The Global Women’s Strike and the new Crossroads Women’s Center in Philadelphia will be hosting a multiracial history-making gathering on June 9-11, 2023. This is a rare and exciting opportunity for women and all genders from Philadelphia and across the US, including Indigenous nations, as well as from Canada, England, India, Ireland, Haiti, Malaysia, Peru, Scotland, Thailand, and more, to come together to build and consolidate the movement against poverty which in the US and around the world disproportionately impacts women and children.
Panels and workshop range across movements, including the Climate crisis, child welfare system abuses, criminalization, international solidarity, and unity in autonomy.
Friday, June 9, will feature a workshop: How nature regulates the Climate and how natural farming can help, with author and soil strategist Didi Pershouse, founder of the Land and Leadership Initiative based in Vermont. Also, the experiences of women farmers in self-help groups in Andra Pradesh, India, the work and challenges of urban farmers in Philadelphia and elsewhere, other defenders of the natural world, and lessons we can learn from their work.
Friday evening will be the grand opening of Cross- roads Women’s Center in Philadelphia. It will also celebrate 51 years of organizing the Wages for Housework Campaign, which coordinates the Global Women’s Strike, featuring London-based founder and coordinator Selma James. Also featured will be Margaret Prescod, an immigrant to the US from Barbados and host of “Sojourner Truth,” a national broadcast on Pacifica radio, co-founder of Black Women for Wages for Housework, and coordinator of Women of Color in the Global Women’s Strike.
Saturday and Sunday, June 10-11 will include presentations by Congresswoman Gwen Moore as well as Madame Aristide, the former first lady of Haiti.
There will be four panels, followed by in-depth work- shops:
– Take Away Our Poverty, Not Our Children on organizing to stop child welfare abuses
– End the Criminalization of Poverty and Protest
– Autonomy: central to organizing and unity
– A Care Income a movement whose time has come
on valuing the work of raising children, caring for others and for the natural world, and paying caregivers for that work.
Panelists will include speakers organizing in England, Scotland, Peru, Thailand, and the US, including Indigenous communities, formerly incarcerated women and men, and more, to end poverty, sexism, racism, violence against and criminalization of women; separation of children from families by child welfare; fighting discrimination including against people of color, immigrants, queer/trans people and people with disabilities; food sovereignty; and for financial recognition for unpaid caregiving work, accomplished overwhelmingly by women.
Crossroads Women’s Center, based in the German- town neighborhood of Philadelphia, will host this exciting Gathering. The Center has been an organizing hub for over two decades and celebrates moving into its new larger space at 5011 Wayne Avenue.
This event will be both live and online; participants can register at https://globalwomenstrike.net/end-wom- ens-poverty-2023/
