Abortion Rights Freedom Ride 2014: GROUND ZERO TEXAS
BAsics 3:22
You cannot break all the chains, except one. You cannot say you want to be free of exploitation and oppression, except you want to keep the oppression of women by men. You can’t say you want to liberate humanity yet keep one half of the people enslaved to the other half. The oppression of women is completely bound up with the division of society into masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited, and the ending of all such conditions is impossible without the complete liberation of women. All this is why women have a tremendous role to play not only in making revolution but in making sure there is all-the-way revolution. The fury of women can and must be fully unleashed as a mighty force for proletarian revolution.
Bob Avakian
Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
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Watch video of Bob Avakian, on "A world of rape and sexual assault"
Call to Action
END PORNOGRAPHY AND PATRIARCHY: THE ENSLAVEMENT AND DEGRADATION OF WOMEN!
We are told that "equality for women has been won" and that "there are no limits to what girls can achieve." BULLSHIT!
Every 15 seconds a woman is beaten. Every day three to four women are killed by their partners. One out of four female college students will be raped or sexually assaulted while in college.
In recent years, pornography has become increasingly violent, cruel, degrading towards women; women are referred to as “cumdumpsters” and “fuckbuckets”; the “money shot” (ejaculation in a woman’s face) is standard; humiliating cruelty—like violent “ass-to-mouth” penetration—is normalized, and racist bigotry is sexualized. Meanwhile, the broader culture has been pornified: pole dancing is taught at gyms, “sexting” is a national phenomenon among teens, and the strip club is the accepted backdrop to “male bonding.” All this is tied in with, and reinforces, the trafficking of millions of women and girls as literal chattel in the international sex industry.
This is NOT society becoming more comfortable with sex....
Forced Motherhood is Female Enslavement!
Abortion on Demand & Without Apology!
There have been decades of assault on women's right to abortion. But in the last few years this has taken a dramatic leap with hundreds of laws passed restricting access to abortion, closing down abortion clinics, and leaving huge parts of the country with no abortion providers at all.
Texas concentrates a lot. In 2011, there were 46 abortion clinics in a state of 26 million people. By September 1 this year, it's very likely that there will only be six abortion clinics left.
As Sunsara Taylor has said: “It is no exaggeration to make the analogy between this Abortion Rights Freedom Ride taking on the fight against female enslavement and the original Freedom Rides which challenged the brutal regime of the Jim Crow South. Forced motherhood IS female enslavement.”
Women and men from many different perspectives have joined this ride directly or in other ways, including financially, come to its support. The Revolutionary Communist Party fully supports and commends these efforts as fulfilling a great need and calls on all those who do not want to see women enslaved to their reproduction to recognize and act on this great need.
Follow the progress of these mobilizations, join these efforts, support them financially.
Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution
Get into and spread the word about revcom.us!
ABOUT THE
EMERGENCY
GET
INVOLVED
STOP FORCED
MOTHERHOOD
STATEMENT
A FETUS
IS NOT
A BABY!-
VOICES
ON THE
FREEDOM
RIDE - REPORTS
FROM THE
ROAD
& PRESS - ABORTION
RIGHTS
FREEDOM
RIDE 2013
ESSENTIAL
READINGS
Updated September 18, 2014
About the Abortion Rights Emergency:
In 2011, Texas had 46 clinics; by September 1, 2014, there are likely to be only six left. Nationwide, hundreds of laws restricting abortion have been passed in recent years. Six states have only one abortion clinic left.
THIS MUST BE RESISTED AND REVERSED! Without access to safe abortion, women die from dangerous, illegal abortions and many more are forced to bear children they don’t want, foreclosing their lives and dreams.
Through the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride, through the People’s Hearings, through dramatic and determined protest, through mass participation throughout Texas and around the country, and through a nationwide Week of Defiance August 25-September 1, a huge leap can and must be made in forging the kind of mass independent political resistance that can turn the tide.
Become a freedom rider for women’s lives!
