by COORDINATION FEMINISTE (France)
Toward the feminist strike on March 8th, we share and translate the call out of the French Coordination Feministe that urges to rise up against the intertwinement of patriarchal, racist, neoliberal and exploitative policies of the government and against the genocide in Gaza. On March 8th women and LGBTQI people in France will unite to a powerful global movement of strike that once again is contesting the violent order of this society.
CALL FOR THE FEMINIST STRIKE OF MARCH 8TH 2024 IN FRANCE BY THE COORDINATION FEMINISTE
The feminist general strike is a necessity!
Feminists the whole world, let’s mobilize against patriarchal and capitalist exploitation!
In workplaces, homes, schools and universities, let’s stop all productive and reproductive activity, paid and unpaid; let’s desert places of consumption and block all areas in which violence and oppression are reproduced.
Against the attacks of a reactionary, racist and misogynist government, we are calling for a strike on March 8, 2024, the International Day of Struggle for the Rights of Women and Gender Minorities.
Despite the government’s rhetoric, impunity remains the rule in terms of the fight against sexist and sexual violence. When a white aggressor close to power is denounced, the entire ruling class rises up to protect its “honor”. President Macron’s recent statements following the Depardieu affair are a textbook case of the State’s masculinism, which reproduces violence at every level of society.
Despite overwhelming evidence, Macron calls into question the word of victims and trivializes violence: this government is antifeminist!
Everywhere in the world, our right to control our own bodies is under attack. Access to abortion is being restricted and obstructed. The rights of LGBTQIA+ people, and trans people in particular, are the target of reactionary offensives. The autonomy of sex workers is constantly called into question. People with visible or invisible disabilities continue to be institutionalized and infantilized.
The latest provocation: Macron and his plan to “demographically rearm” France, by which he wants to dictate if and when we should have children.
We denounce the government’s desire to instrumentalize our bodies in order to “rearm the country through the birth rate”. At the same time, this same government is restricting access to parenthood for trans people and homosexual couples (procreation and adoption), driving children to drown in the Mediterranean, sterilizing women in Mayotte, and limiting access to French nationality for children born to foreign parents.
The presidential majority and the extreme right continue their inevitable reconciliation. Hand in hand, they have passed the Asylum-Immigration law, which criminalizes the existence of thousands of migrant men and women and allows the government to deported them after having overexploited or abandoned them. This brutal, racist, life-destroying law is antifeminist!
For the French government, all lives are not equal. The proof is in the fact that this same government supports a colonial and imperialist State by supplying arms to Israel and failing to condemn the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
It is urgent to fight against these States that organize the exploitation and disappearance of peoples, and that support each other around their economic, political, imperialist, and colonial interests!
If we stop, the world stops!
Against these attacks, we don’t have the luxury of resignation. We have weapons: our numbers and our essential place in society. To protest, to make ourselves heard, to win new rights: we call for a feminist general strike.
The feminist strike allows us to get out of our usual places of existence, to gather, to meet, to organize ourselves in order to regain power over our lives.
Let’s fight together for the world we want to build!
Our bodies, our choices! We want to be able to decide freely whether to abort, transition, adopt or wear the veil. We want to live without being exposed to violence, whichever our gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, dress or religion.
Sharing working hours, sharing wealth! We want retirement at 60 years old, higher wages and the withdrawal of the Darmanin law.
Money for public services, not for the army or the cops! We want an end to police impunity and real funding for public services, education, healthcare, and support for victims of sexist and sexual violence.
Palestine will live, Palestine will win! We want an end to the French arms trade with Israel, and the active involvement of French diplomacy for a ceasefire in Gaza, and an end to colonization and apartheid!
On March 8, let’s take to the streets, take over every space, build alliances and mobilize locally and internationally! On March 8, let’s stop everything!
Let’s fight together for a feminist world: a world in which we are all free.
Long live the struggle! Long live the feminist general strike!
