Montréal demonstration on Thursday, March 8 at 6:30pm Gathering at Square Cabot (corner Atwater & Sainte-Catherine) –> Facebook event.
Too few people are aware that March 8 was born out of the revolutionary fervor of communist women, who in 1910, meeting for the 2nd Socialist International, decided to add a day to the calendar celebrating the courage of proletarians in constant struggle against their capitalist exploiters. Women such as Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontai wanted the proletariat to pay a yearly tribute to its feminine component; they wanted the bourgeoisie to tremble yearly, faced with the tenacity of working women and their male counterparts taking to the streets to put them on trial. A year has already gone by since we commemorated the working women of textile in Saint-Petersburg, opening the way for the Russian revolution of 1917, which brought to power, for the first time in history, the women and men who possessed nothing other than their own labour power.
Throughout the last century, the bourgeoisie however confiscated the revolutionary character of March 8. It insolently suppressed the adjective “working” from the name of the day. It rubbed out the whole thing with a commercial festival and well-behaved parades. This year, in Montreal, we are standing up for once and for all against this revolting recuperation. We are launching the first edition of “Revolutionary March 8, International Working Women’s Day”.
We are calling for the holding of a demonstration that brings together working women and men just as well as revolutionary feminists. The day will honour the memory of the women who marked the history of class struggle, the history of the international proletariat. We will flood the streets with our steps, our banners, our flags, our slogans and our songs to denounce the exploitation of proletarian women, and especially, to signify to their number one enemy that we will take them to battle, quite literally and all the way, for power.
Every day, the fruit of our labour is stolen from us. Every day, in our houses, we carry out free labour the profits of which end in the hands of capitalists. We have had more than enough of small salaries, irregular schedules, of preparing meals, cleaning and caring for children without the help we need. The only liberatory perspective is the collectivisation of all this labour, it is socialism! Still today, the women in factories, warehouses, on the road and on worksites, in stores, at home, in daycares, are nowhere to be seen in academia, in current affairs, in political narratives and in artistic productions. The same is true for the women at the front-line of struggle all over the world and particularly in countries dominated by imperialism. In fact, the bourgeoisie has simply no interest in proletarians, aside to exploit them. It stifles the cause of proletarian women, but we always make it our duty to remind it that it underestimates its adversary.
Incidentally, that is what we will do on the coming Thursday March 8, in the evening. Further details of the march will soon be announced, so stay tuned. Let us call upon our class brothers and all those who lay claim to revolution to join us. The confrontation with the bourgeoisie and the building of socialism will not take place without us, let it be understood!
Let us brand March 8 with red iron; and then drive ahead, fists raised, ranks closed, through the “Workers’ Spring; towards a revolutionary Mayday, International Workers’ Day”. The call is launched! Spring 2018 will start quickly and in full strength!
Working women, unemployed, immigrant and Native women, single mothers, wives, revolutionaries, communists, let us reclaim March 8 and make it glow under the flame of revolution!
Let us celebrate working women, those who craft the world and who produce all the wealth! Capitalists must be made afraid of those they exploit!
Let us not content ourselves to the struggle against sexism: Let us topple capitalism together, since our full and genuine liberation depends on it! The end of the exploitation of Man by Man will be the end of the exploitation of women!
Let us take to the streets and resolutely oppose imperialism that rots the lives of our sisters overseas! Let us take to the streets to overthrow the world that has held us under the yoke of oppression for thousands of years!
Revolutionary Proletarian Feminist Front RPFF – RCP
