In the liberal mainstream world, International Women’s Day is hailed as a day for all women to celebrate women’s innate strength, nurturing ability, power to sway legislators, give birth, and challenge sexism by moving into positions of power in the capitalist system.
All these sexist lies conceal the key contributions of militant, communist, working class, women leaders who understood that you can only fight sexism with a multiracial, multi-generational, and most of all, a working-class movement.
In 2019, the average woman still makes 79 cents for every dollar men make (Payscale.com). The number is even lower for Black, Latin, and indigenous women, who make 26 percent less than white men workers.
Furthermore, we reject the ideology that bosses like Hilary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Kamala Harris help women workers. These ruling-class women perpetuate sexist divisions in our class.
The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) celebrates the history of working-class women—who often put their life on the line—in the fight towards a communist future without sexism, racism, and exploitation.
This month we revisit a few stories, emphasizing that sexism doesn’t just hurt women workers, but the whole working class. The only solution to sexism is nothing short of communist revolution.
Inspired by May Day
Inspired by a May Day demonstration, Clara Zetkin began to lay the groundwork in 1889 to establish International Women’s Day as a communist holiday for working class women (JSTOR, 2019). In 1910 at the Second Women’s Conference of the Second International, she proposed the following resolution, “In agreement with the class-conscious, political and trade union organizations of the proletariat...the socialist women of all countries will hold each year a Women’s Day...” Zetkin went on to become a communist leader in Germany.
Smashing racism at the border
One of those women was a Mexican labor organizer and anti-racist activist, Emma Tenayuca. Born in San Antonio, Texas in 1916, Emma was arrested after joining her first picket line against Finck Cigar Company at age 16 (La Aztlan, 2000). Her political ideology was shaped by two major historical events—The Great Depression during the 1930s and The Mexican Repatriation, a mass deportation of Mexican and Mexican American workers from 1929-1936. As a young person she visited La Plaza del Zacate where socialist and communist working class leaders gave speeches on the plight of the working class and discussions would take place on how to organize.
Emma began organizing workers and by 1934, at age 18, had already helped form the Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. She was arrested as a leader of the 1938 Texas Pecan Shellers Strike. She also organized unemployed workers with Mrs. W.H. Ernst, another radical leader of the Finck cigar strike to form the Workers Alliance. She continually protested over the abuse suffered by Mexican migrants at the hands of U.S. Border Patrol agents. In 1937, Emma joined the American Communist Party.
Organizing against big tobacco
In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, thousands of Black women went on strike against exploitation by the Big Tobacco company R.J. Reynolds (RJR)  and formed the labor union, Local 22. RJR ruled over schools, hospitals, parks and many of the available jobs. 16,000 of those workers were women and more than 80 percent were Black. However, higher-paying jobs were not available for Black workers and women were paid even less (Winston-Salem Monthly, 2018).
Women worked in sweltering rooms thick with tobacco dust. One woman, a widow and mother of five, was too ill to work, but was told by the foreman “if she didn’t catch up, there was the door” (Our State, 9/18). The women met at lunchtime and organized a plan to stop working immediately after lunch. They recruited men in the adjacent casing room to join them.
Velma Hopkins helped mobilize 10,000 workers into the streets of Winston-Salem. Local 22 was integrated and led primarily by Black women. Before Local 22 faced set-backs from red-baiting and the power of RJRs anti-unionism, it gained national attention for its vision of an equal society. Women workers like Velma Hopkins, Theodosia Simpson, Viola Brown, Moranda Smith and Christine Gardner were active Communist Party members.
Soviet women pilots help defeat the Nazis
With working-class women on the forefront, the Red Army battled and smashed the fascist Nazi army. In World War II, women served in the Soviet Air Force.  Dubbed the “night witches” by the Germans, they took off at three-minute intervals, sometimes 10 times a night.  They flew more than 30,000 combat sorties in conditions unimaginable today, They slept two-three hours near their planes in freezing temperatures. “The control stick was heavy to move, and our arms and legs were so short ...”
