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
For more about BA, click here.
Download Sampler Edition PDF
Download full pamphlet PDF
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
A Fetus is Not a Child
Abortion is Not Murder
Women are Not Incubators
Updated August 31, 2014
Emergency in Texas! Get involved...
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?
Kicking off the Week of Defiance in Austin, August 25.
Converge daily 4pm-6pm at Gov. Rick Perry's mansion at 1010 Colorado St. in Austin, TX. Bring your body, your art, your voice, your friends, and your determination to reshape the future.
Around the country: go in public and represent for abortion on demand and without apology. Send your messages, art, and donations down to Texas.
Tweet your message about abortion rights to Rick Perry (@GovernorPerry) using the hashtag #StopForcedMotherhood. Stop Patriarchy will write your message on a coathanger and display it in front of his mansion. Be part of making sure that every day the pile of coat-hangers grows, representing the outrage and opposition of people throughout the country and around the world.
Check out the messages that have been sent and add your own!.
WEEK OF DEFIANCE—ACTIONS
AUSTIN, TX
Every day Monday 8/25 through Monday 9/1
4-6 pm
Gov. Rick Perry's mansion
1010 Colorado St., Austin
JACKSON, MS
Wed. 8/27 at 4-6 PM
Meet at Smith Park
Gov. Phil Bryant's mansion
LITTLE ROCK, AR
Sat. 8/30
Details TBA
JEFFERSON CITY, MO
Monday: 7:10-11 am
Tuesday: 2-5:20 pm
Wednesday: TBA
Thursday: 11:10 am-5:20 pm
Friday: 1:10-5:20pm
E. High Street
LOS ANGELES, CA
Every day Monday 8/25 through Monday 9/1
3-4pm
USC Campus - at Jefferson & Hoover
PRESS CONF WED.
OAKLAND, CA
Wednesday 8/27 through Friday 8/30
12-1 pm
Mills College - Rothwell Plaza
Wear black!
BERKELEY, CA
Wednesday 8/27
1:00 pm
UC Berkeley - Sproul Plaza
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Tuesday 8/26
5:30-7:30 pm
Powell & Market
SEATTLE, WA
Wed Aug 27, 5:30 pm:
Outside Whole Foods at 2200 Westlake Ave
Sat, Aug 30, 1pm-3pm:
Seattle Center; Bumbershoot entrance at corner of Broad & 5th
Monday, Sep 1, 1pm-3pm:
Seattle Center; Bumbershoot entrance at corner of Broad & 5th
NEW YORK, NY
Thursday 8/28-2-4pm - Hunter College
Friday 8/29 2-4pm - front of the ATLAH World Ministry, Lenox and 123rd
CHICAGO, IL
Saturday, 8/30
1-3 pm
State & Jackson (outside DePaul Center)
You are URGENTLY needed to join this effort to fight for women's lives! Support and Join the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride:
7 things you can do today
1. Donate at StopPatriarchy.org
2. Come to Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and/or the Rio Grande Valley*
3. Host a viewing party in your home for webcast of “People's Hearings each Wed beginning July 30 and into August.
4. Speak out or send in testimony to the hearings of pre-Roe abortion stories or what women have to go through today.
5. Spread the word on social media:
@StopPatriarchy, #StopForcedMotherhood, FB: Stop Patriarchy
6. Take to the streets during the August WEEK OF DEFIANCE.
7. CONTRIBUTE YOUR SKILLS in graphic design, art, construction, social media, photography/videography, legal observation and defense, etc.
Join with the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride: GROUND ZERO TEXAS
The Abortion Rights Freedom Ride will consist of three major components, which synergize with and strengthen each other:
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A statement signed by people from many walks of life, including major luminaries, artists, public figures, religious leaders, etc. which recasts the moral and political terms and the thinking of millions.
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Nationally Web-Cast "People's Hearing" – public speak-outs in Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and the Rio Grande Valley which draw out the true dimensions of the emergency, because people do not know of clinic closures, scope, or stakes. The hearings will combine mass testimony from before Roe and from today, the breadth of a wide range of community leaders and health care providers, and voices of conscience of artists, musicians, actors, and other prominent individuals.
