https://socialistaction.org/2017/01/29/womens-marches-from-protest-to-movement/
Women’s Marches: From protest to movement?
/ 3 days ago
feb-2017-wom-march-usa-todayBy PENELOPE DUGGAN
“Over the next months and years we will be called upon to intensify our
demands for social justice, to become more militant in our defense of
vulnerable populations. Those who still defend the supremacy of white
male hetero-patriarchy had better watch out.
“The next 1,459 days of the Trump administration will be 1,459 days of
resistance: Resistance on the ground, resistance in the classrooms,
resistance on the job, resistance in our art and in our music.
“This is just the beginning and in the words of the inimitable Ella
Baker, ‘We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.’ Thank
you.” This was Angela Davis concluding her remarks at the Women’s March
on Washington on 21 January 2017. (For the full transcript see below.)
The worldwide women’s marches on 21 January 2017 were a historic event.
For the first time since the anti-war demonstrations of 15 February
2003, millions of people in different countries and on all seven
continents demonstrated on the same day and for the same reasons, both
in a gesture of international solidarity but also an understanding how
the same political dynamics are at play internationally. [1]
In the U.S. the level of mobilization outstripped the 2003 antiwar
demonstrations and in Britain rivalled that level.
The marches were initiated and led by and mobilized majoritarily women.
While the spark was the election of Trump as U.S. president and reaction
to the announced and probable attacks on women’s rights in that country
under his administration, the international response was also provoked
by the attacks and fears of attacks on those same rights by women around
the world. The rising tides of far-right and religious reaction are
underlining the fact that women’s rights—to choose, to work, to live
their lives as they wish—are never definitely won.
While the impetus came from women—of all ages, women of colour, ethnic
minority women, migrant women, women with disabilities—defending their
rights, the marches also mobilized those concerned by the attacks to
come from the Trump administration—and similar political forces around
the world—on migrants’ rights, on Black rights, on the environment.
In the U.S. the mobilization had a truly mass nature—as is witnessed by
the list of mobilizations that has been compiled. [2] Even the protests
of a few dozen, indeed sometimes a few individuals, are recorded,
showing the extent to which the desire to stand up and be counted
against Trump and his policies sank deep.
Of course, such a spontaneous mobilization was extremely heterogeneous,
bringing into the same marches radical feminists, Democrats and Clinton
supporters, Black rights activists, radical anti-capitalist left forces.
That was an enormous achievement notably in the U.S., but also at a
worldwide level.
Some left commentators because of this have tended to dismiss the
significance of these demonstrations, arguing that they were dominated
by bourgeois, white, liberal, pro-Democrat forces. That such forces were
present and may well have taken the initiative is undeniable. But all
the reports from around the world underline the fact that many, many of
the demonstrators were young, spontaneous and new to mobilizing. What
could be a worse tactic for the diverse feminist, anti-capitalist left
than to leave those people only in dialogue with liberal, mainstream,
institutional feminists
As Susan Pashkoff writing for Socialist Resistance in Britain says: It
is essential that socialist feminists and the left participate in this
movement and not just criticise from the outside. We need to be there,
shifting the boundaries further to the left, to support the demands of
working-class women, women of colour, LGBTQ comrades and disabled women.
We need to make certain that this potential movement is not seized by
those that would subvert its aims to further the needs of mainstream
political parties and the liberal feminist movement. [3]
The need for the marches to be of all women, and in particular those
that suffer, and have suffered, the most sharply from oppression,
exploitation and discrimination—that is, Black and ethnic minority
women, LGBTQ people, disabled women, working-class women—was expressed
strongly from the outset. The “Guiding Vision and Definition of
Principles” in the U.S. were far broader than those of liberal feminism
and addressed the demands and struggles of women of colour and working
class women.[4]
Real efforts were made to ensure that the organizers (co-chairs) [5] at
a national level in the U.S. reflected this diversity, but as with any
living movement, such efforts will have to continue if an ongoing
movement is to develop out of this surge of protest.
Pashkoff pointed out, “If you expect this nascent movement to understand
the fact that it is at the intersections of race, class and gender that
women’s oppression is felt the hardest, then we need to be there
ensuring that the voices of women of colour, working-class women, LGBTQ
people, and disabled women are heard and their demands are taken on
board. It is a nascent movement, if you expect that they will not make
errors or put out wrong slogans, you are asking far too much.”
Nevertheless the movement, if it is to grow in to the powerful protest
movement for social justice called for by Angela Davis in her speech in
Washington, will have to go beyond this organized diversity to become an
expression of the fights and struggles of women against all forms of
oppression, exploitation and discrimination.[6]
But movements take time and effort to grow and to build. As the Marxist
feminist author Cinzia Arruzza wrote on 22 January:
Mass mobilizations almost never begin when we expect them, almost never
have the features we would expect or consider as politically adequate,
almost never have political coherence, they are not free of the social
contradictions and divisions that are present in society, or of the
cultural prejudices and political shortcomings that characterize them.
They are not magical events disconnected from the continuum of social
life, although they have the capacity and potentiality of creating
discontinuity and breaks. They are messy, contradictory processes, where
the outcomes are not given in advance and solidarity is something to be
achieved.
The last 48 hours have shown the potentiality for a new season of mass
mobilization, and that this happened especially in a day of women’s
mobilizations is even more relevant. Of course, a possible, perhaps
likely, scenario is that the Democratic Party and its surrogates will
end up taming, coopting and eventually kill this potentiality.
