International Women's Day protests, along with the March 5 international student strike, are shaping up to be the next globally coordinated actions against war on Iraq. The strike and IWD events are scheduled for the first week of March according to many military commentators, this is the week the US administration intends to activate the thousands of troops massing in the Gulf.
In Melbourne, it is becoming clear that the IWD march and rally on March 8 has the potential to mobilise thousands of people.
The Melbourne IWD collective consists mainly of Muslim and Middle Eastern women, Women for Peace, Global Sisterhood, the Socialist Alliance and Resistance. It is also garnering strong support from the broader peace movement.
Trade unions, student organisations and progressive groups have all contributed resources to building the event. Leading members of the Greens, the Democrats, the ALP and the office of the minister for womens affairs have all made contact with the collective.
Muslim and Middle Eastern solidarity organisations are, also very keen to be involved. A Steiner school teacher called the collective, explaining that the school is organising two buses full of students to come. The Victorian Peace Network and Victorian Trades Hall Council are also helping with publicity and logistics.
The collective has called on the Coalition government to spend the $116 billion earmarked for the Iraq war on maternity leave, childcare, public health services, schools and development aid instead.
Prime Minister John Howards comments about the fat on the bones of the federal budget that he says means we can absorb the cost of war on Iraq without it doing damage to our economy will come as a shock to many women in the community.
There is no money for childcare, aged care, maternity leave, social security, schools or public hospitals, but there is $116 billion to mount a military attack on some of the most desperately poor people in the world?
It is sickening that the US and its allies are seeking to justify the war by arguing that it will liberate Iraqi women from the oppression they continue to suffer under the regime of Saddam Hussein.
US President George Bush, British PM Tony Blair and Howard care nothing for the rights or welfare of Iraqi women, they are simply making cynical use of their suffering to bolster their push for war. Hussein, like so many bloody dictators, was helped to power by the US. If they really wanted to help Iraqi women it would have been easy stop the oil grab and aid development!
Women, men and children attending the action are being asked to wear something pink, in solidarity with the IWD Code Pink actions in the US, and to bring fresh flowers to build a peace symbol in the Melbourne CBD.
Many of the speakers at the event will be refugees and immigrants from the Middle East. There are women aged from 11 to 81 who have asked to speak about their experiences of the war zone that is the Middle East.
March 8 will be a day to consider how women themselves see their liberation. There might be a range of opinions about that, but one thing is for sure: none of us want to be bombed!
BY KAREN FLETCHER
[The author is a member of the Melbourne International Womens Day Collective, the Socialist Alliance and the Democratic Socialist Party.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 26, 2003.
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