 to reflect on the introduction of the feminist foreign policy resolution by representatives Frankel, Lee, and Kamlaugher Dove. This bill, although highlights many points of peace and diplomacy, including the necessity for the US to adopt a feminist foreign policy and the support of adoptions that policies that promote gender equality and women's and girls' participation in public life, including education, health care, and economic opportunities. It also includes women's quote unquote equal participation to the military and public office. So I just wanted to take time to reflect on one of our past feminist foreign policy project webinars in which we had the opportunity to be in conversation with Dr. Tithy Bhattachara, an associate professor of the South Asian History Department at Purdue University, where she talked about what a feminist foreign policy looks like to the global South. And she described her feminist foreign policy vision as no feminist bombs, no feminist drones, and no feminist war. Feminist foreign policy does not look like women being put in the positions to push the button and bomb civilians or enact imperialist agendas. Simply by putting women in positions of power does not mean they are going to act in feminist agendas. As Tithy describes, feminist foreign policy does not mean putting women in the power of destructive, imperialist companies, departments, and sectors of society that promote the war economy. This is our midday webinar reflection. And we will continue to hear from global feminist voices while also uplifting online actions that we can be taking in support of IWD and feminist anti-war organizations. As we hear from speakers today, please send your thoughts and reflections and questions you have so far during IWD. If we have time at the end, we will address the chat and we will have a little bit of a discussion at the end. But first, I would love to introduce our first speaker, Sheldra Patel. She is a queer feminist internationalist from Kenya. She is the author of the International Best Seller Migratude, which is currently taught in over 150 colleges and universities worldwide. Her poems have been translated into 17 languages. The Noble Woman's Initiative on her Patel with a global feminist spotlight in 2019. You can follow her on Twitter. Her handle is S-H-A-I-L-J-A-P-A-T-E-L. Take it away. Thank you for spelling that out, Grace. I'm so happy to be here in this feminist space, especially on IWD, when we're seeing all these corporate messages. So I'm going to kick things off with a poem titled, Letter to My Sisters in Love with Soldiers. And I want to thank my friend, Jeff Peterson, who was the first US Marine to refuse to serve in the Gulf for his work, which was a key resource. And I want to thank Stephen Funk, Amy Allison, Camilo Mejia, Erin Watada, and hundreds of other members of the US military who have refused to main murder, rape, and torture on the orders of their government. I beg you not to close your eyes. Do not turn from the faces of women, raped, tortured, beaten, murdered by US soldiers, from Manila to Mombasa, from Baghdad to Bangkok. Do not tell yourself your man is different. Somehow mysteriously absent when they bomb civilian cities, plow living armies into highways of death. Do not buy the deception that he has no other options. Post on your mirror and his, websites and phone numbers of veterans for peace, conscientious objectors, books, not bars, refuse and resist, answer, not in our name, every army battling for freedom and justice right here. Next to it, put a list of what's available to your man that is not to a 16, 26, 46 year old man in Palestine, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Laos, Congo, Haiti. One, a passport, key to the world, an American passport. Two, the right to reside, to build a life that will, likelier than not endure. Three, 48 contiguous states that he can work in, cross borders freely, no visas, checkpoints, barbed wire. Four, the right to earn a living any way he chooses. Five, non-profit agencies, government agencies, billions of dollars of program funding. Six, libraries, seven hospitals, eight, the internet. What would he say now about his lack of options to a 14 year old in Gaza, a nine year old Kalashnikov toting orphan in Liberia? Spit out the myth that you are guardian, safe deposit box for his humanity. Exercise your own humanity. Remember Audre Lorde, this eye is not for weeping, though tears are on my face, it must record everything. Tell him you would not touch a man who shrapneled your sister, bombed the clinic that treats your mother's diabetes, sliced open the water mains to your neighborhood. He cannot do these things across the world, return and reach for you with shaking hands. Tell him you know about R&R for troops, underage girls, barely grown women, shipped in like crates of chilled Budweisers. Tell him you know he will go out on Saturday nights in Freetown, Seoul, Bogota, with exact instructions on how cheap to buy a little brown or yellow fucking machine and what she will take, everything. How in church on Sunday, he will hear that families and girlfriends back home cannot understand the pressures he is under to defend and protect. So it's best not to tell. How he will come to believe it. Make his eyes meet yours. Tell him you have not spent years learning to love your body, only to open it to sperm laden with hidden minefields of dioxins, alpha particles, untested vaccines, waiting to explode a patriotic rainbow of tumors, malformations into the organs, bones and blood of your unborn