Press Release
Contact: Mariana Mendoza, CODEPINK LA, [email protected], 310-463-6639
Los Angeles, CA March 8th, 2017 - This International Women’s Day, CODEPINK will rise to say Feminism Not Militarism! In 46 countries around the world, women are striking on March 8th for a better world. In solidarity with the international women and other people around the world, we will march, protest and show up on the streets, online, and for our communities.
“We will rise because we want to live in a world without weapons and war, without violence and hate, without bans and walls,” affirmed Jodie Evans, CODEPINK Co-founder. We call for a world where we are spending our tax dollars and our energies supporting life.
Last week Donald Trump announced his desire to increase the military budget by adding another $54 billion to the already obscene amount of money spent on violence, weapons, and war. This investment in war, on top of being unnecessary and immoral, it is taking money away from programs that support women’s health and safety, from agencies that protect our environment, from health care, from education.
This International Women’s Day, we demand the leaders in Congress to move our tax dollars out of the military. We will show up on streets of Los Angeles, NYC, Chicago, DC, Woodland Hills, Oakland, and San Francisco, saying Feminism Not Militarism!
“The average person has been an unconscious accomplice of state violence for too long, enabling injustice to happen. Humanity cannot afford for us to be accomplices of the state, of governments who fail to protect us,” said CODEPINK staff Paula Kahn. This international feminist movement will not only organize resistance against the new fascist waves and misogynist narratives and policies, but also against the conditions that produced this hate and violence, namely the decades-long economic inequality, racial, sexual, and state violence, and imperial wars abroad. We are committed to organizing ourselves against all kinds of war and militarization, local and abroad - against deportations, workplace harassment, gentrification, unaffordable healthcare, unlivable wages, discrimination, criminalization, and police violence.
We oppose the militarization that wages war on queer, trans, femme, butch, gender nonconforming, formerly and currently incarcerated, sex working, homeless, cash poor and working class, war zone-stricken, disabled, undocumented, immigrant, refugee, Black, Muslim, Palestinian, Latinx, women, not excluding disenfranchised white women, who are also recipients of gender-based violence. We say "Feminism Not Militarism!"
Founded in 2002 to prevent the US war on Iraq, CODEPINK is a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect our tax dollars into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs.
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