International Women's Strike Ann Arbor Planning Meeting

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S STRIKE ON MARCH 8TH

Join us on February 23rd for a public organizing meeting to build a powerful local showing for the International Women’s Strike on March 8th.

https://womenstrikeus.org/

Why an International Women’s Strike?

In a dramatic show of defiance – perhaps the largest mass demonstration in US history – women and their allies across the US and around the world marched on January 21st to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump. Many who participated stood opposed not only to Trump’s own misogyny and history of sexual violence, but to the violence of his policies, which continue and intensify ongoing attacks against the health, autonomy, and wellbeing of women around the world. In this, protesters in the Women’s March joined struggles worldwide – from the women’s strike in Poland against the abortion ban to the women’s strikes and marches in Latin America against male violence – in inaugurating a new global wave of feminist activism.

To maintain the momentum of this growing movement, we join with feminist groups from around thirty countries who have called for an international women’s strike on March 8th. This will be a day of action by and for working class women, women of color, immigrant women, Muslim women, queer and trans women, sex workers, domestic and care workers, and mothers. We will strike, march, abstain from care and sex work, boycott, and call out misogynistic politicians. We will continue to build a feminism for the 99%, in solidarity with working women, their families, and their allies throughout the world.

Guiding Principles:

Our aim is to connect organizations and individuals in struggle under a militant feminist banner. This is not to gloss over the differences between us, but is an attempt to form alliances that can respond to our moment of crisis. Following the international call, we embrace and will work to coordinate a range of actions and a diversity of tactics: from walk-outs and a permitted demonstration for those who cannot risk arrest, to direct action and civil disobedience in defense of women’s struggles. We recognize that our struggles are connected, and that we cannot build a genuinely inclusive feminist movement that ignores or downplays structural racism, homo- and transphobia, or the massive inequalities and environmental devastation generated by global capitalism. We follow the Argentine coalition Ni Una Menos in acknowledging that violence against women has many facets: it is domestic violence, but also the violence of the market and of debt; the violence of discriminatory policies against lesbian, trans and queer women; the violence of state criminalization of migratory movements; the violence of mass incarceration; violence against the earth; violence against native women and their struggles; and the institutional violence against women’s bodies through abortion bans and lack of access to free healthcare and free abortion. In the words of Ni Una Menos: “ponemos en practica el mundo en el que queremos vivir - let’s put to practice the world in which we want to live”.

When and where:

TIME: February 23rd, 5-7pm
PLACE: GEO Union Hall, Ann Arbor / 339 E. Liberty St. (Suite #340).