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Confrontational, dramatic, non-violent political protest that delivers the verdict of these hearings to appropriate individuals/institutions. Protesters will brandish bloody coat-hangers, images of the women who died from illegal abortions, and shackles representing female enslavement.
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.
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.
Spread the word!
For printing and distributing:
Emergency in Texas! Statement to Stop Forced Motherhood
With updated list of signatories
We Refuse to Forget!
The stories of women who have died from lack of abortion care.
Print fliers with the two PDFs above, one on each side.
Download posters with the faces of the women.
Download posters with statistics from the war on women.
Flier for Week of Defiance in Austin, part of the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride 2014, Ground Zero TX (PDF, 2 sides, 4 per sheet)
Poster for Week of Defiance in Austin (11x17)
Fact sheet on the national abortion rights emergency (Updated 8/31/14)
Visit StopPatriarchy: www.stoppatriarchy.org
stoppatriarchy@gmail.com
Follow us on Tumblr
Facebook.com/stoppatriarchy
@stoppatriarchy
youtube.com/user/StopPatriarchy
EMERGENCY IN TEXAS
Stop Forced Motherhood
Abortion on Demand and Without Apology
If nothing changes, on September 1st all but six abortion clinics in Texas will be closed (there were 46 in 2011).
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.
Worse, this emergency in Texas is not an isolated problem.
Hundreds of abortion restrictions have been enacted in recent years. Six states have only one abortion clinic left. Eight abortion doctors and staff have been murdered. Countless women have been shamed and humiliated.
Those driving this attack on women's most fundamental rights are deadly serious. They will not stop until all abortions have been criminalized for all women in all circumstances.
THIS MUST NOT BE ALLOWED! Forcing women to have children against their will is a form of enslavement.
Courageous people are doing important work to keep abortion available. At the same time, it must be confronted soberly: much more is needed.
What happens this summer in Texas will affect women everywhere. It is the responsibility of everyone who does not want to see women forced to have children against their will to stand up and fight. Not some time in the future, but now.
This is a time for courage. For people to defy fear, to shatter silence, and to break their isolation. To refuse to wait for politicians or courts to make our will known. To raise our voices and fill the streets, to make art and wage protest, to defend doctors and assist women, to change hearts and enlighten minds. To engage in acts of militant non-violent direct action. To call forth thousands and soon millions until we have STOPPED these attacks and DEFEATED this war on women.
We reject the view that a woman's highest purpose is to bear children. Women are full human beings with the moral, ethical and legal right to decide when and whether to be mothers.
NO MORE women denied the right to dream, the right to live full lives, the right to love, the right to decide for themselves. WE WILL RESIST!
Join Eve Ensler, Mark Ruffalo, Cindy Sheehan, Gloria Steinem, Cynthia Nixon, & Dr. Cornel West in signing this statement
Sign the statement here and donate for publication.
The initiators of the statement are: Merle Hoffman (CEO of Choices Women's Medical Center in New York City), Carol Downer (founder of Feminist Women's Health Center in Los Angeles), Rev. Donna Schaper (senior minister at Judson Memorial Church, NYC), Sikivu Hutchinson (Black feminist atheist author), Diane Derzis (owner of the last abortion clinic in Mississippi), and Sunsara Taylor (writer for Revolution, Stop Patriarchy; fighter for abortion rights since 1995) in signing the statement below.
Stop Patriarchy aims to publish this statement in a major Texas newspaper on August 4, the first day of court proceedings which will determine whether all but six remaining abortion clinics in Texas will be forced to close on September 1, 2014.
Donate to help make this possible.
A Fetus Is Not A Baby!
A Fetus Cannot Feel Pain, but a Woman Denied the Right to Abortion Suffers Intolerable Pain
What Is an Abortion and
Why Women Must Have the Right to Choose
Life Cannot and Should Not Always Be Preserved
by A.S.K.
Is it true that a fetus is a form of life? Of course it is. It is made up of live cells, it is growing and processing energy, it has the capacity to mature and reproduce, it has a genetic system and so on.
Will an abortion destroy this form of life? Yes, absolutely.
Well then, isn’t an abortion killing another human being? No, absolutely not.
