Good Morning,

I am delighted to be celebrating with you this very special day, a day in which we honor women and their achievements – achievements which have enabled us to be where we are today. But it is also a day in which we recognize that the struggle for a just, equitable and fair society, for women and men, is far from over. In many ways in days such as these we are able to refine our ideas, sharpen our skills, bring together all those who share our dreams, and gather all our strengths to envision what kind of society we want, and how are we going to get there as a nation, as a world.

As women we have to recognize that not all women have the same stake in aspiring for a different world – another world. Because there are many ‘nations’ of women within a nation, and women who have reached the pinnacles of political and economic power are often indistinguishable from their male counterparts, whose economic and social policies have brought us where we are today.

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It is the working woman who is the face of the new movement, the future – the aide in the nursing home still working for $11.75 an hour without a contract; it is the fast food worker who has to change buses twice to get to her job which pays $8 an hour; or the mother on public assistance who is begrudged because she can’t find child care so she can go looking for a minimum wage job and probably lose her benefits in the process; it is the woman working in Wal-Mart who buys with her food stamps the same cans she shelved, adding still more to her employers coffers; it is the teacher who is derided because she can’t solve the problems created by poverty and hopelessness; it is the mother who can’t rest until her child returns home – it is in their toils that the real stories of our world are told, it is in their struggles that our collective struggles are realized.

These are the women who are the visionaries of tomorrow. And it is when they come together to demand their share of the wealth, they helped create, that the real possibilities of a just and equitable society, where great wealth does not extinguish the possibilities of a truly democratic order, are made flesh and blood.

It is in building solidarity with these women, in being one with their movement – our movement - that I can believe with confidence that when my first grandchild is born in August of this year, there will indeed be hope, tangible and real hope, that he will grow up in a society where justice, fairness and equity reigns for all.

- Rumu DasGupta