Workers and Antiimperialists Commemorate International Working Women’s Day Across the Country
On March 8, workers and revolutionaries convened across the country for International Working Women’s Day, holding demonstrations, educational seminars, and cultural events.
In Seattle, WA, over 100 people participated in the 3rd consecutive IWWD march hosted by Puget Sound Revolutionary Youth and the Puget Sound Struggle Committees. The demonstrators took the streets in the working-class neighborhood of Rainier Beach, hoisting posters featuring Chinese Communist revolutionary Jiang Qing, Palestinian resistance fighter Leila Khaled, American journalist Anna Louise Strong, Black Liberation Army fighter Assata Shakur, Filipino Communist revolutionary Wilma Tiamzon, Brazilian Popular Women’s Movement leader Sandra Lima, and Peruvian Communist revolutionaries Comrade Norah, Edith Lagos, and Comrade Laura.
During the march, participants burned the American flag and decapitated an effigy of Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism Donald Trump. Speeches were given denouncing imperialist violence against women in the Third World and honoring the revolutionary women’s movements in Brazil, Peru, Turkey, India, and the Philippines.
In Portland, OR, around 20 activists gathered on IWWD for a screening of The Red Detachment of Women, a film depicting female combatants of the Chinese Red Army during the People’s War in China in the 1930s. The film screening was organized by Portland Anti-Imperialist Action.
In Oakland, CA, a cultural event for IWWD was organized by the Bay Area Revolutionary Women’s Committee and attended by roughly 200 people. The event took place in a park and featured speeches, songs, and other activities for the attendees. Several organizations attended the event, including the Bay Area League of Class Conscious Workers, Revolutionary Student Organization—Santa Cruz, and Revolutionary Student Organization—Davis.
In Davis, CA, a study of the document “Postmodernism and Feminism: Individualism and Bourgeois Relativism in the Service of Imperialism” by the Popular Women’s Movement in Brazil was held by Revolutionary Student Organization—Davis.
In West Lafayette, IN, activists from the West Lafayette Revolutionary Student Front hosted a presentation discussing the oppression of women through the international sex trade, with a particular focus on the recent revelations about the politically-connected finance monopolist and serial child rapist Jeffrey Epstein. The activists discussed how these abuses against working women and girls are the product of the imperialist system and how they demonstrate the necessity of overthrowing it.
Later on in the presentation, RSF activists discussed the historic gains of women under socialism in the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China as well as the role of women’s struggles in the revolutionary movements in Peru, Turkey, India, and the Philippines today.
In Eugene, OR several dozen gathered for a cultural event hosted by Eugene Revolutionary Women’s Committee in commemoration for International Working Women’s Day. The event was well received by those in attendance and those passing through the park. Many of the masses in attendance, in particular mothers, expressed gratitude for the ability to participate in revolutionary activity alongside their children. Featured at this event were:
Speeches
Several were given, one on the history of IWWD and the world situation, calling for the construction of national anti-imperialist organization and the necessary participation of women in the revolutionary movement as our class struggles for world proletariat revolution.
“Throughout history, the working and oppressed people under the boot of US imperialism have fought for their rights and dignity. Everything the working class has achieved has been through struggle. And with every crisis, the capitalist ruling class tries to erode what the workers have gained. Anti-imperialists must continue to defend what has been conquered and strive to win more. As local revolutionary and martyr Candice King would say, We must fight so we can win!”
Another demarcating from bourgeois feminism, which serves imperialism. The speaker stating,
“As aspiring communists we know firmly that the international sex trade is a key industry where the exploitation of women and children occurs. We disavow the normalization of the sex trade which is a key industry in the maintenance of imperialism.
This is working class or proletarian feminism. We are not waiting for the next round of voting where we can falsely decide whether to elect this or that pedophilic war criminal. We have a more serious and urgent use of our time and energy .We are struggling towards a unified world proletariat revolution.
Today, with my eyes fixed on a future in which the working class leads humanity toward a society that is organized by the working class, for the working class, and in which the ruling class is eliminated – I have hope for my children’s children. I have revolutionary optimism that will not be eliminated. There is a growing and enduring love for the people, that is nurtured in all of your hearts, that grows in the heart of working women, and we will activate that love through a revolution by the people, for the people. We dare to struggle, and we dare to win.”
One speaker spoke to the hypocrisy of US imperialists who claim to be protecting women and children by bringing “democracy” when they bomb and murder those same women and children.The comrade also spoke of inspiring women in the struggle, Heba Muraisi, Khalida Jarrar, Leila Khaled, and Leqaa Kordia, then highlighted these connections:
“Like in Palestine, the US government and private military contractors are building more jails, more prisons, more surveillance apparatus for the oppression and slow death of women in incarceration.
Like in Palestine, working women in US, especially those living on the streets, face an uphill battle in the impossible struggle of affordability that disproportionately impacts women, as well as hyper exploitation in low wage work.
Like in Palestine, what little human services there are for aid for working women, services like those offered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine, Daisy Chain, CAHOOTS, and the Front Rooms Department of White Bird Clinic are all disappearing.
Like in Palestine, women in the US are also thrown into administrative detention in concentration camps, only, the pigs that carry this out here are called ICE and not the IDF.
Right now is the moment for broad mass organizing, to fill the streets, and to escalate direct action to shut down the war machine. Revolutionary movements—especially in the imperialist countries like the United States—bear the responsibility of playing our role today in this great battle for Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, Venezuela, Cuba, the countries of the African Sahel, and others, and for the future of humanity itself.”
Finally, RWC invited a collective of recently laid of workers of a local organization that provided direct social services related to pregnancy and parenting. The workers spoke to their several year struggle against the greedy executive director who actively worked to sabotage the organization as she was being transitioned out of her position, no longer being able to remotely leech a six figure annual income.
Several weeks following the executive directors leave, it was uncovered that the intentional mishandling and lack of other funding was going to lead to mass layoffs in the coming month. A week later 24 workers, almost all women, were informed of the complete closure of their workplace with just days notice. This was connected to a greater trend of detiroirating conditions that have been seen across the country as mass funding cuts and lays off increase. This trend was declared as a part of a series of attacks on the working class and oppressed people due to the crisis of imperialism in decay.
“The only way to make a world that will guarantee housing, food, and health care is through revolution!”
With the support of the committee, there are plans to develop a continuation of support to the workers as they make plans to continue finding ways to support mothers and parents in the area.
Activities Present at the event were local groups and mass organizations which provided information about local anti-imperialist organizing as well as materials and propaganda. Mass contacts assisted with food and arrangements for an altar that was set up to honor working women and martyrs, made immortal in the struggle for communism. Attendees were invited to bring photos, mementos for the altar, others poems or stories related to working women in their life for an open mic. There were educational print outs of revolutionaries such as Clara Zetkin, Anuradha Ghandy, Edith Lagos, Comrade Norah, Jiang Qing, Rosa Luxemberg. Following the open mic, a local musical duo, played anti-fascist tunes such as Bella Ciao.
Reposted from The Worker