By Anne O'Casey
"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?" asked feminist science fiction writer Ursula LeGuin. Her literary explorations of extra-terrestrial worlds make a vivid commentary on the inhumane state of our society.
The systematic oppression of women, the "human prison of despair" that exists in the Third World, the killing of our planet for the profit — all the rich minority. When we dip beneath the superficialities and sensationalism of the everyday, it is difficult not to come up gasping for air.
At that point it's easy to feel overwhelmed and those who have the choice can pursue any number of options — careers, relationships, religion or cable TV. But these are only temporary distractions to a long-term problem.
There is another option — to engage with the world and get involved in campaigns which confront the system that dehumanises us all.
This world and this system are not just external forces that inflict themselves upon us. History is forged through the struggles of millions of people, and this world can be shaped by our action right here and right now.
Capitalism has never been benevolent. Everything that we have today — the level of wages and conditions for workers, the fact that women can vote and the social welfare that exists — have been won through collective struggle.
When the growing anti-capitalist movement came to town in the form of the S11 protests we saw an example of this. The S11 protests and blockade was one of many new battle fronts that opened up against the sexism and oppression of capitalism in the last year. Those three days showed that when we organise and act collectively we have immense power.
For three days we had representatives of the world's richest transnational corporations running scared. Not just because they couldn't attend their meeting but because the protest at Crown Casino was a show of mass opposition to their agenda.
The collective action also gave us a glimpse of what democratic alternatives to this system might look like.
People put their bodies on the line for human solidarity. High school students, workers, migrants, church and other groups who stood together on picket lines began to break through the chains of alienation that capitalism breeds.
International Women's Day is the next major opportunity we have to express this solidarity and act collectively to state our fundamental opposition to the system and our commitment to fighting against it. It's our chance to make it clear that the world's women are suffering disproportionately from the effects of globalisation and to link our struggles with those being waged by women all around the world on a daily basis.
Then on May 1 we can participate in another global demonstration when we take to the streets of corporate Melbourne. Feminist issues need to be put squarely in the midst of this campaign and it will need a vocal and organised input from feminist activists to ensure this happens.
We don't want to create an additional workload for ourselves outside of the main organising alliances. We want these alliances to be politically convinced of why feminist issues and demands are critical to the anti-corporate movement.
In the S11 Alliance in Melbourne it proved difficult for women to be heard and feminist issues to be raised, so we organised women's collective meetings before each general alliance meeting to work out how women's voices could be heard more often and how the alliance would take up feminist demands. This made the alliance more reflective of the composition of the meetings, though there is still a along way to go. It also made the alliance more reflective of the issues and campaigns which directly affect more than half the world's population and indirectly affect a great many more.
If you have not participated yet in the anti-corporate movement's campaigns, then now is an exciting and inspiring time to make a start and make a difference.
And if you are already an active feminist then the anti-corporate movement would benefit enormously from your input and participation.
Help build a vibrant feminist movement that can take on capitalism and create real change. Such collective action is not only the one way that we can really change the world, it is also the one path that can draw us closer to humanity in the midst of an inhumane world.