children. Read the Defense Department's four year study on significantly higher rates of heart and kidney defects in children of Gulf War veterans. Factor skin lesions, breathing problems, incipient blindness, AKA Gulf War syndrome into your dreams of the future. Memorize the names of all 253 byproducts of depleted uranium. Their radioactive half-lives, the cancers attributed to them. You will need this information. Imprint two words on your brain. Fort Bragg. Four women killed by soldier husbands in two weeks. Familiarize yourself with figures on violent assault of military wives and girlfriends. Triple the civilian rate. Know that calls to violent hotlines spike just before deployment, right after men return. Remind yourself that the days women were adjured to be the heart for their men who had bigger work to do out in the world are over. 200 years over. You need all of your heart and he needs all of his. Your hearts have work to do. Thank you. Thank you so much, Shalja. And if people want to write reflections, thoughts, feelings, anything in the chat about that amazing poem that re-inscribes us the meaning of feminism, peace and justice, and how that does not include violence, war and punitive action, we would love to hear your thoughts and reflections both about that and anything else going on on IWD today. But now we are joined by Samantha. Samantha Ware is a Colombian born peace activist. She joined CodePink's Latin America team after years of working alongside Colombian frontline defenders who risked their lives to protect the environment, water sources and human dignity. She is deeply inspired and energized by those building alternative economic and social models rooted in care, reciprocity and solidarity. Samantha has lived in the U.S., Italy, England, Colombia, Chile and Cuba and hopes to connect, expose and mobilize around the impacts the U.S. military industrial complex has at home and abroad. Welcome, Samantha. Thank you, Grace. And thank you for that beautiful poem. It was so powerful, just so spot on. I just want to, yeah, thank you, Grace and Issa for organizing all these wonderful activities to commemorate this day. Today for International Women's Day, I would like to uplift and honor the struggles of all women, especially indigenous women here in North America as well as the Global South who have been putting their bodies on the line to not only fight against the interlocking systems of patriarchy, colonialism, imperialism, but are also fighting to save our Mother Earth from environmental destruction and resource extraction by capitalism and greedy interest. So I just want to talk a little bit about Peru and the situation there right now because I think it's very relevant and important. And Peru, we're seeing that indigenous women are taking a leading role to fight for justice and to preserve their land and for a return to democracy. So for those who might not be familiar with what's happening in Peru, there's been a political crisis that started about three months ago after President Castillo, who was the first peasant person, first teacher to ever become president and was ousted from power with the backing of the US government. People, especially indigenous people, rural farmers have taken to the streets since December 7th and over 60 people have been killed by the Ku government. The US government is very complicit in these assassinations as they provide about $48 million in military aid to Peru, which is then used to repress and kill protesters. I think it does a really important to mention that there is big economic interest in Peru. Peru has one of the largest reserves of lithium. And so we're having, we have this petition which we've included in the chat calling on Biden to stop military aid as this aid is used directly to repress indigenous people and other people who are taking the streets to protest this government. The Peruvian government, the current Peruvian government has had multiple meetings with US government officials to discuss business interests in the region. And it is no coincidence that the majority of state balance has concentrated in areas where indigenous peoples live and where there's a huge concentration of natural resources. As I mentioned earlier, including lithium, which has become an essential resource as we transition to this idea of clean energy but clean energy at what cost. So this idea of seeing the land as nothing more than something to be exploited is incompatible with indigenous views and beliefs. And this is why we're seeing such strong resistance especially being led by women. And this idea that the US government and US corporations have the right to these resources go all the way to the Monroe Doctrine. This year is the 200th anniversary. So I just wanted to share that for this occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine. Our Latin America team is working on building a forum here in DC entitled in search of a new US policy for new Latin America and the Caribbean bearing 200 years of the Monroe Doctrine. So what we want to do and this forum is send a very clear message that Latin America and the Caribbean are no one's backyard, including the US. And that we need policies that are reflective of the demands of the people of Latin America and the Caribbean who want to create a zone of peace. At the forum will be at American University on April 29th and it will feature panels on resistance to militarization, policy on immigration, US interference and trade policy. And this forum is going to be a combination of learning but also action. So