Chronicle from Euzkal Herria

This past March 8th we gave the first news about the 5th International Action, also coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the World March of Women. A few months before, at the end of 2019, we began to work with the intention of opening a process of creation and collective construction to develop the 5th International Action in the Basque Country.

We were in the middle of this organizing when the Covid-19 and the successive crisis appeared, and although we had to postpone a large part of the process for the elaboration of the 5th Action, we have been able to carry out several actions that have allowed us to keep active and in contact with our companions:

– 30 March, “International Day of Domestic Workers”: together with two other feminist collectives (Trabajadoras No Domesticadas and Lurgatz Anoetako talde feminista) we carried out a campaign in the networks to make visible and to show solidarity with the struggle and the reality of work and domestic workers.

– 24 April, “Rana Plaza Gogoan” and “Bizitzek etekinek baino gehiago balio dute”: every year since the World March we have marked this date in red in remembrance of the Bangladesh textile factory disaster. In addition to a network campaign, we organized a talk (“EMAKUMEAK* ERRESISTENTZIAN! Oihalgintzako langileak kapitala eta bizitzaren arteko gatakaren aurrean”) with colleagues who spoke about transnationals, especially in the textile industry, and the impact on women’s bodies and lives, from different perspectives, including that of women workers in the global South and North. Along with this, we also supported the International Initiative of the March in the 24h of Feminist Solidarity, “Lives are worth more than profits” by making some small videos that we spread through the networks.

– June 4th, virtual assembly to resume preparations for the 5th International Action. The participation of the peoples is what gives identity to the World March of Women of the Basque Country, so we have decided to postpone the action, which we will carry out between October this year and March 2021, adapting it to our needs and the situation we are living in at each moment. It is not an easy challenge but we are willing, and together and among all of us, we will organize a new powerful action!

Capitalism is the virus

The confined situation we have experienced has not prevented us from denouncing and continuing to develop our political work. They locked us up in one of our houses, but we know that the problem is not the virus. The problem is the capitalist, heteropatriarchal, colonial and racist system that kills us and continues to oppress us, even before the health crisis. That is why we have continued to organize, and to seek new forms of mobilization, in the networks, from our balconies, and even in the streets.

We’ve activated a protocol against the murders of women by sexist men. During this period of restricted mobility, three women have been murdered in the Basque Country. En el first and double macho murder, we went out to the balconies to express our rage and boredom, with pots and pans and sirens. On May 6, the pots and pans in the windows were repeated and we also began to encourage the women to leave their homes, given the greater flexibility for the exits, and to bring our protest to the streets by means of posters, overalls, banners.

– “Zaintzak erdigunera!” Euskal Herriko Koordinadora feminist. With the outbreak of the sanitary crisis, we were conscious of the situation that we were living. Before a worsening at all the levels, several groups and women of the Feminist Movement of Euskal Herria saw the necessity to demand from the institutions a management of the resources in a way that care work, the majority of which carried out by women (both those who are paid and those who are not), was at the center of the responses. This is necessary in order to meet the needs of the most vulnerable and abused people by a fierce and biocidal system that puts the interests of the market before life. A dossier was prepared (based on the contributions of more than twenty feminist groups and also other social, union and political agents), and was presented in a massive virtual assembly with more than 150 women*. To date, the Coordinating Committee continues its work, with the objective of advocate at different levels.

– More than a dozen signed manifests. We have responded to countless campaigns of adhesion, in solidarity and support of the following struggles: regularization for migrants in irregular administrative situations; in defense of the rights of domestic and care workers, and the improvement of their working conditions; the demands of the anti-racist movement against violations of rights, police abuse and institutional racism, among other demands; the opening of the popular markets, in favour of a territorialised management of food and food sovereignty; Euskal Herria Batera, Aberri Eguna, for the right to self-determination of the peoples; to demand a change in the socio-economic model that puts lives in the centre above the interests of capital.

Report sent by MMM Euzkal Herria – www.emakumeenmundumartxa.eus

We resist to live, we march to transform!marchons pour transformer !
Liaison Newsletter – July 2020