Our History

2024 Call to Action: For a Feminism that Cares

For the 8th year in a row, care givers, educators, health care workers, sex workers, nannies, domestic workers, among many others, are taking to the NYC streets on March 8th (aka 8M), in synchrony with women and gender expansive folks marching, picketing and striking all throughout the global south and beyond.

This International Working Women’s Day, we will further build upon our 2023 slogan “Back to the Commons” to highlight the struggle against austerity politics imposed by administrations of all colors and to put forward a real alternative to the empty promises of neoliberal feminism–what we call, “a feminism that cares”. We will debunk the myth of the so-called “Migrant Crisis” to highlight the real crisis, which is that of the attack and dismantling of systems of care–most saliently, housing, education, and healthcare. 

We live in times when the cost of living is soaring. In just a couple of years, housing prices in major cities across the United States have doubled. Those that bear the burden of caring, not only for their own, but who are also feeding, nursing, raising the families and cleaning the houses of others, are left out of all safety net protections due to their immigration status; and millions are fleeing north to reclaim a bit of what has been taken away from them through plundering, extractivism and the destabilization of their governments by the United States imperialist policies. 

Meanwhile, the rich keep getting richer; no-bid private contractors receive multimillionaire contracts to offer “emergency relief”; the people’s money is invested in war and genocide; and immigrants are used as scapegoats to prevent an impoverished working class from realizing who their enemy really is.

As the election approaches, liberal feminism is going to tell us, once again, that voting blue is the answer to our predicaments, but we know very well that is a lie. Democrats are funding genocide in Palestine while undercutting our means of survival. Only a politics of the commons that recognizes care as the work that makes all work possible and puts the defense and expansion of care systems at the center of its agenda can lead the way to a livable and feminist future.

The time is now, see you in the streets!

2023 Call to Action: Back to the Commons

This year, for the seventh consecutive year, we are claiming public space with Women's Strike NYC - a coalition at the intersection of feminism, labor and immigration - to reclaim the radical roots of International Women's Day (more popularly known as 8M) and make it clear that, together, we can build an alternative to elite feminism in this city.

Today, after these pandemic years, which have been so difficult for social mobilization, we have gathered to come together and unravel our shared conditions of life, work and struggle. From the margins of the financial capital of the world, and in the midst of a global recession of dimensions not seen in decades, educators, health care workers, caregivers, tenants, domestic workers, street vendors, sex workers, and many others, have gathered here today under the cry of "BACK TO THE COMMONS".

The idea of the commons, popular in anti-austerity movements in many parts of the world, serves us as a key to think about a root transformation of the social order that centers, on the one hand, those who, with our work-paid and unpaid-sustain communal life and, on the other hand, the systems that allow such support, such as education, health, housing, food, among others.

We demand a "Return to the commons" as a horizon of futurity and as an alternative to the austerity policies imposed by administrations of all colors. So, we unite and exclaim in a single roar: It’s worthless to be called essential, while our lives are treated as dispensable! We will no longer bear the human cost of privatization, budget cuts, and the dismantling of systems that allow us to sustain communal life!

Without further ado, we invite you to join us for the entire duration of the festival, from 1 to 4 pm and to beat the snow and cold together. Today we will sing, dance, create and imagine other possible worlds, while reclaiming rage as a source of creativity and collective power.

2022 Call to Action: Sí Hay Marcha en Nueva York!

NEW YORK -  On Sunday March 6, 2022, for sixth year in a row, Women’s Strike NYC is organizing a march and festival in commemoration of International Working Women’s Day on March 8th. The day of action centers women workers who have been at the front lines of aid and care responses throughout the pandemic and yet whose own care and lives have not been centered in policy choices.  Women’s Strike NYC calls on women and feminized workers to join us and march in recognition of the working class origins of this day.  We will begin the March at noon on the steps at Union Square South (in front of the whole foods) and walk south towards  Washington Square Park(Plaza Garibaldi),where we will come together for a festival with music, art, and workshops from 2pm-4pm.  

Our march and festival is an opportunity for us to come together - all the compas from the periphery of the capitalist world, anti-capitalist feminists from every margin - to build new bridges between our kitchens, warehouses, nurseries, maquilas, classrooms, processing plants, emergency rooms and harvesting fields. This day is a chance for us to come together and claim our places in the new world we are shaping.

