IWD and Two Years Since Invading Iraq

Whether or not you were able to join us for our International Women's Day celebration last weekend, you can see pictures from the event here. Enjoy!

If you're interested in the history behind International Women's Day and Women's History Month, read this essay. As we often point out, women have long been leaders in the peace movement:

Over the years and around the world, March 8th took on different meanings. In some years, it was an occasion for organizing against militarism and war. In the late 1950s, it was often the date of female-led anti-nuclear protests. At the same time, March 8th was a rallying point for the demands of workers. By the late 1960s, as women's liberation was spreading in the United States, many radical feminist discovered, re-discovered or decided to honor the revolutionary women and called for an American revival of International Women's Day.

And columnist Sheryl McCarthy (at the radical publication Newsday) reminds us:

In a week that celebrated International Women's Day, it's worth pointing out that the United States is one of the few countries in the world that hasn't ratified the United Nations Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, which was adopted by the UN in 1979. A kind of international bill of rights for women that set up a committee to monitor how well countries are complying, the convention was signed by President Jimmy Carter, but it never has been ratified by the Senate. Supporting broad principles like women's right to vote, to run for office, to have equal access to jobs and to get equal pay, the convention doesn't even mention anything as controversial as abortion.

Eliminating gender discrimination! Hey, it's not like the United States pretends to be the world authority on democracy. Oh, wait...

Speaking of "spreading democracy," this coming weekend is the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. We encourage you to mark the sad milestone on Saturday at 11:30 am, at the Army Recruiting Center and Reindahl Park, a rally organized by the Madison Area Peace Coalition (see link for more info).

Journalist Naomi Klein looks at Iraq and notes, "The problem is not that Iraqis have lost faith in the democracy for which they risked their lives on Jan. 30 - it's that the electoral system imposed on them by Washington is profoundly undemocratic."

Moreover, writes Klein, the U.S. history of heavy-handed foreign relations, its current wars and occupations, and its tendency to define "democracy" for other countries as "what the U.S. ruling powers want" has realconsequences:

By all accounts, most Lebanese would like to see Syria withdraw from their country. But as the hundreds of thousands who participated in the March 8 pro-Hezbollah demonstration made clear, they are unwilling to have their desire for independence hijacked by the interests of Washington and Tel Aviv. By linking Lebanon's independence movements to American designs for the region, the Bush administration is weakening Lebanon's secularists and religious moderates and increasing the power of Hezbollah. Which is precisely what Bremer did in Iraq: Whenever he needed a good news hit, he had his picture taken at a newly opened women's center, a trick that set the feminist movement back decades. (The centers are now mostly closed and hundreds of secular Iraqis who worked with the coalition in local councils have been murdered.)

With apologies to Michael Franti, you can bomb women and children to pieces, but you can't bomb them into peace.