Global women's strike targets big business

Off Our Backs, May/Jun 2002 by Gowens, Pat

When the tourists arrived at WalMart they clanged pots and pans while singing, "Old Sam Walton had a store, ee-ay-ee-ay-o. And in this store he robbed the poor, ee-ay-ee-ayo. With a low wage here, no benefits there. Part-time here and no time there. Old Sam Walton robbed the poor. ." The tourists were astonished to learn that Wal-Mart workers start at $5.75, average $7.50, get only 30 hours a week and would have to work 754 years to earn the CEO's pay. Tourists expressed anger at hearing that half of all Wal-Mart workers are eligible for foodstamps and only 38% can afford to purchase Wal-Mart's health insurance. Chanting, "Boycott big business, buy small," tourists handed out flyers to let Wal-Mart customers know about Wal-Mart's shameful employment practices.

Along with women in Philadelphia, London and Los Angeles, the Welfare Warriors Photo Bus Tour also targeted war (the biggest business of all), protesting the current war against Afghanistan. Chanting the slogan "Invest in caring, not killing," which originated with the Wages for Housework group, the tourists protested outside the U.S. Army Base, where they learned that the U.S. spends $30 billion per month for Star Wars missile system. Big business's desire to build a pipeline through Afghanistan has fueled the massive slaughter of innocent people in Afghanistan.

The final stop on the bus tour of Bloated Big Business was the YWCA W2 Welfare Agency (YW Works), which earned $3.4 million in profit while sanctioning 48% of moms' cases by 45% of their grants! Few tourists could believe that the YWCA has the highest sanction rate among all welfare departments in the state of Wisconsin and that the YW also generates profit from the free forced labor of their clients, primarily women with disabilities and women in crisis.

Welfare Warriors will be gathering photos from the tour to create a poster of Bloated Big Business and its dismal work record to provide to Congress to encourage them to put an end to the welfare time limits, sanctions, and the prohibition of education and motherwork which characterized the TANF welfare law passed in 1996. TANF must be reauthorized this year.

Here is a brief report on Global Strike activities in other places, taken from the strike website (http:/ /womenstrike8m. server] 01. com):

Ugandan Women: Strike Changed Their Lives

The Kaabong Women's Group in Uganda are excited about their successes after organizing the Strike for the past two years. Since the last Strike husbands have given them land and animals and they won free healthcare services for all! This year they are demanding an end to world wars, affordable and accessible housing, transport, protection from violence at home and outside. They visited 100 parishes to organize for the strike.

Wearing traditional dresses in a march, they carried brooms as symbolic signs to sweep the world clean and solve this local and international super crisis. The Uganda Women's Business Organization joined to protest globalization which "favors capitalists and giant multinational companies that women do not own." They demanded "an end to war, which leaves widows, orphans, poverty, street families, famine, and politically, socially and economical ly rapes women."