By ANN MONTAGUE A mass march of women will take place in the nation’s capital on Jan. 21, 2017. This is the first full day that Donald Trump will be president, and will follow demonstrations that are being called for Inauguration Day. The call states, “We will stand in solidarity with our partners and children … Continue reading Forward to the Women’s March on Washington!
By ANN MONTAGUE — JUNE 27 — Women are celebrating today in front of the U.S. Supreme Court Building after a 5-3 ruling reaffirmed Roe v. Wade and struck down two provisions of a Texas state law that restricts women’s access to abortion. The 2013 law that the court nullified required all abortions to take … Continue reading Supreme Court strikes down Texas anti-abortion law
By ANN MONTAGUE As soon as the news first broke of a gunman’s murderous assault inside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Col., women all over the country understood the meaning of the attack. The Nov. 27 shooting was another attack on a woman’s right to abortion. But that is not how it was … Continue reading Clinic shooting: Defend women’s rights!
By STEFANIE LEVI The struggle for women’s right to choose gained an important, if temporary, victory in the state of Texas. On June 29, in a five to four vote, the U. S. Supreme Court blocked HB2, a portion of Texas’ new abortion laws that would have forced the July 1 closure of many of … Continue reading Court blocks Texas anti-abortion law
By CHRISTINE MARIE “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry,” a documentary film directed and produced by Mary Dore, 2014. When the noted documentary filmmaker Mary Dore set about to tell the story of the beginning of the feminist movement that burst onto the scene in the mid-1960s, she could find no funders. Dore was supported when … Continue reading Film: She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry
By CHRISTINE MARIE The fight to save the planet as a viable home to our species will require the most powerful social movement ever organized. Necessarily central to that project is solidarity and collaboration with those who are most immediately vulnerable to the dire effects of the capitalist carbon-fueled economy. An international movement that fails … Continue reading Should ‘population’ be on climate agenda?
On March 8, 2013, International Women’s Day, KFAI in Minneapolis presented a program, “Women and Global Climate Change.” The speakers were Christine Frank, Climate Crisis Coalition Twin Cities (3CTC), and a frequent contributor to Socialist Action newspaper; Patricia Shepard, Idle No More Minnesota Activist, Ojibwe and Prairie Band Potawatami; and Karen Redleaf (now Schraufnagel), 3CTC … Continue reading Women and the Climate Crisis
By CHRISTINE MARIE Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, The State & Revolution: Soviet Family Policy & Social Life, 1917-1936 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); La mujer, el estado y la Revolución (Buenos Aires: Pan y rosas and Ediciones IPS, 2012). On Oct. 10, the Marxist scholar Wendy Z. Goldman published a piece in Counterpunch entitled “The … Continue reading Women’s history as a guide for activists
By CHRISTINE MARIE Book Review: Adrienne Mayor, “The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World.” Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. Marx and Engels, when developing their understanding of the relationship between class society and the oppression of women, relied heavily on the ethnology and archaeological science of their day. They wrote … Continue reading A challenge to myth of male dominance
By ANN MONTAGUE Abortion has been legal in Cuba since the victory of the Cuban revolution in 1959 and was codified into law as a women’s “sovereign right” in 1968. Vilma Espin, a feminist and revolutionary fighter, was made the head of the new Federation of Cuban Women and later created the National Center For … Continue reading Cuba expands women’s reproductive rights
By JUSTA MONTERO MADRID—On Sept. 23, the prime minister of the Spanish State, Mariano Rajoy, announced that he was withdrawing the proposal to amend the abortion law. The law’s main architect, Minister of Justice Alberto Ruíz Gallardón, immediately resigned. Gallardón never tired of repeating that the preliminary draft for “protection of the life of the … Continue reading Spain: Women have won!
By CHRISTINE MARIE The following presentation was given by Christine Marie, representing Socialist Action at a Nov. 10 forum in Philadelphia called Feminist Rebellion Today. The other panelists were Preeti Pathak, Co-Chair of Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment (PAVE), a new group that uses education and action to shatter the silence of sexual violence; Rebecca Katherine … Continue reading Feminist Rebellion Today
By CHRISTINE MARIE On April 25, Black women lawmakers, including Representative Barbara Watson, walked out of a Florida state legislative session to protest the introduction of an anti-abortion bill that would prohibit pregnancy terminations based on “race.” The bill, introduced by white Republican lawmaker Charles Van Zant, is typical of a spate of reactionary laws … Continue reading The road to achieving reproductive justice
By ANN MONTAGUE SEIU 503 announced it supports a living wage for its workers in Oregon, and is taking the issue to the bargaining table and possibly to the streets. While President Obama has proposed an increase in the Federal Minimum Wage to $9 an hour, SEIU doesn’t believe that is the solution. Oregon's minimum … Continue reading Public workers see women’s pay inequity
By CHRISTINE MARIE Book Review: Kristin Bumiller, “In An Abusive State: How Neoliberalism Appropriated the Feminist Movement Against Sexual Violence” (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008). On Feb. 14, the streaming videos of the flashmobs of young women determined to claim a violence-free life set my feminist heart to humming. But the hum quieted a … Continue reading Issues for movement against sexual violence
By DAWN ROSE “Your body is a wrapped lollipop. When you have sex with a man, he unwraps your lollipop and sucks on it. It may feel great at the time, but, unfortunately, when he’s done with you, all you have left for your next partner is a poorly wrapped, saliva-fouled sucker.” –Darren Washington, abstinence … Continue reading ‘Purity’ myth hurts young women
