Last March 8, with pride and emotion we say women of the word complied with the task posed. We retook (and how!) the tradition of struggle of the International Working Women’s Day. Thousand of women and men, from East to West and from North to South of the planet took the streets. Shouting no more femicides, no more violence against women, full right to free abortion, equal pay for equal salary and against the austerity plans and the cuts to workers’ rights that are being imposed in each country as part of the social war encouraged by imperialism and the puppet governments.
By International Secretariat.
General Strike Now! could be heard in Argentina, in a full and sprawling Plaza de Mayo [May Square]; Down with Temer’s social security reform! Down with Temer! could be heard in Brazil. Out with Trump! Out with imperialist bases! was heard in Manila, Philippines.
Huge demonstrations in Madrid, Barcelona, Montevideo, São Paulo, Mexico, Poland and, of course, Buenos Aires; important events in Portugal, Belgium, Ukrain, Asuncion [Paraguay], Santiago de Chile and many other cities and countries, besides many smaller rallies. Early pickets in Barcelona; partial stoppages of cleaners and gardeners in Rivas, Madrid; shift stoppages, meetings and strikes in the industrial region of São José dos Campos [São Paulo]; state and municipal professors’ strike in Brazil; stoppage of comunity mothers in Colombia; professors’ strike in New York; Alitalia’s workers’ stoppage since early in the morning until 9 pm; 24 hs. strike of public transportation in Rome and Tuscany, and rail workers’ stoppage nationally in Italy; etc. In Argentina, the struggle began on March 6, with a professors and teachers’ strike, and continued on the 7th with demonstrations called by the three national workers’ federations and on the 8th with demos and stoppages With and For Women, all of them massive.
We do not attempt to make here a deep balance of March 8, but we want to express the feeling of satisfaction for the struggle, as we recovered the tradition of this date that was borned linked to the struggle of female workers’, exploited and oppressed by capitalism since the end of the XIX century and beginning of the XX; the historic struggle of the working class that gave origin to March 8 and May 1st [Workers’ Day]; the date that, in 1917, begining with a working women’s strike in Petrograd during Tsarism gave origin to the biggest workers’ revolution of History. This date that the bourgeoisie of the world tried to made a holiday of, a date to give presents and flowers attempting to erase its combative, anti-capitalist class nature. So it is a huge satisfaction to see that, in countries like the U.S., who had lost the tradition of both dates, March 8 was full of demonstrations, meeting and activities in several cities, and to see the strength of female workers to recover their history. The demos were not as big as January 21st’, but they are part of the same process; the reborn process of the so feared words that make imperialist bourgeoisie to tremble: class struggle.
This March 8 was different than the previous ones, and we want it to continue like this, for working women’s struggle against the abismal social inequality –as they are the ones that suffer it the most- to continue developing. Such struggle is growing all over the world together with the struggle of the most exploited and oppressed ones: working and peasant poor women; the marginalized population of the major cities; immigrants; Blacks; all of us together in the same struggle. Because we have a common enemy: imperialism, and the bourgeois governments all over the world that are taking us back to barbarianism.
During March 8, while the world raised up against violence to women, 19 girls and teenagers died in Guatemala in a fire while protesting in a juvenile facility against sexual and physical abuse they suffered. Facts like this reinforce our courage, because this is the situation that millions of women across the world face daily, and this capitalist system reproduces this endelessly.
From the IWL-FI we want to say to all working women and men that mobilized that we feel much pride. With no hesitation we supported the call for an international stoppage and all of our sections across the world, in a centralized way, worked tirelessly to make of this M8 a memorable day. We are proud of having contributed for the partial or total stoppage of production to be a fact. We did it from our unions, demanding from the federations to stop too, proposing for the majority female unions to strike showing the north to the rest. We did it from early in the moring at the factories’ doors with pickets and meetings, and we did it through a unitary call and our participation in the demonstrations. We are proud of being an International that stands beside working women, makes part of their struggles and the working class’, and we are proud of calling ourselves Socialists, because we know it does not end here: we have a mjor task ahead, the task of building each day, in each struggle, the workers’ parties and International capable of repeting History: the history of workers’ Russian revolution of 1917 that freed the working class of exploitation and freed women of oppression.
Long Live Working Women’s Struggle!
Long Live the Struggle of the Working Class!
International and Combative March 8 that Echoed Through the World
