The BFC unites with the WMW's demands for international structural changes that will change women's lived conditions globally, including ending neo-liberal structural adjustment programs and cutbacks in public services, and the cancellation of the debt of all Third World countries. The U.S. organizers of the WMW have focused on the universality of women's oppression and have proposed three general demands: "(a) eliminate poverty and ensure a fair distribution of the planet's wealth between rich and poor, and between women and men; (b) eliminate violence against women; and (c) ensure equality between women and men." The BFC supports these general demands. However, we also believe the general U.S. demands fail to capture the racial and national complexities of women's oppression.

The primary assumption underlying the three core U.S. demands is that women suffer similarly, regardless of class, race, nationality, and sexual identity. Yet, there exist significant power differences among these social and economic groups. Liberation for all women demands that we address the unique and intersecting oppressions of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and nationality. Complete liberation also requires a fundamental social and economic transformation of our society.

The oppression of Black women in the U.S. is linked to the oppression of our sisters around the world, and to our Black male counterparts. A significant number of Black women are victims/survivors of male violence, and this type of violence must be eliminated. Male violence is among the various forms of violence Black women in the U.S. face and resist. Many Black women and men live together in communities that all too often are ravaged by poverty, substandard housing, and environmental hazards. Many of us are locked into dead end jobs that don't pay a livable wage, and attend substandard schools. We are subjected to similar structural policies that reinforce our multiple oppressions, such as drug laws and legislative and judicial practices that disproportionately send Black women and men to prison, health care procedures that ignore and/or reinforce race-gender health disparities, and educational policies resulting in the subeducation of our children.

The BFC asserts that Black women's oppression in the U.S. is multiply determined by the intersection of four broad internal and global structures: (a) globalization or global capitalism, an emerging social structure that pushes increased privatization and attempts to erode the public sector; (b) patriarchy and sexism, the beliefs of male superiority and female inferiority and the institutional subordination of women; (c) white supremacy, the beliefs of white superiority and people of color inferiority and the corresponding institutional discrimination; and (d) homophobia and heterosexism, the beliefs of heterosexual superiority and normalcy, and institutional discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people. These ideological and structural forms of oppression interact to shape our lived experiences, and explain the disadvantaged social position of Black women in the U.S. For example:

-- Within our political economic structure, work (paid and unpaid) is both "raced" and "gendered," such that poor and working class Black women are often relegated to low paying jobs, and/or left out of the paid job market altogether. Poor and working class Black women are disproportionately impacted by the erosion of welfare and the loss of an economic safety net for the U.S.'s poorest people.

-- Poor and working class Black women in the U.S. are grossly over-represented in the prison system. They account for approximately 12 percent of the general female population, but are over 50 percent of the women's prison population. Since the implementation of the "war on drugs" in the mid-1980s, Black women's drug offense incarceration rate has risen over 800 percent.

-- In addition to state violence against Black women in U.S. prisons, Black women also face sexual abuse and domestic violence which is shaped by class and patriarchal structures. Poor women, in general, are four times more likely to be victims/survivors of sexual violence. The stereotypes of Black women as sexually loose has served to justify sexual violence against us and has played a negative role in how Black survivors are treated within health facilities and by the courts.

-- One of the most egregious manifestations of globalization in the U.S. is the link between the rising funding disparities between prisons and public education; the majority of states in the U.S. spend nearly 10 times more on prisons than on early education, and schools servicing urban Black girls
and boys carry the brunt of the cut-backs.

-- The intersection of class, gender, and social oppression has had a devastating impact on Black women's health in the U.S. Black women are more than twice as likely to develop certain chronic and disabling health conditions compared to white women (e.g., lupus and heart disease) and/or are significantly more likely to die from diseases such as breast cancer. Nearly 25 percent of reported AIDS cases are women, and Black women are approximately 63 percent of these cases.

In the spirit of the WMW, the BFC of the Black Radical Congress unites around collective efforts to bring about structural changes in our world -- changes that will help to eradicate the disgraceful economic exploitation of workers and to eliminate the multiple forms of oppression confronting
women. We also offer the following demands that target the interlocking structures that serve to oppress Black women in the United States.

The BFC adds these additional demands to the WMW:

INCREASE ECONOMIC SECURITY

1. Institutionalize a national living wage;

2. Institutionalize public policy to ensure an economic safety net for poor women, men and children, including dismantling the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996;

END ALL FORMS OF MISOGYNIST AND PATRIARCHAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

3. Eliminate cultures of tolerance towards violence against women and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered peoples;

4. End independent, cultural, and corporate-supported bigotry and defamation of women in music, television, film, the internet, etc.

END HETEROSEXIST AND HOMOPHOBIC BIAS AGAINST LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDERED PEOPLES

6. Challenge the discrimination of non-traditional families.

7. End job, housing, and other forms of heterosexist discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered peoples.

END LEGAL/PRISON INJUSTICES

8. End drug legislation that requires jail time for non-violent drug offenders;

9. End policies that strip incarcerated mothers of their parental rights.

10. Revoke Resolution HR 254 and make sure that the United States keeps its hands off of Assata Shakur.

11. Reorient the federal budget expenditures away from U.S. prisons and towards public education;

CREATE QUALITY, UNBIASED EDUCATION

12. Substantially increase funding for public K-16 education, and equalize funding disparities between urban and suburban schools;

13. End practices that disproportionately place poor and working class Black girls and boys in "special" schools and keeps them locked out of gifted and college preparatory classes;

14. Invest in girls' extracurricular activities, including sports teams;

PROMOTE GREATER HEALTH AMONG WOMEN

15. Provide medical insurance to all women, men and children
that includes both prevention and intervention care;

16. Increase research and medical services to better understand and prevent the significant health disparities in Black girls and women (e.g., HIV/AIDS, Lupus, infant mortality).

17. End toxic dumping and other environmental practices in poor, primarily people of color communities.

Black Radical Congress
National Office
Columbia University Station
P.O. Box 250791
New York, NY 10025-1509
Phone: (212) 969-0348
blackradicalcongress@email.com