OPEN CALL: March8th Against the War

Dear Sisters:

1913 was a watershed year for the commemoration of International Women’s Day. This year, the uprising of the women of Petrograd occurred, precipitating the downfall of Czarist Russia; in the United States, Ida Wells-Barnett, an African-American journalist, broke segregation laws by marching with her white sisters in Washington DC for women’s right to vote; and all over Europe, women held peace rallies denouncing the looming World War I.

We need to return our Day and our Month to their rightful and correct significance in both national and international arenas. Though March was meant to be a celebration of women’s achievements, International Women’s Day and International Women's Month were also meant to be the time when the women’s voice regarding national and international events was meant to be the loudest. State violence has been foremost in women’s minds, as this has been the most destructive of life and the conditions for the well-being, not only of womankind, but of the entire human species.

GABRIELA Network, in cooperation with the initiating committee of the Mariposa Alliance, is inviting you and your organization to join us in organizing and calling upon all women to declare 2008 March 8th Against the WarCampaign.

We are establishing coordinating committees in various cities, to ensure that activities around March 8th carry this declaration of our continuing opposition to war, invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the use of war, invasion and occupation as a method of resolving differences and as a means of intervening in the internal affairs of other countries.

We hope that by ensuring that our 2008 IWD and IWM activities – whether these be marches, forums, gatherings – are centered around women’s opposition against the war, we can restore International Women’s Day to its proper historical context.

If you and/or your organization are interested in working on this, please contact: in the West Coast -- Annalisa Enrile, Chairperson, GABNet, chair@gabnet.org, 212.592.3507; in the East Coast and MidWest -- Dorotea Mendoza, Secretary General, GABNet, secgen@gabnet.org, 718.753.0257.

Onward,
Mariposa Alliance
GABNet