• INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day this year is not just a celebration, but a mobilisation.

It’s a strike! Those of us based at the Crossroads Women’s Centre in Kentish Town are part of an international call for women to go on strike on March 8, against violence: economic, political, sexual, domestic, racial… Over 40 countries are involved and Kentish Town is on the map!

Can it be done? Well, it’s been done before.

In 1975 women in Iceland took a day off and brought the country to a halt. Following their example, women in Poland downed tools in October last year to stop the criminalisation of abortion, and won. Similar protests in Ireland (north and south), Italy and Korea, mass protests against rape and murder of women in Argentina (300,000 took to the streets), and anti-Trump women’s marches, which mobilised millions in the US and round the world (100,000 in London), are heeding the strike call.

Under the banner “Solidarity is our weapon”, women in each locality are organising their own actions and demands. We have chosen the broom as our symbol: when the strands are together, we are strong.

But something else is happening on March 8 – it’s Budget day!

Women have been the target of austerity. In Camden many have lost jobs, services and benefits, even their lives. We are fighting for our NHS not to be privatised.

We will be striking to end the violence of destitution, the degradation of the planet, the unjust separation of children from their mothers; for a living wage for all workers, including mothers and other carers; to end deportations, close detention centres and much more.

Come with us!

On March 7 there’s stall on Kentish Town Road to remember Eleanor Rathbone, the mother of child benefit.

On March 8 a Speak Out outside the Family Court in Holborn, 10am to 11am, and outside parliament, noon to 2pm. Bring a broom.

Help us sweep out the criminals with money and power who steal our money, our homes, our children!

Anti-austerity MPs are invited to support us. And wherever you are at 6pm, bang your pots and pans with the rest of the women of the world!

NINA LOPEZ
Global Women’s Strike
KIM SPARROW
Single Mothers’ Self-Defence
ELIZABETH TSWANA
AAWG
gws@globalwomenstrike.net