Conghaileach
23rd December 2002, 00:34
The Venezuelan revolution
by GLOBAL WOMEN'S STRIKE
Fri, Dec 20 2002, 11:00pm phone: 087 7838688
[email protected]
An appeal from women to women all over the world
"We women reject the organizers of hate and chaos. We women
are on the front line for our right to live in peace and to
defend the Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela, which gives
us, for the first time in history, the right to full legal
equality, to social security, to a pension for housewives.
We are on the streets backing our President and our
Bolivarian Revolution. Long live the Constitution! No to the
fraudulent referendum! No to the pro-coup fascist stoppage!
Don't stop for the stoppage!"
The Venezuelan revolution -
An appeal from women to women all over the world
"We women reject the organizers of hate and chaos.
We women are on the front line for our right to live in
peace and to defend the Bolivarian Constitution of
Venezuela, which gives us, for the first time in history,
the right to full legal equality, to social security, to a
pension for housewives. We are on the streets backing our
President and our Bolivarian Revolution.
Long live the Constitution! No to the fraudulent referendum!
No to the pro-coup fascist stoppage! Don't stop for the
stoppage!"
In response to women in Venezuela, we urgently appeal to you
to speak out in defence of the revolution of which women are
a leading part. Since President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias was
elected by a landslide in 1998 to carry out sweeping
economic and social reforms to rid the country of poverty
and corruption, their revolution has been under constant
threat.
As you may know, in April 2002 the elite, acting with the US
government, imposed a military coup. Women from the poorest
neighbourhoods of Caracas were the first to descend from the
hills, risking their lives to demand the return of their
elected president. Filling the streets, the population,
supported by the army rank-and-file, reinstated their
government. Women's courage and initiative in defeating the
coup is widely acknowledged in Venezuela, and first of all
by President Chavez.
We learnt this, and much else, when three of us from the
Global Women's Strike in Guyana, Peru and the US, attended
the international women's solidarity conference at the
invitation of INAMUJER (the Women's Institute) last July.
For four decades the ruling elite has been bleeding the
country's wealth, above all its oil revenue (Venezuela is
the 5th largest exporter mainly to the US), leaving 80% of
the population - overwhelmingly people of mixed African and
Indigenous descent - impoverished. The white elite is
furious that from 1998 a man who is the colour of their
servants is in power representing those they have defrauded.
Despite retaining preferential treatment for its oil
imports, the US, which has had a hand in the corrupt
handling of Venezuelan oil revenue, also fears the policies
of the Chavez government: no privatisation, lower oil rates
for Cuba, Guyana and other small Caribbean countries, and
bringing together Latin America and the Caribbean for the
benefit of all its peoples.
By 1999 the population created and passed with a 72% vote a
revolutionary new Constitution. Women, Indigenous
communities who, as in the rest of the Americas, have been
under threat of genocide for centuries, other women and men
of colour, and other social groups who suffer
discrimination, won rights fought for over years:
* A just distribution of wealth.
* Full legal and pay equality between women and men in
employment.
* The recognition of housework as an economic activity that
creates surplus value and produces social wealth and
well-being.
* Social security and a pension for housewives.
* A minimum wage, an 8-hour day, no compulsory overtime and
the right to paid holidays. Women, the lowest paid
everywhere, who do a double day of unwaged caring work on
top of low-waged work, would benefit most.
* Protection from discrimination based on sex, race,
politics, age, religion and disability. Positive steps to
favour those who may be discriminated against, marginalized
or vulnerable, and punishment of those guilty of abuse or
mistreatment.
* Recognition of Venezuelan sign language, and the use of
subtitles in TV programs.
* Recognition and protection of Indigenous communities,
their social, political and economic organizations,
cultures, religious and health practices, the collective
ownership of ancestral land and knowledge. Bilingual
education in Indigenous areas. Women stress that it is their
work that has kept cultures and languages alive.
* Outlawing the patenting of genes, technologies and
inventions arising from ancestral knowledge or resources.
* No privatisation of water; food security through
sustainable agriculture; protection of the environment.
* No oil privatisation - the State will keep 100% of oil
shares.
Always the poorest everywhere, women have the most to gain
from all these reforms. Despite the elite's power to
frustrate change, there have been remarkable achievements
that we have not yet won in most countries in spite of our
own years of struggle.
* A strong commitment to tackling domestic violence and the
machismo of the justice system.
* A Women's Bank that puts money for income generation
directly into women's hands.
* Better child nutrition and greater school attendance
through free breakfast programs and a clampdown on schools
illegally charging fees. A dramatic drop in the infant
mortality rate.
* The distribution of title deeds to land built on by
squatters, mostly woman-headed households in the shanty
towns on the Caracas hills.
