We have been here before, on stolen Indigenous land, in the fields, factories, and prisons built on Black and brown bodies, in Hiroshima, in Vietnam, in Cuba, in Chile, in Palestine, in the deportation buses rolling through our own streets today. The US has always propagated and profited off of violence, and the lives of the most vulnerable are always on the line.
For nearly five decades, Women’s Foundation California has stood on the shoulders of freedom fighters who knew this truth in their bones: that the violence of empire and the violence of patriarchy are the same. That the systems designed to control women and queer people’s bodies, to silence our voices, to erase our labor, are the same systems that bomb schools, hospitals, and universities and call it strategy. Intersectional feminism teaches us to follow that thread wherever it leads and today it leads to Iran. To people who are not so different from us, people full of hope and fear and love for their homes, their families, their futures.
War has never created safety. It punishes the vulnerable, destroys families, fuels our climate crisis, and tears us further from each other. Every human life is precious. That is not a political statement, that is the ground we stand on.
As we publish this, a ceasefire has been announced. We exhale but we do not hold our breath. We do not mistake this moment as relief or resolution. The threat was made. The bombs have already fallen. The systems that produced this moment are still intact. A ceasefire is not peace. Peace is what we build together, in the long after, with everything we have.
These atrocities are not new. But neither is our resistance. Neither is our collective action. Neither is our care for each other. At Women’s Foundation California, we know our power lies in our collective. In that spirit, we gathered statements from our staff, grant partners, community members. Read them here. Know this: We are witnesses. We see you. We are with you. And we will never stop using our voices and our power.
Until Liberation,
Women’s Foundation California
“The dehumanization of the “other,” those considered invisible, treated as disposable, as if their dignity were negotiable, is not an abstraction drifting; it is here, unfolding in real time, shaping the world we are living in. It moves through policies and pronouncements, through the quiet erosion of care in our collective conscience. We hear it in the threat to erase “a whole civilization,” language that carries the weight of history and the shadow of all that has been lost before. We see it in the invocation of ‘invasion’ to describe undocumented immigrants, words to instill fear, to recast human beings as dangers rather than as lives in motion, full of memory, longing, and possibility…These are not just words, they are signals, shaping what we permit, what we overlook, what we come to accept. To name these patterns is an act of resistance, a refusal to let language quietly redraw the boundaries of who and what matters. We choose to hold fast to the truth that every person carries an inherent worth that cannot be erased, and that our future depends on our interdependency, and the value of everyone, without exception.” – Bia Vieira, CEO, Women’s Foundation California
“Today I woke up for a regular day at work and instead I’m returning to the book On Tyranny from Timothy Snyder and going through Octavia Butler’s prophetic writings. I am hoping the wise woman in me can emerge while carrying the anger, fear & grief of this moment. And as I listen to my own voice, I hear our communities clearly joining to say: NO to even more genocide, NO to war, NO to domination. Today is not normal. Today is not OK. I refuse to go about my normal day. Instead I recommit myself to follow calls to action from the wisdom in others, plan for my participation in May Day 2026, and let my wise woman rage.” – Elizabeth Ayala
“Once again, our ruling class is inventing a foreign enemy to stoke fear and division among the working people of the US. We are being told that elementary school children, scientists, and journalists in Iran are all acceptable targets in this illegal war that only seeks to protect our geopolitical interests – aka access to Iran’s oil and Israel’s ability to carry out a genocide for over 2 years. It’s time that we as feminists, abolitionists, activists, workers, artists – understand our struggles in the US are directly connected to the terrorism we inflict abroad. We are fighting for affordable housing, healthcare & job opportunities, daycare programs, and so many more things that we can’t afford because of the trillions of public dollars that are being spent on the military, prisons, and other tools of genocide. While our community members here are struggling with the impossible cost of living, our tax dollars are directly funding indiscriminate destruction of life from Iran to the West Bank to Lebanon. Our antiwar efforts against this administration will have no effect until we truly connect worker & feminist struggles to the anti-colonial movement and move in solidarity with each other every step of the way. Now more than ever, we must refuse to leave anyone behind and understand that it is our duty to fight for each other and for the world we deserve.” – Emma Li, SPI 2022 alum, Artist & Designer
