Below is the platform of the International Women’s Strike US. It is slightly abridged from International Women Strike USA.
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The International Women’s Strike on March 8 is an international day of action, planned and organised by women in more than 30 different countries.
In the spirit of solidarity and internationalism, in the United States, March 8 will be a day of action organised by and for women who have been marginalised and silenced by decades of neoliberalism directed towards working women, women of colour, Native women, disabled women, immigrant women, Muslim women, lesbian, queer and trans women.
March 8 will be the start of a new international feminist movement that organises resistance not just against Donald Trump and his misogynist policies, but also against the conditions that produced Trump: economic inequality, racial and sexual violence, and imperial wars.
We celebrate the diversity of the many social groups that have come together for the International Women’s Strike. We come from many political traditions but are united around the following common principles:
An end to gender violence
All women deserve a life free of violence, both domestic and institutional. Working women, trans women, and women of colour face the worst aspects of direct institutionalised violence.
Against all such state and personal violence, we demand that our lives and labour be treated with dignity, for they form the basis of this society.
Reproductive justice for all
We stand for full reproductive justice for all women, cis and trans. We want complete autonomy over our bodies and full reproductive freedom. We demand free abortion without conditions and affordable healthcare for all, irrespective of income, race or citizenship status.
The history of sterilisation of women of colour in this country goes hand in hand with the attack on abortion rights.
Reproductive justice for us means the freedom to choose both whether to have children and when to have them.
Labour rights
Labour rights are women’s rights because women’s paid labour in the workplace and unpaid labour at home is the basis of wealth in our society.
Around the world, millions of women are forced to work for slave wages in dangerous sweatshops that kill thousands every year. In the US, 46% of union members are women and a majority are women of colour.
All women, irrespective of citizenship status, sexuality or race, must have equal pay for equal work, free universal child care, paid maternity leave, sick leave, paid family leave and the freedom to organise a fighting union in the workplace.
As working women who hold up half the sky, we refuse to be divided over the kind of labour we perform, whether skilled or unskilled, formal or informal, sex work and domestic work.
Full social provisioning
Decades of neoliberal policies have involved the violent dismantling of social provisioning that has affected all women.
As our working lives have been made increasingly precarious, social services that might have provided a safety net against such harsh exploitation of labour have either been attacked or removed completely. Against these attacks, we demand an expansive restructuring of the welfare system to serve the needs of the majority, such as universal healthcare, robust unemployment and social security benefits, and free education for all.
Anti-racism and anti-imperialism
Against the open white supremacists in the Trump administration and the far right and anti-Semites they have given confidence to, we stand for an uncompromising anti-racist and anti-colonial feminism.
This means that movements such as Black Lives Matter, the struggle against police brutality and mass incarceration, the demand for open borders and for immigrant rights and for the decolonisation of Palestine are, for us, the beating heart of this new feminist movement. We want to dismantle all walls, from prison walls to border walls, from Mexico to Palestine.
Environmental justice
We believe that both social inequality and environmental degradation are due to an economic system that puts profit before people. We demand instead that the earth’s natural resources be preserved and sustained to enrich our lives and those of our children. The struggle of Water Protectors against the Dakota Access Pipe Line inspires us.
The emancipation of women and the emancipation of the planet must go hand in hand.