Mums! Learning and sharing stories, struggles and solidarity

SAT 6 OCT; 3.30PM-6PM // FREE & OPEN TO ALL AT TURF

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As part of exhibition MOTHERS, join us to learn about, explore and discuss the Wages for Housework movement and its relevance and application now for mothers and women in London.

We’ll start by reading a short excerpt about the 1970s campaign Wages for Housework from Silvia Federici’s Revolution Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction and Feminist Struggle (2012) and watching a film excerpt from Federici’s archive. We’ll then look at texts from campaigns that extend and expand upon Wages for Housework for application today: Global Women’s Strike and Plan C/Women’s Strike, both London-based.

The reading group will be an accessible introduction to struggles new and old and an opportunity to share stories and ideas about being a Mum in London today. Members of Global Women’s Strike and Plan C/Women’s Strike will attend.

All members of the Croydon community and beyond are warmly welcome!

Excerpts we’ll be exploring:

– Silvia Federici, Revolution Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction and Feminist Struggle (Brooklyn, NYC: Autonomedia, 2012), bringing together 40 years of material on the nature of housework, social reproduction and women’s struggles on this terrain.

– A film from the Wages for Housework archive (NYC: Wages for Housework Committee/Barbara Silverman, 1976.) shown with permission from Silvia Federici/Autonomedia. The film is a tape Emanuel Almborg, who is participating in the show, digitised for Silvia Federici and Autonomedia a few years ago. The clip is an interview made by WfH activists in New York in the 70s, recorded at the WfH office.

– All Work and No Pay (1976), a BBC Open Door public access film made by the UK Wages for Housework Campaign group. It includes vox pop interviews with grassroots women, including women of colour, by Selma James (co-founder of WfH)

– Nina Lopez, The Perspective of Caring: Why Mothers and All Carers Should Get a Living Wage for their Caring Work, pamphlet (London: Global Women’s Strike, 2016)

– What the Fuck is Social Reproduction? 

– A short introduction to the idea of social reproduction and what it means for those organising in, against and beyond capitalism. Made for Plan C, a UK based communist organisation.

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Detail ‘Perspective of Caring’ pamphlet, Nina Lopez