we're having an advocacy day on the 28th to advocate for policies that foster cooperation and mutual respect towards our neighbors in the South. And registration is open now. So people can register here in the link. He said share on the chat, thank you. And we do also have other campaigns and other upcoming events that people can get involved and including removing Cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism list which is a campaign that we've been working on for a while. Cuba was placed unjustly on this list by the Trump administration. And the Biden administration has kept Cuba on this list. So on Saturday and Sunday, the Saturday and Sunday if you're in New York City, there will be a conference on Cuba. And then on March 15th and 16th, we're going to have a day of calling the White House to demand the Biden remove Cuba from the state. And remove Cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism list, a list that Cuba should never have been put on because it does not sponsor terrorism. It actually was hosting the peace talks between the Colombian government and the guerrilla group, the FARC when it was placed on this list. So that's all I have for now. Thank you so much, everyone, for being here and for all the amazing work that we all do. Thank you so much, Samantha. And all of those actions are in the chat and all the actions from today and from this morning will be sent in follow-up emails. So if you did not get them or you don't save them, they will be around, so don't worry. But we are now going to welcome Wei Yu. Wei is CodePink's China is not our enemy campaign coordinator. Wei was born in Tahin, China and has lived in the US since her high school years while in university pursuing her degree in sociology and international studies. Wei conducted an independent research project on neocolonial biases in global North academia. Wei has worked with several non-profits serving women, racial minorities and other progressive causes. Welcome Wei. Thank you so much, Grace and Hi-Esa too for facilitating this webinar. I'm sorry I have to train you on my phone right now because I actually just came from an action that I did today. So that's why I'm just in the car on my phone. But I'm just really happy to be here and thank you to everyone who made it here today to hear about our International Women's Day of Lifting Women's Voices for Peace and Diplomacy. So my name is Wei. I am the campaign coordinator for China is not our enemy at CodePink. And so you might have seen us in the news very recently, maybe last week, just a splash of pink in the House of Congress with our DC organizer, Olivia DiNucci who disrupted the first public hearing of the new House Select Committee on China. So we certainly made a splash which is very CodePink that's like our honorable tradition. But while watching the live stream of that meeting, of that hearing, I also saw at the beginning, so the committee was chaired by a Republican, Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin and the highest ranking Democrat on that committee is Representative Rajar Rishman Notti who is Indian-American. And then in his opening statement, he actually mentioned that while we are having this quote-unquote strategic competition with China, we shouldn't encourage anti-Asian racism which I think is really ironic. As was mentioned in our morning webinar and maybe you've seen our article published yesterday, this International Women's Day, we are holding some people accountable including Victoria Newland who is the Under Secretary of State as a diplomat. Her job is to be diplomatic and maintain peace but then really she's responsible for provoking and also prolonging the ongoing war in Ukraine. So it doesn't matter that we have a woman being in such a high position of power if she's not a feminist. And similarly, I think in this case, it doesn't matter we have Asian-Americans in the House of Congress if they're still pushing for policies that fuels anti-Asian racism in this country. And we talk a lot about how we associate this anti-Asian hate into our campaign because we know since the pandemic started, especially, there's just anti-Asian hate crime in the United States has just soared because China and Asian-Americans are scapegoated for the pandemic. I also remember being really scared from reading all the incidents of attacks just in the street. I remember I was in college at the point and every time I go outside, I would make sure to wear like a shirt with giant letters of my university of it, just go to you so that people can realize, okay, maybe this person is just like associated with an American institution, so maybe that's less of a foreigner. It sounds very silly right now, thinking back, but really at a time I was just terrified for my personal safety that I had to think of like every single detail about myself to keep myself safe. And in addition to all these anti-Asian attacks in the street, we also see scientists and students of Chinese decent being charged with false espionage, charged with false espionage charges and they are arrested, they are torn away from their family and family are just like devastated by legal fee as well. We actually have a upcoming webinar on March 15th, so a week away from today at 8 p.m. Eastern time and 5 p.m. Pacific time, focusing on how US foreign policy on China has interacted with anti-Asian racism. So if you're interested, I really suggest checking out that webinar and we have the webinar is co-sponsored by US-China People's Friendship Associations, New England chapter