SPREAD THE WORD

Some things women are doing to 'Spread the Word' which may be useful:

• Wear the CODEPINK badge and scarf when going about normal business. This invites people to engage you in conversation.
• Tell friends what you are doing and give them this website address and www.codepink4peace.org
• Meet a friend and distribute car stickers and badges, or meet with friends and create an action
• Contact us and tell us what you are doing and how we can help
• Write your response to current affairs and distribute it. The following is the text of some leaflets we have written which may give you some ideas:

Why Codepink? We object to feeling helpless in the face of world events. We seek ways to co-operate for positive action.

Here are some ways we have found that women are coming together and co-operating to make a difference.

We believe there are two approaches we should use, both equally important:
1. To oppose the things that lead to war
2. To support and sustain the things that build peace.

SUPPORTING THINGS THAT BUILD PEACE We try to use our resources (as much as possible) to support businesses which are local, independent from giant corporations and responsive to human needs.

For example, we are supporting SPINIFEX PRESS. It is a local, feminist publishing house. It is at 504 Queensberry Street North Melbourne - an alternative to mainsteam, an alternative to Borders and other giant conglomerates. www.spinifexpress.com.au

We believe that nothing we do is so small as to be insignificant, so we try to avoid using our money to supporting global corporations.

We are boycotting Corporate USA. When we have the time, we try to buy for peace. When we have the money, we ask about conditions of the workers who made it, the impact on the environment, the impact on the community etc.

BUILDING PEACE Out of the despair of the refugee camps in Afghanistan in 1977 women started teaching girl children.

Out of this came RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. Still forced underground, it continues to quietly work with women and children.

At CODEPINK - Women for Peace we think you may wish to look into RAWA, tell people about RAWA and, if you can afford it, send money to RAWA.!

"RAWA is an independent, all-volunteer, non-violent organization calling for multilateral disarmament and the establishment of a secular democratic government in which women may once again participate fully in public life. RAWA provides refugee relief, underground medical care and education, income generating projects, orphanages, documentation of Taliban and other jihadis' atrocities, safe accessible water and more." Taken from SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 Feminist Perspectives edited by Susan Hawthorne and Bronwyn Winter, published by Spinifex Press 2002

The website for RAWA is www.rawa.org

To speak to the local RAWA representative, ring Onnie at 03 9822 8858 or Email mok@connexus.net.au

WOMEN KNEW FREE TRADE WOULD NOT CREATE PEACE A woman from Melbourne, Eleanor Moore, saw the connections between Free Trade, Access to Natural Resources and war after she attended the Second International Congress of Women, held immediately after the Allied peace terms were made public at Versailles.

Those women predicted another war in twenty years.

They saw the Versailles Treaty as
Ø condemning a hundred million people to poverty, disease and despair
Ø violating justice and continuing the rule of force
Ø sanctioning secret diplomacy, denying the principles of self determination, recognizing the rights of the victors to the spoils of war and creating all over Europe discords and animosities which can only lead to future wars.

BUT Eleanor Moore was alone in seeing the threats of free trade and free access to resources - the start of the process that led to the WTO MEETING AT CANCUN.

SEEING CONNECTIONS, CREATING PEACE Those women from the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) must have felt tempted to despair IN 1919, but nothing stopped them.

They had so much working against them:
Ø they didn't even have the vote;
Ø they couldn't meet in Versailles for the peace talks - in fact they were not allowed into the whole of France - because they insisted that peace talks must have representatives from all sides;
Ø many had been refused visas so were prevented from attending their first international meeting
Ø they were not heard - "this (1919) resolution, too, was telegraphed to Versailles, but it is doubtful if it even raised a blush".

Yet this is from Eleanor Moore after that meeting: "Under self determination very country should have a right to decide the terms in which it will trade in manufactured goods with other lands, ... a right to say under what conditions resources may be approached; to control, limit or forbid the spoilation of its forests, the destruction of its native flora and fauna, the ruin of its soil."

And "If the comparatively undeveloped countries wish to become industrially self-contained it is not for nations whose obvious interest lies in the unrestricted export to deny them the right to determine their own policy."

