Gender
- Thu Feb 27 2003
Source:
AWID
An editorial on the global peace march against the war on Iraq.
By Janice Duddy, Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID)
Last Saturday, February 15, was a grey and drizzly day in Vancouver. But it did not stop thousands of people taking to the streets to protest the war on Iraq. I donned my raincoat and joined them. There were people young and old, families, dogs, people with instruments, folk singers, signs waving, and voices yelling. An estimated 30,000 people participated in this march in a city that is not known for its collective social activism. The greyness of the afternoon was dispelled by the colours of raincoats, painted faces, banners, balloons, and the electricity of a collective voice.
2.5 million people in Rome, 2 million people in Madrid, 1.5 million people in London, were but a few cities involved. The millions of demonstrators around the world were participants in the largest coordinated protest in world history. As I marched and observed this crowd of people I was struck by moments of intense emotion. I began to realize that by speaking out against this war I am not futilely banging my head against a wall, like I so often feel, but that I was part of these thousands, these millions, of people who are banging their fists against a door, demanding to be heard. Perhaps that door will not fling open immediately but we are, nevertheless, making a racket, a racket that might be loud enough to drown out the meetings and discussions of the people behind that door.
Arundhati Roy, when speaking at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil on January 27, 2003 on 'Confronting the Empire' referred to the people behind the door as the 'men in suits'. She states, "Still many of us have moments of hopelessness and despair. We know that under the spreading canopy of the War Against Terrorism, the men in suits are hard at work. While bombs rain down on us, and cruise missiles skid across the skies, we know that contracts are being signed, patents are being registered, oil pipelines are being laid, natural resources are being plundered, water is being privatized, and George Bush is planning to go to war against Iraq. If we look at this conflict as a straightforward eye-ball to eye-ball confrontation between "Empire" and those of us who are resisting it, it might seem that we are losing. But there is another way of looking at it. We, all of gathered here, have, each in our won way, laid siege to "Empire". We may not have stopped it in its tracks - yet - but we have stripped it down. We have made it drop its mask. We have forced it into the open. It now stands before us on the world's stage in all it's brutish iniquitous nakedness". (Source: ZMag)
The potential costs of this war are staggering. They included the increased entrenchment of corporate globalization and imperialism, the strengthening of 'Empire', which Arundhati Roy defines as loyal confederation, obscene accumulation of power, and the greatly increased distance between those who make the decisions and those who have to suffer them.
But also, if we look at the effects on women specifically, this war will disproportionately impact them. The American Friends Service Committee cites the following 10 ways that women will be affected by a war in Iraq:
1. ALL war kills civilians, that means women and children die. Civilian casualties made up 90% of the deaths in the Gulf War. A new war with Iraq would likely bring even MORE casualty deaths.
2. It is our sons and daughters who will be sent off to war in Iraq. Many soldiers are killed in the perils of war, and many who do come home develop deep psychological scars from the trauma of war.
3. The war on Iraq is estimated to cost upwards of $200 billion. Every dollar spent on war and militarism is a dollar denied to essential social programs like education, healthcare and welfare. These cuts will dramatically increase women's poverty nationwide. This estimate does not figure in the ways women's programs will suffer globally due to an increase of international military spending and rebuilding efforts due to war.
4. Sanctions on Iraq have denied all the people in Iraq, including women and children, the food and medicine they desperately need. Due to this basic deprivation, caused by sanctions, hundreds of thousands of children have died. How many more must die?
5. During the Gulf War the U.S. deliberately destroyed the infrastructure of Iraq. Electricity plants were completely demolished. This destruction is a leading cause for the humanitarian crisis in Iraq, denying Iraqi's clean water and causing a substantial rise in mortality rates for all ages, especially infants. Because of sanctions, the plants have never been rebuilt and more deaths continue to this day. There is no reason to believe that this type of devastation will be avoided in a new war.
6. Iraq has historically given women's education top priority. With the onslaught of economic hardships formal and informal education has suffered. A full-fledged war will only be MORE destructive to women's education.
7. War makes armed violence and abuse of power more acceptable. This abuse of power seeps into all of society's institutions, reinforcing privileges for the powerful and promoting armed force as a solution to problems.
8. War on Iraq will further our militarized culture of violence. This cultural behavior exposes women and girls to an increase of systematic sexual, psychological and economic violence within the United States AND globally. These violations include rape, domestic violence and other forms of direct physical VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN.
9. War on Iraq will encourage discrimination, racism, religious intolerance, and hate. During times of war, stigmatized populations of women, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender persons, immigrants, non-English speakers, disabled persons, and the mentally ill become MORE vulnerable. We will not tolerate racism against Women of Color and Third World Women!
10. At a time when Bush is creating a "you're either with us or against us" scenario, critical and oppositional voices are silenced. Appeals to "patriotism" suppress the exercise of our civil and human rights. Women must be heard and heeded! (Source: AFSC)
Arundhati Roy asserts: "But for all intents and purposes, the New War against Iraq has begun. What can we do? We can hone our memory, we can learn from our history. We can continue to build public opinion until it becomes a deafening roar. We can turn the war on Iraq into a fishbowl of the U.S. government's excesses. We can expose George Bush and Tony Blair - and their allies - for the cowardly baby killers, water poisoners, and pusillanimous long-distance bombers that they are. We can re-invent civil disobedience in a million different ways. In other words, we can come up with a million ways of becoming a collective pain in the ass. When George Bush says "you're either with us, or you are with the terrorists" we can say "No thank you". We can let him know that the people of the world do not need to choose between a Malevolent Mickey Mouse and the Mad Mullahs. Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe". (Source: ZMag)
In some ways, this process of marching for peace has been exhilarating, sharing a voice with millions of people and feeling the power of this collective energy radiating around the globe was re-energizing. But the threat that our voices may land on deaf ears and that the powers that be will continue on this destructive course has the potential to dampen this energy. But we can not give up, for if our fists banging on the door do not force it open it may force it to fall down!
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