A fetus is not yet a human being. It is more like a seed or a sprout of a human being. It is "alive," but that is also true of all the other cells in a woman’s body. It has no life of its own yet. It is not yet a separate life from the life of the woman in whose uterus it is.
Just because something has the characteristics of "life" doesn’t mean people should necessarily preserve it. This is an obvious truth. Think about it: People routinely terminate "life" for what is seen as a greater good. We do this every time we eat—all the fruits, vegetables, and meats come from live plants and animals killed for our nourishment. People end "life" every time we cut a tree for firewood, every time we take antibiotics to kill off the live disease organisms which are making us sick, or even every time we kill other human beings in self-defense or to prevent them from causing other human beings to suffer and die.
From Revolution, #239, July 17, 2011
Click the image to see full-size, or right click here to Download PDF.
From the StopPatriarchy.org blog:
The “Abortion Holocaust”: A Monstrous Lie From the Christian Fascists
Stop Patriarchy answers the lie of anti-abortion forces who say that the abortions performed between 1973 (the year Roe v. Wade was passed, making abortion legal in this country) and now, are equal to the HOLOCAUST committed by the Nazis on Jewish and other people in the 1930s and 1940s. Read more
Interview with Sunsara Taylor:
A Watershed Moment in the Battle for Abortion Rights and for the Liberation of Women
Posted August 24. Read more
The Abortion Rights Freedom Ride Advisory Board consists of:
Diane Derzis, owner of Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the last abortion clinic in Mississippi
Carol Downer, co-founder of Feminist Women’s Health Center which began doing abortions in 1971
Merle Hoffman, CEO of Choices Women’s Medical Center which began doing abortions in 1971
Wendy Robinson, Director of Voice of Choice
Mary Lou Singleton, licensed midwife and nurse practitioner, founder of Personhood for Women
Sunsara Taylor, Revolution newspaper, Stop Patriarchy, fighter for abortion rights since 1995
Statements of Support
"I stand with the brave 11 Freedom Fighters for women’s reproductive rights who were arrested outside of Governor Rick Perry’s mansion on August 13th for protesting the closure of all but six abortion clinics in the state of Texas. Legislation that limits access to sensitive healthcare, specifically safe and legal abortion, is a form of serious violence against women. We must raise our voices, fill the streets, make art, to defend doctors and assist women, to change hearts, enlighten minds and resist this oppression throughout this Week of Defiance." —Eve Ensler
"Reproductive freedom is a basic human right, like freedom of speech. It affects everything in a woman's life, whether she is healthy or not, in school or not, in the labor force or not, and how long she lives. In opposing reproductive freedom, Rick Perry has become a dictator endangering women's lives. He should be impeached." —Gloria Steinem
Additional voices and statements of support at StopPatriarchy.org
Voices on the Freedom Ride
Updated August 30, 2014
People's Hearings—
Abortion Rights Freedom Ride 2014: GROUND ZERO TEXAS
Brownsville, August 20, 2014
San Antonio, August 13, 2014
Austin, August 6, 2014
Houston, July 30, 2014
From Stop Patriarchy
Daring to be a Woman
Posted August 23, 2014. When I speak about patriarchy I talk a lot about how women dare to do basic things because of how dangerous it is to be female in this society. Read more
Voices of the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride
Updated July 22, 2014. These statements are from Abortion Rights Freedom Riders at Ground Zero: Texas and elsewhere. Read more
Why I Am Taking Part in the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride 2014
by Sunsara Taylor
July 28, 2014. "...as I head to Texas to take part in the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride 2014, I see this as a critical part of fighting to realize a whole better world." Read more
Some Thoughts Preparing to Head out on the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride
August 24, 2014. This Abortion Rights Freedom Ride aims to accomplish a great deal. I'd like to comment on a few aspects, thinking of it from the point of view of accumulating forces for revolution and how it contributes to getting closer to the time when it would be appropriate and possible to go all-out to seize power. In other words, to look at it from the largest strategic objectives of communist revolution. Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
In Honor of Throw-Back Thursday
Posted August 28, 2014. at the second People's Hearing in Austin, Texas, Sunsara Taylor reminded us that we cannot look to politicians or the courts to save us; we might demand to be heard, we must demand the rights we deserve. Read more
“I believe that we are living in a truly pivotal point in time”
July 28, 2014. A “millennial” calls on others of her generation to be part of the Freedom Ride. Read more
Why I’m a Freedom Rider for Women’s Lives...
