2006 Press Statement
FEMINIST STRUGGLE AGAINST PATRIARCHY, THE STATE, MILITARISM AND CAPITALISM
Rebellion Liberates!
Women, Towards Liberation;
Today millions of women whose names we have never known, whose faces we have never seen, turn their faces towards the sun across the world; in different languages but with the same spirit, they shout the same slogans together… Today is March 8… Long live women’s liberation struggle…
Our rebellion is against;
Those who deny our history, who try to make it forgotten;
Those who want to break our spirit of struggle and solidarity
Those who reckon the future can be built without us
Those who think the future can be built without rejecting all relations of oppression, exploitation and power.
History is the history of our oppression as women… And it is history written and told as male domination wishes, so that we women do not awaken and rise up…
We learned how to say “WE EXIST” to those who deny and oppress us from those who wrote the history of women’s freedom through the prices they paid… From the Fouriers, Olympes, suffragettes, Kollontais, Clara Zetkins, Emma Goldmans…
Once again we stand by those burned as witches, sent to the guillotine for demanding the right to vote, killed for demanding bread and roses, excluded for not wanting a revolution in which they could not dance, living a prison life in the country where they made the revolution, confined to psychiatric hospitals for opposing those in power…
Exactly 150 years after the burning of the working women who created March 8 in 1857, women workers are still burning to death…
Because we say there must be no more deaths, night shifts must be abolished,
Because we are treated as cheap labor at work and made to work without security, insurance or unions,
Because we are subjected to a sexist division of labor and sexist practices,
Because our labor at home is appropriated in the name of contributing to the family budget,
To make our disregarded domestic labor visible,
Because we say no to state violence and war,
To expose harassment and rape by village guards, soldiers and police,
Because we oppose militarist, expansionist war policies based on dying and killing, which we do not want and of which we will never be agents,
Because we want all the wounds of women harmed by war and forced migration to be healed,
To stand against racist and annihilation policies directed at Kurds,
Because we say no to the denial of Kurdish women’s language and culture,
Because we say no to a uniform and obedient society,
Because we say no to a heterosexist society that denies different sexual identities,
Because we say no to harassment, rape and violence within the family,
Because men kill us in the name of honour, even though we want to be no one’s honour,
Because we say no to sexual abuse within the family,
Because we say no to being co-wives and to exchange marriages,
Because we say no to femicides committed under the guise of suicide,
Because we say no to patriarchy, militarism and capitalism,
Together! And stronger! We say “Long Live Feminist Rebellion”…
Because we know this world will not change unless we change it…
We will not allow them to deny our dreams, our hopes, our right to live in another world… We will claim our labor, bodies and identities…
We will not obey!
We will change it!