March 8, 2010
It is an honor for us to salute you, revolutionary women, who fight tirelessly to organize and mobilize working women, against exploitation and every kind of oppression: against sexism, racism and homophobia. It is good to know that in the belly of the beast there exist socialist feminist women actively fighting in the unions to defend workers' rights, with immigrants against discrimination, in the universities in defense of public education, with lesbians for sexual and political liberty, and in general, with working women defending the rights of women and men of the dispossessed class.
Right now, in the economic crisis that big business brought on and tries to make the working class pay for with its blood and sweat, it is important for women to unite in our struggles and our efforts to resist unemployment, misery, marginalization and violence, so that we defeat voracious capitalism, because we have been and are the greatest victims of these atrocities.
Therefore, today it is extremely urgent to reclaim March 8 as International Working Women's Day, as a day for fighting to defend our rights, as a day in which we assert that working women in every country are an important part of obtaining the revolution that will extinguish the chains of exploitation and oppression.
In our country, we have accompanied women from the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (Mexican Electricians Union), to the wives of the miners in Cananea, to the activists against the femicide in Ciudad Juarez, to the compañeras who fight for freedom for the political prisoners of Atenco; and with the financial crisis, we believe that there will be more and more women who will join the struggle in every country, which means that as socialists, we must offer alternatives to organize them and mobilize them; and in this sense, the trajectory and the theoretical and political experience of Radical Women is transcendent not only for the United States but for the working women of the world.
As did the socialists at the start of the past century, led by Clara Zetkin, we working women must unite and make the 8th of March a day of revolutionary socialist and feminist struggle.
Partido Obrero Socialista — Comisión de Mujeres — México
(Socialist Workers Party —Women's Commission — Mexico)
March 5, 2010
International Women's Day Greetings to the
Corriente Internacional Revolucionaria
Radical Women extends greetings to the Corriente Internacional Revolucionaria. Around the world, International Women's Day is a time to commemorate the courageous battles for freedom by and for women. Working-class women keep the radical tradition of this holiday alive by not only honoring past victories but also carrying the fight forward. Your organizing in Mexico has given us much to celebrate.
From the historic decriminalization of abortion to the recent legalization of same-sex marriage and adoption by gay couples, the civil liberties triumphs in Mexico City have inspired feminist and queer movements throughout the Americas. The tenacity of the brave women of the Frente Femenil Canaense show the unstoppable power of women. And the mass mobilizations in support of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union are an important example to all who combat privatization.
In the United States Radical Women joins the battle against a government that wants to balance the capitalist economic crisis at the expense of women and the poor by destroying programs that provide basic human needs such as healthcare, food, housing and education. We fight against conservative ideologists who want women to be limited to unpaid service and caregiving at home and poverty wages on the job.
We stand with you in our joint struggle for a genuinely better world of shared socialist abundance.
In solidarity,
Anne Slater
National Radical Women Organizer
United States Section