Revolution #82, March 18, 2007
Solidarity Statement for March 8, 2007 International Women’s Day March in The Hague:
“Break the Chains! Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!”
The following is a solidarity statement from Mary Lou Greenberg, Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, to the March 8, 2007 International Women's Day March in The Hague, Netherlands, sponsored by the Campaign for Abolition of All Misogynist, Gender-Based Legislation and Islamic Punitive Laws in Iran. For information on the IWD march at The Hague, see “From A World to Win News Service: Iranian Women Call for International Women's Day Actions” in Revolution #81, online at revcom.us.
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March 8th, International Women’s Day, is the day for people around the world to stand together in common struggle and solidarity for a future free from the degradation and oppression of women—for the liberation of half of humanity. It is also a day to celebrate the role that women have played and need to play in the emancipation of all of humanity. The fate of the vast majority of both women and men everywhere is bound up with breaking the chains that cripple women’s bodies, silence their words, constrain their thoughts and crush their dreams—whether in western imperialist countries or Islamic theocracies. No people, no part of humanity can be free if one-half of the people is suppressed and enslaved.
We see all around us how the world cries out for revolutionary change. Tradition’s chains of all kinds must be broken—and the vision and means to thoroughly shatter them is to be found in a new, communist revolutionary vision and program. This is what's needed for there to be any fundamental and liberating change, in spirit and in material conditions, in imperialist countries and in countries dominated by imperialism.
One of these enslaving chains is the patriarchal domination that connects the rape, brutality, domestic servitude, and other forms of societal oppression that women face daily in every country. These horrors also are an inevitable part of imperialist war and occupation, today committed while the U.S. war-makers hypocritically preach about “liberation,” “democracy” and “women’s rights.” Let me be clear. The U.S. is the greatest perpetrator of horror and terror in the world, and liberation—including and especially the liberation of women—cannot come through U.S. imperialist war, occupation and domination!
Today as the U.S. escalates war on Iraq and prepares for what may be even greater crimes against Iran and the Iranian people, the need to unite broadly against U.S. imperialism and its crimes is urgently posed. As an internationalist, revolutionary Party working in the U.S., we have a special responsibility to stand firmly against these crimes and lead massive opposition to them. And, especially now, we are joining with many others in the U.S. working to drive the criminal Bush regime from power and oppose the whole reactionary agenda they are pursuing. At the same time, the world’s peoples must not be drawn into siding with oppressors of any stripe and must be firm both in opposing imperialist war and aggression as well as Islamic theocracy and those whose aim is to impose it. This firmness is the only way to give air to breathe and political support to those who are fighting for a revolutionary road forward that is in the interests of the vast majority of the masses of people.
As Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, has said:
“What we see in contention here with Jihad [Islamic fundamentalism] on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade [increasingly globalized western imperialism] on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these ‘outmodeds,’ you end up strengthening both.”
This march today, as last year’s European march, serves as an example of people refusing to accept either reactionary pole and raising the banner of a totally different future. I send this message in solidarity with your march and the larger struggle that it is part of. I know that millions of men and women around the world share the sentiments expressed in your flyer: “We, Iranian women, will continue on the path we started last year, seeking to establish 'another world' based on the participation and authority of all human beings, those who have no interest in maintaining the power structures based on exploitation and injustice....”
Let’s hasten the struggle for that other world. Break the chains! Unleash the fury of women as a mighty force for revolution!
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