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IWD 2017: Celebrating a new revolution

category international | gender | feature author Wednesday March 08, 2017 02:58author by Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group - Anarkismoauthor email macg1984 at yahoo dot com dot auauthor address PO Box 5108 Brunswick North 3056 Report this post to the editors

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This time around, let’s fight for workers’ control from the start. Let’s create structures with checks and balances that ensure workers keep control. Let us not hand over power to a state that can institute tyranny all over again. We want anarchist communist organisation. Workers' delegation. Equable procedures. Bottom up organisation. It is 100 years since women workers began the 1917 revolution. Let’s do it again! The time for global revolution is here!

Petrograd, 1917
The women of Petrograd in 1917 made International Women’s Day their day for going out on strike for bread and peace and an end to Czarist rule. They were angry and defiant in the face of the regime, which was consuming society to fight the Great War. Food was becoming expensive. Queues were long and many people were hungry and cold. Corruption blossomed so the rich feasted on delicacies while the poor starved.

International Women’s Day (IWD), had been born in New York in 1909 to commemorate the 1908 strike of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. The IWD idea was nourished from year to year, and by 1917 women in many countries had celebrated IWD including Russia, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and England. This had become a day each year to join together as working women. By 1917, 8th March was the accepted date for IWD.

What was 8th March in the West was 23rd February in Petrograd according to the locally used Julian calendar. Textile workers abandoned their machines in several large Petrograd factories and took to the streets. Before long the entire city had joined in and there was a mass strike. Ordered to fire on the women, soldiers mutinied. Large crowds joined the women in the streets.
The IWD strike by women workers in Petrograd triggered the 1917 February Revolution in Russia. Change was on its way. A new provisional government was installed and the Czar abdicated. In October of the same year a more thorough revolution brought hope of workers’ control of the country. Over the coming years workers’ control was gradually lost as the Bolsheviks descended into tyranny.

Today

Now on IWD 2017 we remember the hope and passion of those women who began the revolution in Petrograd. Women are still demanding liberty and autonomy, an end to tyranny, an end to war, and demanding secure employment, fair income and secure homes for all. We oppose the fat cats who gloat as their own coffers grow while many women, disabled people, the unemployed, migrants and refugees lose even more of their meagre income. The controllers of the state apparatus celebrate dirty coal and call it clean, supported by a fantastic rhetoric that contradicts the reality of our dire planetary situation.

The subjugation of women is the bedrock of their ugly power, dividing the working class by gender. Present day potentates deny women control over their own bodies, criminalise abortion, stigmatise single mothers, attack women’s incomes, neglect their needs, protect violent partners. They hinder advancement of women in the workplace and silence their voices in the arts and in general discourse. They hope to confine women to their homes or to traditionally female jobs. With women silenced and subjugated, they expect to continue the work of oppression unopposed.

Just like in 1917, the first step towards victory is solidarity. Women of the world unite with each other and with all workers in struggle. How do we win? By going out on strike, by downing our tools and walking out on the corporations. By taking back what is ours: our dedication to our work, our intelligence and our ingenuity. We claim the profits of our labour and take control of our work. Although the workplace today may look different from what it was in 1917, the principles of worker control are the same. It doesn’t matter whether workers are on a factory floor, in a telephone call centre. or home alone in a spare room in front of computer or sewing machine. All workers everywhere must unite to win their demands.

This time around, let’s fight for workers’ control from the start. Let’s create structures with checks and balances that ensure workers keep control. Let us not hand over power to a state that can institute tyranny all over again. We want anarchist communist organisation. Workers' delegation. Equable procedures. Bottom up organisation.

It is 100 years since women workers began the 1917 revolution. Let’s do it again! The time for global revolution is here!

Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group

8 March 2017

Related Link: http://www.melbacg.wordpress.com

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International | Gender | en

Wed 08 Mar, 04:50

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iwd1.jpg image8 March, International Womens’ Day 10:35 Tue 08 Mar by Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (MACG) 1 comments

International Women’s Day is a day when the women’s movement around the world celebrates social, political and other achievements of women. It is also a good day for women to take a closer look at the oppression that flourishes through the double bondage of capitalism and patriarchy, and which is still an unfortunate and undeniable reality for the majority of women today.

blackflaglady.jpg imageInternational Women's Day 2013 21:32 Fri 08 Mar by Workers Solidarity Alliance 0 comments