* A law distributing unused state and private land to rural
people. Women, including Indigenous women, are often the
main agriculturalists.
* Subsidies of $1000-$2000 to small farmers - a lot for
people earning $15 a month.
Women's determination to resist provocation and to protect
"el proceso" - the peaceful and democratic process to which
many middle class people are also committed - has been
hidden by the corporate-owned media. National and
international audiences are bombarded with lies promoting
the coup leaders and glorifying or hiding their ongoing
violence.
This has so incensed women that they have declared a
"permanent mobilization". Every day thousands surround the
main TV channels to demand an end to media lies about them.
They are also infuriated that the leadership of the CTV, the
corrupt trade union federation involved in the coup, has
been given a platform to claim that workers are backing the
employers' efforts to destabilize the economy. These lies
are given credibility by the financial and other support for
CTV from the US union federation AFL-CIO (without union
members' knowledge), and by the silence of the UN's
International Labour Office.
Most recently, a "general strike" that has been in fact a
corporate lockout, has tried to stop oil exports, to give
the US an excuse to intervene and restore the rich and
racist elite to power. The situation is heightening now
because basic changes, such as land reform and regaining
control over the national oil industry in order to tackle
poverty, are to be implemented in January 2003.
The impact of the popular mobilization in support of the
elected government, and fears that the US will attack not
only Venezuela and Iraq but any country it wishes, spurred
the Organization of American States to support the Chavez
government against calls for early elections. Apparently,
this is the first time the OAS has stood against a major US
policy, which shows we can win.
We urge women, women's organizations and all who support
women's rights and anti-racism to endorse the following, and
to send protest emails and faxes to the State Department,
the AFL-CIO, the ILO and major media outlets. Please also
send your letters to Venezuela's Women's Institute,
President Hugo Chavez and the Global Women's Strike (numbers
on page below).
Issued by the Global Women's Strike
*The Global Women's Strike takes action in over 60 countries
every March 8 since the year 2000. We demand that the world
"invest in caring not killing." We sent a women's
truth-finding mission to Venezuela in July 2002. Findings
can be found on our website:
http://womenstrike8m.server101.com
To the US State Department, the AFL-CIO, the ILO and major
media outlets
Women in Venezuela, overwhelmingly women of colour, who have
suffered discrimination and poverty, were central to
reversing the April 11 military coup against elected
President Hugo Chavez Frias. They have called a "permanent
mobilization" to defend their "peaceful and democratic
revolution" and their elected government. The coup,
supported by the US, the only country to recognize its
installed dictatorship, tried to return power to the rich
and racist elite, its corrupt running of the oil industry,
the corporate media and the corrupt leadership of the CTV
trade union that acts for the employers and the US against
the workers.
We the undersigned, responding to the appeal of grassroots
women in Venezuela, condemn any attempt to threaten and
undermine what women and therefore every community have won
through their revolution and its anti-sexist anti-racist
pro-worker Constitution.
We condemn US intervention - subtle, covert or overt - aimed
at overthrowing the government of President Chavez that was
elected to carry out economic and social reforms to rid the
country of poverty and corruption.
We demand that:
* The Bush administration stop its attempts to bring down
the elected government of Venezuela, financing and
sheltering those trying to destabilize the economy.
* The AFL-CIO stop hosting, funding and defending the
pro-coup trade union federation CTV.
* The ILO end its silence on the corruption of the CTV.
* The media stop spreading lies and panic in order to create
an excuse for US intervention.
Name _________________________________________________
Organization _________________________________________
Email ________________________________________________
Phone/Fax ____________________________________________
Address ______________________________________________
Return to: Global Women's Strike [email protected]
and [email protected] Or fax to 001-215-848-1130.
For more info: 001-215-848-1120; +44 20 7482 2496
Send protest emails and/or faxes to US Government: J.
Curtis Struble, Acting Assistant Secretary of State Bureau
of Western Hemisphere Affairs Tel 202-647-5780; Fax
202 -647-0791
Brian Naranjo, Venezuela Desk Officer, US Dept of State Tel
(202) 647-4216 or (202) 647-3338;
AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney, Tel 202-637-5231; Fax
202-508-6946 email: [email protected]; Barbara Shailor,
Director, Int'l Affairs Dept, Tel 202-637-5050
ILO Regional Office for the Americas email: [email protected] Fax
+51.1.442.25.31
ILO Geneva email: [email protected], Fax +41 22 798 8685
Send copies of your protest letters to: The Honorable Hugo
Chavez, President, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
<http://www.venezuela.gov.ve/ns/index.htm>; email
[email protected]; Fax: +58-212-806 3145;
Maria Leon, INAMUJER (Venezuelan Women's Institute)
[email protected]; Global Women's Strike
[email protected] or [email protected]
related link: womenstrike8m.server101.com
<http://indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=22333&start=0>
-- Yoshie
by GLOBAL WOMEN'S STRIKE
Fri, Dec 20 2002, 11:00pm phone: 087 7838688
[email protected]
An appeal from women to women all over the world
"We women reject the organizers of hate and chaos. We women
are on the front line for our right to live in peace and to
defend the Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela, which gives
us, for the first time in history, the right to full legal
equality, to social security, to a pension for housewives.