Week of Defiance, August 25-September 1: STAND UP for Women's Liberation
For the People's Hearings webcasts, as well as voices speaking out about the Freedom Ride, go to the "Voices on the Freedom Ride" tab on this page. (updated August 30)
For the latest reports from the road, as well as press coverage of the Freedom Ride, go to the "Reports from the Road & Press" tab on this page. (updated September 18)
The three overarching goals of the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride 2014: Ground Zero Texas are:
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Forge a national strategic counter-offensive.
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Radically reset the political, moral, and ideological terms of this fight so that millions understand that this fight is about women’s liberation or women’s enslavement.
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Mobilize all people of conscience to wage massive, independent, political resistance. Relying mainly on politicians, and the courts, has not halted the barrage of attacks.
The fight to turn the tide in the all-out assault on women's right to abortion and birth control is something that everyone who cares about the future of women has a stake in. YOU are needed. Everyone must find the ways to support this effort, and everyone reading this, and everyone that you know can do something to strengthen the impact of this effort.
On Bob Avakian: Far-Sighted Revolutionary Leadership vs. Gutter-Level Wrecking and Disregard for the Truth
Response from Sunsara Taylor to the unprincipled attacks on BA. Posted August 18, 2014.
A Statement from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP)
To all those who truly do want to see an end to the outrages and abuses coming down on people... and to the slanderers, the haters, the opportunists, and worse.
There are 2 things about the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA that some people apparently hate... that other people cherish... and that everybody needs to know about and understand:
Sunsara Taylor Calls for
Week of Defiance
August 25-September 1
Recorded August 13, 2014
Emergency in Texas!
WEEK OF DEFIANCE:
Abortion on Demand and Without Apology!
August 25 – September 1
On September 1st, the state of Texas is on track to close all but six abortion clinics (there were 46 in 2011). Women will be forced to have children against their will. Others will be driven to risk – or lose – their lives through dangerous illegal abortions.
This is a critical turning point in a nation-wide emergency.
Now is the time for resistance, for refusing to back down in the face of injustice. Now is the time to defend women's lives and women's rights. Abortion on Demand and Without Apology.
Come to Texas. Take a stand.
If not now, when?
Urgently Needed: A Week of Defiance to Stop the Attacks on Abortion Rights
A letter from the 11 Freedom Riders arrested outside Rick Perry's mansion on August 13, 2014
Download: PDF for print | JPG for web
Come One, Come All to the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride 2014: Ground Zero Texas!
by Sunsara Taylor
It would be hard to overstate the dangers hurtling towards women in every part of the world today. I'm talking about everything from the rising epidemic of gang-rape from India to Steubenville to the sexual enslavement of millions, from the saturation of the culture with ever-more violent and humiliating pornography to the all-out assault on women's right to access abortion and even birth control. Everywhere, the oppression of women is being violently and aggressively reasserted. Here in this country, one major spearhead of this global war on women is shaping up in Texas.
Join Sunsara Taylor, Sikivu Hutchinson, Rev. Donna Schaper, Merle Hoffman, Diane Derzis, & Carol Downer in signing the statement
EMERGENCY IN TEXAS
STOP FORCED MOTHERHOOD
ABORTION ON DEMAND AND WITHOUT APOLOGY
From Stop Patriarchy
Why we honor and invoke the example & legacy of the original Freedom Rides in our name
Download: PDF for print | JPG for web
From Stop Patriarchy
Pledge to Defend Abortion Rights and Defeat the War on Women
To those who call themselves "pro-choice" but say that “Abortion On Demand and Without Apology” is “too extreme”:
Which women do you think should apologize and feel guilty for their abortions?
Which women would you force to have children against their will?
Sunsara Taylor
From the RCP's "A Declaration: For Women's Liberation and the Emancipation of All Humanity":
WE DECLARE: NO MORE!
Women need emancipation. Women need liberation from thousands of years of tradition’s chains. This is a declaration that stands on the clear recognition that for humanity as a whole to advance, half of humanity must be lifted from centuries of being condemned to being the property of men and pitilessly exploited, demeaned and degraded in a thousand ways.