August 2, 2014—From an Abortion Rights Freedom Rider. Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
Reflections from the Ride
Posted August 28, 2014. We are not forced to wear chains and shackles but yet we are enslaved. We do not need an endorsement to be role models but yet we are. We were not always equal but yet as women we leave a big impact on society. Being a freedom rider is a privilege. Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
An Open Letter to the Parents of the Abortion Rights Freedom Riders
Posted August 28, 2014. This week on this journey I have met women and men with impressively sharp and astute intellects; compassionate, sensitive hearts; and courage of their convictions that facilitates their passion radiating around them to influence the world. I would be immensely proud to have raised any one of them. Read more
No One Has to Ask Permission to Fight For Women’s Liberation
A response from Carol Downer to Katie Klabusich’s attack on Stop Patriarchy in Bitch Magazine
Posted August 30. Read more
From the Advisory Board of the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride
A Response to Recent Attacks and Invitation to All
July 10, 2014
For Women's Lives and Against McCarthyism: A Response to "United Statement Against Stop Patriarchy"
July 29, 2014
>
DONATE NOW!
StopPatriarchy.org
Reports from the Road
Updated September 18, 2014
Stop Patriarchy Protester: Don't Give Up the Fight for Abortion Rights
Posted September 18, 2014. I protested because I feel responsible to act on what I know to be true. The closure of abortion clinics nationwide must be stopped because without the right to decide for themselves when and whether to have a child, women cannot be free. Read more
That Look: The Final Day of the Week of Defiance
Posted September 6, 2014. I got the call outside of Governor Rick Perry's mansion on Friday, August 29. It was nearly 5 pm. The clock had ticked incredibly slowly that day, and there we were, for the seventh time, at the culmination of weeks of struggle, protest, and exposure. The person on the other end of the phone said, "The judge ruled. He blocked the law. The clinics won't close on Monday, but the Attorney General is going to appeal it." I felt a combination of cautious relief and determination. Read more
Abortion Rights Freedom Ride 2014 Picnic—Ground Zero Texas!
Posted September 5, 2014. It was an Austin-hot day: the sun beaming down strong, and in a shady clearing along the riverfront, blankets were laid down. Joining the Freedom Riders who had been part of ARFR2014 traveling through Houston, San Antonio, the Rio Grande, and Austin were riders who had gone home for a short spell and returned, riders who were just joining in anticipation of the pending closure of clinics, and University of Texas students who had met the Freedom Riders during their bold traffic-stopping action outside UT a few days prior. Read more
8/27/14 Flash: Sunsara Taylor & 4 Other Abortion Rights Freedom Riders Arrested in Austin, TX
Posted August 27, 2014. Sunsara Taylor and four other members of the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride: Ground Zero Texas 2014, were arrested on Wednesday, August 27, in Austin, Texas. Sunsara and other Freedom Riders courageously marched into the middle of Guadalupe St., bordering the campus of the University of Texas where 50,000 or so students just started class this week. When the Freedom Riders boldly went across Guadalupe St., a chaotic, swirling scene quickly disrupted the normalcy of business as usual as far as the eye could see. Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
Day 1 and 2 of the Week of Defiance
Posted August 30, 2014. Read more
From Stop Patriarchy blog
A Morality Based on Reality: I’m Counting on YOU to End the Attacks on Abortion Rights
Posted August 22, 2014. A heroic doctor, who has been providing abortions for 40 years in Texas in the face of death threats and legal attacks, recently welcomed the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride into his clinic. I want to share some of his stories with you, along with some reflections on morality. Read more
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
Abortion Rights Freedom Ride – Ground Zero Texas
Outrageous Brutality and Cruelty Against Nonviolent Civil Disobedience
August 19, 2014. An Abortion Rights Freedom Rider reflects on the stakes of the battle for abortion rights—a future of forced motherhood and female enslavement versus a future in which women are truly liberated and a driving force in the emancipation of all humanity—and their noviolent civil disobedience, a profoundly moral act supported by all those who recognize abortion as a basic right of ALL women. Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
11 Abortion Rights Freedom Riders arrested outside Rick Perry's mansion on closing day of major Texas abortion trial
August 14, Austin, Texas.
Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
We were acting for millions…
Posted August 30. On August 13, 2014, I, along with ten other Abortion Rights Freedom Riders, got arrested for engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience, blocking traffic, in front of Rick Perry’s mansion. Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
"Anybody on the side of women’s lives has to put everything on the line"
Posted August 30. I was born in 1995, so I don’t have personal memories of a pre-Roe society, but I know enough after living through the murder of eight abortion providers, after witnessing the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar as she was persistently denied an abortion in Ireland, to know that anybody on the side of women’s lives has to put everything on the line to ensure we don’t “go back.” Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
Jailhouse Blog
Posted August 30. Commentary by one of the 11 Abortion Rights Freedom Riders arrested at the Texas governor's mansion on August 13. Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
Brownsville, Day 1
Posted August 30. First day in Brownsville we headed over to a local flea market. Right off the bat, we had a group of 4 girls that loved what Stop Patriarchy was about. Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
“The more people I spoke to the more confident I became”
Posted August 30. Before heading to Brownsville I confided in a fellow freedom rider that I was nervous about speaking to people about abortion and really taking initiative. Her response speaks volumes about the richness of today’s outreach: she said to me that talking about abortion is easy or at least gets easier in time. Another freedom rider echoed this sentiment by emphasizing the strength in our varying degrees of experience and knowledge, and that bolstered my confidence. Read more
The Second People's Hearing of the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride
Courage and Strength Shatter the Silence—We Must Act On What We Know
August 9, by Sunsara Taylor. She was a young, poor, and very innocent student growing up in Mexico when a friend invited her over to study. She arrived with books in hand, but he told her, “We are not here to study.” He closed the door and a group of his friends proceeded to join him in raping her. Read more
Scientific Sex Ed
Posted August 17, from Stop Patriarchy blog. While talking to people in front of the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas a man started yelling at us from across the street, “Close your legs! Close your legs! Close your legs!” …..this is not the first time we have heard this sentiment, and these kind of comments. Across the country, from NYC, to Wichita, and now in Texas, we’ve heard this kind of argument against abortion. Things like “Women gotta be ready to have the baby every time they have sex” or “If you make a mistake, if you have sex, you have to suffer the consequences!” FUCK all that. Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
This is a State of Emergency!
Posted August 31. Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
On the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride 2014: Ground Zero Texas
Posted August 31. A fellow freedom rider recently said “we did not choose to be here at this time, we had to be here at this time.” Read more
"The time has long passed for politeness and respect"
August 10, from an Abortion Rights Freedom Rider. I was part of a crew that went out to the University of Texas campus recently to talk to people about the fact that abortion rights are in a state of emergency. Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
A Case for Breaking the Shackles of Mainstream Morality
Posted August 31. An Abortion Rights Freedom Rider shares a conversation with a student at UT Austin who identified herself as "pro-life." Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
Protest at Rick Perry's
Posted August 31. Excerpts from a conversation with Abortion Rights Freedom Riders after August 7 protest at Governor Rick Perry's mansion. Read more
Letter from Sunsara Taylor
August 7. On Monday, a very important trial began down here in Austin, Texas over whether the next round of abortion clinic closures will go forward in Texas. The media couldn't ignore the powerful presence of the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride outside the courthouse with our bold message: “Forced Motherhood is Female Enslavement.” Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
It's Not That Complicated
Posted August 31. "Forced Motherhood Is Female Enslavement." This truth is the foundation on which Stop Patriarchy is built, but what does all that mean? How do we step back and understand this message? Read more
August 4, 2014: Day 1 of the Trial
"Mortality-wise, abortion is safer than a shot of penicillin"
August 5. Mary Lou Greenberg attended the first day of the Austin, TX trial that will determine whether all but six abortion clinics in the state will be closed on September 1. Read her report
Emergency In Texas: First Day of Austin Abortion Trial
Sunsara Taylor reports from Austin Texas, August 4, the first day of a trial that will determine whether on September 1 all but six abortion clinics in Texas will be forced to shut down. Read more
Abortion Rights Freedom Ride 2014, Ground Zero Texas, Has Successfully Launched!