as well as the Institute for Asian American Studies at University of Massachusetts Boston. So very excited to be on that panel with some other amazing panelists. In addition to the Asian Americans in our country who's already bearing the brunt of the attack on China, we also see that in this preparation for a war with China, the US is also militarizing the Asia-Pacific, hurting the people in the Asia-Pacific. We have an ongoing campaign in Guam. So with the construction of a new base in Guam, it's destroying cultural artifacts and it's contaminating people's drinking water. We have a petition. Thank you so much, Issa, for putting it in the chat and also there's also increased militarization with Japan in the Philippines. We know recently the US just got access to four new bases in the Philippines and also with Red Hill, the oil spill in Hawaii. So the people of the Asia-Pacific also bearing this cause of war as the US is driving hate, driving fear with China. Additionally, we have another ongoing campaign about this documentary that was made about how China lifted 800 million people out of poverty and this documentary was made by American filmmakers but it was censored by PBS because it's just not okay to talk China in a positive way anymore. So we are also asking people to hold screenings of this documentary in our own community to expose this hypocrisy of censorship and also just telling the truth and starting conversations about China. Thank you so much, Issa, again, for posting the link in there and thank you all so much for being here. If you would like to learn more about a campaign, just visit Coating.Works.China and also we are on Twitter at China's Not Enemy and again, just thank you, thank you, thank you and happy International Women's Day. Thank you so much Wei and again, all of those actions will be in the chat and if we have time at the end of this hour, we'll be doing some actions together online in community with one another. But before we get to that, I am very excited to introduce Shea. Shea is based in Chicago, Illinois and is a national organizer with the divest from the war machine and coping Congress campaigns. Shea has worked on campaigns related to environmental justice, food access and nuclear weapons abolition. They also have a background in research and we're a next leader with the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies prior to coming into Code Pink. Welcome Shea. Thank you, Grace. I'm like, I wish I'd taken out that intro because it's an honor to just be on the Code Pink team and wrapping the divest campaign and all the rest feels a little embarrassing but I'm just so grateful to be here and to be following such powerful speakers who are grounding us in why we do anti-war organizing and how it's like fundamentally rooted in feminism and the importance of this day to just acknowledge the role of women in our movements for peace and justice. So I'm just gonna talk a little bit about the divest from the war machine campaign, touch on how it relates to this day and the role that I believe this campaign has within the larger anti-war movement and strategic place. But I'm gonna keep it kind of brief just because unlike some of these other campaigners, I have fewer specifics and more just a strategy to discuss and to plug with you all and then we can just keep it moving to the next amazing speakers. But like Grace mentioned, I'm Shea, you stay them or she her pronouns. And I am the divest from the war machine organizer with Code Pink, which means that I get to work with different activists, organizations and formations of people across the United States who are creating running city specific divestment coalitions that are aiming to divest their universities or pension funds or cities operating budgets or religious institutions operating budget, like whatever public pot of money that they have a stake in, they're trying to pull that out from being invested in weapons manufacturers. And for a list on, I don't have visual aids, but we do have a list on, thank you so much, Issa. Yeah. If you go to the link I just put in the chat, we have a list of the top 100 weapons manufacturers in the world as of 2022, I wanna say. And when we're organizing these campaigns, our ask is really simple. We just want the institutions that claim to represent us that are using our taxpayer dollars or our tuition dollars or what have you to pull their money from weapons manufacturers that make a killing off of killing. So whether that's Lockheed, Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, companies that produce nuclear weapons, companies that produce conventional weapons, we want our money to stop being plugged into those companies and just enhancing their ability to create weapons and turn a profit. So I think I'm gonna keep it short in why we're working to divest because I feel like folks on this webinar have a pretty good basis in it. We know that divestment is a really powerful anti-war tool and these weapons manufacturers, these war profiteers are a central cog in the military industrial complex. They thrive when we are at war. They benefit when we're off in war. They fund our politicians and I don't know, like related to International Women's Day. We know that some of these companies with bigger publicity budgets also do a really good job trying to loop young women in, young people, offering engineers roles when they're graduating from school. They take really talented folks who need work and they pull them into this industry of death and violence and beyond that, they just