"Border Women" End Hunger Strike, Call for Emergency White House Meeting

Eleven women who live in El Paso, TX, and are either from or have family in the border region around El Paso and Ciudad Juarez in Mexico have ended a ten-day hunger strike in front of The White House. Amidst the Washington, D.C. rain, the vigil has wrapped. Their efforts, however, to draw attention to the extreme poverty and ever present violence in the El Paso/Ciudad Juarez border region are still strong.

They are part of the almost twenty-year-old group La Mujer Obrera; an organization that works for women’s empowerment, as well as economic and community development in this embattled region. And they are fierce. Despite their accomplishments – creating “social purpose” businesses, with the help of displaced women workers, for the women and their families, they cannot do it alone.

In a letter to First Lady Michelle Obama, the group speaks woman-to-woman, asking the First Lady for an in-person thirty-minute meeting. Why? Because the women and families in this region have been all but forgotten by the federal powers-that-be more invested in border security, protecting international trade agreements that harm workers, and fighting a "war on drugs" than on empowering communities.

As the women note in their letter to Michelle Obama, however, they are "not victims. We are rebuilding our communities with dignified courage. As women, we know we have and are exercising, the right to determine our own destiny and work towards the meaningful development of our communities to improve the quality of life of our children and grandchildren."

What they do need are visibility and federal assistance to support the economic and community investments they’ve already made, on their own. They are, they note, living in the most impoverished border region in the nation – the poverty parallels Appalachia – and while they have made strides towards lifting themselves and their community out of poverty, they cannot continue without the federal government’s help.

What does this help look like, specifically? The group wants President Obama and Congress to establish a Border Development Commission, and a national summit to identify public-private partnerships, both of which would help fund development in the border area.

To President Obama, La Mujer Obrera also says the time has come to stabilize the area by investing in women in particular. Billions have been spent on authorizing jobs mostly for men; global U.S. companies are profiting from free trade. But the highest poverty and unemployment rates in the El Paso/Ciudad Juarez region are actually among women. Join the eleven women who committed to a ten day hunger strike in asking President Obama and Congress for an emergency meeting to help them fix the crisis of poverty and violence by providing real border security: job creation, sustainable business development, access to health care and education. Women and their families in the region deserve justice and equity.

Photo credit: Notomex