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Indian Women’s Militant Protest Spans 300 Miles

On Jan. 1, 5.5 million women in the India state of Kerala formed a human wall in an act of defiance against gender oppression. The immediate inspiration came from growing protests happening around the Sabarimala hill temple which prohibits women of childbearing age from entering. Back in October, India’s Supreme Court had declared the ban unconstitutional.

Mobilizations began occurring after several women were denied their right to enter into the temple by priests and their far-right defenders. A fightback was organized by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which co-governs the state of Kerala as part of the Left Democratic Front. Most participants in the ensuing movement were not women who necessarily wanted to visit the temple themselves. They participated in the action because they recognized it as part of the broader struggle for women’s rights.

The chain was 386 miles long, coursing through the 14 districts from Kasargod in the north to Thiruvananthapuram, the state capital, in the south. Men formed a parallel human chain in a show of support to the women.

Brinda Karat, a leader in the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and former general secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association said, “Today’s wall of women was aimed at strengthening gender equality; women should no longer be pushed into dark corners.”

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Peoples’ Assembly Women’s Dinner In Solidarity with Immigrants

By Shera Phillips

May 2nd was my second People’s Assembly Women’s Dinner. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I knew there would be women of different religious and cultural backgrounds speaking about their unique experience in the “Land of the Free and Brave”.

The evening was entitled Solidarity with Immigrant Women. The guests were from Central America, Haiti as well as a Muslim woman. Our sister from Central America allowedus, the audience members, to see a glimpse of what life was like for her as an undocumented woman. She explained that the act of merely paying a traffic ticket could mean the end of life as she knows it. I immediately could draw from my own experience as a brown woman in the U.S., but listening to her amplified my experience and overwhelmed me with emotion. I had never before heavily considered what being pulled over might mean for an immigrant. When I go to court, praying that my ticket will be thrown out, Maria is praying that she can pay hers and go home. I had never even thought about the variation of discrimination that immigrants have to endure here, being mistreated by employers and landlords, fearing to speak out about injustices because it could mean deportation, imprisonment or worse. This one conversation caused a change in perspective in which I was able to awaken to an entirely different existence, one that would cause fear to pulsate through the veins of any suspecting body.

Most people build a reality and only include in it things and people that correspond with it. Many of us rarely socialize with people who aren’t a part of our social and cultural existence. We live in a bubble, and our circle becomes a focus group that confirms and reaffirms variations of our own experience. We travel through life in this vortex, in which we are the center of the universe and anything that doesn’t conform to this matrix is unpleasant and therefore we defend our position or avoid anything outside of it. Just take a look at yourself and your friends. Are any of them from different countries or states, different social, religious, economic or racial backgrounds? If your answer is yes, congratulations. You are unlike a majority of the population. The People’s Assembly provides a safe space for people of different walks, to come, learn and work together towards liberation.

The Women’s Dinner is the first Wednesday of every month. Transportation, childcare and dinner are provided all by the men of People’s Assembly. Women are appreciated, celebrated, encouraged to relax and converse about the issues we experience, find resources, and learn how we can collectively combat our oppression.

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Peoples’ Assembly Women’s Dinner Wednesdays

The New Orleans Peoples Assembly Organizing Committee meets every Wednesday. The first Wednesday of every month is dedicated to our monthly Women’s Dinner Wednesday. On Women’s Dinner Wednesday, we gather as working class women to connect, build in strength, and become informed about the specific systems that affect our lives most, and how to overcome oppression that hinders and harms our abilities to be healthy and whole. We are bold in the fact that we center working class women, which includes those impacted by homelessness.

During our first two meetings, we focused on the history of International Working Women’s day and what it means to us now, and also the “Work Week Ordinance” that the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Committee is advancing on behalf of the 88,000 hospitality workers and all other workers in the city. This is important because women make up such a large force of the working class, and the impact on our lives, children and families is straining and oppressive.

Audre Lorde said, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” This is why we call out to all working class women to join forces to organize on behalf of our collective liberation.

