Our Health Series: From struggles for safe staffing to self-managed health

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Our health series is out and has taken on questions from health care reform to workers struggles for better conditions and a liberatory system of health. We interviewed a nurse active in the movement for safe staffing in the US, and a network of health workers in New Zealand about their organizing and recent strikes. During a month of struggles around gender, we published a translation of an article on health and gender by anarchist leader and medical student Melissa Sepúlveda Alvarado in Chile. In a field that has traditionally been defined by largely defensive struggle, we put forward strategy and an alternative vision that goes beyond universal public health systems within capitalism. The first came from the perspective of the United States by one our editors S Nicholas Nappalos, and the second by Pedro Heraklio is from Spain within the context of a threatened public system. This series unfortunately will be our last for the foreseeable future. The priorities and situations for our… Read More

Health and Patriarchy

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Medicine is draped in the language of commerce and science that hide the social forces that sustain and shape health in society. Gender is particularly central both to the experience of health industries and in the sustenance and production of health. Our contribution today comes from Melissa Sepúlveda Alvarado, a Chilean medical student and anarchist organizer. Her argument shows not only how patriarchy shapes health, but also how medicine reproduces patriarchy itself. Read More

Being a Woman Organizer Isn’t Easy

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A mural image showing (left) A member of the IWW or “Wobblies” trying to organize the Maine woodsmen and The Textile Workers and a mural image depicting (right) Young women were often sent to the mills by their families, who could not, or would not support them. REUTERS/Judy Taylor/Handout March was International Women’s Day and the IWW celebrated it with a special issue of the Industrial Worker. It’s worth reading the whole thing via the Industrial Worker here and you can get a subscription via this link if you want to support it and see more writings like that. Much of the time discussions around organizing center on what keeps us from winning or building the union up to those fights. There’s less discussion around things that prevent workers from becoming their own radical agents, particularly in gendered terms. The article we’re running today comes from Miami, Florida and was published in the Industrial Worker. It’s a personal account of one organizer’s journey to becoming a committed IWW, and how she has seen race and gender play a role in her life. Though only one snapshot of these big issues, contributions like this give us a window into deep forces at play in our work and neighborhood lives, and are things we hope IWWs can continue thinking around and fighting for an alternative.  from Luz Sierra This past year I became politically active. I went from being completely unaware of the existence of radical politics to doing organizing work in Miami with an anarchist perspective. It has been both a rewarding and difficult journey, yet gender seems to haunt me wherever I go. I am probably not the first woman to experience this, but I believe that I should demonstrate how this is a real issue and provide my personal insight for other women to have a reference point for their own struggles. Read More