Women are not breeders. Women are not lesser beings. Women are not objects created for the sexual pleasure of men. Women are human beings capable of participating fully and equally in every realm of human endeavor. When women are held down, all of humanity is held back. Women must win liberation, and they can only be liberated through the revolutionary transformation of the world and the emancipation of all of humanity, and through being a powerful motive force in that revolution.
Also available as downloadable PDF.
Judge Rules Against Further Abortion Clinic Closures in Texas
A statement from StopPatriarchy.org and the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride
DID YOU KNOW...
» Last year, Texas had 44 abortion clinics, and by September 2014, if nothing changes, there will be ONLY SIX.
» New Texas laws have closed all the clinics in the Rio Grande Valley.
» 97% of rural counties have no abortion provider.
» SIX states have only ONE abortion clinic.
» over 80% of clinics that provide abortions have experienced violence, threats, harassment, and the new Supreme Court ruling protecting anti-abortion protestors outside clinics will make this worse.
» EIGHT abortion providers and staff have been murdered by anti-abortion violence.
Reproductive rights are in a state of emergency.
An Abortion Rights Battle Bigger Than Texas
Dennis Trainor of Acronym TV interviews Sunsara Taylor, August 6, 2014
Interview with Sunsara Taylor:
A Watershed Moment in the Battle for Abortion Rights and for the Liberation of Women
Posted August 24. Read more
Revolution Interview: "This is one of the most special places I've ever been."
Diane Derzis, owner of the last abortion clinic in Mississippi, talks with Sunsara Taylor about legal threats to her clinic, her own abortion, anti-abortion violence, and the joy of serving women. Read the interview
Revolution Interview
Dr. Willie Parker, Doctor at the Last Abortion Clinic in Mississippi
Sunsara Taylor interviews Dr. Willie Parker, one of the two heroic abortion doctors who regularly flies to Mississippi to provide abortions at the last clinic in that state. Read more
Also: A Conversation with Dr. Willie Parker and Sunsara Taylor. October 28, 2013 at Revolution Books NYC (video)
“The energy of hate in that place was palpable...”
Susan Cahill speaks out after the destruction of her Montana family clinic, which provided abortions
On March 3, All Families Healthcare, a Montana clinic that provides abortions, was so severely vandalized that it has been forced to close down indefinitely. This took place against a backdrop of the most relentless escalation of restrictions against abortion and clinic closures since Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalized abortion 41 years ago. Sunsara Taylor speaks with Susan Cahill, the owner and advanced-level clinician who provided abortions and other services at the family clinic. Read more
Revolution Interview with Dr. Susan Robinson
"Chasing the Abortion"
Revolution/revcom.us had the opportunity to interview Dr. Susan Robinson, one of the four heroic abortion providers in the U.S. who openly provide much-needed third trimester abortions. Read more
Interview with Texas Abortion Provider on the Abortion Rights Emergency
"The time machine has been turned back about 40 years" Read more
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Women will begin dying from dangerous illegal abortions. Others will be imprisoned for self-inducing abortions. Thousands more will have their lives foreclosed by being forced to bear children they do not want – shattering their dreams, trapping them in abusive relationships, and/or driving them into humiliating and dangerous poverty. Rural, poor, immigrant, and women of color will be hardest hit.
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BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian is a book of quotations and short essays that speaks powerfully to questions of revolution and human emancipation.
On this planet today, there are no questions that are more important—and no answers that are more thoroughgoing—than what is spoken to in BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! And there is no person more filled with contempt for the powers-that-be and the horrific order they trumpet and enforce—nor more filled with scientific confidence in the potential of masses of people to change all that—than Bob Avakian, the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.
"She makes an excellent exposition of the view that sexual differentiation of status, role, and power are built on small asymmetries in biology as, for example, the division of reproductive labor, in societies where the development of a surplus gives rise to a general class structure. No better theory has yet been advanced than this general view that we owe originally to Engels, and I found Ardea Skybreak's book a very thoughtful and persuasive exposition of that view." 
Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing
the World
