The Best Quotes From The Women's Strike Manifesto

If you were aware of the massive Women's March on Washington last month, or supported it, or actually personally attended it, you know full well just how much activist fervor is in the progressive grassroots movement right now, especially among women. That energy is now being channeled into another day of demonstration, albeit of a different sort ― there's a planned women's strike in the works for next month. And, as an intersectional collection of activists and academics wrote in a recent op-ed, it's being organized in order to protest "against male violence and in defense of reproductive rights."

Last week, a Guardian op-ed by a host of prominent voices ― Linda Martín Alcoff, Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, Nancy Fraser, Barbara Ransby, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Rasmea Yousef Odeh, and Angela Davis, to be specific ― made that point very clear. They called for public opposition not just to Trump, but also to "anti-labor" neoliberal policies and corporate globalization, things commonly criticized by the progressive left.

In fact, if you're looking to get a sense of what the strike will be all about and whether you'd be interested in participating, checking out that call to action is a good way to start. In that spirit, here are seven of the most spot-on quotes from the op-ed.

1. "It Is Not Enough To Oppose Trump"

In our view, it is not enough to oppose Trump and his aggressively misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic and racist policies. We also need to target the ongoing neoliberal attack on social provision and labor rights.

2. "Women's Conditions Of Life"

Women's conditions of life, especially those of women of color and of working, unemployed and migrant women, have steadily deteriorated over the last 30 years, thanks to financialization and corporate globalization.

3. Feminism For The 99 Percent

Lean-in feminism and other variants of corporate feminism have failed the overwhelming majority of us, who do not have access to individual self-promotion and advancement and whose conditions of life can be improved only through policies that defend social reproduction, secure reproductive justice and guarantee labor rights. As we see it, the new wave of women's mobilization must address all these concerns in a frontal way. It must be a feminism for the 99%.

4. "The Idea Is To Mobilize Women"

The idea is to mobilize women, including trans women, and all who support them in an international day of struggle – a day of striking, marching, blocking roads, bridges, and squares, abstaining from domestic, care and sex work, boycotting, calling out misogynistic politicians and companies, striking in educational institutions.

5. Defining "Violence Against Women"

Violence against women, as [Argentinian protest movement Ni Una Menos] define it, has many facets: it is domestic violence, but also the violence of the market, of debt, of capitalist property relations, and of the state; the violence of discriminatory policies against lesbian, trans and queer women; the violence of state criminalization of migratory movements; the violence of mass incarceration; and the institutional violence against women's bodies through abortion bans and lack of access to free healthcare and free abortion.

6. "It Is Important Not To Lose Momentum"

The women's marches of 21 January have shown that in the United States, too, a new feminist movement may be in the making. It is important not to lose momentum.

7. "Let Us Join Together"

Let us join together on 8 March to strike, walk out, march and demonstrate. Let us use the occasion of this international day of action to be done with lean-in feminism and to build in its place a feminism for the 99%, a grassroots, anti-capitalist feminism – a feminism in solidarity with working women, their families and their allies throughout the world.

In these seven excerpts from the op-ed, you get a vividly clear indication of what the strike's been envisioned as, and therefore, whether it's something you want to be a part of. It's undeniably a more anti-capitalist vision than the Women's March was, and that's to be expected ― the very concept of holding a massive strike is ripped from the pages of socialist labor movements, and is intended to demonstrate and reassert the power workers have over the mechanisms of capitalist systems.

The organizers of the Women's March are on board with this latest day of demonstration, too ― the march's official Twitter account signal-boosted the strike earlier this month, and a Facebook post from the group this week has furthered the call for action. In short, if you have the wherewithal and you share the ideals behind the strike, this is yet another opportunity to make a show of solidarity.