Forecast—Hot August in Texas
A report from the first days of the Freedom Ride—a fight to turn the tide in the all-out assault against women's right to abortion and birth control. Read more
From Stop Patriarchy blog
Official Launch of Abortion Rights Freedom Ride and First People's Hearing in Houston
The first People's Testimony was live broadcasted on StopPatriarchy.org and the recording is available here at revcom.us (see "Voices on the Freedom Ride" tab) and at StopPatriarchy.org. Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
Welcome to the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride 2014: Ground Zero Texas
Posted August 31. Greetings and welcome to the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride 2014: Ground Zero Texas, organized by Stop Patriarchy. I have been with the Riders for almost a week. I am a little short on sleep and clean clothes but I would not want to be anywhere else. Read more
From Stop Patriarchy blog
Report from Austin: You are Not Alone, and You are Needed Now More Than Ever
from an Abortion Rights Freedom Rider: The Abortion Rights Freedom Ride has hit the streets of Austin, in preparation for a raucous and revealing month of resistance against the attacks on abortion. We have been talking to many people—on street corners, in theater lines, at student unions, and outdoor markets—about women, abortion, society, and the role we all can play in making history right now. Read more
From Stop Patriarchy
"Nobody should be forced to have a child they don’t want."
Posted August 31. On the university campus, in Austin, TX, we asked students whether they knew there will be only six abortion clinics in the entire state after September. Many didn’t. A lot of people knew about the Wendy Davis filibuster, but they had not heard that abortion clinics continue to and will be closing. Read more
Additional reports posted at StopPatriarchy.org and Stop Patriarchy's blog.
Press Coverage
Updated September 18, 2014
An Abortion Rights Battle Bigger Than Texas, an interview with Sunsara Taylor
August 6, 2014 | Dennis Trainor, Acronym TV
Opponents Spar In Court Over Texas Clinics That Do Abortions
September 12, 2014 | NPR Weekend Edition
Sunsara Taylor interviewed by Michael Slate
The Michael Slate Show, KPFK Radio, Los Angeles
Interview with Sunsara Taylor and Dennis Trainor
August 31, 2014 | Project Censored Radio
The second segment of this show, starting about 20 minutes in, is an interview with Sunsara Taylor, correspondent for revcom.us/Revolution and initiator of StopPatriarchy.org, and Dennis Trainor of Acronym TV about attacks on, as well as censorship of the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride. Other segments are Kevin Gosztola (firedoglake.com) recounting his experiences in Ferguson, Missouri and UK Guardian writer Nafeez Ahmed about universities assisting the Pentagon in creating data-mining systems to spy on political dissidents.
Listen here
Abortion Rights Group Arrested on UT’s West Campus
August 27, 2014 | Austin American-Statesman
Compilation of media coverage shown at San Antonio People's Hearing
San Fernando Cathedral, San Antonio, TX
August 15, 2014 | Univision San Antonio
11 arrestos en Austin provocados por el tema del aborto en Texas
August 13, 2014 | Univision Austin
Audio Journal 8/15/2014
August 15 | KPFT Radio, Houston
Sunsara Taylor on Sabrina Jacob's "Rude Awakening"
July 14, 2014 | audio interview on KPFA
I Was Warned About Stop Patriarchy
by Mary Lou Singleton | On the Issues
Protesters arrested for obstructing traffic on the Drag
August 27, 2014 | The Daily Texan
Five arrested at abortion rights protest at UT
August 28, 2014 | Austin American-Statesman
Abortion rights protest on the Drag, 08.27.14
August 27, 2014 | Austin American-Statesman photo gallery
Abortion rights protesters arrested Aug. 13 claim mistreatment by authorities
August 24, 2014 | Austin American-Statesman
Group protests abortion clinic law
August 21, 2014 | Valley Morning Star
Groups Clash over Abortion Rights in Main Plaza
August 15, 2014 | Fox San Antonio
Abortion rights activists, counter-protestors clash in Main Plaza
August 14, 2014 | San Antonio Express-News
Abortion protests heat up as both sides gather downtown
August 14, 2014 | KSAT News, San Antonio
Pro-Choice, Anti-Abortion Protesters Square Off at Main Plaza
August 15, 2014 | WOAI New Radio, San Antonio
Hundreds Protest Outside Texas Abortion Law Hearing
August 4, 2014 | Texas Public Radio
Crowds Fill Courthouse Lawn for Start of Abortion Trial
August 4, 2014 | Time Warner Cable News
Rallies Accompany Start of Abortion Trial
Austin American-Statesman
Texas abortion law back in court over surgical center requirement
