AN INDEPENDANT GEOPOLITICAL GENDER INFORMATION PROJECT
Tuesday 6 March 2007 by Topics & Roses , Karine Gantin
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Hello,
This occasional weblog "Topics & Roses" aims to gather some articles on contemporary social movements and geopolitical stakes in a feminist and gendered perspective, and also some articles of mine related to that (especially in French), at last some translations of interesting documents. I am a former journalist and former benevolent and ngo assistant, this is how it all went. Sorry for not moderating forums on the articles, but i have tried and got too much spam. Welcome to this virtual world written from France,
Karine Gantin
An information and analysis website
This information project is based on a non racist, non imperialist, non sectarian perspective that is besides compatible with defense of human rights and citizenship. It has a motivated interest for democratic and social fights, for independant thinking and autonomous civic initiatives, and it sees as a valuable condition the multiplicity of exchanges or connections between movements and trends as an essential way to promote debates, new thinking and evolutive analyses in a very troubled international period.
This web resource is meant to be an autonomous information project that reflects the broadest possible strands of opinion within varied movements / campaigns / initiatives promoting greater autonomy of women. It seeks to inform and share different analyses and experiences. It hopes at last to promote a common interest among its visitors for sharing and building clear information, and to contribute by this way in an original manner to intellectual, strategical and political debates of the time.
Responsibilities and Content
For legal mentions about Responsibilities and Content, please consult the French related article.
Where we come from
«As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: "Bread and roses! Bread and roses!"
As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women’s children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
...
As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for — but we fight for roses, too!
...
As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler — ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!»
...
Author: James Oppenheim, December 1911, which attributed his poem to "the women in the West".
More specifically, the expression "bread and roses" is commonly associated with a huge 2-month textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts during January-March 1912, led especially by migrant female workers, and often presented as the "Bread and Roses strike".
The title of this website echoes both to this story and to this poem.
Moreover, beyond our claim for bread and roses, may every topic, if political or geostrategical or whatever, be also ours, with no discriminating consideration from others for what we can add as women and human beings to the current need for renewal of thought and perspective in this changing, fragile world.
At last, the editor of this website remembers that "topic" etymologically relates to the word "place". And that an issue, whatever its universalist value, has to be adequately framed in a local situation, culture, history and geography before being universalized in one way or another...
Shall we associate from now topics and roses as they should have always been.
Karine Gantin
This author's articles
- Scandale des crimes pédophiles dans l’Eglise : une lecture puisant au féminisme peut être utile
- Jihadisme et guerre contre la terreur : quelles réponses des sociétés civiles ?
- Non, la manif’ du 17 octobre 2009 n’est pas unitaire.
- Les nouveaux combats des femmes du Kurdistan irakien
- Féminisme et droits humains universels : une perspective
- [...]