We are on the streets backing our President and our
Bolivarian Revolution. Long live the Constitution! No to the
fraudulent referendum! No to the pro-coup fascist stoppage!
Don't stop for the stoppage!"
The Venezuelan revolution -
An appeal from women to women all over the world
"We women reject the organizers of hate and chaos.
We women are on the front line for our right to live in
peace and to defend the Bolivarian Constitution of
Venezuela, which gives us, for the first time in history,
the right to full legal equality, to social security, to a
pension for housewives. We are on the streets backing our
President and our Bolivarian Revolution.
Long live the Constitution! No to the fraudulent referendum!
No to the pro-coup fascist stoppage! Don't stop for the
stoppage!"
In response to women in Venezuela, we urgently appeal to you
to speak out in defence of the revolution of which women are
a leading part. Since President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias was
elected by a landslide in 1998 to carry out sweeping
economic and social reforms to rid the country of poverty
and corruption, their revolution has been under constant
threat.
As you may know, in April 2002 the elite, acting with the US
government, imposed a military coup. Women from the poorest
neighbourhoods of Caracas were the first to descend from the
hills, risking their lives to demand the return of their
elected president. Filling the streets, the population,
supported by the army rank-and-file, reinstated their
government. Women's courage and initiative in defeating the
coup is widely acknowledged in Venezuela, and first of all
by President Chavez.
We learnt this, and much else, when three of us from the
Global Women's Strike in Guyana, Peru and the US, attended
the international women's solidarity conference at the
invitation of INAMUJER (the Women's Institute) last July.
For four decades the ruling elite has been bleeding the
country's wealth, above all its oil revenue (Venezuela is
the 5th largest exporter mainly to the US), leaving 80% of
the population - overwhelmingly people of mixed African and
Indigenous descent - impoverished. The white elite is
furious that from 1998 a man who is the colour of their
servants is in power representing those they have defrauded.
Despite retaining preferential treatment for its oil
imports, the US, which has had a hand in the corrupt
handling of Venezuelan oil revenue, also fears the policies
of the Chavez government: no privatisation, lower oil rates
for Cuba, Guyana and other small Caribbean countries, and
bringing together Latin America and the Caribbean for the
benefit of all its peoples.
By 1999 the population created and passed with a 72% vote a
revolutionary new Constitution. Women, Indigenous
communities who, as in the rest of the Americas, have been
under threat of genocide for centuries, other women and men
of colour, and other social groups who suffer
discrimination, won rights fought for over years:
* A just distribution of wealth.
* Full legal and pay equality between women and men in
employment.
* The recognition of housework as an economic activity that
creates surplus value and produces social wealth and
well-being.
* Social security and a pension for housewives.
* A minimum wage, an 8-hour day, no compulsory overtime and
the right to paid holidays. Women, the lowest paid
everywhere, who do a double day of unwaged caring work on
top of low-waged work, would benefit most.
* Protection from discrimination based on sex, race,
politics, age, religion and disability. Positive steps to
favour those who may be discriminated against, marginalized
or vulnerable, and punishment of those guilty of abuse or
mistreatment.
* Recognition of Venezuelan sign language, and the use of
subtitles in TV programs.
* Recognition and protection of Indigenous communities,
their social, political and economic organizations,
cultures, religious and health practices, the collective
ownership of ancestral land and knowledge. Bilingual
education in Indigenous areas. Women stress that it is their
work that has kept cultures and languages alive.
* Outlawing the patenting of genes, technologies and
inventions arising from ancestral knowledge or resources.
* No privatisation of water; food security through
sustainable agriculture; protection of the environment.
* No oil privatisation - the State will keep 100% of oil
shares.
Always the poorest everywhere, women have the most to gain
from all these reforms. Despite the elite's power to
frustrate change, there have been remarkable achievements
that we have not yet won in most countries in spite of our
own years of struggle.
* A strong commitment to tackling domestic violence and the
machismo of the justice system.
* A Women's Bank that puts money for income generation
directly into women's hands.
* Better child nutrition and greater school attendance
through free breakfast programs and a clampdown on schools
illegally charging fees. A dramatic drop in the infant
mortality rate.
* The distribution of title deeds to land built on by
squatters, mostly woman-headed households in the shanty
towns on the Caracas hills.
* A law distributing unused state and private land to rural
people. Women, including Indigenous women, are often the
main agriculturalists.
