Accent of Women Jiselle Hanna

On today’s Accent of Women, a different perspective on the War on Gaza and the October 7 attacks. Combatants for Peace is a grassroots movement of Israelis and Palestinians, working together to end the occupation and bring peace, equality and freedom to the are we call Palestine but others call Israel. Committed to joint nonviolence since their inception, Combatants for Peace uses civil resistance, education and other creative means of activism to transform systems of oppression and build a free and peaceful future from the ground up.  Launched in 2006, Combatants for Peace is the only movement worldwide that was founded by former fighters on both sides of an active conflict. As a result, they were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 and 2018.Iris Gur is an activist from Combatants for Peace. She is Israeli, and she starts here by discussing how she was first politicised, and how she came to join the peace movement.

Two years on from the Supreme Court’s ruling in the United States that overturned the historic decision on abortion rights in the famous case called Roe v Wade, and abortions are predictably the most inaccessible they’ve been. The National Mobilzation for Reproductive Justice has been spearheading a campaign to get unions behind the fight for reproductive justice against the far right's relentless onslaught. To mark the 2nd anniversary of the Supreme Court decision on June 24, National Mobilzation for Reproductive Justice will hold a press conference in Washington DC, outside AFL-CIO headquarters, to deliver an open letter signed by 600 unions, union groups and members to the AFL-CIO, which calls on the AFL-CIO to convene a national union conference to strategise for a national fightback for reproductive rights. Today's guest is Nancy Reiko Kato, Japanese American feminist, socialist and organiser with National Mobilzation for Reproductive Justice.

On today’s show, we feature Maiy Aziz from Everybody’s Home, a national campaign to fix the housing crisis. Everybody’s Home was launched in 2018 by a coalition of housing, homelessness and welfare organisations to achieve the change needed so everybody has a safe and decent place to live.But first up, a reminder that there’s still a Genocide in Gaza. Rihab Charida - a Palestinian Film Maker speaking at a recent Belmore Park, Sydney event for Palestine.

On today’s show, we head down to one of the Stop the Ports Rallies held across Australia by Trade Unionists for Palestine to highlight the need for Australia to cease aiding and abetting the war on Palestine. In Melbourne, Victoria, trade unionists and community members gathered first at station pier then marched along the foreshore to Sandridge Beach, with the cranes of webb dock clearly in sight. The purpose of the co-ordinated nationwide action was to highlight again that maritime trade is strategic in the war on Gaza, and that workers everywhere, do indeed have the power to grind everything to a halt.Today’s guests are Reem Yunis and Mai Saif.

On the 29 April this year, our comrades in Bangladesh organised an international meeting called From Local to Global: Struggle and Solidarity. The purpose of the meeting was to talk about international organising and solidarity, in the context of major international workers events such as International Workers Memorial Day, International Working Women’s Day and of course May Day.The speakers today are Dina Siddiqi,  Linda Gomaa, Nafisa Nipun Tanjeem.

Today’s Accent of Women commemorates May Day – International Workers Day on 1 May every year. The Second International designated International Workers’ Day be 1 May every year, in 1889. The date was chosen to commemorate the Haymarket Affair, a violent confrontation between police and labour protesters in Chicago on May 4, 1886, that became a symbol of the international struggle for workers’ rights. The strike at Haymarket in 1886 was about a national campaign to secure an eight-hour workday. May Day is a day of protest and action, right across the world, and this year Palestine was a major theme everywhere. On today’s Accent of Women, I bring you four speeches delivered at the May Day rally in Melbourne, Victoria – on a very frosty autumn evening.