November 25th is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women!
The day goes back to three Dominican sisters and activists: Patria, Minerva, and María Teresa Mirabal, who bravely stood up against the Trujillo dictatorship — and were murdered today, 65 years ago.
Feminists from Abya Yala (a decolonial self-designation for Latin American regions) turned this day into one of remembrance and resistance. It was only due to their pressure that the UN was forced to officially recognize November 25th.
Violence against us is not an isolated problem:
Its root lies in a historically grown order based on patriarchy, colonialism, and class systems, kept alive only through oppression.
This oppression is omnipresent:
female, queer — especially racialized — bodies are economically exploited, politically controlled, and rendered invisible in society.
Whether femicides, sexualized violence (used as a weapon of war), restrictions on reproductive rights, state violence at borders and in camps, the disappearance of Indigenous women, the exploitation of migrant workers, the disenfranchisement of queer bodies, or the appropriation of land and life — all these forms of violence express the very same order.
Violence keeps us dependent, makes us small, and separates us from one another — thereby stabilizing the very conditions that produce this violence.
Yet we are not isolated; our struggles are interconnected!
From Germany to Abya Yala, Kurdistan, Sudan, Palestine, India, and Turtle Island — everywhere FLINTA* resist, organize, and break the silence that this system depends on to survive.
Together we fight for feminist, international solidarity.
Against violence, for life!
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