Leaflet of ROSA Socialist Feminist Movement, Ireland International Women's Day 2022
Stop the war -- Putin out of Ukraine!
We stand in solidarity with the poor & oppressed people in Ukraine, and with the hundreds of thousands who have already marched against the war around the world, including those risking arrest by protesting in Russia itself.
The inhuman travesty of this war must be stopped by building a mass anti-war movement internationally, and by supporting the organised mass resistance of the ordinary working people of Ukraine themselves to repel the invasion and reorganise Ukrainian society for the benefit of the majority, not the oligarchs. Putin out of Ukraine! No to Russian & US/NATO imperialism & militarism! NATO out of Eastern Europe! Tear down Fortress Europe & allow safe passage for all refugees victimised by capitalist & imperialist wars!
On International Women's Day 1915, socialist feminist Clara Zetkin who started the International Women’s Day tradition led an anti war demonstration of tens of thousands in Berlin. Her rallying cry to bring women onto the streets against World War One rings true more than a century later. The brutality, imperialism and violence of the capitalist system cannot be allowed to continue.
Who profits from this war? The manufacturers of rifles and cannons, of armour plate and torpedo boats, the shipyard owners and the suppliers of the armed forces’ needs. The workers have nothing to gain from this war but they stand to lose everything that is dear to them. - Clara Zetkin
Covid intensified oppression and exploitation
Lockdowns were accompanied by a terrible increase in gender based violence in homes and online all around the world.
Covid also intensified the exploitation of workers in healthcare and other frontline sectors where women workers predominate.
Capitalism’s inflation crisis is worsening our cost of living nightmare that is especially impinging on lower paid women, young and migrant workers, and is pushing single mothers and their children deeper into the poverty trap.
The outpouring of grief and anger on the streets after the brutal femicide of Ashling Murphy has to be made a real turning point. Politicians from the establishment political parties who wrote the playbook on misogyny joined vigils. However it’s the solidarity from below that must be garnered against them and their misogynistic system.
The need to build a mass anti war movement; the need to build an active struggle to end gender violence including challenging every example of the state and culture that reproduces sexism; the need to build for struggle and strikes of a feminist and worker fightback for pay increases and rent cuts; and the need for this movement to be linked up with a movement to save the planet -- couldn’t be more urgent.
What kind of feminism do we need?
A feminism of struggle
From the right to vote, to equal pay, to repeal and abortion rights -- every right we have came from trade union, feminist and LGBTQ movements, strikes and struggle.
A feminism that’s anti- capitalist
A system for the profits of the super-rich, that war-mongers; that has homelessness, low-pay, exploitation and environmental degradation everywhere; is the enemy of freedom and equality. Liberal feminism’s quest to feminise the elite is useless -- we need struggle and solidarity that gets to the root. We have to tear down all inequality and injustice -- capitalism must go.
A feminism for solidarity
An injury to one is an injury to all -- we are strongest when we stand united with all the exploited and oppressed of the world in a multi-gendered, multi-racial working class movement of solidarity.
International Socialist Feminism
This working class feminism is socialist feminism -- it’s about building a united movement to end the private ownership of wealth and resources. Public ownership under democratic working class control of the key levers of the economy would allow us to build a society based on solidarity that caters for the needs of people and the planet, rather than the sociopathic super-rich elite.
