March 8, 2009
International Women’s Day (IWD) is marked on March 8 every year. It is a major day of global celebration for the economic, political and social achievements of women. My remarks to a gathering in Los Angeles celebrating IWD:
First of all, I would like to thank the organizers for inviting me and bringing me here to celebrate with you all. San Francisco is my home but Los Angeles is my hometown!
I hope my remarks don’t offend any men out there, but if you are here, they probably won’t. In any case, my remarks aren’t meant to offend, but to inspire.
A double “X” chromosome makes a person a FEMALE but does not guarantee that she will be a WOMAN.
FEMALES have been historically involved in geo-politics for decades; FEMALES like Golda Meier, Margaret Thatcher, Condileeza Rice, Tzipi Livni and Hillary Clinton are perfect examples of FEMALES that believe to play on the male dominated patriarchal world stage they have to act like MALES and suppress their double “X’s.”
For our species to survive, WOMEN, true WOMEN with compassion, hearts of love and the intellect of the communal history of our courageous fore-mothers, must take over this planet.
FEMALES buy into the patriotic crap that geo-political strategies must include belligerence and the threat of force to solve problems, or more likely, to reinforce the military paradigm of murder for profit.
On the other hand, WOMEN know that problems are only magnified by violence. Violence does not end violence. Condi Rice and Hill Clinton, who were both tasked to be the country’s top diplomats are FEMALE war mongers who could just as easily fit into the War Department mold—as the State Department has become little more than an adjunct to the War Department now, anyway.
WOMEN know that other WOMEN and children are the ones that pay the ultimate price for war. FEMALES participate in sending other women’s children to war to kill even more children.
FEMALES protect their own children, if they even have them, but WOMEN protect all children and do not think bombing other WOMEN’S children is right, and is in fact, morally repugnant.
Like I said earlier, we WOMEN must take over this world, if we don’t, even our Mother Earth will become inhospitable to our kind.
How do we do this?
We step outside of patriarchal systems and reclaim our power!
One FEMALE wrote to me very early on in my campaign against ultra-FEMALE, Nancy Pelosi, and she said that I was not qualified to be in Congress because I, a) didn’t own a car; b) didn’t have a job and c) horrors of horrors, I didn’t even have a husband!
Cars, jobs and even (or maybe, especially) husbands come and go and this planet will last forever with or without humans, but the patriarchs can never kill unconditional love.
Unconditional love and respect for all earth’s creatures is the power of WOMAN! WOMEN from Gaza to Kabul to Baghdad to Tehran to Juarez to Oaxaca back up to DC and L.A. know this.
WOMEN do not need UN charters or resolutions to tell us that the “recognition of human dignity of all persons is the foundation for justice and peace,” we know this intuitively whether we nurse a single child at our breasts, teach a classroom filled with young faces, or lead nations responsible for maintaining peace with justice.
Capitalism is the problem and the solution is not to try to reinforce capitalism but to mold an entirely new society based on needs, not robbery. To get through these tough times, we must rely on each other and not our governments.
This cancerous behemoth known as the US Empire must be reduced to smaller community units with a mentality and governance that fosters sharing, education, local economies, physical and environmental health, and above all, peace!
As the patriarchal governmental societies lose even more credibility, and thankfully, power, this will be the time when we WOMEN will be the beacons of light towards which humans will cluster and the seemingly bottomless pit of macho callousness and stupidity of both MALES and FEMALES alike will begin to be filled with the rays of real HOPE.
This, mis hermanas y mis hermanos, is called REVOLUTION and it cannot happen soon enough for me.
Mis amigas y amigos:
Hasta la Victoria, siempre!
Cindy Sheehan
Cindy Sheehan is the Nobel peace prize nominated mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan who was killed in Sadr City, Iraq, April 4, 2004. She has been on an international quest for peace and accountability since then. She has written three books and numerous published articles. Cindy is currently running as a "Decline to State" independent candidate in the 8th District of California against Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
The Hunger Site
March 9, 2009 at 3:20 pm
We used to call Sheehan’s views “gender fascism,” and that term still seems useful, though she combines it with a crude Marxism and anti-Americanism. Who, by the way, killed the child in the photograph? Sheehan suggests that the US did, but that seems unlikely. Most Iraqis killed in this war are killed by other Iraqis of differing branches of Islam using suicide bombers and car bombs. And then there’s al Qaeda in Iraq, a bunch of fanatics from around the world who are eager to kill civilians in Iraq.
March 9, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Say what? Come again? Was I just time warped back about 100 years?
Who are you to tell women, especially women in San Francisco, what it means to “be a woman� To imply that women aren’t really “women†unless they 1) eschew all traits you deem ‘masculine’, 2) look at politics only through the lens of the impact of political actions on children, 3) showing unconditional love for ‘all earth’s creatures, etc. is to buy into a very narrow and sexist view of femininity (not to mention the reverse-sexism of implying that men are inherently violent power-mongers).
Not all women have the same values as you. So go ahead and take them to task on those values, but leave out the ridiculous (and dated) accusation that they are not living up to the expectations of their sex. This view is partially to blame for keeping women out of American politics for centuries, and its extremely disturbing that we’re still perpetuating this view today, especially here in one of the most progressive cities in the nation.