WWP celebrates International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day was celebrated at a Workers World Party forum in Detroit on March 6. A multinational and multigenerational panel of women speakers paid tribute to “sister soldiers” in the struggle and discussed how women’s oppression can be overturned.

Lauren Spencer Megan Spencer Deirdre Griswold, right, recieves “Warrior Woman Award” from Kris Hamel.

Comrades Debbie Johnson and Lee Booth paid homage to WWP members and friends in Michigan who have made important contributions to the struggles against imperialism and for social and economic justice and socialism. Megan Spencer, a feminist activist, artist and Michigan State University student, spoke about the links between women’s oppression and environmental degradation and how the struggle against both must be anti-capitalist in order to succeed.

Sandra Hines, a leader in the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shutoffs, talked about African-American women in Detroit who have furthered the struggle for self-determination. Lauren Spencer, an intern at MSU’s LGBT Resource Center, discussed how the struggle for lesbian/gay/bi/trans and queer liberation is intertwined with the struggle against racism and for women’s rights.

Deirdre Griswold, a WWP national leader and the editor of Workers World newspaper, was presented with the Warrior Woman award for her many decades of exemplary leadership in the struggle. Griswold gave insights into the early struggles of women in the Party by focusing on the lives and work of WWP founding members Dorothy Ballan and Elizabeth Copeland. Ballan and Copeland were theoreticians as well as activists and extraordinary leaders in their unions, communities and the Party. The meeting was chaired by Andrea Egypt.