bolster this entire war economy. So when we're working on divestment, we're working on pulling funds, assets, resources out of this industry. And that is what the Divest Campaign within Code Pink works on and the Divest Campaign at Code Pink is part of a larger Divest from the War Machine Coalition which we co-founded in 2017 with World Beyond War and some other amazing anti-war groups. We currently have over 70 member organizations from across the planet. So when we talk about divestment, like I was saying, we're talking about pulling money but not only money but public support and endorsement of the self perpetuating cycle where weapons manufacturers use their profits to fund politicians' campaigns, politicians and vote for wars, they increase the Pentagon budget. You know, there's gonna be a new Pentagon budget likely released tomorrow. It's gonna be the highest ever. And these politicians profit when they do that, these companies profit when they do that and us, those people who are looped into this cycle in some way without our consent, we don't have too many disruption points or I guess we do have disruption points because we're organizers and activists but we're not given those points and divestment is one of those ways that we can kind of sink our claw into this cog. So partially why divestment is a really powerful strategy is because it works on pulling funding out and we also know that the funding, I'm based in Chicago and one of the campaigns that I organize with is the Divest Chicago Coalition. We're actually meeting tonight and our city's operating budgets and every pension fund in the city is invested in weapons manufacturers. And we are working to pass different types of legislation in the city to prevent those sort of investments. And our strategy there is to fold, you know, one, like I was saying is to pull the funding out itself but then another thing is to denormalize we're profiteering and to shine a spotlight on the stock market and all the different mechanisms we have going on in society that enable these companies to be concentrating wealth and gaining power. Divestment helps make the war machine seem more concrete by showing its pervasiveness in every institution, all these financial institutions that we rely on. And so we are able to kind of pinpoint where and how that's happening and it exposes, yeah, it exposes the influence it shows us that things are all connected and it starts stigmatizing companies that are complicit in the war economy and that we are invested in. As we scale up these divestment campaigns from city to city, and there are several cities and towns that I've been working with on these different campaigns and people who are organizing around this in different ways, not with me, but other on accord. We are able to mount the economic impact of these campaigns and we're also building a larger social case and a more visible movement against these investments. It helps revoke the power of those who profit from war making and it gives us a lot of agency as people, as people who may be pay taxes, as people who live in a certain town or who are members of a community to say that when cities invest our taxpayer dollars into weapons companies, it's a direct contradiction to what their roles should be. Our cities, our communities should be protecting the health and wellbeing of its residents and we know these companies aren't doing that. So it's powerful to be organizing around divestment. It's also really powerful to be organizing around reinvestment and in hand, which can be harder in ways just because there aren't as many legislative mechanisms there, but I think that's also a really exciting place of growth that we see happening. Yeah, and I think I might just keep it short just because I don't have an action step tonight, but if folks just wanna visit us at divestfromwormachine.org, I'll put the link in the chat for that. And you can also just get there through the Code Pink website. You can see different cities where we have divestment campaigns happening. If people are interested in getting involved, you can always email me or if you're doing similar organizing and want resources or support, I'm always just really interested in growing this powerful grassroots movement. And yeah, especially when we're doing it in partnership with our siblings in the struggle who are involved in direct action, who are involved in maybe legislative organizing, we're doing this at so many different levels and we know that power and momentum is building and that gives me a lot of hope. So that is my spiel about divest. I really appreciate everybody's time and all the amazing work that we're talking about today. Awesome. I think that was a perfect note to carry on International Women's Day and our group of speakers. So thank you so much, Shay, for not only talking about divestment from war and weapons companies, but also reinvestment in community and peace and healthcare and education and everything that we need to support ourselves and our families. So we have a little bit of extra time in this webinar which is perfectly on schedule to do some online actions together. Also, if folks have any questions, comments, thoughts that they wanna throw in the chat. And if any of the speakers want to reply to them, want to have their own questions and thoughts and talk about their reflection of International Women's Day, I invite you to put them and type them in the chat. Right now I am going to put in the chat a series of online actions that we have talked about both on this webinar and in the