Version imprimableWe are the tide that flooded the streets of Rome on the last 26th of November. We are the ones that on the 8th of March built the first global women’s strike together, along with the women from all the world, from Poland to Argentina, from the United States to Turkey, from Spain to Brazil. On the next 25th of November we shall flood the streets of Rome once again, to send out a clear message: we shall not stop until we are free from male and gender violence in all its types and forms.
Throughout one year of mobilizations, campaigns, national and thematic assemblies, networking feminist knowledge and experience, we have written a Feminist Plan Against Male and Gender Violence, a tool for struggle and claim, a document of proposal and action that we shall take to the streets on the 25th of November. A political and feminist document that considers male and gender violence a systemic and structural phenomenon, that cannot be faced by increasing penalties and sentences or with an emergency based approach, but by starting from the experience of the anti-violence centers and from the feminist movement. In order to contrast male and gender violence in its complexity, we don’t want more police on the roads, nor assistance, we want autonomy, freedom and social justice!
To fight against male and gender violence means to challenge the culture and the social relations that sustain it. We don’t need tutors or guardians, we are not victims and we have not been asking for it. We fight for a structural change, starting from schools, work, health, administration of justice and the media, we demand for respect of our paths of freedom and self-determination and of our independence. For this reason we demand for means and resources for our self-determination and in order to choose for our own lives.
The Plan is our program of struggle against the violence of patriarchy and capitalism. The rapes and feminicides we witness on a daily basis shall not stop us. We shall not stop until we obtain freedom from the sexist violence we live in our workplaces, from harassment, from discrimination and abuse of power, but also from the daily one of exploitation and precariousness. We shall not stop until we are free from the violence we live when budget cuts made by the national and European governments impoverish our lives and attack anti-violence centers and our autonomy. We shall not stop until we are not free from violence on social media and newspapers, that either blame us or victimize and silence us.
We shall not stop until we are free from the racism of institutions and boundaries, until rapes shall stop being manipulated to justify racism in the name of women. We shall not stop until institutional measures that expose migrant women to daily violence in refugee camps shall be abolished. Cases such as the bilateral agreements with Libya and Turkey, and the ones, such as the Minniti laws, that assault migrants, prostitutes and transsexual women in the name of an unacceptable “decency”.
We shall flood public space to state the determination of our claims, of our daily practice of change, mutualism and solidarity: the strength of thousands of women, trans and queer united that recognize themselves in #Metoo, in order to transform it into #WeTogether.
We shall be in the streets to fight for our autonomy. We want freedom of movement in our city and across our borders, the power to decide on our own lives in hospitals, in court rooms, to choose our own destiny outside from the roles that are imposed on us. We want an income of self determination, a European minimum wage, welfare and rights, in order to be free to choose on our bodies and lives.
We shall not stop: we have a Plan!
7 November 2017
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