Women’s history month commemorated

Women’s central role in the struggle against imperialism was celebrated at an International Women’s History Month meeting in San Francisco on March 26, organized by Workers World Party.

From left to right: Judy Greenspan, Ruth Vela, Sharon Black.

Ruth Vela, a youth organizer with Fight Imperialism, Stand Together—FIST—descri bed the battle women on the U.S.-Mexico border are waging against maquil a doras—foreign-owned assembly plants that pay poverty wages to workers, most of them young single women. Workers World Party member Judy Greenspan spoke about the fight women wage behind prison walls and the history of women in the lesbian/gay/bi/transgender movement. Sharon Black, the Baltimore/D.C. coordinator of the Million Worker March, paid tribute to women’s leadership in labor struggles.

Vela talked about the horrific conditions women face in border towns. They earn $25 to $55 per week working in assembly plants. The maquiladoras prefer to hire women who are single; those who become pregnant are fired or assigned to difficult jobs to force them to quit, she said.

Vela spoke about the terror women in Ciudad Juarez face. Nearly 300 young women have been brutally tortured, raped and murdered, and more than 4,000 women are missing.

“Despite these staggering numbers the maquiladoras refuse to take any action in providing safe transport to and from work for their employees, many of whom are forced to walk dark unpaved streets late at night or in the early morning in order to reach the shantytowns they live in,” Vela said.

Vela also discussed the battle being waged by residents in Maclovio Rojas, a community outside Tijuana. They are fighting to access the water that runs underneath the land they live on.

While the Mexican government provides free water to foreign-owned factories, it is demanding that the residents pay for it. So the people tapped into the city’s main electrical lines, the main source of water. Officials responded by going after those leading the struggle, including Nicolasa Ramos, a woman in her 50s. She has now served almost two-and-a-half years behind bars for alleged water theft.

Black said women face greater exploitation now compared to the time her mother worked at Woolworth’s. Wal-Mart is a prime example, she said. Seventy percent of the company’s workers are women who are paid $7 to $8 an hour.

“You can’t separate women’s struggle for liberation from the struggle against capitalism,” Black said. “You can’t divorce what is happening at Wal-Mart from our Iraqi brothers and sisters resisting U.S. war and occupation.”

Black said the Million Worker March movement is now calling for reviving another crucial day: May Day, the historic day honoring workers struggles around the world.

Greenspan spoke about often forgotten fighters in the struggle for justice: women in jails and detention centers, including immigration centers. In 1970 the women in Youth Against War and Fascism, the youth arm of Workers World Party helped to revive International Women’s Day in the U.S. with a march to the Women’s House of Detention in New York City.

A reporter from KPFA, a progressive radio station, interviewed Greenspan before the meeting. Greenspan told the reporter: “This meeting is for everyone in the struggle against U.S. imperialism, those struggling for land and water like the people of Uruguay who voted to end the privatization of water. We want to honor and commemorate and prepare ourselves to struggle alongside our sisters in Pales tine, Iraq, Iran and in this country.”