WILPF still creates peace www.dragonamazon.net/wilpfaustralia

FURTHER READING "The WTO perpetrates a subtle and pervasive form of re-colonisation and warfare... The result is the further subjugation of economies and peoples in the developing world." Aileen Kwa, Cancun and the Battle for Developing Countries Markets: Another form of Warfare www.focusweb.org

"When the economic agenda is hijacked by the World Bank, IMF, WTO, democracy is reduced to an empty shell with room only for fundamentalism and extremism" Vandana Shiva, Globalisation and Talibanisation, cited in SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 - Feminist Perspectives ed Susan Hawthorne and Bronwyn Winter, Spinifex Press

The CODEPINK Melbourne website documents some of the tradition we feel we are part of - women coming together to make peace and oppose war.

On the VOICES OF REASON page there are voices from local women who have come together to work for peace and the environment over nearly 100 years - from the Sisterhood of International Peace examining the connection between free trade and war at the beginning of the last century, up the present Irati Wanti Declaration

CODEPINK - Women for Peace http://codepinkforpeace.alphalink.com.au Ring Maggie - 03 9406 5872 geraldin@alphalink.com.au

Nuns' Story On July 25th 2003, three Dominican nuns faced sentences of between 5 and 30 years in gaol.

They had served a year already.

Their crime? Writing a cross in their own blood and hitting with a hammer, to symbolize hammering swords into ploughshares, on a Minuteman Missile silo in Colorado, U.S.A.

This silo has missiles of more explosive capacity than 1,000 Hiroshima bombs! The peace activist nuns said the act symbolized that they would rather pour out their own blood than have USA weapons take the blood of another.

Sister Ardeth Platt, Sister Jackie Marie Hudson and Sister Carol Gilbert were charged with "obstruction of national defense and injury to government property".

This is a felony punishable by up to thirty years in prison. The three were handcuffed and forced to lie face down on the ground for hours. Sister Platte said that members of the bomb squad, the FBI and other departments swarmed them "like stormtroopers", surrounding them with M165's, grenade launchers and guns.

Their bravery serves as a model to the millions of peace loving people across the world. They have sacrificed liberty to expose the war machinations of their government. How is it that these nuns can see the obscenity of weapons of mass destruction for what it is when our politicians raise not a whisper?

Who pays? Who profits? Sr. Jackie Hudson was sentenced to 30 months; Sr. Carol Gilbert to 33 months; Sr. Ardeth Platte to 41 months in prison. In addition, a period of 3 years supervised release follows their prison sentences; no fines were imposed but restitution of $3,081.04 was.

"I know it will be a long journey," Platte said "but we are not afraid. We're just hoping and praying that this work for peace will not be in vain, that God will hear our prayers as a nation and a world, and that people will continue to work for peace."

Corporations, as well as governments and the media, increasingly support free trade, deregulation, privatization and globalisation. This affects what we see and hear. It is up to us to discover and speak the truth - even if it involves cost.

The sisters believe nuclear weapons are the "taproot" of social and economic injustice because the billions of dollars spent on them could go to programs for the poor and needy. They believe that together we could nonviolently accomplish complete nuclear disarmament, one weapon at a time, starting with open declaration and inspection.

www.codepink4peace.org
www.coloradopeace.org
www.domlife.org
www.occupationwatch.org
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~womenweb
Aug2003

Boycott Corporate USA Products Make your next purchase a conscious choice for peace, justice and our environment!

People in America, Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East, Pacific Islands and South America are using their power as consumers to oppose war. Boycotts of unwelcome businesses such as McDonalds, Nike, Starbucks or Borders increase, as connections are made between everyday consumption and world events.

"Saddam's dictatorship is being replaced by US corporate dictatorship ... which has hijacked state power and uses military might to grab markets." Vandana Shiva 12/5/03 www.zmag.org

New Corporate State Power "War has become a convenient excuse for enlarging corporate rule. There is little distinction between those who sit on boardrooms and those who sit in government. Bechtel has a $680 million contract to 'rebuild' Iraq. The profiteering from war by corporations like Bechtel confirms that war is globalisation by other means." Shiva - War As An Excuse For Enlarging Corporate Rule

Who Pays for War? Australians Working Together legislation has recently passed through Parliament. It forces women without independent means, or a man to support them, to go under the control of Personal Advisers and the infamous Activity Test.

