We all like holidays: Kids get out of school, and adults have a day off. Having a special day gets people to talk and think about the holiday’s subject. But when you get a whole month, there’s no holiday. The government controls what days are holidays, and it carefully avoids the ones that would connect us up to others in the world. Not in the US but in the rest of the entire world, International Women’s Day is March 8, and it is a big holiday. Why not in the U.S.?
International Women’s Day has deep roots in struggle against oppressive working conditions of women. A hundred years ago, in 1911, in a New York sweatshop sewing women’s blouses, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, 146 women were burned to death as a result of locked doors and dangerous conditions. The event sparked the Women’s Day, which began in the U.S., spread to other countries and is now celebrated elsewhere but not here.
We are in a period of great upheaval, where computers and robots eliminate jobs that will never return. The government, firmly in the hands of the corporations, is cutting human services everywhere. Unwilling to tax corporations, they claim there just is no money. Programs helping women and children are easy targets. We can’t just go home and cry when our programs are cut. We must demand corporations bear their fair share and our programs not be cut — food, health care, child care, education, all the things women and children need. Children are our future, and as mothers, we must fights to build a new system for them.