webinar this morning that folks can take and we can be taking in community together. But I see one individual has their hand raised and if they want to share their reflections, I invite them to. I can speak. Yeah, you're good. Yes. Hi, hi, hi. I am so happy to be here and I wanna congratulate and say more power to the woman. I hope there will be a day that we all can see soon that we don't have to just remind ourselves about women's life one day a year, it should be every day. Anyway, what I wanna share here, I was, I did join the meeting in the morning. I was listening. I was very, it was very powerful talks by everybody. I happen to consider myself as a citizen of the world, but I was born in Iran and I'm following the news of what's going on in the last four months. I am a little bit disappointed because I didn't hear from the organizer of this program on speakers, anyone speaking any word about Iran, especially as we know in the last 40 years, women have been struggling for their rights. And today especially, we do not mention that knowing that there has been a continuous effort by women in Iran, especially in last three, four months by a younger generation of women. It's been international news. I am puzzled and I'm deeply saddened the fact that there was no mention of that. And I'd like to understand why that is the case. Is it a very, is it accident or is it really systematic? And there's, you know, we talk about media, for example, they don't tell the public all the truth and the news. And then I feel that it's happening here in different environment. And I'm very scared to witness this. I would like to, some of you who are very active in with Cote, to speak your opinion about women's right in Iran. What's the Cote thing position? Why we see not much support or publicly announcements by Cote thing about this situation. I mean, so many people in the public, even the media that they do not want to cover it being forced to speak about what's going on in Iran. So, I, again, I am interested to hear some of you if you could, your opinion about this situation in Iran and why there is, I correct me if what I'm experiencing, I hope I'm wrong, that's all, peace. Thank you so much for speaking your perspective and your understanding. I actually do want to invite you, me and Issa produced a radio show that was put out last night and today dedicated to International Women's Day and dedicated to the history and the ongoing events that are going around the world today. And I do give a large segment and multiple quotes from organizers in the current Iranian feminist uprisings as well as quoting many different interviews and publishers and academics who are talking on the subject because I knew that we did not have speakers on it today because right now we do not have an Iranian, Iranian campaign coordinator. And we, because we have a lot of other campaigns going on and other coordinators, as you've seen on the first morning's webinar and this one are dedicated to many different ongoing actions. I wanted to still make sure that the current organizing around Iranian feminisms and Iranian uprisings was discussed during International Women's Day despite not having the current campaign and platform through CodePaint currently, we are still in solidarity with those organizing both on the ground and within the diaspora throughout the world with what has been happening currently but also with what's been happening for the four decade long feminist uprisings in Iran. So I definitely understand your perspective and I apologize that we currently do not have a campaign dedicated, but we do have a resource page on our website dedicated to Iranian resources and actions and events. And we are always on our social media both boasting and supporting those actions from other organizers and other campaigners. And I did include it in the radio show last night because I knew that we did not have that contribution today. So I understand your frustration with the mainstream media and not including this in mainstream versions of International Women's Day and in the conversation, but I hope that that contribution and ongoing contributions to this organizing and this uprising is ongoing and I will make sure to send those resources that I included in the radio show yesterday and today will be included in a follow-up email with the rest of the actions. All right, awesome. So yeah, I put the actions that other campaigners have spoke about in the chat. So if folks wanna go ahead and take some time now to complete those actions online, we will be doing them together in solidarity and community. And if folks want to continue to send their own reflections and their own thoughts today with what they've seen both online and in person, I think Arzang set it off perfectly that although we are representing women and International Women's Day throughout the world, sometimes those people that are being affected the most by the war economy and by militarism and policing and surveillance are not always heard. So if you have other actions, other events, organizers, academics to uplift, please also put them in the chat and we will include them in other follow-ups as well. I might have gotten lost, so I'm gonna resend the actions. And yeah, if other folks have questions, have thoughts, have reflections, or if any of the speakers want to speak more on any resources they shared or any other reflections they had informally on the day, we invite you. But this is now just an open space to be doing those actions. If you do want to speak or do have a reflection, please