We strive for a society in which one person or group of people do not dominate or exploit another. In such a society there would be no basis for sexual oppression, domination, or class exploitation. We must work to replace the institutions of power, the nation-state, and capitalism with a worldwide system of grassroots empowerment and self-management of all facets of social and economic life.

textWSA 's International Women's Day statement‏ 21:19 Fri 07 Mar by W.S.A. 0 comments

One hundred years ago today, on March 8, 1908, thousands of women left their jobs in the sweatshops of New York City's Lower East Side and took to the streets to demand their rights as women and as workers. In 1917, their sisters in Russia followed suit, and helped to bring about the revolution that overthrew the Tsarist autocracy. And in Spain in 1936, the anarchist women of Mujeres Libres helped to free their sisters from centuries of oppression.

text8 March 2008!! Celebrating International Women's Day? 18:49 Fri 07 Mar by FdCA - Ethics & Gender Policies Commission 0 comments

If 8 March - International Women's Day - is not to remain simply an annual recurrence, we must smash these chains by means of ever-stronger solidarity and class consciousness, in the knowledge that the liberation of women will never be complete until all of humanity is free from its oppressors, from tyrants, churches, States and bosses. In the knowledge that the freedom of all comes through the freedom of women. [ Italiano]

imageAnarchism and the Continuing Struggle for Women's Freedom Jan 27 by Bongani Maponyane 0 comments

As anarchist-communists, we oppose sexism whenever and wherever it exists, although we also realise that class position differentiates the experience of sexism. We salute all the woman freedom fighters, and the older generation of women, many our mothers, who bear the scars of the gruesome battles in which they stood firm, fighting the oppression imposed on the African native by colonial conquest. There were hard times in the apartheid era, where black women were abused, raped and oppressed: the state did nothing to stop this, but aided it, as the state was part of the system of oppression. History shows that dispossession and systematic dehumanization for the purposes of exploitation and domination were undertaken through the uncontrolled and coercive mayhem of the South African state.

imageFlora Tristan: precursor of feminism and proletarian emancipation Mar 08 by Nahuel Valenzuela 0 comments

Flora Célestine Thérèse Henriette Tristán y Moscoso Lesnais (1803-1844) was a French writer of Peruvian descent. Little known in official historiography, probably intentionally forgotten because of the rebellion and desire for freedom that emanates from her writings. Among her works were Peregrinations of a Pariah (1839), Promenades in London (1840) and the booklet The Workers' Union (1843). [Castellano]

textHijab: lifting the veil Jul 18 by Ada 0 comments

Ultimately we believe that people should have the freedom to dress whatever way they like. This means freedom from state interference and freedom from religious interference in how one should dress. Anarchist reflections on the debate around the banning of the veil in French schools.

textSome thoughts on anti-sexism in the libertarian movement May 10 by Klito 0 comments

Article from "Alternative Libertaire", March 2005 issue, contributed by Klito, a women-only feminist collective.

image8 March, International Womens’ Day Mar 08 Anarkismo 1 comments

International Women’s Day is a day when the women’s movement around the world celebrates social, political and other achievements of women. It is also a good day for women to take a closer look at the oppression that flourishes through the double bondage of capitalism and patriarchy, and which is still an unfortunate and undeniable reality for the majority of women today.

imageInternational Women's Day 2013 Mar 08 WSA 0 comments

We strive for a society in which one person or group of people do not dominate or exploit another. In such a society there would be no basis for sexual oppression, domination, or class exploitation. We must work to replace the institutions of power, the nation-state, and capitalism with a worldwide system of grassroots empowerment and self-management of all facets of social and economic life.

textWSA 's International Women's Day statement‏ Mar 07 0 comments

One hundred years ago today, on March 8, 1908, thousands of women left their jobs in the sweatshops of New York City's Lower East Side and took to the streets to demand their rights as women and as workers. In 1917, their sisters in Russia followed suit, and helped to bring about the revolution that overthrew the Tsarist autocracy. And in Spain in 1936, the anarchist women of Mujeres Libres helped to free their sisters from centuries of oppression.

text8 March 2008!! Celebrating International Women's Day? Mar 07 Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici 0 comments

If 8 March - International Women's Day - is not to remain simply an annual recurrence, we must smash these chains by means of ever-stronger solidarity and class consciousness, in the knowledge that the liberation of women will never be complete until all of humanity is free from its oppressors, from tyrants, churches, States and bosses. In the knowledge that the freedom of all comes through the freedom of women. [ Italiano]

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