Description

Global Women’s Strike organizers Selma James & Nina Lopez will discuss the thesis of Ralph Ibbot’s book Ujamaa: The Hidden Story of Tanzania’s Socialist Villages, which they co-edited, as it relates to the international women’s movement.

In 1960s Tanzania the Ruvuma Development Association (RDA) was created in 17 self-governing villages working the land communally. Men, women and children together organized production, distribution, housing, education, childcare, healthcare, without recourse to foreign loans. A response to President Nyerere call for ujamaa, or African socialism, RDA illustrated the interconnection between ending the subordination of women and developing a caring, independent society that is capable of bypassing capitalism.

NINA LOPEZ is originally from from Argentina and coordinates the Global Women’s Strike (GWS) in Latin America. She is now based in London where she is part of the GWS Haiti working group, founder of Legal Action for Women, and works with the English Collective of Prostitutes.

SELMA JAMES was a founder of the Wages for Housework Campaign in 1972, and a member of the Johnson Forest Tendency with her husband and comrade CLR James. She now coordinates the Global Women’s Strike (GWS) and has recently published a book detailing her political theory called Sex, Race and Class: The Perspective of Winning.