http://themilitant.com/2017/8105/810506.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 81/No. 5 February 6, 2017
(front page)
‘Women’s march’ no advance in fight for rights
of women
BY MAGGIE TROWE
WASHINGTON — The day after the Trump inauguration, several hundred
thousand people took part in a bourgeois “Women’s March on Washington”
happening organized by political forces bitterly disappointed that
Hillary Clinton had not been elected. The Bernie Sanders “Our
Revolution” group, the Communist Party and numerous others promoted the
action as part of resuscitating the Democratic Party with a more
progressive veneer and fighting “Trumpism.” Similar rallies took place
in many U.S. cities and around the world.
The action was called the day after the November election by people who
had expected they would be celebrating the ascendancy of the first woman
president.
Far from signaling the rise of a new women’s movement, the rally
weakened the fight for women’s rights. It wasn’t organized around any
concrete demands. It wasn’t aimed at spurring state-by-state battles to
defend a woman’s right to choose abortion against continuing attacks. It
drew few unionists or African-Americans.
The action did mobilize large numbers of middle-class marchers caught up
by hysteria depicting Donald Trump and the “deplorables” who backed him
as some kind of latter-day Nazis.
Hillary Clinton angered millions of workers last September when she
described Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” who are “racist,
sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it” and
“irredeemable.”
Billionaire capitalist Trump is rebuilding the Republican Party by
appealing to workers angry about the effects on their lives from the
world capitalist crisis. With nationalist demagogy he promises to “Make
America Great Again” and create jobs and prosperity.
‘Join the Socialist Workers Party’
Socialist Workers Party members went to the Women’s March on Washington
and other actions looking to debate and discuss political perspectives
with those who participated, seeking to meet those who want a serious
discussion about how working people can fight back effectively. While
many disagreed with our working-class outlook, or complained about one
of the books we offered — The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record: Why
Washington Fears Working People — we found quite a few interested in
the SWP and how we can fight for unions, for women’s equality, against
police brutality and to end the colonial oppression of Puerto Rico. We
discussed and debated why neither Democrats nor Republicans serve the
interests of the working class. And we pointed to the examples for
working people of the Cuban and Russian revolutions.
SWP member Glova Scott met Lauren Adams, 30, a sports videographer from
Pasadena, California, who has taken part in protests against racism and
police brutality since 2012. “I’ve been in the streets. But we’re
lacking perspective. I think that’s true here as well,” she told Scott.
“I’m in the Socialist Workers Party,” Scott told her. “The fight against
police brutality is important, but to end cop violence we must uproot
its source — the capitalist system. The SWP runs its own candidates,
like Dennis Richter for mayor of Los Angeles where you’re from, to win
workers to a perspective of fighting to end the dictatorship of capital
with its dog-eat-dog values and replace it with a society run by working
people and built on human solidarity.”
“That sounds pretty good,” Adams said, adding she would like to meet
Richter when she gets home.
At the Chicago rally Raven Reed overheard SWP member Dan Fein telling
another marcher, “This rally would never have been organized if Clinton
had won the election. The Democrats say they’re for women’s rights, but
they have demobilized the fight. We are building the Socialist Workers
Party to lead the working class in making a socialist revolution.”
“I think you’re right,” Reed told Fein, joining the conversation.
Alex Bergstrom, a writer for a training company, talked to Samir Qaisar
at the SWP table, saying he was looking for “an alternative vision.”
“We have one — revolutionary Cuba,” Qaisar replied. Bergstrom bought a
copy of The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record. SWP members in Chicago
got the names of nine people who wanted to get together to discuss
further, sold 26 books, seven subscriptions and 66 single copies of the
Militant.
‘Looking for socialists’
“I was looking for the socialist and union movement, so I signed up to
campaign for Bernie Sanders with the Democratic Socialists of America,”
said Madhu Tikkisetty, a 32-year-old Indian-born information technology
worker from Baltimore, when she ran into SWP members and subscribed to
the Militant in Washington. “When we talked with Black and immigrant
workers at Metro stops last year, a lot of them said they were for Trump
because he talks about jobs.” Tikkisetty spent the rest of the afternoon
with us as we talked with people at the march. She left with six books
on working-class history and communist politics under her arm.
Some Bikers for Trump who had stayed in Washington after the
inauguration were playing country music near the Women’s March. “I tried
to talk with people from the march,” Debbie Clay, a union lab worker
from Barboursville, West Virginia, told me and Tikkisetty. “But most of
them yelled, ‘How can you support Trump? He’s a racist and a fascist.’ I
argued it wasn’t true, told them Clinton was part of globalization and
that we need jobs where I come from.”
Her friend Teresa Jones, a special education teacher’s aide from
Bethalto, Illinois, said she liked Bernie Sanders as well, “but he got a
raw deal” from Democratic Party tops.
I told them I had supported Alyson Kennedy, the Socialist Workers Party
presidential candidate, and am part of building a party that fights for
unions and unity of the working class and has confidence in the capacity
of ordinary workers to take power. They got copies of the Militant to
learn more.
Related articles:
Tennessee woman framed up on abortion charges is released
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