But the relevant decision we should make is whether we want to already
sing the funeral eulogy of a mobilization that could be or whether we
want to be true to our desire to change this world and have a serious
non-moralistic political analysis of the limitations, composition and
potential of these last two days, and of what we should do and how in
order to help the growth and radicalization of the struggle.[7]
That is the challenge facing feminist, anti-capitalist forces in the
U.S. and around the world in the wake of this wave of protest. What is
at stake, and also the possibilities opened up, are undoubtedly greater
in the immediate in the U.S. But as women around the world fight to
defend and extend their rights, this protest movement is a sign of the
possibilities to build their own movements, whether for the right to
abortion in Ireland and Poland, against violence in India and South
Africa, against feminicide in Mexico, and for women’s rights as human
rights everywhere.
History cannot be deleted like web pages
Civil rights activist Angela Davis spoke at the Women’s March on
Washington on Saturday in front of a crowd of hundreds of thousands who
gathered in the nation’s capital to protest the Trump administration.
Davis, who is known for writing such books as Women, Race, and Class,
made a passionate call for resistance and asked the audience to become
more militant in their demands for social justice over the next four
years of Trump’s presidency.
Here’s the Full Transcript Of Angela Davis’s Women’s March Speech:
“At a challenging moment in our history, let us remind ourselves that we
the hundreds of thousands, the millions of women, trans-people, men and
youth who are here at the Women’s March, we represent the powerful
forces of change that are determined to prevent the dying cultures of
racism, hetero-patriarchy from rising again.
”We recognize that we are collective agents of history and that history
cannot be deleted like web pages. We know that we gather this afternoon
on indigenous land and we follow the lead of the first peoples who
despite massive genocidal violence have never relinquished the struggle
for land, water, culture, their people. We especially salute today the
Standing Rock Sioux.
“The freedom struggles of Black people that have shaped the very nature
of this country’s history cannot be deleted with the sweep of a hand. We
cannot be made to forget that Black lives do matter. This is a country
anchored in slavery and colonialism, which means for better or for worse
the very history of the United States is a history of immigration and
enslavement. Spreading xenophobia, hurling accusations of murder and
rape and building walls will not erase history. No human being is illegal.
“The struggle to save the planet, to stop climate change, to guarantee
the accessibility of water from the lands of the Standing Rock Sioux, to
Flint, Michigan, to the West Bank and Gaza. The struggle to save our
flora and fauna, to save the air—this is ground zero of the struggle for
social justice.
“This is a women’s march, and this women’s march represents the promise
of feminism as against the pernicious powers of state violence. And
inclusive and intersectional feminism that calls upon all of us to join
the resistance to racism, to Islamophobia, to anti-Semitism, to
misogyny, to capitalist exploitation.
“Yes, we salute the fight for 15. We dedicate ourselves to collective
resistance. Resistance to the billionaire mortgage profiteers and
gentrifiers. Resistance to the health care privateers. Resistance to the
attacks on Muslims and on immigrants. Resistance to attacks on disabled
people. Resistance to state violence perpetrated by the police and
through the prison industrial complex. Resistance to institutional and
intimate gender violence, especially against trans women of color.
”Women’s rights are human rights all over the planet, and that is why we
say freedom and justice for Palestine. We celebrate the impending
release of Chelsea Manning. And Oscar López Rivera. But we also say free
Leonard Peltier. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. Free Assata Shakur.
“Over the next months and years we will be called upon to intensify our
demands for social justice to become more militant in our defense of
vulnerable populations. Those who still defend the supremacy of white
male hetero-patriarchy had better watch out.
“The next 1,459 days of the Trump administration will be 1,459 days of
resistance: Resistance on the ground, resistance in the classrooms,
resistance on the job, resistance in our art and in our music.
“This is just the beginning and in the words of the inimitable Ella
Baker, ’We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.’ Thank
you.” — Angela Davis
Footnotes:
[1] Many photos, videos and articles have reported on the
demonstrations. For a taste see The Huffington Post “38 Stunning Photos
From Women’s Marches Around The World”.
[2] See here.
[3] Susan Pashkoff, Socialist Resistance, “Are we witnessing a moment or
a movement?”. See on the routes proposed for the movement: “May the
angry women return home the day after the march to lead us toward a
women-led hybrid movement-party in every state that is disciplined
enough to govern, militantly local and single-mindedly devoted to
actualizing a force capable of seizing control of city councils and
mayorships during midterm elections across America in preparation for an
electoral coup against the presidency in 2020.”, Micah White, The
Guardian, 19 January 2017, “Without a path from protest to power, the
Women’s March will end up like Occupy”. Experiences as varied as those
of the PT in municipal government in Brazil and Podemos in th Spanish
state have shown that it is not so easy to wield “power” even at a
municipal level.
[4] See the “Guiding Vision and Definition of Principles” here.
[5] See here.
[6] The organizers have understood this point and are addressing it in
their fashion, see Susan Chira and Jonathan Martin, 22 January 2017 New
York Times, “After Success of Women’s March, a Question Remains: What’s
Next?”.
[7] Cinzia Arruzza is author of “Dangerous Liaisons: The marriages and
divorces of Marxism and Feminism” available here.
Penelope Duggan is a member of the bureau of the Fourth International
and editor of the on-line journal International Viewpoint. See
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article4842 – forum. She
is a member of the New Anti-capitalist Party in France. of the NPA in
France.
Photo: Thomas P. Costello / USA Today
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January 29, 2017 in Women's Liberation.
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