Call to Participate in the International Women’s Strike on March 8th

Dear colleagues,

In its first weeks, the Trump administration has followed through on its promise to aggressively target vulnerable populations through a series of illegal and inhumane executive orders. Many of the policies of the Trump administration have harmed members within our own university community. As members of this community, we must help build a movement in defense of our most vulnerable colleagues, staff members, and students. The time for organized resistance is now.

A coalition of feminist and women’s groups from over thirty countries has called for an international women’s strike on March 8th. This will be an international day of action by and for working class women, queer, cis and trans women, sex workers, domestic care workers, immigrant women and women of color, against violence and for reproductive rights. As the Argentine coalition Ni Una Menos – one of the main organizers of this international day of protest — writes, violence against women has many facets: it is domestic violence, but also the violence of the market and of debt; the violence of discriminatory policies against lesbian, trans and queer women; the violence of state criminalization of migratory movements; the violence of mass incarceration; the violence against the earth; the violence against native women and their struggles; and the institutional violence against women’s bodies through abortion bans and lack of access to free healthcare and free abortion.

A national social coalition of grassroots groups and collectives, political, feminist and labor organizations, and individuals, has called for a women’s strike in the United States on March 8th, in solidarity with the women on struggle around the world, against Trump’s administration, but also against the neoliberal policies that have caused his election and that are causing a new wave of authoritarianism in Europe. In that day there will be marches, actions of civil disobedience, picket lines, workplace strikes, strikes from housework, care work, and gender roles, boycotts, teach-ins in several US cities, together and in solidarity with thousands of women mobilizing around the world.

We ask that you sign the New School petition in support of the Women’s Strike and that you cancel your classes on March 8th. You can promote alternative forms of engagement with students to respect the cost burden, consider connecting course plans with movement themes or participate with your class in the activities that will take place in New York City and at the New School in support of this great international protest.

Cinzia Arruzza (NSSR and Lang)

Chiara Bottici (NSSR and Lang)

Margot Bouman (Parsons, Lang and GCGS)

Alice Crary (NSSR, Lang and GCGS)

Julia Foulkes (SPE)

Nancy Fraser (NSSR and Lang)

Laura Y. Liu (Lang)

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela (Lang)

Julia Ott (NSSR and Lang)

Claire Potter (SPE and the Digital Humanities Initiative)

Lisa Rubin (NSSR and SPE)

Rachel Sherman (NSSR and Lang)