In working to make March 8th the kind of protest it needs to be and bring people into the fight for abortion rights and revolution, the revcoms have been reaching out to high school students. We’ve mainly run into students who are shocked to learn that the Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade and take away the right to abortion.
At our first time out at one high school, a group of young women were outraged to find out how serious the attack on abortion rights has gotten. “Why the hell do men get to decide what I do with my own body?” one of them said angrily. This was a common sentiment shared by many students. Some took stickers and flyers which they immediately started putting up in key places where other students would see. The Revolution Club phone number and social media handle was on the flyers and students started calling and following as soon as they got them (literally within a half hour).
We challenged everyone we could with a basic provocation, “If you will not fight against forced motherhood, you are choosing the enslavement of women, what choice are you going to make?” We were clear that fighting this meant getting in the streets March 8 and beyond and challenging everyone around us to pick the right side. Society must be turned upside down with mass resistance if we are going to have a chance to beat this back.
We had the Points of Attention for the Revolution on one side of the flyer and pointed them out to people who stopped to talk. We asked people to question what kind of society are we living in where women’s humanity is up for debate like this? Where their bodies and status as people can go before a court filled with religious fanatics in this way and have that be treated as legitimate? We should not accept living in such a world and we don’t have to, we could make a revolution that sweeps this system away and brings in a world where women can truly be free.
We didn’t have a lot of time to talk to the students because they were heading to school and we wanted to convey just a few basic ideas. What choice will they make around this attack on women? And we put this to people, making clear that we are going for revolution, and that everyone has to be part of this fight whether they feel we need a revolution or not.
We challenged the guys who said they supported women having the right to have an abortion by telling them that was good but this is a real fight and it’s going to require more than a cheering section that supports women. One group of young men were saying that it was fucked up that this right could be taken away. One asked, “What if you’re a teenage girl and you can’t have a kid, then what?” Another told of a teenage girl who got pregnant and wanted an abortion but that her parents wouldn’t allow it.
Students talked with each other about sharing the flyers with people they know and about whether they should take a bus or walk to City Hall on International Women’s Day. One thought it would be cool if a bunch of students marched together from the school to the march. We told them and other students who said they were going to come that they couldn’t wait for something like that to just happen, they would have to make that happen themselves by spreading the word and struggling with other students.
In talking to people who wanted to do something, we tried to show that the basic thing we were doing isn’t that hard. We read the flyer and discussed with others what was happening, we printed flyers and went out to where we could find people to get the word out and struggle with them to take up this fight now. We’ve got a YouTube Show, The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show, that breaks things down and gives people leadership. People can watch the weekly shows, discuss what they see there, and keep going out into the world to organize other people. Some students formed a group chat where more students who want to take up this fight are getting invited to. This is an important way that people can start working together with others and break out of feeling like there’s nothing they can do.