* Subsidies of $1000-$2000 to small farmers - a lot for
people earning $15 a month.
Women's determination to resist provocation and to protect
"el proceso" - the peaceful and democratic process to which
many middle class people are also committed - has been
hidden by the corporate-owned media. National and
international audiences are bombarded with lies promoting
the coup leaders and glorifying or hiding their ongoing
violence.
This has so incensed women that they have declared a
"permanent mobilization". Every day thousands surround the
main TV channels to demand an end to media lies about them.
They are also infuriated that the leadership of the CTV, the
corrupt trade union federation involved in the coup, has
been given a platform to claim that workers are backing the
employers' efforts to destabilize the economy. These lies
are given credibility by the financial and other support for
CTV from the US union federation AFL-CIO (without union
members' knowledge), and by the silence of the UN's
International Labour Office.
Most recently, a "general strike" that has been in fact a
corporate lockout, has tried to stop oil exports, to give
the US an excuse to intervene and restore the rich and
racist elite to power. The situation is heightening now
because basic changes, such as land reform and regaining
control over the national oil industry in order to tackle
poverty, are to be implemented in January 2003.
The impact of the popular mobilization in support of the
elected government, and fears that the US will attack not
only Venezuela and Iraq but any country it wishes, spurred
the Organization of American States to support the Chavez
government against calls for early elections. Apparently,
this is the first time the OAS has stood against a major US
policy, which shows we can win.
We urge women, women's organizations and all who support
women's rights and anti-racism to endorse the following, and
to send protest emails and faxes to the State Department,
the AFL-CIO, the ILO and major media outlets. Please also
send your letters to Venezuela's Women's Institute,
President Hugo Chavez and the Global Women's Strike (numbers
on page below).
Issued by the Global Women's Strike
*The Global Women's Strike takes action in over 60 countries
every March 8 since the year 2000. We demand that the world
"invest in caring not killing." We sent a women's
truth-finding mission to Venezuela in July 2002. Findings
can be found on our website:
http://womenstrike8m.server101.com
To the US State Department, the AFL-CIO, the ILO and major
media outlets
Women in Venezuela, overwhelmingly women of colour, who have
suffered discrimination and poverty, were central to
reversing the April 11 military coup against elected
President Hugo Chavez Frias. They have called a "permanent
mobilization" to defend their "peaceful and democratic
revolution" and their elected government. The coup,
supported by the US, the only country to recognize its
installed dictatorship, tried to return power to the rich
and racist elite, its corrupt running of the oil industry,
the corporate media and the corrupt leadership of the CTV
trade union that acts for the employers and the US against
the workers.
We the undersigned, responding to the appeal of grassroots
women in Venezuela, condemn any attempt to threaten and
undermine what women and therefore every community have won
through their revolution and its anti-sexist anti-racist
pro-worker Constitution.
We condemn US intervention - subtle, covert or overt - aimed
at overthrowing the government of President Chavez that was
elected to carry out economic and social reforms to rid the
country of poverty and corruption.
We demand that:
* The Bush administration stop its attempts to bring down
the elected government of Venezuela, financing and
sheltering those trying to destabilize the economy.
* The AFL-CIO stop hosting, funding and defending the
pro-coup trade union federation CTV.
* The ILO end its silence on the corruption of the CTV.
* The media stop spreading lies and panic in order to create
an excuse for US intervention.
Name _________________________________________________
Organization _________________________________________
Email ________________________________________________
Phone/Fax ____________________________________________
Address ______________________________________________
Return to: Global Women's Strike [email protected]
and [email protected] Or fax to 001-215-848-1130.
For more info: 001-215-848-1120; +44 20 7482 2496
Send protest emails and/or faxes to US Government: J.
Curtis Struble, Acting Assistant Secretary of State Bureau
of Western Hemisphere Affairs Tel 202-647-5780; Fax
202 -647-0791
Brian Naranjo, Venezuela Desk Officer, US Dept of State Tel
(202) 647-4216 or (202) 647-3338;
AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney, Tel 202-637-5231; Fax
202-508-6946 email: [email protected]; Barbara Shailor,
Director, Int'l Affairs Dept, Tel 202-637-5050
ILO Regional Office for the Americas email: [email protected] Fax
+51.1.442.25.31
ILO Geneva email: [email protected], Fax +41 22 798 8685
Send copies of your protest letters to: The Honorable Hugo
Chavez, President, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
<http://www.venezuela.gov.ve/ns/index.htm>; email
[email protected]; Fax: +58-212-806 3145;
Maria Leon, INAMUJER (Venezuelan Women's Institute)
[email protected]; Global Women's Strike
[email protected] or [email protected]
related link: womenstrike8m.server101.com
<http://indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=22333&start=0>
-- Yoshie