Joycelyn Bacchus: Red Thread Member, Grassroots Warrior for Justice

2006 to attend the World Social Forum. Through the Global Women’s Strike, RT members met and learned from grassroots Venezuelan women organising around the recently announced Article 88 of the Bolivarian Constitution (under then president Hugo Chavez) which recognised caring work as productive work and entitled housewives to social security under the law.

In Red Thread Joycelyn has worked on low-income issues with a specific emphasis on the plight of domestic workers. In this capacity she attended workshops and conferences in London, Venezuela, Barbados, Jamaica, St. Kitts, Antigua. She also served on the steering committee of the Caribbean Domestic Workers Network, which was founded in 2011. She participated in workshops to train domestic workers from Corentyne, Essequibo, Bartica, Linden and Georgetown on their labour rights. Joycelyn also played an important role in campaigning for the ratification and implementation of International Labour Organization Convention 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers (which was adopted in 2011). In Guyana this work included conducting workshops on the Convention, and helping to collect over three thousand signatures that were presented to the then Minister of Labour Nanda Gopaul. Guyana ratified shortly after the signature campaign and protest action. After passing a Red Thread protest on his way to the May Day rally in 2013, the Minister announced that Guyana would ratify the Convention, which was done shortly after, making Guyana the first country in the region to take this action. Just this past September, Joycelyn was nominated as the interim chair of the Domestic Workers Service Cooperative Society Ltd. – which is now in the process of being registered, and whose mandate is to advocate for, represent and protect domestic workers to ensure that Article 189 is properly implemented. The Society, run by domestic workers, will also work as a placement agency for domestic workers in Guyana.

Joycelyn was a regular face on the picket line, whether it was about protesting sexual predators and the inadequate enforcement of the Sexual Offences Act, or condemning the situation in Haiti, or protesting the police violence that led to the shooting deaths during the Linden protests of 2012. We will remember her as a no nonsense person who stood up always for what she believed in, and who fought with and for grassroots women’s rights to dignity, respect and a life worth living. She always reminded us to believe in ourselves and our power and ability to make change together. We have lost a friend, a colleague and a warrior in the truest sense. To her daughter, Malkia Troyer, and her family, we extend our deepest condolences.