first put it in the chat and then we can talk about it and discuss it. Also as a reminder, the events that I put in there include many different actions. We have the call the White House and tell Biden that Cuba is not a sponsor of terror action. Ask Biden to join China in promoting peace in Ukraine. Tell Congress to stand with peace and cooperation with China, nor will we China cut the Pentagon action. Tell Congress to investigate the harm done by the US military in Guam. Tell the JNF and JUF to stop funding birthright. We were going to have an individual from our Palestine campaign come on today, but she fell sick. So this action would really support her campaign. I'm gonna copy and paste that individually. And tell the Senate to ban stock trading for members of Congress. This is a divest action that Shay talked about earlier. So yeah, as I said, this is an ongoing space to be doing online actions together and to be in community with one another. So thank you for completing these online actions. And if you have any other reflections and thoughts to please put them in the chat. Also, Issa, do you wanna speak on the hashtag and photos and videos that we've been getting throughout the day? Yeah, thank you, everyone. Great, great speeches that we heard and great insights for some of our participants. I just wanted to remind folks that if you attended an in-person action today or if you plan to attend one, make sure to take photos where pink continue to use our hashtag, hashtag IWD and war along with the trending hashtag right now, hashtag IWD or hashtag International Women's Day. We will continue to uplift these photos and visuals that we are seeing on our social media as well as gather these photos for our end of the week report. You could also send them to me at isabelleatcodepink.org and I'll be collecting those photos and making something really beautiful out of it. So if you have anything that you've attended today or later on in the day, please keep in contact with me and we're more than happy to share this and keep the movement going on past IWD. But as for now, great webinar, thank you everyone. Grace will touch a little bit on our final webinar that we'll be having later and some of the fabulous stories that we'll also be hearing from. Yeah, thank you all so much. So we will be having one more end of the day webinar just for reflection for thoughts and for ongoing actions. We have an event planned, we have multiple events planned across the country for March 18th, which is the 20th anniversary of the criminal invasion of Iraq. It is calling for peace in Ukraine, calling for negotiations and once again, calling for us to be in community as feminists, divesting from more, divesting from weapons companies and reinvesting in a peace economy and in healthcare, education and community. I did wanna end today with a few words. Jodi, if you wanna introduce this clip was in conversation with Alice Walker and we were just given access to the clip. So if you wanna introduce this or we can talk about it at the end of the day webinar. It's up to you, Jodi. Sure, it starts at 6.31 if you wanna queue it up while I'm talking. So just it was really inspiring. I just wanna lots of love to share Jeff for being with us today. Thank you, sister, miss you a ton. Thank you for during your voices you do every day to raise up the issues about women globally. You are a daily force for women and women's rights and against war and for peace. So deepest gratitude for all you do and for the team that shared all these issues that are so important that we understand the threads of war and how they're in our lives. So yeah, if you're ready, Grace, I think I cover most of the history of this and what we say with Alice, thanks. Grace, you have to unmute. IWD and war. Today as we share these voices that we're hearing from around the world. I am joined by two of my very favorite women, Alice Walker, storyteller extraordinaire, writer, poet, social activist and inspirer of our hearts and souls. Over the span of her career, she has published 17 novels and short story collections, 12 nonfiction works and collections of essays and poetry. I know they nourish so many hearts and souls around the world. And Zeynep Salbi, she's an Iraqi-American women's rights activist and writer. She's the co-founder and former CEO of Women for Women International and host of Through Her Eyes with Yahoo News. She is a humanitarian and also the co-founder of Daughters for the Earth, a tireless advocate for peace who stands deeply, who understands deeply the cost of war to women, unstoppable, both of these women. So it's so special to have you with us today. New Rock starts for peace in this over militarized world. Now you were both with us 20 years ago, this day, when we marched from Martin Luther King Park with 10,000 men and women dressed in various shades of pink. And Alice, thanks for dressing up in pink today. You both spoke at our rally and then we get down to the White House and it is fully surrounded by cops. We are blocked from going near the White House. Now, this is the first time in history this has happened. They are afraid of the voices of women. This never happened, hasn't happened since. So Alice is questioning the cops on the side and saying, why are you keeping me from being outside the White House calling for peace? My ancestors were slaves, they built this place. And this black police officer, let's go his hands, open up the play links of cops. And he says, I can't go home tonight and tell my wife that I didn't let Alice walk or