Nineteen-year-old Lieutenant Yekaterina Musatova-Fedotova, recalled, “The navigators helped us by pushing on our backs as we pushed on the stick to get the tail up for take off.” (NYT, 12/4/1994)
Fifteen women pilots died at Stalingrad, “We hated the German fascists so much that we would have even flown a broom to be able to fire at them.”
Continuing the tradition of communist women
In PLP, we have women like Clara, Emma, Velma, and Yekaterina continuing the tradition of fightback and building amongst the working class. In New York, the women in the family of Shantel Davis, a young woman murdered by the police, continue to speak out against police brutality and  organize with other working families that have been forever changed by the racism of Killer KKKops. Founders of Moms 4 Housing are battling against exploitative tenant laws, racism and sexism in California. Teachers from Chicago have protested on picket lines against racism underlined in school closings and exploitation of teachers in schools. Women are fighting against environmental racism in Newark and building with communities to see past liberal politicians’ false promises. We as a party fight against sexism because it means the super-exploitation of women, and because overall, it divides the working class. No matter the gender, we all must join in on mass fightback and speak out about the communist history of International Working Women and anti-sexism everyday. Join PLP today!

Comrade Joan Heymont died on February 26, surrounded by her family and comrades who had become her family, after a valiant battle against interstitial lung disease. A lifelong communist, Joan was an anchor of the New York City Progressive Labor Party collective and a leader of the Party’s education work around the world.
Joan grew up in Rockaway, Queens, the child of two former Communist Party members. She learned strong working-class values and a fighting spirit from her parents, who helped organize the Rockaway community against displacement of Black communities by the city and support for workers harmed by unsafe working conditions.
An excellent student, Joan entered Stony Brook University early and joined Progressive Labor Party there, having met the Party through the anti-war work of Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s. Joan then spent many years as a hospital laboratory worker, organizing for communism in the unions there.
Communist science teacher
Joan later began to work in the NYC public schools, first as a laboratory specialist, and then as a science teacher. Joan was a dedicated teacher who spent enormous amounts of time thinking about what and how to teach her students, connecting with other teachers to learn from them, and sharing her own ideas and lesson plans at science teacher meetings and online groups. She made the connection between science and politics, knowing that the two are interconnected.
Joan was a leader of the Party’s work in education, helping to lead the struggle for Party teachers to make sure that their pedagogy was as strong as their political agitation and base building. Joan worked to help other communist teachers see that “fighting to learn” and “learning to fight” were equally important, organizing several conferences of Party teachers focused on the connections between our political organizing and planning for our classrooms. She was a mentor to many teachers at the schools she worked at, as well as in the Party.
Union work
Joan represented the Party’s ideas in the teachers union at the local and national levels. She stood on the floor of the UFT Delegates Assembly every month and at NEA and AFT conventions every summer to advocate for working-class politics and struggle. She joined many coalitions and union groups over the years, fighting to move those groups to the left. In every group she participated in, she was respected for her integrity and welcomed as a friend. She was able to build friendly relationships even with those who disagreed with her ideas. Joan didn’t give up on workers; she worked to bring her friends closer to the Party, to win them to communist ideas.
Wherever Joan was, she fought for communism. Wherever the Party was fighting, Joan was there. As much as the workers loved her, the bosses wanted to be rid of her. At Boys and Girls High School, the administration attacked her for organizing students and removed her from her classroom and the school for several months. Joan fought like hell to get back to her work teaching and organizing. She never gave up until she was back in that classroom.
Far beyond the struggles on the job, at the union and in the streets, Joan built a collective life. She and her husband Paul raised four daughters together, trying to develop equality in their home. Many more young people over the years have described Joan as “like a mother” to them - former students, younger comrades, the children of friends. Joan helped raise dozens, there for support and struggle. And anyone Joan knew who had a new baby received a beautiful blanket or sweater, hand knit by her while she led meetings, rode the train or just had 10 minutes to sit still.