August 4, 2014, Houston Chronicle
Abortion Debate
August 4, 2014, KTBC-TV, Austin
Abortion legislation trial gets underway
August 4, 2014, KTBC-Austin
Stop Patriarchy Protests Outside Harris County GOP Office
Houston Press Blog, August 1, 2014
Abortion Rights Freedom Ride in Austin
Week of Defiance, Seattle
Photo: Special to Revolution/revcom.us
Photo: Special to Revolution/revcom.us
Photo: Special to Revolution/revcom.us
Abortion Rights Freedom Ride 2013
In the summer of 2013, the movement to End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women (StopPatriarchy.org) set out to turn the tide on the national state of emergency surrounding abortion rights by launching a national Abortion Rights Freedom Ride. Traveling from both coasts and down the middle of the country, through fifteen states and nearly 10,000 miles, over two dozen people caravanned, hundreds rallied, and thousands took part in other ways to stand up for abortion on demand and without apology.This report is the collective summation of that launch.
The Abortion Rights Freedom Ride received significant attention from both local and national media outlets, with the central message of "Abortion on Demand & Without Apology" front and center in much of the coverage. Click here for a compilation of the coverage.
"In July, pro-choice activists with the group Stop Patriarchy embarked on a cross-country abortion rights freedom ride....From the looks of things, they've only just begun."
"The Top 5 Moments in 2013's War on Women,"
The Progressive, December 23, 2013
The last abortion clinic in Mississippi during the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride, Summer 2013.
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.
Read statements of support for the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride, including from:
Susan Brownmiller
Mark Ruffalo
Gloria Steinem
Sikivu Hutchinson
David Gunn Jr.
Eve Ensler
Merle Hoffman
…and more
Watch the video of Abortion Rights Freedom Ride rally in Fargo, North Dakota!
Historic Abortion Rights Freedom Ride
July 23 - August 25, 2013
Full coverage from Revolution/revcom.us of the Summer 2013 Freedom Ride. Read more
Mississippi/Albuquerque Abortion Rights Emergency
Full coverage from Revolution/revcom.us of the mobilization to respond to the abortion emergency concentrated in Mississippi and Albuquerque in November 2013. Read more
Revolution and Women's Liberation: Essential Readings
Break ALL the Chains!
Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution
A collection of groundbreaking works by Bob Avakian on how central and defining the liberation of women is to any real revolution.
Engage with and introduce people to BA’s deep and incisive work on this in the new compendium, Break ALL the Chains! Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution. In a world of rape, human trafficking, and sexual slavery, BA’s urgent insistence that the revolution humanity needs will go to work on uprooting the thousands of years of tradition and structures that oppress women in thousands of ways needs to be known, discussed, and debated by millions.
Full collection (PDF download) | Sampler collection (PDF download)
A printed edition of the sampler has also been made available free for distribution in prisons, schools, and communities, courtesy of The Bob Avakian Institute, as indicated on a sticker printed on the booklet. Check with your Revolution distributor for copies.
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.
BAsics 1:10
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
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
BAsics 3:22
Watch You Can't Break All the Chains Except One. Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution, a talk by Sunsara Taylor at Revolution Books, New York, August 9, 2012, discussing this quotation. This talk was part of "Take Patriarchy by Storm!", ten days of activism against patriarchy and pornography in New York City.
BAsics from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian
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.
BAsics concentrates more than 30 years of Avakian's work. BAsics can not only introduce many more people to the thinking of the author who has put communism back on the agenda as a vital and viable force—it can play a major role in bringing forward and forging a new wave of revolutionaries. To look at the table of contents is to look at the key questions that present themselves to someone agonizing over the question of whether and how they can actually change the world in a fundamental and meaningful way. Read more
BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live
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.
