Basis of Unity

8 March COORDINATION AND ACTION COMMITTEE OF WOMEN OF DIVERSE ORIGINS


1. We want to be visible. We want to organize March 8 with our issues and our organizations occupying centre stage (not just as a workshop or in an addendum to a mainstream women’s event).

2. We are feminists of diverse origins – born in other countries, mainly in the southern hemisphere, or Canadian-born. We have a continuing strong connection to our countries of origin, and to issues of the Third World.

3. In our communities and in the wider society we oppose patriarchy and misogyny in terms of family relations, societal and political institutions, culture and the media.

4.We are committed to dignity and to basic rights – freedom from fear and intimidation, freedom from sexual discrimination, freedom from fundamentalism.

5. Without basic rights women and their families are unable to achieve human dignity. So we are committed to rights in the areas of housing, education and healthcare, choice in matters of lifestyle and reproductive rights.

6.We support the on-going national liberation struggles in our countries of origin and the Third World in general, and people’s struggles against imperialism and local repressive governments. We want to celebrate and inform on women’s traditions of resistance from our communities and countries of origin.

7. We support the ongoing struggles of the indigenous people, the original inhabitants of Turtle Island, who, as a consequence of settler colonialism, have suffered dispossession of land, destruction of culture and way of life, including more egalitarian gender relations.

8.Locally, we actively oppose racism, and all forms of oppression, particularly the heightened repression against visible minorities since Sept. 11 2001, and against justice-loving people speaking out against war preparations, Canadian and US foreign policy and global economic inequality.

9.We oppose discriminatory immigration and refugee policies which marginalize women and their families, keeping them in poverty and near-slave conditions, and the effects of globalization which are driving down wages and working conditions of women, particularly immigrants and refugees and putting people into increasingly desperate conditions.

10.We are anti-war and anti-imperialist and wish to contribute to building a strong women’s stance against war and aggression, particularly US-led wars of terror.

11.We do not wish to work in opposition to existing feminist organization and practice. We invite the participation and support of women from the mainstream and recognize the importance of joint action in strategic areas.

12.We are a coordination and action committee, because we wish to coordinate the activities of existing groups, which some of us represent, and because we also intend to initiate new activities jointly for which we will mobilize our respective networks.