be outside the White House calling for peace. So love prevails, women prevail. Alice, you were arrested that day calling for peace. Can you share any reflections on, why our voices for peace today are so needed and why it's so important and we need our courage, our hearts to be visible for those around the world that are suffering from US wars and weapons? Well, I think that we want to be happy. We have to resist. For me, resistance is happiness. I could not be happy knowing that children are destroyed, towns are blown up, horrible things are happening every second. And with my tax money, I could not. And so to see this brother in uniform, standing, trying to keep us out of the space we needed to be in in front of the White House was just intolerable. And our ancestors, his and mine, would not accept it. They would not. They knew we had to break through to each other and we did and he led us through. And he was able to go home that night and I'm sure his wife was very good to him. Thank you. Had you been arrested before? Was that your first time in jail? Oh no, no, I'm from the South. And also other, you know, anti-war activity. I was once arrested with Maya Angelou. That was very wonderful. I was once arrested trying to stop the flow of weapons to Nicaragua. That was good. The point is you have to make the effort. You know, as we see, sometimes you can't tell you made an effort because people don't seem to get any more intelligent. But it's left to us if we respect our own feelings and our own hearts to do what we can do. Thank you. Thank you. Sina, you've been to so many war zones around the world and worked with so many women in war zones. What are the costs that women bear of these wars? Well, Jodi just reminded me because 20 years ago was the Gulf War, was the second Gulf War. And that's, you know, there was a time in which, that was a time in which everyone was rallied together in unity and, you know, American politics, you know, to fight that war. And those of us who were demonstrating, and I remember demonstrating with Code Pink and so many other women, we were like ridiculed in the media. We were like laughed at. We were called all kinds of names. And that war, just, I mean, this is just one of war, just that war is in my home country, destroyed everything, an entire country, everything in my memories and many people's memories. And we are left with so many deaths, so many traumas, so many, it's born deformed because of chemical weapons, so many environmental damages that right now, the country has, you know, majority of its days, sandstorms and things like that, that people saying is climate change, climate change doesn't come on its own. It comes because we put poison in Mother Earth. It's, we are doing that work. And so it's disrupting honestly right now to sit on this day and see nothing has been learned from not only that war, but that war just captured all our attention at that time. But there's so many wars before it and after it and almost every single one leads us to the same place. Destruction of lives, destructions of countries, depressions of people, pain, and only few people get to make money and profits and prosper out of it. And more often than not, we come around and say, oh, so sorry, that was a mistake. And it just breaks my heart that we are not learning anything from it. So yes, women do pay the brunt of the calls for war, not only in terms of violence and in terms of displacement, but they're also resilient. You know, they are the ones who are keeping life and joy, joy in the midst of war. And so we're here to learn from the past and hopefully I just pray to apply it in the present because we're destroying the same, we're like not learning, it's a groundhog day, same destruction, same pain for humans, to humans and to Mother Earth. And then complain, oh, climate change, oh, poverty, oh, all of the violence. Well, we're creating that, we are creating that. Thank you so much. They are. Yes, we aren't. Unfortunately, it's been our past dollars, but and it's very few people. So we need to know that it's very few that we are standing up against and we need to be vocal and loud and present. So thank you both for being present with us today on International Women's Day. Thank you, Jodi. We love you. We love you. Love you. Bye. Amazing. I'm so glad we got to end with that beautiful interview today. Thank you so much, Jodi, for sending that in. That was a wonderful ending interview and discussion and it really wrapped up, I think, what all of the speakers had to say both in this webinar and in the first. And yeah, if anyone has reflections or thoughts or feelings about that interview, I'm in, I don't know, I'm just sitting in a little bit. I texted my mom. I was like, Alice Walker's on the webinar right now. You have to get on right now. So yeah, if anyone has thoughts or reflections or connections to what you've been seeing today, please put in the chat now and a reminder that we still have one more webinar tonight for more reflection and more discussion with could pink individuals and global feminist voices. It is the same Zoom link to get on. You don't need another Zoom link. So yeah, thank you all so much for being here, being in community. Thank you to all of our amazing speakers for taking the time to write something, to talk about their actions and their passions and doing the most they could on this International Women's Day. I thank you all so much. Have a good day, everyone and I'll see you for the end of the day reflection. Thank you, Grace and Nisa. Thank you. Thank you.