londonartfish

something really exciting happened last week! President Chavez from Veenzuela came to London and we went to meet him. i mean, he was doing a talk in camden city hall and we went with the Global Women's Strike to welcome him. we kind of guessed that he wasn't going to go into the hall where the organisers had told everyone he would go in, so we waited where we thought he would go in and we were right! Ken Livingston, the mayor of london had invited him there, so Ken came out to be there when he arrived. we were right inthe front row, Ianto and me and Ken came over, you know, like politicians like being seen talking to little kids. he asked Ianto if he had come to see the president and ianto said yes. so then Chavez arrived with a whole troupe of bodyguards and security etc, and Ken welcomed him. then he said to Chavez: here is a young man who has come to meet you. and he came over to us and Chavez said hello to Ianto, asked him how he was and Ianto said "fine" :-) he was so friendly! he took ianto's hand and kissed it and then went over to the other side, where Sian and Kristina were with our banner and the book by the director of the women's development bank of venezuela, which the strike published with her. and he said hello to sian and kristina and saw the book and then he remembered who we were and hugged Sian and kind of introduced the strike to ken livingston! the president of venezuela!
the best thing then was that in his speech, he mentioned Selma James, who is our point of reference in the Strike, a long-time campaigner and widow of CLR James, who wrote the book Black Jacobines, which describes the Slave rebellion in Haiti. he mentioned the book and Selma, who gave him the book last year. :-)
sian and me had made a banner welcoming chavez and saying: globalise article 88. that is an article in the venezuelan constitution that sais that women's work in the home should be recognised as valuable to society and the economy and should be remunerated (paid). on the first on June in venezuela they will start to give money to the poorest women in the communities, starting with 500.000 and then spreading the scheme from there. they will get 3/4 of the minimum wage to start with.
anyway, this banner we made is now in possession of the president. :-)

so, you see it was a really exciting week. i will try and add some pictures....>>>it's not working at the moment, so that will have to wait. sorry.

:-)

posted by hanna @ 2:55 PM