Tuesday, July 29, 2014

women's strike in Italy - debate in Wien Austria

With reference to the historical women strike which took place in Italy on 25th of november 2013 we were invited to Wien by a group of lesbians an feminists who were, so they said, very impressed by the strike.
A small group.of italian comrades, some belonging to mfpr, went to Wien on 14 and 15 of June.
On saturday morning a demonstration was organized in a very popular area of the town where a lot of migrants live. The demonstration was near an open market and there we had the first meeting with distribution of various pamphlets and so on.
There were also banners, photographs and music and we made a presentation of the strike, the topics on the basis of which it was organized: a women strike against violence, femminicidi but also considering the conditipn of women on the whole.
In the same evening there was a public meetic in a place occupied 29years ago Autonomen Frauen Lesbian Zentrum a very big selforganized place consisting of two floors where various activities take place: information for migrsnt women, courses to learn German, help for papers, various laboratories and a gymnasium for 5 courses of wendo.
The women there had organized in this year different demonstrations in particular the 8th of March with the participation of about 400 women. They also organized demonstrations at the houses of rapists and against pornographic exhibitions.
How and why the strike was organized in Italy has been very interesting for them and we made a continuous effort in comparing the situation in Austria and in Italy in order to understand if it will be ever possible to have a similar strike in Austria.
Obviously the negative role of socialdemocracy and the strict connection among parties and trade unions made them say very often: "but here it will not be possible" also due to the weakness of the "left". We must also consider the present situation of the comrades in Austria where there is no welfare state any more and wages are becoming worse and worse.
These women do a lot of political work but it seemed to us in a narrow environment of militants.
They were very impressed by our report about the strike most of all due to the big number of women who took part. At that point of the meeting we had an ovation.
We tried to explain the difficult points we had to face, the struggles among the different political points of view stsrting from the demonstration.in Rome on the 6th of July and explaining the two meetings of18th and 19th of October.
They were fascinated. One of them said :"I envy you for this strike." She focused also on equal opportunities and the lies on violence said through the mass media. They asked how did the mass media react in Italy.
Than after the meeting the discussion went on on abortion, on the attacks to the right of women to have abortion in both countries, on the role of Vaticano, they worried for the small interest of feminists on this topic in Wien.
In the same afternoon there had been the gay pride parade with the presence of catholics against the parade.
Questions concerned the modalities of the strike, communication among women, the real problems, the response of political parties. Then the video of the attack to the stage in Rome was projected.
We found the meeting very interesting and also a bit tiring for the necessary translation which made everything heavier and because the translater did not know the topics we were discussing and also we had so many topics to discuss in such a short time.
Fortunately we left copies of the translated dossier.
At the end of the evening they said they were very impressed and that the discussion had been very important also to focus on new thoughts and new things.
One of the feminists there said she didn't hear talking of class struggle and proletariat for 15 years.
The ones who brought the Italian women strike to Wien.

No comments:

Post a Comment