Róisín Lyder
Rebel Youth presents 10 biographies of revolutionary women!
Angela Davis
“The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what
does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what’s
that? The freedom to starve?”
Angela Davis first became involved in the
black liberation and communist movements in the late 1960s as a professor at
the University of California Los Angeles. As an outspoken critic of US
imperialism and white supremacy, Davis was targeted for persecution and was
imprisoned in 1970 on charges of murder and kidnapping. After a massive
mobilization across the world demanded her freedom, Davis was acquitted in
1972. She has continued her political work to this day, as well as pioneering
theoretical work on the relationship between race, class, and gender and on
incarceration. Lefties today are sometimes still spotted sporting a nostalgic
‘Free Angela!’ button.
Read more:
Angela Davis: An Autobiography
Watch:
Free Angela and All Political Prisoners
La Pasionaria (Dolores Ibárruri)
“The fascists shall not pass. ¡No Pasaran!”
Spanish communist Dolores Ibárruri, better
known as La Pasionaria, lived up to her name through her passionate speeches
and the energy and enthusiasm with which she threw herself into mobilizing
popular support for the Spanish Republic and against Franco’s fascists. In the
process, she came to be a symbol of anti-fascist resistance to both Spaniards
and foreigners alike. During the Spanish Civil War La Pasionaria was an
articulate inspiration to the communists as well as a fierce opponent of the
fascists. Exiled from Spain following the war she finally returned in 1977 to
the great joy of many Spanish people.
Read more:
¡Comrades! Portraits from the Spanish Civil War;
They Shall Not Pass: the Autobiography of
La Pasionaria
Tania
“Tell El Commandante I will fulfill the
mission no matter how long it takes.”
Tania was born Tamara Bunke in Argentina to
exiled German communist parents. In the 1950s her family returned to the GDR,
where she worked for the Free German Youth and the World Federation of
Democratic Youth. After meeting Che Guevara in 1960, Bunke moved to Cuba, where
she participated in the literacy campaign as well as other revolutionary
efforts. She was selected to participate in Che’s attempt to launch armed
struggle in Bolivia, where she operated as an undercover agent for several
years. Her loyalty to the struggle was unwavering despite having to cut almost
all ties with her friends and family in order to safely complete her mission.
Tania was one of the last surviving members of the guerrilla group when she was
killed by the Bolivian army in August, 1967.
Read more:
Tania: Undercover with Che Guevara in Bolivia
Annie Buller
“There was enthusiasm and a fighting spirit
in the Dressmakers’ Union. Girls in their ‘teens, women past middle age, all
enthusiastically worked together to build their union. It was truly theirs, for
they were in on all deliberations…
recognized for the first time in their working lives as human beings who
had a purpose in life and who were part of a great movement.”
Annie Buller was a leading member of the
Communist Party of Canada and a militant organizer who travelled the country in
the 1920s and 30s organizing mineworkers, dressmakers, and other sectors of the
working class into unions. Jailed twice for several years as part of government
repression of communists, Buller was never discouraged from her deep conviction
that Canada would see a socialist future. Throughout her life Buller also
worked to organize the unemployed, campaigned against fascism and later the
Vietnam War, and worked to build left wing and labour publications in Canada. A
police report apparently described her as “a very powerful speaker; very well
liked. Dangerous agitator.”
Read more:
Raising the Workers’ Flag: The Workers’ Unity League of Canada,
1930-1936; She Never Was Afraid: The Biography of Annie Buller
Constance Markievicz
“What I stand for is the… ideal of a
worker’s republic.”
Nicknamed the ‘rebel countess’, this
fighter for Irish independence was atypical given that she was born into an
Anglo-Irish family of aristocrats. Rejecting the path set out for her at birth
and deeply affected by the poverty she encountered in Dublin slums, Markievicz
threw her hat in with socialist trade unionist James Connolly and his Irish
Citizen Army. She is perhaps best remembered for her role in the 1916 Easter
Rising after which she was sentenced to death along with the other leaders of
the movement, although her sentence was commuted because she was a woman.
Read more:
Terrible Beauty: A Life of Constance Markievicz
Rosa Luxemburg
“Your ‘order’ is built on sand. Tomorrow
the revolution will rise up again, clashing its weapons, and to your horror it
will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!”