Party is red politics and red culture
Joan always said that joining the Party had taught her many things beyond politics and she saw it as her legacy to continue that gift. She remembered older comrades introducing her to cuisines and cultures she had never experienced before and she delighted in doing the same for her students and young comrades. She took joy in sharing a new restaurant, a new recipe, a new neighborhood or museum or city. And Joan made the life of the Party delicious. She loved to cook and bake, both as a scientist looking for the best recipe and a communist recognizing the role of building a collective. Many a potluck, cookout and fundraiser were made successful by Joan’s efforts. As her politics had a strong social aspect, Joan’s social life was political. At her family’s enormous annual Thanksgiving Rehearsal open house, or any other event she hosted, CHALLENGE was offered and communist politics were discussed.
Joan’s comrades, friends and family members all describe her in the same way. She was a steady, tireless and optimistic fighter for the working class. She cared for and educated those around her without letting her ego get in the way of what needed to be done. Joan built networks and collectives in every aspect of her life, and that must now carry her work forward: building collective knowledge and struggle, learning about the world in all its aspects, and fighting the bosses everywhere we can.

MEXICO, March 3—We live under the capitalist system, where a minority of profit thirsty multi-billonaires steal the wealth socially generated by the majority of the exploited and impoverished working class. In Mexico the Fourth Transformation Government (4T), of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s (AMLO) campaign, and its promise to end corrpution, and  massive income disparity plaguing Mexico, is continuing this viscious cycle rather than eradicating it.
AMLO’S exploitation
The megaprojects of the Interoceanic Corridor (CI, Spanish abbreviation), the Maya Train, the new International Airport in Mexico City, the Comprehensive Project of Morelos (PIM, Spanish abbreviation) and the Dos Bocas Refinery, will bring destruction, death and exploitation for the communities where they are being created. But, according to AMLO’s government, it will bring “progress” and “development”.  Words that under capitalism mean more poverty, exploitation and repression for workers.
Mining destroys
We just have to look at how mining has devastated the lives of millions of workers living in the municipalities where it is taking place.  According to a 2017 report from the FUNDAR organization: 50 percent of the mining municipalities in Mexico have higher levels of poverty than the national average and 13 percent of those communities surpass the limits of extreme poverty (Las Actividades Extractivas en México: Minería e Hidrocarburos Hacia el Fin del Sexenio, 2017).
During that same year, according to a report from the Chamber of Mines of Mexico, the mining production was up to 12,772 billion dollars, which means record breaking profits for the mining bosses and inequality and poverty for those communities. Let’s not forget that mining destroys  workers’ way of life and the environment.  
Those who oppose these megaprojects are often intimidated or assassinated by the repressive forces and paramilitary groups hired by the companies or organized crime.  Samir Flores, an indigenous fighter and leader of the resistance against  PIM, was assassinated a few days after AMLO called him a “leftist conservative”.
The government of the 4T is also creating conflcit between imperialists. The CI is a project that U.S. imperialism has long wished for; to streamline and simplify the flow of raw material and products between the east and west coast of the U.S., creating more profits.  It also means creating big industrial parks with laws that impose slave labor conditions for workers, while taking the abundant hydraulic, mining and energetic resources in the south of Mexico.
 But China is rising to become the main imperialist rival of the U.S. The CI will be a confrontation point due to its connection with the strategic Pacific Ocean, the main disputing zone for both imperialists.
Reject all capitalist politicians
We have to confront the attacks these megaprojects represent for our class.  The international revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is in solidarity with these communities and their resistance. We reject all forms of repression against this struggle.  
Capitalism will continue its deadly projects, be it with right-wing governments like Peña’s or Calderon’s or liberal governments like AMLO’s.  Only in a society run by and for the workers, can projects be done on the basis of the social needs of workers, and without destroying the environment.
