My name is Mary Kalyna of International Wages Due Lesbians. I bring greetings from Wages Due Lesbians groups in Philadelphia, San Francisco, London, England, and Barcelona, Spain, as well as the network of lesbian women we are in touch with in many other countries, North and South.

Wages Due Lesbians is a multi-racial grassroots network of lesbian women that has been organizing since 1975 for lesbian women's economic, legal, civil and human rights, and for the recognition of lesbian women’s work, waged and unwaged. Like many here, we have been increasingly frustrated by and alienated from mainstream Gay Pride events, by the commercialization on all levels and the reduction of the celebration of our struggle to an all-day marketplace and an expensive party with no political content. Over the years, we have fought with Pride organizers in several cities, including over the high fees to have an information table, to have childcare and now to even get into Pride events.

In San Francisco we have been harassed by the Parade "police" but have still squatted an information table every year; they never succeeded in forcing us to leave. In 1990 Wages Due Lesbians in London could not afford the cost of a stall, and wrote "Whose Pride?" challenging the priorities and lack of accountability of Pride, and the exclusion of grassroots groups. We have copies here – the issues raised then are unfortunately still relevant, and even more so. The budgets for Pride are even higher today, as are the fees to participate. Just two weeks ago in Philadelphia we had to fight for a reduced fee for an info table at Pride, where "vendors" selling $3 lemonades and $5 ice creams were welcome and plentiful. We like a good party as much as anybody else, but we shouldn’t have to choose between politics and celebrating what we’ve won – Pride can be both.

So we’re glad to be here at this alternative event to connect with others who have a different view – who, like us, see the lesbian and gay movement (a word you don’t hear much these days) as our part of the overall fight to challenge the status quo – not just for a bigger piece of the status quo pie. Part of the movement that made such an impact in Seattle, in Washington, in Prague and other places, including the Democratic and Republican convention protests, where WDL was part of the organizing, and especially pressing for women’s and queer visibility and autonomy.

One of our major initiatives now is DYKES ON STRIKE: lesbian women joining women in over 60 countries taking action in the Global Women’s Strike on March 8 for a total change of priorities – a world that values all women’s work and all women’s lives, and an end to no pay, low pay and too much work.

We began Dykes on Strike to make clearly visible the participation and demands of lesbian women in the Global Women’s Strike. The demands of the Strike include payment for all caring work, pay equity for all, paid maternity leave, abolition of Third World "debt", accessible clean water, non-polluting energy and technology, protection & asylum from violence and persecution, and freedom of movement.

As lesbian women, we have something to say about each of these demands. Along with all other women, lesbian women also do 2/3 of the world’s work for 5% of the income. We also give birth to and raise the whole population. We too grow most of the world’s food and then cook it. We provide care for those who are ill or disabled or are just poor after a lifetime of work. We provide more health care than all health care industries combined. And on top of this work that all women do, lesbian women also must do the work of fighting homophobia and discrimination, violence and criminalization. Those of us who are women of color do the work of dealing with racism on top of this. But despite what we contribute, most lesbian women in the world cannot afford to live openly, and are forced to live double lives or face violence, imprisonment, torture or death.

With other women we are demanding the military budget. If the $800 billion plus now spent each year on the military instead went to life, all women could afford sexual and other choices. In most countries of the world women have little choice but to be in heterosexual marriages and financially dependent on a man, whether they are lesbian or straight. Even in the US, women in full-time waged work earn only 72% of what men earn; for Black women the figure is 62% and for Latinas only 52%. The combined income of a Black or Latina lesbian couple is what one man earns, and often we are supporting children or elderly parents as well.

We oppose so-called "welfare reform" that has cut out the bottom of what little remained of the safety net. Welfare reform is a profoundly anti-lesbian measure, anti-woman and racist: an economic weapon to enforce the right-wing "family values" agenda, attacking the right of women to have children independent of a man. Under welfare reform, a woman must name the father of her children or lose benefits. She must go after a man for child support whether she wants to or not, and most of what he pays goes straight to the welfare department, not her or her child. In some states, the welfare department is even tying getting benefits to getting married.

Welfare, as little money as it ever was, afforded women at least some financial independence, and women used it to leave violent husbands & boyfriends, to come out as lesbian, to have children without having to be married, to leave parents (or to survive after parents had kicked us out when we came out to them). We are fighting for welfare as a wage, money women are entitled to for the work of raising children. Welfare reform has been used to drive down everyone’s wages; but the unions have done little to oppose it, and it has not registered at all in the mainstream gay movement: "What does poverty have to do with being gay?"

Politicians of both parties say they want to get rid of welfare as part of the "culture of entitlement". But under Bush the military budget is growing, and the Pentagon is still entitled, as are all the industries, consultants, universities, and others who profit from the death-machine funded by government money. Their safety net is stronger than ever and their culture of entitlement flourishing.

DYKES ON STRIKE is our fight against globalization and the military that enforces it. We have a badge in the Wages for Housework Campaign that says "Pay Women Not the Military". We want payment for caring work, and no payment for the work of not caring, for work that destroys lives and the environment. We do not want to see men – our sons, our brothers, our friends (gay or not) – routed into the military, to be trained for killing work as one of the few economic options, especially for men of color.

And we do not celebrate the entry of more women into this "non-traditional" work; we don’t want women to become more like men. In fact, we want men to become more like women – to take on more of the work of caring and to refuse to not care. We work with Payday, a network of men in support of the Wages for Housework Campaign who share this view, and includes gay men who are speaking out about the caring work they do, for partners, parents, children and others. Dean from Payday in Philadelphia is here today & Payday has been gathering statements from other men in support of the Global Women’s Strike, which we have with us.

Finally, those of us living in the richest country in the world, where the lesbian and gay movement is most visible, must extend the power we have won to address the violence, criminalization and illegality still faced by lesbian women and gay men in most of the world including many places right here in the US – in rural areas for one – and the poverty that is at its root. Media censorship has cut us off from the rest of the world. But we are finding ways to connect with lesbian women in countries like Uganda where we recently learned that women walked for three days without food to get to the Global Women’s Strike action. There are lesbian women there, and everywhere else, even if they do not yet have the resources yet to be visible, to live openly or independently as lesbian or perhaps even consider the possibility.

Dykes on Strike is how we are organizing to do that. We are having events in Philadelphia and San Francisco in the next few weeks to launch Dykes on Strike, and would like to have one in NY. Please let me know if you would like to work with us to help make that happen here. It’s a hopeful moment, when people in many corners of the earth are rising up. When the Zapatistas in Chiapas regularly include lesbian and gay people in their list of demands. When more people, especially young people, are refusing to limit or define their sexuality to prescribed categories and are calling themselves bisexual or refusing labels altogether.

Our job right now is to find our way to each other, to bring out the different ways we all have been exploited, and to work out ways to bring our struggles together. That’s how we’re going to finish the job that was started in the 60s, at Stonewall but also at Soweto and Watts, and elsewhere. In the 60s we were coming out, now our job is coming together.

"Gay Shame", New York June 24, 2001