This year we march to remind you about the right to laziness – because it embodies the social and economic issues that are most important to us. The right to laziness is the right to take back our time, which belongs to us and not to the exploiters. It comes from the traditions of the worker movements and the struggle for an 8 hour work week and a guarantee of time free from work. As the slogan goes – “Bread and Roses!”.
The right to laziness is the right to a life that isn’t just biological survival. A full, rich and a happy life that doesn’t amount just to slaving away and a constant rush.
The right to laziness is also the right to live without the fear of abuse. Patriarchy, queerphobia, transphobia, racism, whorephobia, ableism, ageism and all other hatreds crawl into our bodies and into our heads, alter our endocrine system, make our muscles and stomachs clench…. On a planet dying of heat, in the midst of wars and hatreds, with the capitalist cult of the busybody implanted in our heads and bodies, there is no way to get lazy.
The full right to laziness can only be obtained after the abolition of capitalism and patriarchy. But when can fight for a number of social demands here and now: from providing each and every one with shelter and access to healthy food, clean water, healthcare and care for dependents, to designing public spaces so that they are actually public, so that they provide a space for reading, lying down, sport, art, dance, craft. From defending workers’ rights to allowing the Earth to rest from all the things we destroy her with. We remind you our basic demands that Porozumienie Feministyczne 8 Marca keeps repeating for years now:
- Abortion. We demand the decriminalization of abortion and an introduction of solutions which would make it accessible to everyone, no matter their economic status.
- Labor. We demand the protection of workers’ rights. We demand an end to junk contracts and to forcing people to start one-person businesses. We demand dignified salaries, unemployment benefits and retirement pensions. We demand pays and workloads which would allow us to live full lives. We demand solutions which would allow people, most commonly women, performing reproductive labor at home, that would make them not dependent on partner’s earnings and which would provide them with pensions. We demand the decriminalization of sex work.
- Sex and gender diversity. We demand an end to discrimination and violence against LGBTQ+ people. We demand the acknowledgement that transgender and nonbinary people especially experience violence in every possible form, including systemic and economic violence. We demand solutions that would protect them from poverty, homelessness and unemployment.
- Housing. Homes are a right, not a commodity. We demand the protection of tenants’ rights, an access to social housing and rent control.
- Migration. We demand opening up borders between countries and providing every migrating person the same protections we demand for ourselves. We demand tearing down the wall at the Belarus border immediately.
- Violence. We demand preventative programs against violence and support for people, a great majority of them women, who are experiencing and have experienced violence.
- Healthcare. Health is not a business. We demand access to free healthcare and a dignified pay for people working in this sector. We demand solutions which would counteract the exclusion of people with disabilities from social life. We demand support programs for people, a great majority of them women, who take care of people with disabilities, including financial support and respite care.
- Public services. We demand access to public nurseries, preschools and schools and to public transport – in smaller towns and villages as well. We demand an end to inequalities in education and to exclusion in transport.
- Climate. We demand systemic changes that will work to stop the climate crisis in a real way. We refuse to accept a narration which pushes the responsibility onto individuals, when corporate greed is the real reason for climate change.
- Lay state. We demand respect for the laicity of the state.