Sisters and brothers, we’re here to honor each other and honor the spirit of resistance, because in the words of Audre Lorde: “Our silence will not protect us.”

Sisters holding together families, working two jobs, on welfare, women resisting violence!

It’s time we stopped being faces at events and token women in the movement – we need to make this movement actually represent us! Sisters and brothers – war does not forget women. In the 20th century 90 percent of people killed in war have been unarmed, not soldiers—and they’re mostly women and children. Napalm, white phosphorus, Hiroshima. This is modern war. “Shock and awe” doesn’t discriminate, it kills men and women at equal rates. Bush and Co. want us to only remember “our boys”’ deaths, but that’s both racist and sexist. War does not forget women.

graphic by Amee Chew

From Iraq to right here in the US, poor women and girls (especially women of color) are disproportionately bearing the economic costs of this war. In Massachusetts, women are most of the Medicaid recipients; state & community college students; welfare, subsidized housing, eldercare & childcare recipients and these programs have been slashed with budget cuts. Women in Iraq suffer the brunt of unemployment and illiteracy since their country’s economic collapse. Because of patriarchal gender roles, when public healthcare, childcare, and education systems break – whether in the US or Iraq – women make it up by increasing their unpaid household labor.

When immigrant and black men are jailed, women of color put in double and triple shifts holding families together.

War does not forget women

Rape and sexual violence are tactics of war. Around the world US military bases support sex trafficking and prostitution, exploiting young women & girls from impoverished backgrounds. Militarism cultivates a culture of misogyny and increases the sexual commodification of women in the US and Iraq.

Young women and girls fleeing Fallujah after the U.S. destroyed the city are turning up in Syria as prostitutes and sex workers. Rapes and trafficking of Iraqi women skyrocketed directly after the invasion – the occupation forces had no response, after all they were only there for the oil. But the U.S. anti-war movement did not have a response to this sexual violence either, not treating freedom from rape as equal to the right to food or water.

Let’s remember My Lai, where young girls and women were not only raped, but sodomized, mutilated, tortured. Similar reports have surfaced from Fallujah and we’ll be hearing more with prolonged contact between civilians and military forces. War does not forget women.

Women in military families deal with domestic violence, while social service cuts destroy our rape crisis centers. War does not forget women

Women lose control over their reproduction when there’s no healthcare or contraception; occupation has meant more back-alley abortions in Iraq. And in the US, with this over-bloated war budget, we’re never gonna see universal reproductive healthcare, let alone free contraception! But the religious right wants to convince us that morality means saving a clump of cells and being straight – not addressing the economic exploitation within this country, the systemic inequality, and needless war!

Now in South Dakota, they’ve banned all abortions even in cases of rape or incest. This law is barbaric –if anyone rapes me I have to have their kid? At the same time poor women and women of color are sterilized without their consent, forced to take dangerous contraceptives like Depo Provera.

Either way, the agenda to slash reproductive healthcare and control women’s reproduction is about controlling our reproductive labor. Under the right-wing agenda, anyone who doesn’t fit into a model of the patriarchal family is criminalized. So welfare is slashed. And so public healthcare and childcare are cut and replaced by exploiting women’s unpaid labor in the home, since that’s where women belong. This is part of imperialism: using economic sexism to make it cheaper for the fat cats. War does not forget women

Here in the US, both the media and this movement tend to be more interested in suffering that happens to white men – like our troops. Because of this, militarization only makes it harder to talk about what happens to women and girls, the economic, sexual, and psychological violence to our minds, bodies, and lives.

But war does not forget women!

I will not forget women (and neither should you)! OCCUPATION is not bringing democracy to the people of Iraq – it’s not liberating Iraqi women – and it’s NOT LIBERATING WOMEN & MINORITIES HERE IN THE US from our own problems.

This war uses and reinforces inequality, including sexism – so let’s call it sexist! THIS WAR IS SEXIST, this war is sexist! Sisters, we have a special role to play in raising our voices, against how this war relies not only on white supremacy and class exploitation, but also on patriarchy.

I’m a member of the Coalition to Defend Reproductive Rights, I’d like to invite you to come to our clinic actions on the second Saturday of every month at Planned Parenthood in Allston. On Saturday, April 8, we will block anti-abortionists harassing women, because no one deserves to be humiliated for seeking reproductive healthcare. The action starts at 8:30 am and goes till 11:30 am.