In order to make this an effective fight, we have to collectively organize an international revolutionary communist party to unite all the isolated efforts of all communities to the struggles of the world’s working class.  Only a multiracial, antifascist, international antisexist movement can unite the world’s workers in a common fight to liberate the working class from the oppression of the capitalist system.  PLP is fighting to build the movement to end capitalism once and for all! Join us!

Washington, D.C., February 6—Progressive Labor Party members have joined a number of rallies and struggles against racist immigration policies, including a recent rally in Washington, D.C. Our goal: show medical professionals that only a strategy with the end goal of communism and revolution can alter the vicious capitalist attacks on workers who are divided from each other by capitalist-formed borders. Our class has no borders, and revolution will abolish them!
Racism and cages divide families
Racist immigration policies are dividing families at the Texas-Mexico border. The U.S. bosses’ racist immigration policies create a devil’s choice for families migrating to the U.S. from Central America. The Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) force families who come together into unsafe conditions in Mexico where children entering without parents are forced into U.S. detention centers. Children are in cages and some have died while the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) was supposed to be monitoring them and getting them treatment. Among many horrors, the CBP is not giving children flu vaccines. The CBP claimed that the children could get the vaccine after they reached their final destination since they would only be held a couple of days. But in fact, many are held longer and the crowded conditions predispose the spread of infection.
Medical workers organize
One organization in which we are involved in is Doctors4CampClosure (D4CC), which is protesting against inhumane and racist policies. This group has over 2,000 medical professionals and has demanded to meet with CBP medical staff about flu vaccinations and general medical care for children and families. In DMV (District of Maryland and Virginia) an active chapter led a protest at the Trump hotel in October and today a local contingent gathered to protest in D.C. at the CBP headquarters. In response to the mobilization, CBP Senior Medical Advisor David Tarantino said he would meet with the group after all.  This remains to be seen.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members have participated with D4CC here and led the rally at the Philadelphia ICE office during the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting in November. Today’s rally included plans to disrupt CBP work and risk arrest through civil disobedience tactics. This reflects the anger and seriousness of medical professionals who join the fight for immigrant rights and building solidarity among all workers. This rally built on the many resolutions passed in medical organizations to get the message out. This is similar to the way we led the rally at the APHA and turns words into action. While most of the D4CC members are physicians, their events have welcomed a wide range of medical workers as well. In Maryland we are demanding that no new ICE detention centers be built and that local government connections to ICE be stopped. These reforms would be welcome, but they only scratch the surface of capitalism’s systematic attack on workers around the world.
Concentration camps litter U.S.-Mexico border
The MPP went into effect on January 29, 2019 and has since detained 58,000 asylum applicants in Mexico until their asylum cases can be heard. Corralled into makeshift camps on the Mexican border, refugees sleep in the open without adequate access to water or proper sanitation. Human Rights First reported 660 reported cases of murder, rape, kidnapping and other attacks against migrants relegated to stay in Mexico by the U.S. under the MPP. These include 148 cases of children who were kidnapped or nearly kidnapped.
The MPP explicitly exempts those with medical and mental health issues; however, the Administration routinely denies humanitarian parole into the U.S. to vulnerable people. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has reported on 17 instances of Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers sending women in the final trimester of pregnancy back to Mexico under the MPP. A woman with a known history of preeclampsia was sent back to Matamoros and went into labor in a tent, endangering both her life and that of her baby. In another case, CBP denied U.S. entry to a seven-year-old girl from Honduras with an enterocutaneous fistula, a condition in which excrement leaks through a hole from the intestines to the skin.
Communist revolution is workers only solution
International agreements and the U.S. bosses own laws claim to be against the mistreatment of refugees, but U.S. bosses ignore these agreements. The bosses break their own laws whenever it suits them—truly a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Building our party to move this struggle in a revolutionary direction is critical.