Described in the Act as 'sole parents, older unemployed people, alcoholics and recently released criminals', they will attract more breaching penalties.

This regime has already taken 1 billion dollars from unemployed people who have committed no crime - almost 1 million activity test breaches and 500,000 administrative breaches have been applied since 1996.

"Social Security is now reduced to welfare, public service to private profit and entitlements to allowances. The precarious security of income support for parents of children living in Australia's poorest families has been severely compromised in this legislation." Council for Single Mothers and their Children

Medicare, not Munitions: Our Medicare system, which has served us well, is to be abolished - cuts are planned to reduce universal health care to a mere safety net for concession card holders.

Books, not Bombs: The government funding of schools and universities from taxation has served us well. But now we move towards the neo-liberal 'user pays' for education, American style.

American Women: In the USA the treatment, or should we say persecution, of single mothers is shown in the film Bowling for Columbine. Over half US states have recently reduced state subsidies for childcare, and tax credits have been removed for 12 million of America's poorest children.

Iraqi Women: How would you like to be bringing a child into a situation where there is no water, food or electricity? Where soldiers are still shooting at you and what's left of your family? Even basic hospital services have not been restored fully in Iraq - children are dying from infectious diarrhoea and cholera is raging.

"Before this latest war, women in Iraq had the right to vote, drive, engage in paid work, get educated and hold political office. As early as 1958 a woman was a government minister.

Now, Iraqi women fear they will end up living under a distorted legal system with a constitution denying them almost all their basic human rights. The US general who headed the Pentagon's civil administration in Iraq said he wanted to include fair representation of all ethnic and religious groups, but he made no mention of the largest group - women!" Lesley Abdela - Eyecatcher/Shevolution

"US corporations are harvesting profits from 'reconstructing' a society after its deliberate destruction." Vandana Shiva

Buy from Corporate USA? NO WAY!

People are acting worldwide American women from CODEPINK www.codepinkalert.com are also fasting to oppose a possible 30-year prison sentence for Dominican nuns who protested against weapons of mass destruction - they used their own blood to paint a cross on a Minuteman 111 nuclear missile in Colorado. These missiles together have the explosive power of 1,225 Hiroshima bombs! Also, the Mayor of Hiroshima wrote to George W. Bush to complain about "the barbarism that has led you to develop new nuclear weapons'.

Australian women are conducting an urgent appeal to help Iraqi women shape their future www.iwda.org.au

Others question what they buy and how it may be related to war - www.adbusters.org www.stopUSA.org may help and http://home.vicnet.net.au/~womenweb may be useful.

"Social reality exists not by chance, but as the product of human action... people make history" Verity Burgmann

"The only thing more powerful than government is civil society." Arundhati Roy

What is Mother's Day? Mother's Day began with women's public activism!

"The women who conceived Mother's Day would … expect women to be marching in the streets, not eating with their families in restaurants." Ruth Rosen

It was originally started after the (American) Civil War, as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who had lost their sons.

Here is the original Mother's Day Proclamation, written in 1870 in Boston by Julia Ward Howe: Arise, then, women of this day!

'Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession' … http://www.peace.ca/mothersdayproclamation.htm

Mother's Day for Peace ·

• In 1858 - a community activist named Anna Reeves Jarvis organized Mothers' Works Days in West Virginia. During the Civil War, Jarvis pried women from their families to care for the wounded on both sides. Afterward she convened meetings to persuade men to lay aside their hostilities. ·
• In 1872, Julia Ward Howe, author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, proposed an annual Mother's Day for Peace. In the following decades, they (women, also) launched successful campaigns against lynching and consumer fraud and battled for improved working conditions for women and protection for children, public health services and social welfare assistance to the poor. ·
• In 1913, Congress declared the second Sunday in May to be Mother's Day. … Outraged by florists who were selling carnations for the exorbitant price of $1 apiece, Anna Jarvis' daughter undertook a campaign against those who would undermine Mother's Day with their greed. Within a few years, the Florists' Review triumphantly announced that it was Miss Jarvis who was completely squelched. ·
• Since then, Mother's Day has ballooned into a billion-dollar industry. Taken from 'Mother's Day for Peace' - by Ruth Rosen, professor of history, UC Davis, USA. RESCUE AND