Contact us at:
Facebook.com/NewOrleansPeoplesAssemblyOrganizingCommittee/

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Women Are 51% of the Workforce! The Bosses Are Terrified, So They Attack Reproductive Choice

The Koch brothers, billionaire oil tycoons, bribe legislators around the country, especially in Louisiana, to vote against equal pay, birth control, abortion, family benefits and women’s health care, and raising the minimum wage (the majority of minimum wage workers are women). The bottom line of this is the profits extracted from the underpaid labor of women workers. While Trump boasts of raping women, these so-called moral Christians cheer him on as it confirms their view of male supremacy. It has nothing to do with religion or morality. It is all about using every means to curtail our rights and make us poorer so it is harder to fight them. Birth control, abortion and programs to help raise children made it possible for women to control our lives and take part in political life. They seek to declare that we are servants and sexual receptacles because men should have rights over us.

Religion is a personal matter, and these are personal choices every woman has the right to make without male representatives fronting for Wall Street, criminalizing our decisions. The so-called right to life movement is a right-wing crusade controlled and funded for the benefit of rich men. They prey on women.

The Louisiana House passed by a vote of 90 to 3 a bill that prohibits Planned Parenthood from obtaining an abortion license. Planned Parenthood clinics are non-profits run by people who really care about women. Their clinics are often our only option for abortion, medical screenings and contraception.
Twenty Ohio Republicans have co-sponsored a bill to ban all abortions—punishable by death for women and doctors. Ohio’s abortion ban has no exceptions for rape or incest, or even to save a woman’s life, beginning at the moment of conception. The Kentucky legislature has a bill with a death penalty for abortion, and a candidate for lt. governor in Idaho said the death penalty would be an effective “deterrent” for abortion.

Women are fighting back across the country. Our labor is exploited for their profits. We can show up to work now, but they should remember we can strike for our rights: on March 8th, International Working Women’s Day, the women of Spain shut down the entire country.

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Conditions are Dismal for Louisiana Women

By Gavrielle Gemma

In New Orleans, tourists can hop between fancy restaurants, concerts, conventions and giant drinks in the French Quarter. Rarely do they ever see that women here and throughout the state are suffering.

According to a report on the “Status of Women in the States” issued by Institute for Women’s Policy Research, Louisiana’s score for employment & earnings and health & well-being was ‘F’. Poverty, reproductive rights and elected representation earned ‘D-‘.

Black women earn only 49% of white men’s earnings. It’s 68% for white women and 52% for Latinas. Black women are only 28% of managerial or professional jobs, yet have the highest percentage of women working.

Infant mortality and women’s mortality rate during childbirth are about the worst in the country. Louisiana ranks 49 out of 50 states for women’s health and well-being and 46th for reproductive rights.

Neither the state nor New Orleans has any laws giving workers paid sick leave or vacation. Most women have no pensions. Only one women was elected to a state executive office and women had no seats in Congress.

The good news is that women in unions earn $252 a week more than those who have no union.

Women in the city and state have potential power that has not yet been organized or exerted. We make up a large percentage of the work force and the bosses make billions in profits from our labor. We will soon make our power known.

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Capitalism Breeds Sexual Harassment: Women Should Take to the Streets to Show Our Power!

By Gavrielle Gemma

For thousands of years before class society developed, men and women, expressing many forms of gender identity, lived and worked together with mutual respect. In fact, if anything, women were held in the highest regard.

Once class society developed based on individual rather than shared accumulation, mother right, the rights of women, was overthrown as women and children became the property of rich men and the family a unit to advance further private wealth and inheritance.

Just as U.S. imperialism demonizes countries, other religions and people to justify genocidal bombings and occupation, women were and are brutally depicted as less than human. Men suffering the worst exploitation and oppression could feel superior to women who were the servants of even the humblest peasant or worker. As the heroic Lucy Parsons said, “We are the slaves of slaves”. Racism among white workers is designed to make them feel that at least they are better than Black people. In both cases the rich white capitalist class laughs all the way to the bank.

The problem lies in the private ownership of all the means of production and the capitalist class that owns the Congress and the Presidency and the Supreme Court. This is a Congress that has never been able to pass an Equal Rights Amendment. The problem lies in that women workers do not control and run things as we would under socialism. Congress has allowed a rapist pig to be president – Donald Trump – for fear that firing him over being a sexual predator would not serve Wall Street’s interests.

Even while new exposes are constantly being revealed, the real condition of working class and oppressed women sinks lower every day. But what cannot be undone is the potential revolutionary force that women workers are in capitalist society.

In the meantime, we must not be handcuffed to internet petitions and phone calls to Congress. We need to get out into the streets by the millions to say no to Sexism, Racism, Poverty, Homophobia & War. They need to be afraid of our power.