The Trump administration continues to attack working people: women, trans workers, immigrants and federal workers. The appointment of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court last year, an anti-abortion reactionary judge with pending accusations of sexual assault is only the tip of the iceberg. We cannot wait to the elections or for liberal elected women to change this course. We need to take build an independent movement of our own.
Written by Workers’ Voice
Today We March Tomorrow We Strike
We all remember January 21st being the largest demonstration in US history. By taking the streets by millions in 2017 and 2018 women have shifted the political debate and heightened visibility of gender-based demands. The vicious attacks of the Trump administration and the right wing forces that back him can only be defeated in the streets. It is not enough to “show” our resistance anymore, we need to start practicing it through mass action. Trump is accelerating the now 15 year long assault on abortion rights, ramping up attacks against trans rights, eroding access to quality, affordable housing, and terrorizing communities through increased state repression. The only way to reverse this course is to channel our energies in united political action – we need to continue to take our actions to the streets and to build a broad front with unions, immigrant groups and communities of color.
Los Angeles Teachers Are Leading the Way
Women constitute a vast majority of the teacher workforce. This year, like last, women are showing the way by staging another round of impressive teachers strikes. UTLA is the second largest school district in the country, representing roughly 33,000 workers in a school district with 600,000 students. The current strike is not only about the quality of public education but also about giving visibility and value to the necessary work women do – the work of social reproduction. For far too long, the task of preparing future generations of workers through public education has been extremely under-resourced. Large class sizes, low salaries for teachers, defunding of arts and extra-curricular activities, and understaffing of nursing and counseling staff burden not only those employed at public schools, but harm working families and children.
Teachers on strike for better pay that keeps up with the ever-increasing cost of living, are also on strike protesting these conditions. Teachers in Oakland, angry at similar conditions in their community and inspired by the actions taken by UTLA staged a one-day wildcat strike on January 10th as well signaling that teachers are ready for a continued fight.
Let’s Build for a March 8th of Class Struggle
There is a real interest in and need for organizing around women’s rights issues. Following the women’s march this year, international women’s day presents another opportunity to build a movement capable of challenging the current attacks against working women and our communities. The outcome of the strikes in public education across the country have shown that even just a few days of independent, mass action can achieve more for working people then decades of lobbying and electoral campaigns.
What is needed now more than ever is grassroots organizing in our workplaces, schools, and homes to challenge the corporate feminism of mainstream organizations and pushback on the terrors of the trump administration. Local coalitions of labor, community, and student groups coming together to build protests, and where possible strikes, in support of a feminism for the 99% – a feminism against war, and state terror, against evictions and attacks on affordable housing, and against transphobia. A feminism that supports union wages for all, and all struggles against oppression and exploitation. A feminism that is rooted in the working class as a whole, and solidarity.
Published in: https://lavozlit.com/on-march-8th-lets-bring-together-the-struggles-for-womens-rights/
