans folks. Just last week, ICE arrested and deported a trans woman on the steps of an El Paso courthouse after she filed a protective order against her abusive boyfriend. Aggressive ICE raids have been reported around the country, and in the Bay Area they have shown up at social services agencies, grocery stores, and other public places, terrifying the local community and causing people to avoid going to work or to school.

THE FUTURE IS NOT FEMALE, IF IT IS TRULY FEMINIST.

Our actions will honor a different feminism, a feminism which refuses to collaborate with elite power brokers, naked capital and imperial interests, opportunists, managers and tepid reformists of every pink stripe.

Our feminism will never invoke the hollow praises of “intersectionality” because we *live* intersectionality, on our bodies and in our communities daily.

We must act on our own behalf: we will not be spoken for and co-opted by upwardly mobile “feminists” with designs on appropriating and exploiting our labor, our struggles and our formidable strength.

THE FUTURE IS NOT GENDERED, IF IT IS TRULY REVOLUTIONARY.

Ours is a feminism that always fights, uncompromisingly, in defense of all who are oppressed by gender: trans women, undocumented migrants and domestic workers, refugees, black and brown people subjected to daily harassment and murder by police, and all who are situated at the intersection of life and death, surviving so many deadly forms of racialized, feminized and gendered exploitation.

Ours is a feminism that is anti capitalist; that is antifascist; that is against all forms of supremacy, imperialism, and nationalism; ours is a feminism that must destroy every patriarchal wall or border built between us and *our future*. We proclaim, the future is our liberation! and nothing less.

AGAINST STATE VIOLENCE AND REPRESSION

Necessarily, our strike will not call upon the police to protect our “safety” because our feminism opposes state violence, absolutely.

Police do not make everyone safer. When women, especially those of color, call the police seeking protection from abusive partners, they are met with violence from the police. When people call the police for help in a mental health crisis, they are met with fatal violence from the police.

Rally against ALL forms of oppression, which deepen and contribute to patriarchy and all that genders us & subjects us to gendered violence, exclusion, exploitation & oppression!

https://womenstrikeus.org/event/san-francisco-gender-strike-bay-area/
by julia angelis
Beware of antifeminism disguised as 'gender'.
FYI: Women are the poorest class, the ones that the unpaid labor and the most subject to male violence.
If anything is to change, we must end the Patriarchy and Male Supremacy.
THE FUTURE IS FEMALE
by here we go again
I thought the oppressed 99% was a "poor class analysis"? I feel irritated now. Thought we went through this in occupy. If the underlying principle of unity is going to be anti-capitalism, I think we ought to re-evaluate our inclusions into anti-capitalist movement or we risk the chance of being co opted by passive reformists who only want to preserve their interests and the interests of the status quo not just for the 1% but a handful of capitalists within the top 20% and well below that who are part of this oppressive capitalist system. It's not just the one percent who abuse us in the work place and pay us shit wages. I take anti-capitalism very personally and I think everyone else who wants to be part of it should as well and know their stance and what role they play in the system. Be aware of social status you come from. Are you an employer who treats people like shit for example? This issue strikes me at my core. Remember your bass support for militant action comes from the very bottom where people are struggling in life; the poor, oppressed, disenfranchised, unemployed and unemployable with no hope. They're always the first responders at the frontline and always have been through out history of anti capitalist struggle. I don't think this call to militant action is going to be anymore militant than your average protest because the language doesn't rub me the same as language you read on websites like BAMN, IT'S GOING DOWN, FIREWORKSBAY, SUB MEDIA, STIMULATOR, CRIMETHINC ETC ETC ETC. Those are people you know will have your back in an actual shit hit the fan scenario. More than likely just another flash in the pan. Still waiting on that stock market crash so we can get it over with. Tired of all the luls.
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