------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the April 3, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
WOMEN SLAM WAR AND BUDGET CUTS
By Nancy Younassi Boston
On March 22, the Women's Fightback Network and ANSWER Boston held a spirited anti-war rally that packed the Cambridge YWCA. The event was co- chaired by WFN leaders Steph Simard and Erline Salley and included cultural performances by Puerto Rican activist Marta Rodriguez and DAGGER, the Theatre Offensive's Queer Women's Guerrilla theater troupe.
Mahtowin Munro, co-chair of United American Indians of New England, opened with an eloquent message of resistance to racism, colonialism, budget cuts and war. She saluted women in the frontlines of the struggle worldwide.
Speaking of the cutbacks and deepening war at home, Munro explained, "People of color in the U.S. know first-hand what it is to be on the receiving end of a relentless campaign of war and terror. Native people have dealt for centuries with the terrorism of the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and other colonizing governments. I urge all of you to consider the knowledge that we have gained during that time. If we had unified early on, worked together rather than as separate nations, we may have prevailed. Now is the time to come together in unity, to speak with one voice and say NO to war. We have the power within us to stop this war and to change the world, and we will do so."
Yoomi Jeong of the Korea Truth Commission had just returned from visits to both North and South Korea. She told the crowd, "The Korean people are actively opposed to the U.S. war on Iraq. Huge demonstrations take place continuously. We know first-hand what war, economic sanctions and occupation are all about. We have endured and resisted Japanese imperialist occupation, the Korean War which resulted in the U.S. colonization of the south, and more than 50 years of U.S. economic sanctions against the north.
"When the U.S. started bombing Iraq, we knew that we could be next. We support the right of North Korea to defend itself against U.S. imperialist aggression."
Jeong stressed the need to strengthen the solidarity between the anti- war movement in the U.S. and the Korean people's struggle against U.S. imperialism. Jeong said that the Korean people's desire to kick out the 37,000 U.S. troops forcibly dividing the Korean peninsula is at an all- time high, especially since the death last summer of two young Korean girls who were crushed by a U.S. tank.
Minnie Bruce Pratt, a renowned lesbian poet and anti-racist activist, analyzed the relationship between capitalism, imperialist war and women's oppression. Her talk helped to deepen the crowd's understanding of the revolutionary role women have to play in the liberation of the working class as a whole. She evoked Marx and Engels in reminding women how their dual role as laborers and "instruments of production" is exploited by the capitalist class. This gives women an even greater reason to fight back and gain control of both their labor power and their bodies, alongside their brothers in the struggle.
Pratt also encouraged the crowd to cast aside the ruling class notion that women are inherently more peaceful and nurturing than men. War hawks like Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice quickly disprove this theory. "What matters is which side of the class struggle one stands on-- the side of the oppressors or the side of the oppressed."
Her carefully woven formulations and passionate agitation left the audience with an even greater resolve to carry forth the decisive class struggle as so many revolutionary women have done before us, "Not just to fight and die, but to win." n
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