When so few dare...

On International Women's Day we are taking to the streets to call for something sorely needed and unseen in generations: an uncompromising outpouring of fury and resistance from women and men who want to see women, the world over, lifted from centuries of being condemned to being treated as the possessions of men.

March 8 is special this year. This year we are honored to stand together with and affirm our sisters and brothers in Iran who for the last year have heroically defied batons, bullets, harsh prisons and now hanging. In a society where women are denied basic rights—where a woman who doesn't cover her hair faces jail and up to 80 lashes, and where it is still legal for a woman found guilty of adultery to be stoned to death—a new generation of young women are joining their brothers in the streets, with many of them confidently throwing off their head coverings and demanding an end to the theocratic regime.

WE ARE BUILDING A MOVEMENT FOR REVOLUTION...

Because in the 21st century women are still being stoned to death for sleeping with the wrong man—at the same time that women by the tens of millions are being forced by the workings of capitalism-imperialism into prostitution in a globalized "sex industry."

Because slavery—both literal and in barely disguised form—has made a worldwide comeback, with young girls abducted and offered up from desperately impoverished villages and mega-cities of the oppressed nations of the globe and transported across borders.

Because we live in a capitalist culture where women are devalued and reduced to disembodied breasts and bottoms—advertised at every turn as objects that exist for the sexual gratification of men. Because sexuality and human intimacy have been twisted into being just another commodity: a thing to be bought and sold and exploited in the marketplace, instead of a way to express love and as a source of mutual pleasure.

Because some women are defined and confined by the role of mother and denied full participation in the wider world, while other women—again mainly from the impoverished and oppressed nations of this globe—must leave their children for years to work in the rich nations and send home badly needed money for their family's survival.

Because of all this and so much more, we need a revolution. And we are building a movement for revolution.

When a young girl growing up in this culture cuts herself, starves herself or hates herself, and when this goes on in epidemic proportions—it's not merely a personal problem.

When a woman cannot walk the street anywhere on this planet for fear of rape—this is not merely a personal problem.

When a woman is denied reproductive freedom—when she cannot get a condom in Africa, an abortion in Latin America or birth control from a pharmacist in the United States who subscribes to a cruel Christian fascist morality, the problem is global and systemic.

These horrors that happen by the billions are not because of the "bad choices" of individuals—they happen because of backward institutions propped up by an outmoded economic and political system. This must go.

When half of humanity is held down—all of humanity is held back. It is long past time for people to wake up—it's time to refuse to accept this as the natural order of things. There is no biological, god-given or man-made reason for things to remain this way—these days must be gone and they can be.

Imagine for a moment women being treated like human beings—not lesser, not inferior but as full human beings capable of participating fully and equally in every realm of human endeavor. This is real and possible. But because the oppression of women is bound so deeply into the fabric of society here and around the world... because it is so intricately and intimately bound together with all the other forms of oppression in capitalist society... it will take a total revolution—communist revolution—to liberate women.

The Revolutionary Communist Party is building a movement for revolution. Never has revolutionary communism been more radical and scientific and viable than with its advance and development through the leadership of Bob Avakian. This is a communism that builds on the extremely significant (and suppressed) achievements of the past revolutionary movements and societies, while critically examining their shortcomings in conception and practice; this is a communism that on that basis is bringing forward radically new insights and pathways for change. Avakian's far-seeing new synthesis of communism takes the full emancipation of women as a cornerstone for a revolution that is serious about uprooting and abolishing all exploitation, oppression and the degrading social relations and ideas that go along with this—here and all over the world—and it does this in whole new ways.

In this revolution the defiance and impatience women feel is welcomed and sustained as a mighty force that can move us all forward in the fight to emancipate all humanity. In this revolution, women and men are transforming themselves as part of fighting for a world worth living in. This revolution is real and it's creating the kind of ethos, culture, and communist morality for women to be fully unleashed, not some time later, but in this struggle today.

March 8th March! Assemble that day1 and bring with you examples of and symbols of the kind of oppression that squanders and suffocates the spirits and lives of women and say "NO MORE."



The revolutionary movement today must be a living manifestation of the new social relations between men and women and a new morality that fosters mutual respect and equality. As Bob Avakian has put it:

"In many ways, and particularly for men, the woman question and whether you seek to completely abolish or to preserve the existing property and social relations and corresponding ideology that enslave women (or maybe ‘just a little bit' of them) is a touchstone question among the oppressed themselves. It is a dividing line between ‘wanting in' and really ‘wanting out': between fighting to end all oppression and exploitation—and the very division of society into classes—and seeking in the final analysis to get your part in this." (A Horrible End, or An End to the Horror?, RCP Publications, 1984, pp. 140–141)