In the Time of Coronavirus, Building a Feminist World for the Next 7 Generations

Contact: AF3IRM San Francisco Bay Area [email protected]

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Transnational women are under attack. 

For centuries, transnational women and girls have survived as the insidious and oppressive forces of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism have infected every corner of our world. Time and time again, our bodies are labeled as diseased, inhuman, and criminal by the patriarchal and xenophobic ruling classes. We have seen our ancestors and abuelitas survive centuries of xenophobic violence, femicide, and medical genocide. In recent months, both intergenerational trauma and intergenerational resilience have been activated for millions of transnational women of color in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The global response to COVID-19 has reinforced age-old sexist, classist, and colonialist rhetoric that says poor, indigenous, black, brown, disabled, and female bodies should be sacrificed to uphold the crumbling pillars of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy. 

Thousands of transnational women who have contributed their labor and invaluable skills to the agricultural, education, medical, social services, domestic, retail, restaurant, and caregiving industries are being excluded, attacked, and targeted in the name of public health and national security. Our labor as caregivers and skilled workers has always been seen as less valuable and less worthy of protection and respect– and now, they want to call us “essential workers.” The devaluation and hyper-exploitation of feminized labor must end. Our lives and labor are essential, valuable, and worth fighting for. 

Everywhere we turn, the health and safety of transnational women is violently attacked by the oppressive state and the ruling classes that sustain it. In the streets, API women are being attacked with anti-Asian violence and racist misogyny, becoming targets for harassment at three times the rate of Asian men. In our communities, the militarized police and ICE are being deployed into our neighborhoods to prey on undocumented workers and commoditize our bodies to sustain the prison industrial complex. In the fields, campesinas continue to put their bodies on the line to plant and harvest the food we depend on for survival. In prisons, juvenile halls, and migrant detention centers, transnational women and children are being exposed to COVID-19 and exploited as disposable political pawns. 

In our homes, millions of women and children live in fear due to already skyrocketing rates of domestic violence, child abuse, rape, harassment, trafficking, and femicide that is normalized under a hypermasculine and patriarchal state. In our medical institutions, women are being denied abortions and access to life-saving medical care. In hospitals, where up to 70% of medical providers and health workers identify as female, women are performing life-saving procedures and ensuring that our facilities are safe for patient care without the compensation or protection they deserve. In our unhoused communities, women and families are criminalized for fighting for their basic human right to housing in encampments, shelters, and reclaimed houses in Los Angeles and Oakland. On the militarized US/Mexico border, survivors of gender based-violence, anti-LGBTQIA+ violence, and US imperialist policies are being denied their human right to seek asylum and forced to take shelter in migrant camps where they are extremely vulnerable to illness and violent attacks. 

AF3IRM SF BAY AREA

We refuse to stand idly by as the health and safety of our unhoused, uninsured, undocumented, and unemployed sisters get placed on the chopping block of the violent, patriarchal state. 

  • We call for the resurgence of a radical labor movement and stand in solidarity with all workers on strike and join them in their fight against the crushing weight of racial capitalism. We demand immediate relief for workers and the unemployed, including: protective gear, hazard pay, paid sick & family leave, a living wage, equal pay, and full access to unemployment and stimulus benefits.
  • We demand universal, comprehensive care for everyone regardless of immigration status. We call for a halt on evictions and the total cancellation of rent, utilities, credit, medical and student loan debts. Housing, childcare, healthcare, and education must be made freely available to all and not for profit.
  • We call for the release of our incarcerated sisters who are now more vulnerable than ever to lethal diseases and exploitation in the wake of COVID-19. 
  • We demand the abolition of ICE and for the repeal of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) and Congressional Bed Quota, the liberation of all of our sisters in detention and in the migrant camps, and an end to the raids and deportations that terrorize our migrant communities. We call for the reunification of families separated by ICE.
  • We demand safety, solidarity, and justice for survivors of gender-based violence, increased funding for domestic violence, sexual assault, and trafficking services and safe housing. Femicide and racist misogyny end here: We call on our transnational sisters to join us in building a militant feminist movement to rematriate the land and affirm women’s liberation.

We know another world is possible. We dream of and fight for a world where caregiving and feminized labor in all of its glorious, powerful forms is revered, respected, and protected. We envision a world free of gender-based violence, transicide, and femicide. Our collective spirit remembers and longs for a world without borders, without police, and without patriarchy. The time to manifest and build this world for ourselves, for our ancestors, and for the next seven generations is now. 

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https://humanservices.hawaii.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/4.13.20-Final-Cover-D2-Feminist-Economic-Recovery-D1.pdf