"Help To Free Our Sisters" Page: 2 of 2
This text is part of the collection entitled: Karen B. Alexander Collection of Protest Literature and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the UNT Libraries Special Collections.
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United States imperialism not only affects the lives and struggles of Vietnamese women. The war affects
us as women here in the following ways:
1. The war causes inflation. Fruit and meat have become luxuries we can no longer afford. Rents are higher,
forcing most of us to spend a large chunk of our income for miserable or cramped living conditions. This is
especially true for women workers who receive 30% - 60% of what men earn. In a family where the womar
a breadwinner (one out of ten U.S. families) this means disaster. Meanwhile it is women who, in their role
housewives, must continually juggle the shrinking family budget and bear the brunt of this impossible situa
2. As the war grinds on unemployment continues to rise, Women and Third World people are its major victims.
When women leave a tight labor market they are generally forced out of the market entirely, or only allowed
back in as domestic or seasonal workers.
3. The war is hardest on non-white women, more of whom support families, are given the lowest paying jobs
and are first fired, last hired. On the average the black woman earns one-half of what her white sister makes,
about one-quarter of what her black brother makes. Politicians try to blame high taxes on welfare and other
aid to the poor, in order to cover up the real reason for high taxes -- the war.
4: The war is an even greater burden on the woman whose husband is forced to go to Vietnam. She must take
sole responsibility for home and children, while living in fear that her husband or son may never return. In a
society which defines-a woman's identity solely with her husband and children, this situation is even more
traumatic. In more than one-quarter of these cases, Third World families are hit hardest.
5. Women have justly demanded control of their own lives -- twenty-four hour community controlled child-care,
adequate health care, access to education, adequate salaries for all socially productive work including housework,
guaranteed annual income. The resources for such programs exist, but the money is being used for the war. And
politicians use the war as an excuse for not instituting these programs.
6. The people that own and rule this country have a stake in controlling thelives of women and in fact all people,
just as they have a stake in controlling the destiny of the Vietnamese people. Vienam is one testing ground for
the techniques of social control.
Struggling for our own liberation means struggling to build a society free of oppression. In order to
realize our goals we will need to support other movements for liberation; we will need to fight against
imperialist, racism and the exploitation of working people.
Marching with our sisters in Atlanta on October 31 is a way of supporting our sisters in Vietnam and
the rest of Southeast Asia.
Sisters in Struggle
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Alexander, Karen B. "Help To Free Our Sisters", text, 197X-10; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1940473/m1/2/?q=%22~1~1%22~1: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.