From an Abortion Rights Freedom Rider and Member of a Revolution Club: Excerpts from a Statement on the "Abortion Rights Freedom Ride: GROUND ZERO TEXAS" Read at an August 9^th "Break ALL the Chains!" Celebration

"Why I'm an Abortion Rights Freedom Rider"

August 14, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

I want to share with you all a short excerpt from a longer piece I wrote about why I'm an Abortion Rights Freedom Rider, where I present a challenge, to all those involved in this ride, to get into the real problem that faces women and what the real solution is. So much of my early life was shaped by this idea that you can be and do whatever you want as a woman in this society, and in fact, even get ahead wielding your femininity. It wasn't until I found the revolution, or more accurately, until the revolution found me on my college campus, that I began to confront the reality that some of the more twisted things that had happened to me when I was younger, which I had dismissed as just a "fucked up situation" and not part of what it meant to be a woman, were exactly that: a misogynist act of violence against me, as a woman.

I wish I had more time to pull something together from all the revolutionaries on this ride, but unfortunately with the great need we are filling here on the ground, it presents many challenges and urgent needs and tasks to be fulfilled... even feeding the group becomes a huge project here! Please check out our blog, where we are doing our best to share photos on a daily basis from outreach and actions, reflections from the ground, press coverage, and polemics. Go to our website, and watch the webcast, which features incredibly moving testimony from women, which concentrate SO much of what women here and all over the world are facing, how horrific and barbaric forced motherhood really is, and how we are acting NOW for millions of women, to change this.

Anyway, here is what I want to say:

If you are serious about putting an end to all these horrors that come down on women, and humanity as a whole, then you need to get into the work of Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party. There's been a lot of controversy surrounding the involvement of communists in this ride, but let me ask you. Why do you think it is the case that so many of us are communists or aspiring communists? There have been a lot of lies about communism, and its real history, because this system has a huge stake in keeping people ignorant and afraid of actually rising up and breaking all the chains of oppression. But we can't be afraid, we need to dig into the real questions of "what is the problem," and "what is the solution," or we condemn future generations to lives of misery, brutality, exploitation, and oppression. I am a part of the Revolution Club, and I see this fight for the full liberation of women as part of the fight for the emancipation of all humanity. Without this basic and most fundamental right to abortion, women cannot play an equal role in society, they cannot raise their sights, they cannot participate in the realm of ideas, and they surely cannot play an equal role in building a movement for revolution. The Revolution Club is leading people to fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution, TODAY, and I encourage all of you who cannot stand living in this kind of world another day, to check it out, and get with it.

And to that I would add, especially on this occasion, the great importance of Bob Avakian's (BA's) work on this question of the oppression of women, and the publication of this compendium, Break ALL the Chains! Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution. It is a real breakthrough in history, the understanding of the absolute necessity to break this chain in particular, as BA puts it, "You can't break all the chains except one. 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."

So let me end with this. This Abortion Rights Freedom Ride: GROUND ZERO TEXAS has made some great breakthroughs on the ground thus far, but we are very far from society-wide impact. We have gotten a lot of very positive press coverage, connected with lots of people on the ground, and all the forces down here, both the anti-abortion fanatics, and the mainstream pro-choice movement have been forced to respond to the work we are doing in some way. The antis claimed they would be at every one of our stops and yet they have hardly been out at all. The organized pro-choice movement refuses to engage with us on the real need to change the current strategy of relying on the Democrats, has spread lies and slander about our project, and refuses to watch our powerful People's Hearings. What is all this saying? I see it as a glimmer, of the society wide impact we are going for. We ARE changing the terms of this fight, making people understand this fight as about women's liberation or women's enslavement. We ARE taking away the moral high ground from these antis. And we ARE forcing the mainstream pro-choice movement to have to make an argument (or not) for how their program will ultimately defeat these attacks. But look, we can't do this on our own. We need YOU. We need you to watch and spread the powerful webcasts, to follow the coverage on revcom.us and StopPatriarchy.org. There are a million things you can do, and it really matters. Take a stand for women's lives, and for the FULL liberation of women.

—Those who want the world to remain as it is, do not want it to remain at all…

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