Fw: March 8 , Herstoric Day for Women

[norma dollaga]

March 8, 2013

 

March 8 will always be a day for celebrating the mothers, martyrs and heroes   of our WOMYN’S MOVEMENT. It will also be a day of  pursuing the cause they have instigated and  initiated .

 

We salute   their   courage, power, love, and unyielding resistance against powers and principalities that dehumanize  people. Their decisive act had been a    harbinger to the yearly observation of March 8 known to be the International Women’s Day. Without the sacrifice, persistence and the enduring quest for rights of the struggling class women, March 8 would never be a day for International Women’s Day.  We honor their lives and their   sharp analysis  as their daily concrete situation demanded them to decide and to act   to end the exploitation, oppression and violence inflicted against them. They act collectively and organizationally and they did it without pessimism.

 

Thanks to the scholars , herstorians , theologians, philosophers,  great thinkers, artists and warriors  who subverted the  male-elitist-dominant class   worldview  and   showed us historical truths about the participation of struggling women in crafting a better world.  They persistently retrieved the herstorical participation of women from the underside, and also those women who refused to be cowed by the patriarchal system.

 

Our memories have awakened on the   witch-hunting between the 14^th-17^th century in Europe. They were peasants, healers, and leaders who shook feudalism, led in mass uprisings      and rebellion. Thousands and thousands were burned literally, hanged and punished   by the state. We will not forget that on March 8, 1857, women marched in New York  to demand  a better working condition, and for ten-hour work. Riot police violently dispersed them.  The women’s movement around the world had their “no-turning back” movement against exploitation and perpetuation of patriarchy.  In a meeting of Worldwide Socialist Congress in 1910, great leader Clara Zetkin proposed  that March 8 should be observed as International Women’s Day  to commemorate the demonstrations of women workers in the US  and honor the working women across the globe.

 

In our country, the accounts of our history must be reviewed to remember the significant roles of women who defended our land and fought side by side with men against the colonizers and their local cohorts who are mostly elite and rich families. We remember the babaylans, the priestess, Gabriela Silang, Teresa Magbanua, Tandang Sora, Henerada Agueda (Agueda Kahabagan), Aguada Esteban,Gregoria de Jesus and lots of other unnamed women who sacrificed their lives to liberate our country. They were creative, intelligent, skilled and dedicated.

 

We must not forget the MAKIBAKA ( Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan- Free Movement of New Women) , an organization that was born when Pres. Ferdinand Marcos   was attacking the civil liberties of the Filipino people .It was established in April, 1970 by women who long for freedom in the context of national liberation. It was an organization that picketed major beauty contest as it raised a very specific woman-issue that is the commodification of women through these beauty pageants.  The founding chair of MAKIBAKA, Lorena Barros, a poet and consistent honor student wrote:

 

 "Women comprise more than half of the oppressed Filipino people and thus share with men a common burden of social and economic exploitation. In addition to class oppression, however, women suffer male oppression. This second type of oppression is justified by a feudal conservatism which relegates women to the category of domestic chattel, and by a decadent bourgeois misrepresentation of women as mere pleasurable objects.

 

When Martial Law was declared, MAKIBAKA went underground along with other sectoral progressive and anti-imperialist, anti-feudal organizations.

 

Today, women are rising. The Filipino women are rising against  poverty, unemployment, unfair labor practices and various forms of discrimination against women, increasing  prices of basic commodities, lack of access to social services especially health and education, militarism, violence against women, and plunder of natural resources.     On Feb. 14, 2013 women from different sectors joined the One Billion Rising , a world action (strike, dance, rise)  to end violence against women.

 

The long and arduous struggle for emancipation lead us to creative, consistent and stubborn hope. There have been changes, every single success and victory is sought with painful struggle and sacrifice. The joyful fruit of  victory must not led us to complacency and surrender to the crumbs that fall from the table of the rulers who are not willing to give up their  power and wealth accumulated though plunder and exploitation.

 

Norma P. Dollaga

Kasimbayan Women’s Collective

kasim...@yahoo.com.ph