STATEMENT OF SOLIDARITY ON INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 2010

   Mary Lou Greenberg

Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

International Women's Day is especially significant this year.   As women and men take to the streets from Brussels to London to Los Angeles we are standing together with the women warriors who have taken to the streets of Tehran along with their brothers, defying bullets, beatings, torture and executions to take on the reactionary anti-woman Islamic Republic of Iran. 

 In a society where women are denied basic rights – where a woman who doesn’t cover her hair faces jail and up to 80 lashes, and where it is still legal for a woman found guilty of adultery to be stoned to death – a new generation of young women are joining their brothers in the streets, raising their fists and voices, with some daring to throw off their head coverings and demanding an end to the theocratic regime. Their bold determination has astonished and inspired women and men worldwide, and their widespread participation in the front ranks has made the whole question of the oppression of women a critical component of the struggle against Iran’s ruling Islamic fundamentalist theocracy.

 The Revolutionary Communist Party USA is proud and honored to stand together with the March 8 Women's Organization (Iran-Afghanistan) and all of the fighting sisters and brothers of Iran on this day.

 WE IN THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PARTY ARE BUILDING A MOVEMENT FOR REVOLUTION...

 Because in the 21st century women are still being stoned to death for sleeping with the wrong man – at the same time that women by the tens of millions are being forced by the workings of capitalism-imperialism into prostitution in a globalized “sex industry.”

 Because in countries like the US, women are devalued and reduced to disembodied breasts and bottoms – advertised at every turn as objects that exist for the sexual gratification of men. 

 Because some women are defined and confined by the role of mother and denied full participation in the wider world, while other women – mainly from the impoverished and oppressed countries – must leave their children for years to work in the rich nations and send home badly needed money for their family’s survival. 

 Because of all this and so much more, we need a revolution.   And we are building a movement for revolution.

 When a woman cannot walk the street anywhere on this planet for fear of rape– this is not merely a personal problem.

 When a woman is denied reproductive freedom – when she cannot get a condom in Africa, an abortion in Latin America or birth control from a pharmacist in the United States who subscribes to cruel Christian fascist morality, the problem is global and systemic. 

 These horrors happen by the billion all over the world.  They happen because of backward institutions propped up by an outmoded economic and political system.  We will not choose between the medieval hell of Sharia law and being shrouded in veils or the modern-day capitalist hell of women and girls being reduced to sex objects and commodities, their body parts displayed in pornography or their spirit crushed by brutal beatings by their own partners.  A whole different way and whole different morality is needed in the world. 

 When half of humanity is held down – all of humanity is held back.  It is long past time for people to wake up – it’s time to refuse to accept this as the natural order of things.  These days must be gone and they can be.

 Imagine for a moment women being treated like human beings – not lesser, not inferior but as full human beings capable of participating fully and equally in every realm of human endeavor.  This is real and possible.  But because the oppression of women is bound so deeply into the fabric of society here and around the world...because it is so intricately and intimately bound together with all the other forms of oppression in capitalist society... it will take a total revolution – communist revolution – to liberate women. 

 The Revolutionary Communist Party is building a movement for revolution. In service of this, our Party last year issued a Manifesto for these times, grounded in the pathbreaking work of Bob Avakian.  Never has revolutionary communism been more radical and scientific and viable than with its advance and development through the leadership of Bob Avakian.  This is a communism that builds on the extremely significant (and suppressed) achievements of the past revolutionary movements and societies, while critically examining their shortcomings in conception and practice; this is a communism that on that basis is bringing forward radically new insights and pathways for change.   Avakian’s far seeing new synthesis of communism takes the full emancipation of women as a cornerstone for a revolution that is serious about uprooting and abolishing all exploitation, oppression and the degrading social relations and ideas that go along with this all over the

world. 

 In this revolution the defiance and impatience women feel is welcomed and sustained as a mighty force that can move us all forward in the fight to emancipate all humanity. And standing firmly  with and building support for the women and men struggling against the woman-hating regime in Iran is an important part of the revolutionary movement we are building.  

 When so few dare today to defy authority and challenge oppression, the Iranian women are a heroic example for everyone who longs for another world that is radically different and far better than the present.

 On this International Women's Day, we declare our commitment to stand with you, learn from you, and march with you. 

 Together, we will Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!