We have a world to win

By Liz Payne, Morning Star

     International Women's Day each year provides an opportunity to focus in depth on the condition of women, the class struggle against inequality and the tasks that face us in the immediate and more long‑term future.

     In Britain, the austerity measures of the coalition have been nothing less than a brutal assault on working‑class women.

     Beginning with the Emergency Budget of June 2010 draconian measures "to fill the economic deficit" have hit women hardest, taking their jobs and slashing the benefits and services on which so many depend. And, with less than a quarter of the already-planned cuts implemented, the worst is yet to come ‑ that is, unless we put a stop to it.

International Women's Day 2013

Statement by the Central Women’s Commission, Communist Party of Canada and endorsed by the Young Communist League of Canada

March 8 is a day to honour women’s struggles, take stock of hard‑won gains, and to demand full equality.

This year, International Women’s Day comes amidst inspiring new struggles. Working people around the world, particularly in Europe, continue their huge struggles against austerity measures. In Canada we saw students in Quebec rose up, leading a fight against tuition fee increases, against neo‑liberal policies, and in opposition to a draconian bill that attempted to repress dissent. The result: the Quebec Liberal government’s defeat at the polls, a tuition freeze and the scrapping of Loi 10. Young women played a key and leading role in that struggle.

The “Idle No More” movement has initiated an historic struggle against Bill C‑45 and the entire racist agenda of the Harper Tory government.

On Valentines - solidarity with missing and murdered Aboriginal women

Rebel Youth has received this commentary about the crisis of missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada. We are reprinting it also in the context of the build-up to International Women's Day 2013.

By Darrel Rankin, CPC Manitoba

On this day of action for murdered and missing Aboriginal women in Canada, we are circulating yesterday's report from Human Rights Watch on the issue (read the report summary here).

It focuses on B.C., but the brutal racist and sexist realities are no different in this part of Canada, reported and unreported. (For example, see this "Letter from a Grandmother" we ran in the past - RY eds.)

This is a systemic problem, connected to the oppression of both women and Aboriginal nations in Canada by the dominant, English-speaking nation and Quebec, a nation which itself is in an unequal union with the non-Aboriginal "rest of Canada." Like war, the inequality of nations is an inherent part of capitalism in its late stage of development.

Solving the problem will require fundamental social change, curbing and ultimately ending the immense power of the corporate elite who benefit from all forms of discrimination and inequality, dividing working people and creating pools of super-exploited labour that drag all wages down.

(Extra: Read the YCL solidarity statement on the Sisters in Spirt campaign from 2011)

In serious denial, the largest oppressor nation (or its political, corporate class) doesn't have a name for itself, because it refuses to recognize the genocidal crimes it continues to commit. It calls itself "Canada," claiming we have a "multi-cultural" society with no other real nations, except Quebec which Harper recognized because it is an equal opportunity oppressor of Aboriginal nations. Je me souviens Oka.

Human Rights Watch is playing a useful role by helping expose the crude police state Aboriginal peoples are resisting in Canada, although I disagree with the role it has played in other parts of the world. (About HRW's role elsewhere, see for example here or here.)

The Aboriginal rights struggle requires the full solidarity of Labour and other popular movements. May Aboriginal nations win full rights and equality, and soon.



Links and related reports (with thanks to Eagle Watch):

• Full report
• Press release re-printed on Rebel Youth
• BBC report - RCMP 'discriminates against and abuses' First Nations women 
• Harper brushes off calls for inquiry into violence against Aboriginal women
• Documents show Attawapiskat gets 0.5% share of annual diamond revenues

Canada: Abusive Policing, Neglect Along "Highway of Tears"

Media report on the Highway of Tears

Human Rights Watch yesterday joined calls for the establishment of a Cross-Canada inquiry into the murders and disappearances of Indigenous women and girls. Their full release is below. Rebel Youth reprints this also as part of a series of articles we are running in the lead-up to International Women's Day.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in northern British Columbia has failed to protect indigenous women and girls from violence, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Women and girls Human Rights Watch interviewed also described abusive treatment by police officers, including excessive use of force, and physical and sexual assault.

25 years after Morgentaler, struggle continues to defend and expand the reproductive rights of women

This article is the first part in a series we are running on Rebel Youth in preparation for International Women's Day on March 8th.

In the same week as women and men celebrate the 25th anniversary of the historic Morgentaler decision which decriminalized abortion in Canada, a group of right-wing Harper Conservative MPs want to push women's reproductive rights back into the dark ages.

The latest attempt to attack abortion rights has come from three Tory MPs: Maurice Vellacott of Saskatoon-Wanuskwein in Saskatchewan, Leon Benoit of Vegreville-Wainwright in Alberta and Wladyslaw Lizon of Mississauga East-Cooksville in Ontario.

In their letter (addressed to the RCMP Commissioner on House of Commons letterhead) the MP's demand the RCMP launch a "national investigation" into abortions after 19 weeks gestation calling them "possible murders."