“In this moment of ongoing genocide, man-made war, and destruction, our congress members are choosing to put profit over people. Fascism doesn’t happen overnight; instead it’s an insidious plot that has been brewing over decades by a billionaire class that wants to uphold the status quo. And while fascism is on the rise, we have seen people from all across the political spectrum mobilize in the streets, chanting NO WAR! History tells us that war only benefits the ruling class, leaving the rest of us to deal with the immediate aftermath. We must come together to keep making it loud and clear that we condemn the imperialist agenda. We cannot let the US government use our tax dollars for war. Tax dollars that should be funding our infrastructure, healthcare, and education are being used to destroy the infrastructure, healthcare, and education of people across the world. Our words must be followed by action; we must continue to mobilize in the streets, build a multi-racial movement, take care of each other, and hold those in power accountable. We all have a role to play in the fight against fascism, and we must be united!” – Jeanine Erikat
“I felt my fear, my grief, my love and gratitude for my colleagues, feminist freedom fighters, friends and family, and I went to 5 Calls and called and left messages for our representatives and senators so that I could add my voice to others demanding that we STOP, and refusing complicity in this violence, this immoral, genocidal campaign.”
“My body is uneasy. I recognize my privilege as an American and with that comes the responsibility to hold this government accountable. To love my community and my neighbors. I cannot rest easy while a genocide continues to murder people in the name of safety and justice. To practice intersectional feminism is to hold those in power accountable. It is to reject the idea that there is nothing we can do. I am furious with my representatives who say their hands are tied. Bring Congress back into session. Sit in the chambers and do your jobs. When I see ICE in our neighborhoods, sanctions strangling Cuba, the ongoing funding of a genocide in Gaza, the threat to wipe out a “whole civilization” in Iran, I see the same logic at work a government that has decided some lives are expendable. We cannot continue to let our country enable, lead, or fund genocide. We cannot enable murder. This administration is unfit and poses a danger to us all. Today I am calling my representatives again and sharing the Oakland People’s Arms Embargo campaign to demand military cargo be removed from our civilian airports.” – Nicola Schulze
“As a community organization serving communities displaced by war and genocide, we know how damaging war is. Refugeehood is a direct consequence of the world allowing another genocide to happen. It means that we are faced with no choice but to leave behind our families, our communities, our schools, our mosques, our churches, our homeland. It means we are forever carrying the grief of war in our hearts as we continue to rebuild a life in a foreign country. Which is why we stand with our partners and say NO TO WAR! Our communities deserve to be invested in to rebuild,and not to fund genocide. We must come together to hold our elected officials accountable.” – Ramah Awad, Majdal Center
“I woke up this morning realizing I’m still not a revolutionary. That my fingertips on these keys won’t change anything. But in the fog of this terror, of systems designed to kill, brutalize and silence, I start beans for dinner and wonder about the women in Tehran doing the same — what they’re cooking, who they’re feeding, whether they slept. And I think maybe this is it. Maybe this is the thread. Ordinary love that outlasts every empire. Laughter around the table, piano through the window, the future I’m fighting for smells like my daughter’s warm breath, like tomorrow belongs to us.” – Torre Freeman
“No system of borders, laws, power, or greed justifies the erasure of lives or histories. We must hold onto the sacred understanding that we are interconnected—relatives, actually—while resisting narratives meant to divide us for domination. In doing so, we affirm that our collective survival and liberation are bound together.” – Vonya Quarles, Alum & Founder of Starting Over Inc.
P.S. We have joined Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, and over 200 organizations and experts in calling for an end to Trump’s threats of war crimes. We urge our representatives to speak out and activate funding alongside movements for a just peace – now and for the long-term. In the face of fascism and authoritarian leaders, we must safeguard communities, organizations and leaders working for justice.