2021 Call to Action: Towards a Translocal Feminist Community

To all the compañeras from the periphery of the capitalist world; to those that have been forcibly displaced, are unhoused or threatened with eviction; to those that keep the cities of the north running, while purposefully cut off from public safety nets; to those whose labor is essential, yet whose lives are deemed disposable; to the millions of unemployed, precariously employed, working informally or clandestinely; to the colonized and those that “speak in tongues” (as Anzaldua would have it); to those imprisoned, persecuted or precluded from safely inhabiting public space or their own homes; to those serving in the back of the house and toiling behind closed doors; to those harvesting and processing other people’s food, caring for their families, and cleaning their homes; to those keeping themselves, their households and communities alive, against all odds. It is to you all, that this call to action is addressed.

The pandemic and its manyfold consequences have made us increasingly aware of everyday life as a terrain for community building and collective struggle. Today, the irreducibly political character of the local and the proximate has become again apparent, while their future form continues to be disputed. 

The current crisis hit the world after years of technocratically-led enclosures. The neoliberal erosion of the social fabric and the infrastructure needed to sustain life in common has been acutely felt. This has been especially the case for women and feminized bodies since we are the ones that still perform most of the paid and unpaid care work that makes all other work possible. 

Already by 2020, the feminist movement had been showing a strength and geographical span not seen in decades.The current crisis represented an unprecedented challenge that demanded us to both reclaim and innovate repertoires of struggle embedded in the everyday. In the face of the state´s neglect, we built communities of care from the ground up, from soup kitchens, solidarity funds, time banks, free stores, childcare coops, and beyond. Furthermore, we had to explore novel forms of coming together; organizing locally and translocally; and envisioning a future in common. 

These have not been the only challenges to the growth of a widespread grassroots movement. In a manner similar to the enclosures of the neoliberal era, the ability to define the language, means and horizon of the movement have been increasingly monopolized by several brands of elite feminism. Their tempting invitation for a few women to break the glass ceiling hides their need for the mass of us to clean the shards behind them.

Local and self-managed responses cannot address the scale and systemic nature of the catastrophe on their own. Our current situation highlights the need for locally grounded movements to common-up for the fight. We need to share resources, draw common terrain and develop coordinated strategies to build a translocal feminist community to come.

As a first step in that direction, this March 8th we invite you to tap into the possibilities of emergent communication platforms with us. Together, we can thread a decentralized, non-hierarchical and translocal day of action that can serve as a stepping stone towards a feminist commons increasingly true to itself. Anti-capitalist feminists from every margin, let's build new bridges between our kitchens, warehouses, nurseries, maquilas, classrooms, processing plants, emergency rooms and harvesting fields. A new world is taking shape. The time to claim our rightful place in it is now.

2020 Call to Action, Women's Strike NYC Fest

OUR BODIES, OUR LABOR, OUR STREETS: RECLAIMING THE ANTI-CAPITALIST ROOTS OF INTERNATIONAL WORKING WOMEN'S DAY

NEW YORK, NY—For the fourth year in a row, Women's Strike NYC will be out in the streets reclaiming the anti-capitalist roots of International Working Women's Day and highlighting some of the major struggles at the crossroads of feminist and labor organizing. Members of the March 8th Coalition will convene Women’s Strike NYC Street Fest 2020 in Washington Square Park to put the spotlight on women, trans, and nonbinary workers, activists, and artists who are dedicated to building a grassroots, anti-capitalist alternative to elite feminism. Through workshops, performances, and participatory art, the street fest will highlight four axes of struggle: reproductive justice; systemic violence against women and feminized bodies; the battle over labor; and reclaiming the commons. 

Interactive stations, speakers, and a collective participatory performance will draw attention to the labor organizing of women, trans, and nonbinary workers whose work gets exploited, devalued, made invisible, and criminalized -- including home care attendants (Ain’t I a Woman? campaign), street vendors (Street Vendor Project), sex workers (SOAR Institute, Walking While Trans Coalition and Colectivo Intercultural TRANSgrediendo), food processing workers (Brandworkers) and farm workers (Coalition of Immokalee Workers). An array of musicians and dancers will speak to the four axes of struggle through their performances, including Audry Funk, Renee Goust, Fogo Azul, Colectivo18/10 and Joselyn Kaxyek Borrero. Latina Institute-NY and National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum will host an interactive reproductive justice timeline; Brides’ March will hold a workshop on gender and gender-based violence; and Dominatrix Ashley Paige and Mistress Master Leigh will facilitate a workshop on power and consent. 

The Women’s Strike NYC Street Fest is a coordinated action with other cities around the globe within the context of International Working Women’s Day, an anti-capitalist celebration highlighting struggles at the intersection of women’s liberation and labor.

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