One Billion Rising for Justice:
Forging a Worldwide Community of Resistance to Women's Oppression

January 27, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Editors' note: We are sharing excerpts from a letter from Andy Zee, spokesperson for Revolution Books in New York City, on the importance of the One Billion Rising For Justice events, suggestions for how Revolution Books stores might participate in, and bring revolution into the mix. We feel the letter will be helpful to all revolutionaries in making plans to relate to this important day.

 

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
BAsics 3:22

One Billion Rising for Justice is a very positive international manifestation against the abuse of women. It takes place on February 14 this year. The day forges a sense of world-wide community of joyful resistance to what is one of the deepest and most vicious forms of oppression—the brutalization, degradation, denial of the basic humanity of women.

The oppression of women is completely bound up with class society, it is a cornerstone of this system and the liberation of women is a decisive driving force in making revolution and carrying revolution forward to the full and complete emancipation of humanity around the world.

Revolutionaries should be a part of One Billion Rising for Justice, bringing revolution into the day and the streets—a total revolution for the liberation of women and the emancipation of humanity all over the world. As part of that, I strongly feel that Revolution Books should be a part of—and a site for—One Billion Rising for Justice this year. The store should be a place people come on 2/14 to Rise Up—an event should be planned and happening in the store and the store should lead people to dance in the street—bringing people from around the city to the store and activating the neighborhood to join in.

One Billion Rising for Justice at Revolution Books should give exuberant and substantive expression to this day. We should not think that there isn't great joy in unleashing the fury of women as a mighty force for revolution—and indeed the joy expressed in the potential of millions dancing around the world on V-Day should inspire even greater determination to work for the liberation of women as part of a total revolution. The Revolution Books One Billion Rising event should be coordinated with the citywide activities so that those who come to the store can join the "snake" dance that I believe will lead to some convergences which supporters and friends of Revolution Books can join.

People can sign up to participate and get in touch with the V-Day coordinators at onebillionrising.org.

 

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Look at all these beautiful children who are female in the world. And in addition to all the other outrages which I have referred to, in terms of children throughout the slums and shantytowns of the Third World, in addition to all the horrors that will be heaped on them—the actual living in garbage and human waste in the hundreds of millions as their fate, laid out before them, yes, even before they are born—there is, on top of this, for those children who are born female, the horror of everything that this will bring simply because they are female in a world of male domination. And this is true not only in the Third World. In “modern” countries like the U.S. as well, the statistics barely capture it: the millions who will be raped; the millions more who will be routinely demeaned, deceived, degraded, and all too often brutalized by those who are supposed to be their most intimate lovers; the way in which so many women will be shamed, hounded and harassed if they seek to exercise reproductive rights through abortion, or even birth control; the many who will be forced into prostitution and pornography; and all those who—if they do not have that particular fate, and even if they achieve some success in this “new world” where supposedly there are no barriers for women—will be surrounded on every side, and insulted at every moment, by a society and a culture which degrades women, on the streets, in the schools and workplaces, in the home, on a daily basis and in countless ways.

Bob Avakian
BAsics 1:10

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