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Speech
given to the rally Speech given on Monday, 14 August 2000 to the rally "Human Need Not Corporate Greed – March for our Lives". Lori Nairne of International Wages Due Lesbians (San Francisco) was one of the key speakers at this opening event of the four days of protests against the National Democratic Convention, Los Angeles 14-17 August 2000. My name is Lori Nairne of International Wages Due Lesbians. I speak today for women in 64 countries who took part in the first-ever Global Women's Strike on March 8, 2000. Unwaged and low-waged caregivers, mothers, grandmothers and daughters, in villages and cities, most of us women of color –most of the world is not white – stopped our work as housewives, farmers and farm workers, bonded laborers, domestic workers, sex workers, nurses, teachers, students, with and without disabilities, many of us immigrant . . . to demand a total change in priorities, from the production of profit to the care of people. As women we do 2/3 of the world's work for 5% of the income and 2/3 of our work is unwaged. We give birth to and raise the whole population. We grow most of the world’s food and then cook it. We provide the care for those who, having worked a lifetime, are ill or disabled, or just poor. We provide more health care than all health care industries combined. And we are the first defenders of loved ones who are persecuted and imprisoned because of racism, 'crimes' of poverty and/or protest. Many of us are lesbian. And we do the same work as other women caring and earning. On top of that we confront hostility and discrimination in housing, employment, healthcare and the legal system. The majority of lesbian women in the world can’t afford to live openly, so we're forced to live double lives or face violence, imprisonment, torture or death. We women are not only the invisible workers, but also the invisible fighters and leaders. We’re not only the hidden backbone of every economy but of most movements for social change. We haven't raised our kids to be commodities in the global market or cannon fodder in the armies which protect the market. We are here to tell the government of the USA that we oppose military spending of $800 billion a year while the UN says that $80 billion -- one tenth of world military budgets – would provide water, sanitation, basic health, nutrition and education, and a minimum income for every individual. While we’re denied money for survival, both parties now want to spend $500 billion more of our money on Star Wars 2. Every time a hospital is closed we pick up the slack; every time a social service is cut, we make do; every time wages are lowered we take on more work to make ends meet. We are the invisible adjusters in structural adjustment programs, including in welfare reform which denies us the right to be with our own children, to breastfeed them and to money for the work of raising them. Our movement to value caring is the movement to value people against an economy which claims success while millions die of hunger and/or are homeless, including here in the richest country on earth. We are with the Indigenous women in Mexico resisting the US-trained army, and with the Ogoni people in Nigeria opposing US oil companies, and with the millions in India stopping the Narmada dam which will flood their homes. We are with the Mothers of the Disappeared in Chile trying to bring Pinochet to trial, and with the millions in Peru resisting another dictator the US supported because repression is good for ‘American interests’ – which Americans? Not most of us. We out here represent the majority in this country who don't vote or vote without conviction, and the rest of the world who can’t vote. Our vote is no confidence in either party and in the Market they serve. We demand recognition of all caring work. Every life is of value, and every carer deserves a wage. Men are increasingly aware that money for women and children is money for the workers of the world. We demand pay equity not just between women and men but among all women and all people globally, so we can say to the market: nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no slave labor nowhere. On behalf of the thousands in Seattle and DC before us, the thousands preparing for Prague S26 and the second Global Women's Strike on March 8, 2001, we demand that the government of the USA which rules the world without any mandate: Invest in life, not death, not prisons. This is the globalization we want! |