EAST: Közgyűlés és nyilatkozat a patriarchális erőszak ellen

E.A.S.T. - Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational és a szem | 2020-11-26 | Ötödik fül | EAST, Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational, feminizmus, Kelet-Európa, közgyűlés, nők elleni erőszak, szolidaritás, transznacionális összefogás

E.A.S.T. Public Online Assembly: Essential Struggles Against Patriarchal Violence

On the 25th of October E.A.S.T. (Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational) had its first public assembly. About 70 women, workers, migrants, activists participated from several countries: Central and Eastern Europe, Turkey, Georgia, the Balkan route, Italy, UK, Germany, and USA. Starting from different conditions and struggles during the pandemic, we discussed how to break isolation in a moment when women, migrants, and workers are supposed to put their lives and health in danger, to ‘naturally’ fill the gaps of collapsing healthcare and welfare, to work interminable shifts or have their wage cut in order to reconcile working at home and outside, while being left without state aids and documents. We published a common statement (read it here) signed by dozens of collectives to stand together with Polish women who went on strike for freedom of abortion, saying that the attack on women is a way to consolidate hierarchies and divisions. The strike was a success: hundred thousand of women took to the streets showing their ‘essentiality’ and the Polish government did not go further with the abortion ban.

We know that our struggle cannot stop and we want more people to join it, recognizing the need of a transnational initiative which starts from (but is not limited to) the East, from which most devalued but essential labor that sustains production and reproduction in Western Europe comes. Therefore, we call for a second public meeting on November 29th. We want to hold the meeting in the week of the International day against male and gender violence and following the Transgender Day of Remembrance because we know that these days have been crucial for the global feminist movement in its attempts to visibilize structural violence. This year we have been witnessing yet another increase in domestic violence, exploitation of essential workers in hospitals, houses, workplaces, and institutional racism. Violence against women, migrants, and lgbtqi* people interlock with racism and exploitation thus reproducing hierarchies in the pandemic society.

On November 29th between 18-21 CET we take the stage to strategize together transnationally, building on the ongoing essential struggles of nurses, cleaners, teachers, migrants, women. We want to discuss how to realize an essential strike acknowledging that it is an ambitious challenge because of precarity, fragmentation, national divisions, informal conditions, legal obstacles and visa requirements. We want to imagine how to take back the weapon of the strike to oppose violence by interrupting production and social reproduction, including the essential labor which allows the society to survive during the pandemic.

We want to deepen our political communication and step up the fight around the following issues:

How to connect transnationally struggles against patriarchal, racist, capitalist violence in the pandemic? How to build shared analysis and claims?

What is missing and what is needed to organize an essential strike against violence in all its forms? How to reach out to essential workers who are under the blackmail of the wage and residence permit? How to overcome legal obstacles, national divisions and unions’ sectors?

How to start developing common discourses and practices that will eventually culminate in the global date of March 8th?

The meeting will be hosted on Zoom and streamed online on the Facebook page of this event. More info on how to participate will follow on the event page:

📌 E.A.S.T. Public assembly: Sunday November 29th 18-21 CET

👉How to connect transnationally struggles against…

Posted by EAST – Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational on Monday, November 16, 2020

#25N : Essential Struggles Against Patriarchal Violence – statement

November 25th is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. On this day women* stand together against patriarchal violence in all its different forms and shades. On Sunday November 29th we, Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational (E.A.S.T.), invite everyone to discuss in an online public assembly how to connect transnationally struggles against patriarchal, racist, capitalist violence in the pandemic.

Today we stand against domestic violence, physical abuses and sexual harassment against women*. These have been going on long before the covid19 pandemic, but have now been intensified during the lockdown imposed in many national contexts in the course of the pandemic. Many of us are stuck at home in poor living conditions, together with abusive partners while we are being told “stay home, stay safe”. But our homes are not always a safe space and the lives of many were not saved! We stand together with those who struggle everyday against such conditions!

Today we stand against conservative and fundamentalist attacks on our freedoms and autonomy. The pandemic lockdown, isolation, and the need to stay at safe distance from each other to protect outselves and our loved ones was also used as an opportune moment by many right wing governments across the European continent to adopt anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQI legislation, knowing we are risking our lives coming out to protest against them. Such measures were the ban on abortion in Poland, the attack on transgender rights in Hungary or the ban on gender studies in Romania. These are obvious and unacceptable attempts to tame women’s, LGBTQI reproductive rights and freedoms in order to reproduce social hierarchies in societies under pandemic lockdown. We stand together with Polish women on strike and with all those who fight back against these attacks!

Today we stand against capitalist violence and exploitation of our productive and reproductive labor. Women* and migrants are those who took care for families and communities and covered many low paid and stigmatised positions of key workers during the pandemic. Women* are those who work in the “essential” sectors as nurses, care and domestic workers, teachers, cashiers, cleaners, and seasonal workers. Women* are those who need to sacrifice their safety and lives and continue working for miserable wages and in terrible working conditions imposed by the current economic system that puts profits over human lives. When out of jobs or transferred to work from home arrangements during the lockdowns, women* are those who are expected to care for kids, ill or elderly for free as care work is seen as a “female” job and thus as less valuable. We stand together with all those who fight against the identification of women as natural care takers and most expendable labour force!

Today we stand with migrants who are exposed to extreme forms of structural and racist violence across Europe and beyond. In the peak of the pandemic migrants across Europe were stuck in overcrowded rentals, dormitories and shelters and often without any financial aid, allowances, medical insurance or residence permit. Migrant workers from Eastern Europe were transported in crammed airplanes or pushed to make their own ways into the farms and meat factories of Western Europe to allow that the supply chain to the EU’s core countries was not broken. Migrant workers from other parts of the world, already facing violent border regimes and restrictions to their movement and access in hosting countries, were even further hindered in their movement and made ever more invisible, held as bearers of contagion and subjected to racist violence, while always more exploitable during national lockdowns. We stand together with migrants and all those who strike against violence, oppression, exploitation and institutional racism!

This is why on November 25th we won’t remain silent! Our lives are essential, our struggle is essential, our strike is essential!

Have a look at the videos where women from different countries talk about their experiences of violence and their essential struggles against it:

#25N from Romania:

#25N from Macedonia:

#25N from Italy:

#25N from Spain:

#25N from Germany:

#25N from France:

This statement was originally published on Transnational Social Strike.

Letöltés