To Organise Is to Start to Prevail

Coco Guzmán, Syndicalist Feminisms, 2022. Digital drawing 
 

At the end of 2020, La Laboratoria. Espacios de Investigación Feminista and Museo en Red organised the encounter The Syndicalist Feminism to Come. We Are All Workers in the Museo Reina Sofía. Its aim was to reflect on the notion of syndicalist feminism and thus vindicate the dynamism of new emerging struggles that pick up tools from the labour movement (strikes and strike funds), moving out in at least two directions. On one side, these new forms of syndicalism formulate and combat the way in which axes from a system of domination — patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism — are interwoven; and, on the other, they hold protests that transcend a strictly labour-based field, highlighting even more oppressive ways of extracting value and extending beyond the exploitation of work as debt, sexual violence, immigration laws or the dismantling of public services. These new struggles, with the prominence of women and gender-dissident people, place the defence of life and joy at the centre amidst an advancing context of the devastation of bodies and territories. 

The first encounter saw a wide array of Spanish and Moroccan collectives participate and share their experiences of collective organisation in highly precarious living conditions. This second set of workshops seeks to weave alliances between these and other lived experiences, not only casting light on the difficulties faced and calling for change from institutions, but also backing rebellion and thinking jointly about strategies and forms of action which are up to the task of current challenges in a present laced with uncertainty but also full of hope. 
  
These sessions set out from the idea that a feminism with the will for transformation must prioritise the most oppressed and violated needs, giving precedence to those who sustain the reproduction of life with their work. A feminism that is truly transformative must place the material conditions of existence at the centre and be able to build syndicalism based on stable networks of mutual support, politicising individual problems and allowing struggles to connect, and at the same time intersecting racial, gender and class oppression. Consequently, this encounter recovers the slogan of Constanza Cisneros, a participant in the first sessions: “To organise is to start to prevail”.

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Houda Akrikrez is a member of the cultural association Tabadol de la Cañada Real (Madrid), which has seen women spearhead a major mobilisation as a result of the electricity supply being cut off since 2020 and which has also led to stereotypes and stigma on the city’s most impoverished area being tackled and broken down.    

Antonia Ávalos is a member of the Mujeres Supervivientes de Violencias de Género (Survivors of Gender Violence) project developed in Seville, which welcomes and supports women who have experienced this form of violence but from a devictimising perspective and with integral support and in accordance with their needs. 

Olaia Bilbao González is a trade union representative for the Struggles of Female Cleaning Workers from the Lab trade union in Bilbao. 

Cristina Burneo Salazar belongs to the women’s movement of Ecuador and the collective Corredores migratorios. She is a writer, translator, teacher and advocate at the Popular School for human mobility rights in Ecuador.    

Yelena Cvejic and Marcela Puig are part of the Nodo de producción de Carabanchel (Production Hub of Carabanchel, Madrid), a project which assembles different production lines and means of collective production (carpentry, cooking, beer, dressmaking, graphic art, audiovisuals…) open to the Carabanchel neighbourhood. 

Juana Cuenca and Heidy Mieles are part of Mujeres de Frente (Women Head-on), a community of cooperation against punishment and for care in Quito, Ecuador, and made up of female prisoners, former prisoners, prisoners’ families, independent street traders, urban waste recyclers, salaried female workers paid by the job, students, teachers, children and teenagers.    

Mar Coloma is a nurse at Hospital Ramón y Cajal. 

Pastora Filigrana works in Abogadas Sociedad Cooperativa Andaluza (The Andalusian Cooperative of Women Lawyers) and is a human rights activist. She is the author of El pueblo gitano contra el sistema-mundo (Akal, 2021). 

Beatriz García Dorado and Julia Tabernero are part of La Laboratoria. Espacios de Investigación Feminista (La Laboratoria. Spaces of Feminist Research). 

Alba Gràcia participates in the Assemblea d'Afectades pel Masclisme i el Patriarcat (AAMAS) and the Red de estructuras comunitarias y colectivas de Manresa (the Manresa Network of Community and Collective Structures, Catalonia), a community framework based on mutual support and mass empowerment. 

Emmanuelle Hellio is a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and a member of the Collective in Defence of Farm Workers (CODETRAS) from Marseille. 

Mónica Lencina is a streetwalker, feminist and activist for sex workers’ rights from Argentina. She is also general secretary of the Association of Female Prostitutes from Argentina (AMMAR), from the San Juan province. 

Eugenia Monroy is a secondary school teacher in a state school and a feminist activist specialised in affective-sexual diversity and gender. 

Ninfa is a streetwalker in the Villaverde industrial estate in Madrid. She is part of the Feminist Association of Sex Workers (AFEMTRAS) and secretary of Identities for the Sex Workers Organisation labour union (OTRAS).   

Rafaela Pimentel is an activist in the sphere of feminism and domestic work who received the Avanzadoras Award in 2018. Her work with feminist movements and women’s movements began in her country of origin, the Dominican Republic, and she has continued to be involved in activism since arriving in Spain in 1992. Today, she is part of Territorio Doméstico, a collective in which domestic workers organise and assemble to assert their rights. She is also an activist in the 8M Feminist Coordinator and promotes the creation of the Labour Union of Female Domestic and Care Workers (SINTRAHOCU), the first union of its kind on a state level and registered in October 2020. 
  
Ana Pinto is a day labourer and co-founder of Jornaleras de Huelva en Lucha (an Association for the Struggles of Female Day Labourers in Huelva), where she articulates anti-racist, feminist and ecological syndicalism.    

Ana Requena Aguilar is a journalist, head editor of Gender in elDiario.es and creator of the blog Micromachismos, for which she has received a number of awards. 

Ana Ruiz Tejada is a food handler in Almería, where she heads a process of syndicalist organisation in a feminised and invisible sector.   

Elena Vidal Martín has been a home help worker since 2004. She is the co-founder and general vice-secretary of the Syndicalist Organisation of Direct Action (OSAD) labour union.

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