International Women’s Strike US Platform

Platform

The International Women’s Strike is a network of women that emerged through planning a day of action for March 8th, 2017 in more than 50 different countries.

In the spirit of that renewed radicalism, solidarity and internationalism, the International Women’s Strike US is organizing a new strike on March 8th, 2018 and continues to be a national organizing center by and for women who have been marginalized and silenced by decades of neoliberalism directed towards the 99% of women: working women inside and outside of the home, women of color, Native, dis/differently abled, immigrant, Muslim, lesbian, cis, queer and trans women.

We see our efforts as part of a new international feminist movement that organizes resistance not just against Trump and his misogynist policies, but also against the conditions that produced Trump, namely the decades long economic inequality, poverty, criminalization and policing, racial and sexual violence, discriminatory immigration policies, and imperial wars abroad.

We aim to build relationships of solidarity between diverse organizations of women, and all those who seek to build a global feminist, working class movement. We come from many political traditions but are united around the following common principles.

An End to Gender Violence

All women deserve a life free of all forms of gender violence: domestic and institutional, in the streets and in the workplace. Working women, girls, trans women, dis/differently abled women, indigenous women and women of color face the worst aspects of direct institutionalized violence, be it in the form of police brutality, immigration raids, and day-to-day violence in the form of state policies that create and consolidate poverty in our communities. Against all such state, capitalist and personal violence, we demand that our life and labor be treated with dignity for they form the basis of this society.

Reproductive Justice for All

We stand for full reproductive justice for all women, cis and trans. We want complete autonomy over our bodies and full reproductive freedom. We demand free abortion without conditions and affordable healthcare for all, irrespective of income, race or citizenship status. The history of forced sterilization of Indigenous women and women of color in this country goes hand in hand with the attack on abortion rights. Reproductive justice for us means the freedom to choose both whether to have children and to have them at a time of our choosing.

Labor Rights

Labor rights are women’s rights because women’s paid labor in the workplace and unpaid labor at home is the basis of wealth in our society. All over the world millions of women and girls are forced to work for slave wages in dangerous sweatshops and other ‘hell factories’ that kill thousands every year. In the United States 46% of union members are women and a majority of them are women of color. All women, irrespective of citizenship status, sexuality or race, must have equal pay for equal work, recognition of and resources for the unwaged caring work we do, free universal child care, paid maternity leave, sick leave, paid family leave and the freedom to organize a fighting union in the workplace. We demand the end of forced labor and the abolition of child labor. As working women who hold up half the sky we refuse to be divided over the kind of labor we perform, whether skilled or unskilled, formal or informal, sex work and domestic work.

Full Social Provisioning

Decades of neoliberal policies have seen the violent dismantling of social provisioning that has affected all women. While our working lives have been made increasingly precarious, social services that might have provided a safety net against such harsh exploitation of labor, have either been attacked or removed completely. Against these attacks, we demand an expansive restructuring of the US welfare system to serve the needs of the majority, such as universal healthcare, robust unemployment and social security benefits, housing, food security, free education for all. Welfare is a human right: we demand that the welfare system work to support our lives rather than shame us when we access such rights.

For an Antiracist and Anti-imperialist Feminism

Against the open white supremacists in the current government and the far right and anti-Semites they have given confidence to, we stand for an uncompromising anti-racist and anti-colonial feminism. We strike to end the targeting of black and brown, indigenous and native women and girls by capitalism for racialized and gendered exploitation. Movements such as Black Lives Matter, the struggle against police brutality and mass incarceration, for rights of Indigenous nations and the decolonization of Puerto Rico, for self-determination by Native women in Hawai’i and island nations in the Pacific colonized by the U.S. the demand for open borders and for immigrant rights and Justice for Palestine are for us the beating heart of this new feminist movement. We want to dismantle all walls, from prison walls to border walls, from Mexico to Palestine.

Environmental Justice for All

We believe that social inequality and environmental degradation are both due to an economic system that puts profit before people. We demand instead that the earth’s natural resources be preserved and sustained to enrich our lives and that of our children. The struggle of Water Protectors against the Dakota Access Pipe Line inspires us. The emancipation of women and the emancipation of the planet must go hand in hand.