MANIFESTO 8 MARCH 2019: IN THE FACE OF BARBARISM, FIGHT FOR FEMINISM
The feminist movement is back to make history! We have returned to bring the world to a standstill and call out all the discrimination and violence that women suffer every day, everywhere!
We women are diverse, but we share the struggle for the rights of all, and all together, those of us who are here and those who can not be, let us say no to chauvinist, racist, capitalist and colonialist barbarism.
We women are the source of life, not only when we give birth, but also as we are taking care of people daily. Today we are doing a care strike because this work is still invisible and despised. It is time to put care at the center of society. We women can not continue with this burden, we demand co-responsibility in the home and demand the full rights of citizenship, the right to care and be taken care of.
We want to denounce the conditions of exploitation and slavery of women around the world, who work in conditions of exploitation, and build alternative consumption strategies that help create a more social and fairer world, more respectful of the environment and of the life of its people. We have a primordial role in sustaining life, in the fight against climate change and in the preservation of biodiversity. We cry out very strongly against the savage neoliberalism that is imposed as the only school of thought in the world which is destroying our planet and our lives. Today we are taking a consumer strike against this unjust system.
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We women suffer discrimination and violence at work. Gender gaps: in salaries and pensions. There are sectors with inadmissible conditions: as cleaningstaff of hotels or as domestic workers. We’ve had enough!
We demand decent jobs and wages; the repeal of labor reforms, pensions and internal work that enslave migrant women. We demand equal and non- negociable maternity leave; an effective law of equal pay; the ratification of Convention 189 of the ILO; measures to eradicate sexual and gender-based harassment and that women with functional diversity have a real and effective treatment of social and occupational integration. Because we do not want any discrimination or violence in our work environment, because we want a job with decent wages and conditions!
We denounce that being a woman is the main cause of poverty. The precarity that affects the women who so generously take care of the world is aggravated by being older, being lesbian, being an immigrant, by sexual orientation, by race, by having functional diversity or an image that is not within the norm. Poverty is degrading. It does not only affect the body, it destroys dignity and hope and pushes towards exclusion.
We also demand the pensions we have earned: the time dedicated to care tasks must be recognized in the calculation of pensions.
We strike against the educational system and demand an emancipatory education for all human beings.
We want an education that does not make women invisible, an education in values, where coeducation and affective-sexual education form people for a world of equals in rights and respect, without gender stereotypes or misogynistic dogmas. A public, secular and feminist education, free of heteropatriarchal values.
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Today we strike so that violence against women stops, violence that we suffer in all spaces and in all áreas, just for the sake of being women. Enough of femicides, of killing us! Enough of a patriarchal justice that condemns us to be double victims! Enough of violating our bodies, of the criminal alliance between patriarchy and capital that wants us impoverished so that we are docile, quiet and submissive and that puts a price on the bodies of women! We demand laws that consider all forms of violence against women, compulsory training in gender perspective in the judiciary, security and administrative forces, that feminicide is a state problem and that comprehensive pacts against gender violence are endowed with sufficient resources and are fully complied with.
We migrant women also strike. We demand that the economic, social and cultural contribution we make in society is recognized and that our voice is heard.
We denounce the immigration law that is institutional racism, we demand the immediate closure of the Immigration Detenion Centers, the CIES!
We denounce that the European Union does not assume its obligations and that it is hindering access to refuge and violating the Human Rights.
We denounce colonialism translated into the continued exploitation of natural resources threatened by extractivist capitalism in our countries of origin. We denounce the persecution suffered by women to defend their rights around the world: Colombia, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia or Pakistan!
Here, as well as beyond borders, xenophobic, racist and homophobic political discourses are being constructed that question the rights achieved by women.
No more exploitation of migrant women!
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To those who protagonize this reactionary and patriarchal wave, we women respond with this feminist tsunami. We will not take a step back in our rights!
Sisters, remember that March 8 is every day! The road is long and themobilizations continue! Let’s look for the assemblies of our towns and our neighborhoods, let’s make new ones, let’s get together, defend ourselves; Let’s fight back and take care of each other!
In the face of chauvinist and racist barbarism, fight for feminism!
Together we are UNSTOPPABLE! Live, live, live, the feminist struggle!