Born a few days before the proclamation of
the Paris Commune and dead just a year after the October Revolution, Rosa
Luxemburg’s life punctuated a great historical period. Throughout her life she
dedicated her energies, capacities and intellectual powers to the goal of world
socialist revolution. A leading intellectual and theorist as well as an active
member of the Polish and then German left, Luxemburg eventually broke with the
German left over their support for the First World War. She was one of the
founders of the Spartacus League, which became the German Communist Party, and
was a leader of the 1919 general strike and uprising. Jailed twice and
eventually murdered by a right-wing paramilitary group, Luxemburg paid the
ultimate price for her convictions.
Read more:
Rosa Luxemburg Speaks
Leslie Feinberg
“Remember me as a revolutionary communist.”
Leslie Feinberg helped transform
understandings of gender both on the left and in society at large as the author
of one of the first novels to deal with the experiences of trans people, Stone
Butch Blues, and as a tireless activist for trans liberation. Feinberg became a
communist in the late 1960s and participated in struggles against imperialist
war, for black liberation, workers’ rights, women’s rights, and more. Feinberg
gained a reputation as an extraordinarily hardworking organizer, who believed
passionately in the inseparable connections between the struggles of all
oppressed people.
Read more:
Lavender and Red; LGBT Struggle: An Essential Working Class
Struggle; Stone Butch Blues
Nguyen Thi Binh
“It is the duty for all Vietnamese to help
each other in the fight against the foreign aggressors for the independence of
the country and for peace.”
Nguyen Thi Binh, who became known around
the world as Madame Binh, became involved in the Vietnamese revolution in the
1940s during the struggle against the French. She joined the communist party
and became a senior diplomat. Binh represented the Provisional Revolutionary
Government of South Vietnam during years of difficult negotiations with the
United States, and was one of the signatories of the Paris Peace Accord that
finally ended America’s war on Vietnam. After the war, Binh continued to serve
Vietnam, as Foreign Minister, Minister of Education, and eventually
Vice-president of the country.
Read more:
Family, Friend and Country: Nyugen Thi Binh’s Memoir
Ruth First
“I count myself an African, and there is no
cause I hold dearer.”
The child of communist parents, Ruth First
was part of the small minority of white South Africans who fought against the
Apartheid regime. First was imprisoned repeatedly for her activity, including a
period of detention without charge lasting 117 days, during which she was
tortured. After her release she continued to participate in the anti-apartheid
struggle from exile in Britain and several African countries. In 1982, First
was assassinated by South African intelligence.
Read more:
Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War Against Apartheid
The Cuban Revolutionaries
Vilma Espin, Celia Sanchez, Melba Hernandez, Haydee Santamaria
“I was not born a guerilla or a
revolutionary, for sure. But I knew… the Cuban peasants would follow me if they
felt we had a chance against Batista. I had to show them we had a chance.” –
Celia Sanchez
Each of the four women most associated with
the triumph of the Cuban Revolution has a fascinating and inspiring story.
Haydee Santamaria and Melba Hernandez were early converts to the struggle, both
participating in the famed July 26th attack on the Moncada Barracks in
Santiago, the action which inspired the name of the young revolutionary
movement. After the revolution, Haydee devoted herself to developing and
promoting the world-renowned Cuban culture, founding the Casa de Las Americas.
Vilma Espin was a chemical engineer and ballet dancer born into a wealthy
family. As a young woman she acted as messenger between sections of the
revolutionary movement in Mexico and Cuba, and post-revolution she was
responsible for founding the Federation of Cuban Women, which works to advance
the position of women in Cuban society. Celia Sanchez was a leading guerilla
soldier who devoted the rest of her life to building Cuban socialism and
preserving the historical records of the Revolution. The beautiful and
expansive Parque Lenin in Havana was developed for the enjoyment of the Cuban
people under her direction and a memorial statue at its entrance honours her
memory.
___________________
This article is included in Rebel Youth's 18th print issue, released in March 2015. This issue is produced by women members of the Young Communist League of Canada. To subscribe to Rebel Youth click here. To learn more or to join the YCL or click here.
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