March 8, 2026 • International Women’s Day 2026

A salute to poet-activist Nellie Wong and the women of the world

On this International Women’s Day, the socialist holiday founded in 1910, we pay special tribute to revolutionary feminist leader Nellie Wong, a beloved poet and leader in Radical Women and our sister organization, the Freedom Socialist Party. Nellie died at age 91 on January 2 in San Francisco. She was a groundbreaking Asian American feminist whose poetry was a heartfelt expression of the radical politics to which she dedicated her life. Nellie was grounded in her working-class upbringing and dedicated her life to fighting for the multi-hued, multi-cultural grassroots majority. Her decades of activism, powerful oratory, and passion for connecting people and ideas teach us all how to live and relish the fight for justice.

We join Nellie in saluting working-class sisters and siblings around the globe as described in her 2022 poem:

Women of the World

Women who plant rice
Women who sew pants
Women who weave rugs
Women who compose songs
Women who launder, who wash and wash
Women who clean rooms, who dig ditches
Women who agitate for a living wage
Women who give their bodies
Women who invent
Women who dance
Women who work
And all women work
Women who sacrifice sleep
Women who weld, who paint, who doctor
Women who see with their ears, hear with their eyes
Women who resist, their brains and bodies in united fronts
Women who build coalitions
Women who organize, strategize, materialize
Women who teach, who learn
Women who are migrants, refugees escaping violence
against their bodies, their children’s lives
Women who fight against sexual slavery
Women who abort, who choose
Women who act for clean water, clear skies
For education for all
Women who lead
To end wars that promulgate profits, destruction
Women who cross borders
Women     she     they     we
Women of the world unite
We are waves, rivers, mountains
We who cover the earth
Fighting to be free.

Learn more about Nellie’s life and work by watching this 2025 tribute at a Seattle Radical Women meeting, sampling her latest poetry collection Nothing Like Freedom, and her writings in the Radical Women pamphlet Three Asian American Writers Speak Out on Feminism. Additional remembrances, tributes and biographical info are in AsAmNews and The Oakland Side.