SELMA JAMES

Selma James is an antisexist, antiracist campaigner and has fought for justice for over 50 years. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1930 she became the wife of the internationally renowned West Indian Historian and political philsopher C.L.R James. In Britain during the 1960s, she became a leading activist in the movements for the rights of immigrants and people of colour. 

Selma is the author or several seminal books among them A Women's Place; Sex Race and Class; The Perspective of Winning; Wageless of the world and Women, the Unions and Work. She has lectured and led workshops all over the World and is the founder of the Wages for Housework and Care Income Now campaign.

Selma's most recent book Our Time Is Now: Sex, Race and Class and Caring for People and Planet is steeped in the tradition of Marx. She draws on half a century of organizing across sectors, struggles and national boundaries with others in the Wages for Housework Campaign and the Global Women’s Strike, an autonomous network of women, men, and other genders that agree with their perspective. There is one continuum between the care and protection of people and of the planet: both must be a priority, beginning with a care income for everyone doing this vital work. This book makes the powerful argument that the climate justice movement can draw on all the movements’ people have formed to refuse their particular exploitation, to destroy the capitalist hierarchy that is destroying the world. Our time is now.

Antiracism, anti-discrimination and the justice work we do for ourselves and with others are at the heart of Selma James' campaigning.

Press release: Wages for Housework film All Work and No Pay at Tate Exhibition Women in Revolt.

By Global Women's Strike | 7th November 2023

The Wages for Housework film All Work and No Pay is part of the major Tate Britain exhibition Women in Revolt which opens tomorrow 8 November 2022 and runs until April 2024. The film was made by the Wages for Housework Campaign (WFH) with the BBC community access unit Open Door in 1975. It provided…

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Event: Workshop on Autonomy – women, race & immigration, at the Anarchist Bookfair.

By Global Women's Strike | 28th September 2023

Join us at the Anarchist Bookfair in London next week. Workshop: Autonomy – women, race and immigration. Saturday 7 October 1pm – 2:30pm Zilkha Auditorium, Whitechapel Gallery. In 1982, the Wages for Housework Campaign organised the first conference in the UK on women, race and immigration. Insisting on our right to be here is even…

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Event: London Socialist Film Co-Op presents: Walter Rodney: What they don’t want you to know.

By Global Women's Strike | 14th September 2023

Join us for a screening of Walter Rodney: What they don’t Want you to Know (2022), a documentary exploring the life of Guyanese academic and activist Dr Walter Rodney.  The event will be accompanied by a panel and Q&A with: Arlen Harris, director Dr. Patricia Rodney, academic and widow of Walter Rodney Selma James, writer and activist…

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Event: Climate change – learning from women farmers in Andhra Pradesh, India.

By Global Women's Strike | 13th July 2023

A Global Women’s Strike event for South India Heritage Month. Thursday 20 July 2023, 6-8pm, Swiss Cottage Library, 88 Avenue Rd, London NW3 3HA.  ALL WELCOME. What we saw when we visited the women’s self-help groups transforming their communities with natural farming. We in the city must know more about how our food is grown…

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Press conference and action outside Philadelphia Family Court: Take away our poverty, not our children – Implement recommendations on child separation

By Global Women's Strike | 12th June 2023

For Children’s Week for the Child Tax Credit, mothers, grandmothers and supporters from Philadelphia will be joined by others from Baltimore, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York, England and Scotland who are suffering from the same abusive child welfare system. We are demanding the implementation of the Recommendations of the Philadelphia City Council Special Committee on Child Separation, starting with: Poverty is not neglect and must not be used as a reason for child removal; Get resources to mothers/caregivers – support, not separation; Open the family court

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PRESS RELEASE: As new Child Tax Credit legislation is introduced in Congress, international networks gather in Philadelphia to demand an End of Mothers’/Caregivers’ Poverty.

By Global Women's Strike | 8th June 2023

This week new legislation making permanent the Child Tax Credit (CTC) was introduced into Congress (The American Family Act).  The expanded refundable CTC which expired last year had cut the child poverty rate in the US almost in half.  This and other measures to get cash directly into the hands of mothers and families will be the focus of a national and international gathering this weekend June 9-11, entitled End Women’s Poverty – A Guaranteed Care Income for All Caregivers of People & Planet.  Childcare available.

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Taking Agroecology to scale: Learning from the experiences of Natural Farming in India

By Global Women's Strike | 18th May 2023

Learning from the experiences of Natural Farming in India, this new publication has been compiled by the Alliance for food sovereignty in Africa. Download a copy of it for free here below.

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Shamima case shows terrible prejudice

By Global Women's Strike | 18th May 2023

Read Layla Omar’s brilliant article published in the Camden New Journal, describing how and why the government’s removal of Shamima Begum’s British citizenship is drenched in racism, and undermines all our rights. If Shamima isn’t British, then many of us are not.

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Event summary: GWS at XR, The Big One.

By Global Women's Strike | 30th April 2023

Together with 60,000, we took part in XR’s The Big One, four days of action 21-24 April, around Parliament to force the UK government to act on the climate emergency. Day One: Unite to Survive – “Women Care” Speak Out Diverse networks of mothers, grandmothers, other carers and people with disabilities spoke out on refusing…

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Book 2

Our Time Is Now: Sex, Race, Class, and Caring for People and Planet

Author: Selma James • Foreword by Margaret Prescod • Editor: Nina Lopez

Subjects: Feminism / Economics