On January 19, when all over the world women, and men, march for women’s rights, Socialist Alternative Canada launched our new banner, “Women Rising: for Socialist Feminism.”
Around the world a new women’s movement is emerging. We recognize that it needs to have a clear class analysis and be rooted in the everyday experiences of most women. This movement must take on issues of sexual harassment, gender-based violence, reproductive rights, childcare and the pay gap. Women also need to be central in the fight for higher wages and affordable housing.
The banner features six women who made major contributions to the struggle for Indigenous, women’s and workers’ rights, and socialism:
- Marielle Franco: a Brazilian politician, feminist, and human rights activist, served as a city councillor for the left-wing Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) from January 2017 until she was brutally murdered in 2018.
- Rosa Luxemburg: brutally murdered a hundred years ago, remains to this day a well-known and renowned Marxist theoretician and activist. She was imprisoned for her opposition to World War One and was a founding member of the German Communist Party in 1918.
- Lea Roback: a Québec trade union organizer, social activist and feminist, campaigned against exclusion, violence, racism and injustice and opened the first Marxist bookstore in Montreal. A member of the Communist party, until 1958, she was regularly harassed by the police and fascist thugs.
- Mary Two-Axe Earley: a Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) elder born on the Kahnawà:ke reserve is described as “a pioneer and architect of the Canadian women’s movement. Her political activism helped to forge a coalition of allies to challenge Canadian laws that discriminated against Indigenous women.”
- Clara Zetkin: a German Marxist, introduced the resolution at a socialist international conference in 1910 that established Working Women’s International Day. She was a Communist member of the German parliament from 1920 to 1933.
- Rosa Parks: her lifetime of civil rights activism began before her defiance of bus segregation in 1955, which sparked a year-long boycott in Montgomery Alabama, and continued long after. She associated with the Communist Party, Malcolm X and other socialists.
