The following is an excerpt of a speech that was given at our annual Pre-May Day International Women’s Day brunch in Brooklyn, New York. To read the speech in its entirety visit www.plp.org. 

Thank y’all so much for coming out to celebrate International Working Class Women’s Day!! 

Today, we are here for a communist celebration of March 8th—where we recognize the crucial role that women have played in the fight against capitalism. We are here to struggle for a world where this celebration extends far beyond one day in March. That world will be won through the revolutionary leadership of women. 
We know this because it is our very leadership that has historically propelled us toward that world.

Women workers lead the way to revolution!

After the revolution in Cuba, women led education programs to combat high illiteracy rates that disproportionately affected rural women. Integrated groups of urban Cubans moved to the countryside to teach. And just two years after the revolution, illiteracy rates had fallen from 23 percent to 3 percent. Under socialism, the working class was uplifted through a collective antiracist, anti-sexist fight against capitalism’s failings.

In PLP, leadership from women of color has been integral to our growth, and the sharpening of our fight against capitalism. 

Our last chairwoman, Gracie, led with force into the 21st century, providing militant direction as our organization fought against racist neo-nazis and imperialist war. Now, leadership has been passed from that chairwoman to an integrated collective. 

We are here to affirm that, therefore, it will be leadership from women, specifically Black and Brown women, that will liberate ourselves from capitalism’s chains. So we stand here as the fertilizer for our next harvest.

And everyone is necessary in this fight, sexism hurts us all. Women were initially forced into free domestic labor so men could be exploited more heavily at work. But in a communist world imagined by PLP, we would abolish the entire profit system. And  “without that system, there will be no motive for gendered inequality, and without that, gendered exploitation and violence would be collectively confronted and, over time, eliminated.” 

This task is no small feat, but let us be invigorated from the recent communist struggles led by women that are displayed around the room. And let that motivation deepen by the multi-racial, gender-inclusive, multi-generational crowd that fills it. 

Our class is the only one we can truly depend on to liberate ourselves. We confront police terror in Brooklyn, with the families of Kyam Livingston and Shantel Davis. We strike at the Stella D’oro cookie factory in the Bronx. We occupy the La Casita community center in Chicago.

And our fight extends far beyond the US. Sexism knows no borders—it follows through the Darien Gap, at the southern border of Mexico, in the midst of war in Sudan, at the intersection of Church and Nostrand, and in the West Bank. Our revolutionary struggle must be as ignorant to borders as sexism and racism are. We are building an international fight that will abolish capitalism and the divisive borders it creates.  

So though capitalism has cut our movement at the trunk, they have no idea our roots are alive and well, deepening with each action. One root when we take the streets and resist ICE raids. When women in Sudan form grassroots committees against sexual violence in wartime, another root strengthens. “The only solution is a communist revolution” amplified for all of Flatbush to hear, that’s another root. Come to our May Day (May 2nd)—that’s another. Join our Party, another. 

So, while at the surface we may only see a stump, our efforts are deepening, entangling, until we force them to break ground with communist revolution. I’m fighting for the day that my sister, her beautiful friends, you, me, and our class siblings harvest our revolutionary fruit, plentiful and sweet. 

Happy International Working Class Women’s Day.