Sylvia Estrada Claudio - Speaking out for reproductive freedom, 2013

>> SPEAKER: And now for our final speaker, Sylvia Estrada-Claudio. But as she says, every Filipina has a nickname and her friends call her Guy. She's coming from the University of Philippines. (Cheering) >> SYLVIA: Niell, you are so right. You want me to follow after that? I will try. I come here to bring you all a message from women back home in the Philippines. Half a world away, the last country in the world without divorce, where abortion is illegal under all circumstances And where feminists are blamed for any natural calamity because we have angered God. And we are likened to the Sandy Hook gunman for advocating contraceptives because we kill innocents. A country that sends tens of thousands of workers abroad to work farms, clean toilets take care of the sick or the elderly, or invent the next technological miracle. We have won many battles for reproductive rights and justice against corrupt politicians, religious patriarchs, capitalist marauders. In the words of many this morning, *** them. (Cheering) >> SYLVIA: I come to tell you that the battles we have won have led to yet other struggles. But we keep on. And we keep on joyfully, happily, optimistically. When we are at our best, and engaged in direct political action That is also when we experience many of our desires to the fullest. Those desires lie outside the hetero-sexist, elitist, conscripted, and constricted identities and sexualities that capitalist patriarchy would give us. Comrades, friends, sisters, compañeras (...) Shall I thank you all for having me come, or shall I say that in any real struggle we must always have each other in our hearts. Class, sex, race, hetero-sexist, and case systems are not separate entities. There is no such thing as a less racist capitalism or a less hetero-sexist class system. (Applause) >> SYLVIA: The feminist insight that brought us to reproductive and *** rights and justice has been validated by the evolution of the world and its economy. Productive and reproductive systems derive from the same human creativity. When wealth is extracted from the poor and the oppressed, it begins by making us all accept that these two moments of life: Production and reproduction, can be separated. They cannot. When power moves, it dictates what we think of ourselves and our world. It does so because it has to, because our lives are not like that and we resist. So our movement is broad and expansive. It is a movement for women's health, but also a movement against globalization, A movement against sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, and transphobia. It is a movement of resistance grounded in our polymorphous desires and pleasures, A movement creating new identities forged in the parameters of solidarity and love. So I say don't be sad when engaging in political action. Even if what we are fighting is monstrous and depressing. And I say we must go for the nomadic, for the conjunctures and flows, for the proliferations and juxtapositions. Remember the words of all who have spoken here and all who will speak over the weekend. Embrace all of them, outlaw none of them. Diversity is not a painful truth that we must learn to live with, it is the groundswell of passions that give us power. (Applause) >> SYLVIA: That power in its diverse, multi-centric, multi-struggle joyousness shall bring us all the reproductive justice, social justice, and freedom. Thank you.