For Women's History Month - Women's History of Peace

[proud2BlibKansan]

Peace Work/Piece Work -- Women's History of Peace
Presentation Given as Part of Women's History Celebration
Dominican University, San Rafael California
March 24, 2003

by Mary Ann Maggiore



I do peace work. I organize groups against war. My grandmother did a different kind of "piece work". She sewed buttons on dresses in a factory. A penny a button, 1200 buttons a week for $12.00. She supported a family of four. She was a proud card carrying member of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Because she did what she did, I have the privilege to do what I do.

I see clearly that I stand upon the shoulders of the women, including my grandmother, who went before me. Tonight I want to give a salute to some of them.

I want to first give a shout out to Eve - the mother of so many. They say she messed things up but I say she made things much more clear. And I am all for that. I'd rather have the pain of childbirth and my own free will than no pain and a drugged out Paradise governed by two over-controlling men.

<skip>

I thank the 14-year-old girls who made the clothes I wear tonight. The sweat shops workers I will never see who have toiled to create my clothing so that they could receive $1.15 and live in a cage like an animal and will never see even a portion of the millions of dollars women's clothing stores receive -building profit out of their labor and their agony. I see these children and I hear them. I give voice now to their history and I work for their victory.

I seek also a new victory for the young. Not a victory of guns and smart bombs but a victory of compassion, of healthy food and clean water, of games, and laughter and delight. I call for the end of the disparagement of the lives of children that war insists upon. 50% of all the people in Iraq are under the age of 15. When our forces of violence seek to destroy this nation, they seek to destroy these young. I cry for their suffering because as a woman, as well as a mother, every child, in every city and village is historically mine.

---------------

Women's History is my mother and your mother. My sister, your sister. Women's history is distant women in books and rumors of courage heard on the wind. Women's history is in every tale of magic, and regeneration and creativity. Women's history is my grandmother and her piece work. Your grandmother's labor in some one else's field or someone else's restaurant. Women's history is the story of chambermaids and cashiers, scientists and sex workers. All these women are in you. All these women are in me. Just as Rosa Parks is in me. And you are in me. I am now in your history and you are now in mine. We carry this within, all this movement, this struggle, this churning, this triumph, this celebration. Women's history is within all of us. We are all testaments to the past. We are all potential advocates of the future. Don't wait. Climb up and look ahead. Don't hesitate to give voice as others have. Don't think only of yourself and of your life; think of all the lives within you, both of the dead and of those yet to be born. The women of the past gave you the gift of freedom. Take it and enlarge upon it for all people. It is yours and you have a right to claim the past and to use it.

So the next time someone asks you "What is women's history?" Say, "I am Women's History." And believe it.

A former writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Mary Ann Maggiore is a peace organizer and history professor in Marin County, California. Her e-mail address is [e-mail]

Copyright Mary Ann Maggiore, 2003


http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0326-01.htm

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. kick

[Cerridwen]

2. Kick and recommend.

"I see clearly that I stand upon the shoulders of the women, including my grandmother, who went before me. Tonight I want to give a salute to some of them."