Wednesday 2 February 2022,
5-6pm (online)
Occasionally, a person comes along whose experience, analysis and sheer fighting passion shift the way we think about the deepest systems of power. When they do, they are a gift without equal because they create new space to imagine a different, better way of living. Selma James is one of those people.
Selma James was last year’s winner of the SMK Long Term Achievement Award, for her antisexist, antiracist campaigning. For over sixty years, she has organised from the perspective of unwaged women who, with their biological and caring work, reproduce the whole human race—whatever else they do. This work goes on almost unnoticed everywhere, in every culture. It is not prioritized economically, politically, or socially, and women are discriminated against and impoverished for doing it.
In 1972 she put forward Wages for Housework (WFH) as a demand and a political perspective that redefined the working class. The International WFH Campaign she founded coordinates the Global Women’s Strike. She coined the word “unwaged,” which incorporates all workers without wages.
Now, she makes the powerful argument that the struggle for climate justice can draw on all the movements people have formed to refuse exploitation. There is one continuum between the care and protection of people and of the planet.
Our Time Is Now: Sex, Race, Class, and Caring for People and Planet, is a new book that compiles several decades of James’s work.
It includes the unusual history of how autonomous organizations formed within the International Wages for Housework Campaign and reshaped it. Women of colour, queer women, sex workers, women with disabilities – each independent but mutually accountable (including to the men’s network with whom they work) as they confront sexism, racism, deportation, rape, and other violence.
Tickets: £10 (£5 unwaged or students)
We are also able to offer a limited number of bursary places for people on low incomes. Email [email protected] if you would like to apply for one.