Payday men's network

Campaigning with the Global Women's Strike

see our website: www.refusingtokill.net

Payday is an international and multiracial network of men which works with the Global Women’s Strike.  We have groups in London and in Philadelphia.  We work with other men in other countries, including Canada, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Scotland. 

We are from many walks of life, waged and unwaged, urban and rural, fathers, carers, immigrants, gay, bisexual and straight, of different races, ages, members of community organizations and trade unions. Like the rest of the Strike, we are independent of political parties.

We organise on the basis of the Strike’s central demand: that society must Invest in Caring, not Killing -- that money spent on military budgets must go instead to communities, which means first of all to women, who are internationally the primary carers.

All our organising is done in close consultation with women from the Strike to ensure that we do not ignore or contradict women’s and children needs.  We have benefited from the leadership provided by the Strike, whose starting point is the worker who does (most of) the caring, and are encouraged to know that the revolution in Venezuela has also been spearheaded by women, which was acknowledged by the late President Chávez.  Finding ways to work with women and children, and other men is, we believe, our biggest challenge as well as our only chance for survival.

Over the years we have been involved in many campaigns and initiatives, namely: in defence of welfare, anti-deportation, anti-war, support for waged workers on strike (the Fire Brigades Union was the latest), pay equity disputes, and many anti-racist initiatives, including No School Apartheid: protesting the segregation of the children of asylum seekers, mainly Third World children of colour.

Our main initiative in the last few years has been Refusing to Kill: gathering support around the world for men (and increasingly women) who refuse to torture, maim, rape and kill for the military.  Until an end for any need for them, armies must be used to defend and support communities -- as in Venezuela -- not for aggression. 

We have initiated international campaigns in support of refuseniks in Israel, Turkey, UK and the US; and highlighted the key role that women play in supporting conscientious objectors, “deserters”, draft evaders and whistleblowers. 

In the United States, we have been part of an anti-racist self-help campaign to inform students and parents of their right to Opt Out – to refuse to allow schools to give military recruiters access to students’ home phone numbers & addresses .  Young people in Black, Latino and other low-income communities in the US are targeted by military recruiters, despite broad and increasing opposition to US wars, especially in communities of colour.

We have helped expose the appalling level of rape (of women and men) perpetrated by, and going on within, the armed forces.  In fact, when Payday first got together, in 1977, it was to support an anti-rape action in London by women, who founded the Global Women’s Strike, accusing the State of defending and encouraging rape, especially by soldiers.

Since we began we have said that as long as women are financially dependent on men, men can’t be sure whether women are with us for ourselves or for survival (little as that money may be).  We refuse to do the job the State allots to us men, to use our greater social power to discipline women and children.

To contact us email: payday@paydaynet.org