From El Barrio to La Realidad, Women Lead Struggles to Transform the World Jessica Davies - CIP Americas
go to original July 5, 2014

On May 24, hundreds of members of the Movement for Justice in El Barrio from New York, mostly women of all ages, came together to honor the life and struggle of the murdered Zapatista from La Realidad, “Galeano”. For this event, the prominent Mexican feminist, activist and thinker Sylvia Marcos sent her reflections on Being “Jovena” (a young woman) and Zapatista in La Realidad.

The women of El Barrio and the Zapatista women of La Realidad are two examples of how women in struggle all over the world are coming together to inspire and learn from each other, and how, in the process, women are transforming the world.

The Movement for Justice in El Barrio is a community-based organization, led by immigrant women that works for dignity and social justice and against oppression, gentrification and displacement in El Barrio, New York.

The organization was founded nearly ten years ago by Mexican immigrant mothers, many of them indigenous. They had been displaced from their native land and forced to emigrate, and now found themselves faced with racism, brutal landlords, appalling living conditions, and a constant threat of displacement. These women had never participated in social struggles in Mexico, and they did not speak English. But they started listening to their neighbors and realized that they all shared the same problems, and had the same needs: decent housing, a strong community, justice. The women started to go from door to door, building by building, listening to each other’s problems and thinking together about how they could be solved. They gradually established a base and the Movement for Justice in El Barrio was born.

It is the women who have built the organization. The Movement now has 850 members, in 80 building committees, of whom 80% are female. As immigrants, these women work very long shifts, 6 to 7 days a week, for very low pay, in addition to all the work they have to do at home. Many are mothers raising children.

Despite these heavy demands on their time, they continue to be deeply committed to the struggle against neoliberalism and gentrification, and against the capitalist property owners, multinational corporations and government institutions who seek to displace them from, and destroy their community. Determined, they still manage to make the time to organize with their fellow neighbors and to work to build a strong community base for the organization.

Read the rest at CIP Americas

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!