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Dear Sisters:
1913 was a watershed year for the commemoration of International
Women's Day. This year, the uprising of the women of Petrograd
occurred, precipitating the downfall of Czarist Russia; in the United
States, Ida Wells-Barnett, an African-American journalist, broke
segregation laws by marching with her white sisters in Washington DC
for women's right to vote; and all over Europe, women held peace
rallies denouncing the looming World War I.
We need to return our Day and our Month to their rightful and correct
significance in both national and international arenas. Though March
was meant to be a celebration of women's achievements, International
Women's Day and International Women's Month were also meant to be the
time when the women's voice regarding national and international
events was meant to be the loudest. State violence has been foremost
in women's minds, as this has been the most destructive of life and
the conditions for the well-being, not only of womankind, but of the
entire human species.
GABRIELA Network, in cooperation with the initiating committee of the
Mariposa Alliance, is inviting you and your organization to join us in
organizing and calling upon all women to declare 2008 March 8th
Against the WarCampaign.
We are establishing coordinating committees in various cities, to
ensure that activities around March 8th carry this declaration of our
continuing opposition to war, invasion and occupation of Afghanistan
and Iraq, and the use of war, invasion and occupation as a method of
resolving differences and as a means of intervening in the internal
affairs of other countries.
We hope that by ensuring that our 2008 IWD and IWM activities –
whether these be marches, forums, gatherings – are centered around
women's opposition against the war, we can restore International
Women's Day to its proper historical context.
If you and/or your organization are interested in working on this,
please contact: in the West Coast -- Annalisa Enrile, Chairperson,
GABNet, chair@gabnet.org, (619) 316-0920; in the East and MidWest --
Dorotea Mendoza, secgen@gabnet.org, (718) 753-0257.
Onward,
Mariposa Alliance
GABNet
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