It is no exaggeration to say that if humanity is going to fight its way out of this horrific nightmare and create a world where human beings can rise to their full potential and truly flourish, it will be because of the work and leadership of Bob Avakian. And it will be because people—beginning with YOU—get into this work, get with this leadership, and fight for others to do the same. Read more
Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal)
from the
Revolutionary
Communist
Party, USA
Of Primeval Steps & Future Leaps: An Essay on the Emergence of Human Beings, the Source of Women's Oppression, and the Road to Emancipation
by Ardea Skybreak
"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."
R.C. Lewontin
Harvard University,
Co-Author of Not In Our Genes
"An excellent critique of the aquatic theory of human evolution, and an equally cogent demolition of sociobiological views. An extra bonus is the long overdue acknowledgement of Frederick Engel's prescient views on the evolution of humanity."
Ashley Montagu
Available at Revolution Books - New York City. Also available at amazon.com.
Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing
the World
by Bob Avakian
Is believing in gods actually harmful? How has Christianity for centuries served as an ideology of conquest and subjugation? Why is the "Bible Belt" in the U.S. also the "lynching belt"? Why is there a rise of religious fundamentalism throughout the world? In the intensifying conflict between U.S. imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism, is the only choice to take one side or the other? Why is patriarchy and the oppression of women foundational to so many religions? Can people be good without god? These are just some of the questions explored in this provocative work by Bob Avakian.
"Away with All Gods! is a powerful and erudite critique of religion and superstition and a rousing call to place our trust in reason and the scientific method....Unusual for an atheist work and in marked difference to works of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, Avakian went further to explore the way in which religion is used to sustain the status quo and as a reactionary force by political power mongers... He stands against not only religion and superstition but for reason and science and shows us what an alternative way of living can really be like. More importantly he shows us the revolutionary potential of finally doing away with all gods and what such a new world could look like."
— Synergy Magazine
by Bob Avakian
I. Once More on the Coming Civil War... and Repolarization for Revolution
II. (Some Observations on) The International Movement
III. The New Synthesis and the Woman Question: The Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution—Further Leaps and Radical Ruptures
From the Burkha to the Thong: Everything Must, and Can, Change –
WE NEED TOTAL REVOLUTION!
a talk by Sunsara Taylor
In this talk, given on a campus speaking tour in 2010, Sunsara Taylor challenges and engages a broad section of students to think in new ways about the world, about the situation of women, and about the necessity and possibility for fundamental change. Please note: The talk begins at 16:30 in the streamed webcast.)
The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism:
Knowing What's Real
and Why It Matters
by Ardea Skybreak
In today's world, without the science of evolution there would be no science. Written for both the scientifically-minded as well as those who are not familiar with science at all, this book details the facts of the science of evolution. In one engrossing volume Ardea Skybreak looks at the diversity and complexity of life on this planet and how all life, including humans, evolved. She examines the many different lines of mutually reinforcing evidence that support and confirm the biological theory of evolution. At the same time, Skybreak dissects the myth of Creationism and the lies behind the thinly-veiled religiosity of Intelligent Design. There's urgency in this book. It comes at a time when evolution—and the very definition of science—is under concerted attack by religious fundamentalists, with backing from the highest levels of government.
Available from Insight Press
A World of Rape and Sexual Assault
from Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About
The Difference Between Eroticism and Pornography
Question and Answer session
with Bob Avakian
Abortion, Morality, and the Liberation of Women
Specially designed for use in classrooms and by school groups, this film, “Abortion, Morality and the Emancipation of Women” with Dr. Susan Wicklund, author of This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor and Sunsara Taylor, writer for Revolution newspaper, is divided into two parts: 30 minutes with presentations from each speaker, and 30 minutes answering some of the key questions put to the abortion rights movement.
Available from worldcantwait.org
The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State
by Friedrich Engels
With this book Engels brought forward the most advanced historical materialist understanding of his time of how the oppression of women came about, and how this oppression is rooted, not in human nature, but in the economic base and the corresponding social relations of society. His understanding of the role of private property, the family, and the state are still relevant today.
"What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman's surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love, or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences. When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual and that will be the end of it."
Friedrich Engels