Milwaukee, WI – On Friday, February 16, Reproductive Justice Action – Milwaukee (RJAM) held a press conference outside of Milwaukee City Hall to call on Wisconsin Assembly Leader Robin Vos to hold a public hearing for the Reproductive Freedom Act.

RJAM Chair Lauren Forbush started off the press conference with a chant, “When reproductive rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” 

“We are outside City Hall this morning to call attention to the Reproductive Freedom Act. The Reproductive Freedom Act would expand access to abortion services statewide,” Forbush said.

Isabella Gargi of RJAM was the first speaker for the press conference. “This legislation has three parts. The first part restores the power of individuals to make their own pregnancy health care decisions by removing medically unnecessary restrictions and bans on abortion care, and removes inappropriate political interference from the doctor-patient relationships. The second part affirms the obligation of health care providers to provide medically accurate information to patients and creates a right for patients to receive medically accurate information from their healthcare provider; and the third part ensures that publicly funded pregnancy counseling services provide all options counseling and services.”

Maya Seshan from Medical Students for Choice used her speaking time to highlight the need for a public hearing for the Reproductive Freedom Act. “Voters across Wisconsin have affirmed the need and right to be able to access abortion care! Restrictive abortion laws affect patients, healthcare providers, and medical workers.”

After voicing her support for the public hearing, she went on to explain how the previous abortion ban has impacted pregnant people with life-threatening complications during pregnancy. One of these conditions is preeclampsia, which causes life-threatening complications to the pregnant person during pregnancy, and if they continue with giving birth they can experience life-threatening conditions postpartum as well. Preeclampsia is only diagnosed at or after 20-weeks of gestation, while the current abortion restrictions in Wisconsin only allow abortion up to 21 weeks.

“Under current Wisconsin law, this condition cannot be treated safely. All healthcare professionals and patients will experience uncertainty until the Reproductive Freedom Act is codified into law,” Seshan said.

The next speaker was Tracey Schwertfeger, a registered nurse and leader with the Saint Francis Hospital chapter of Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals Local 5000. She spoke in favor of a public hearing for the Reproductive Freedom Act on behalf of labor activists in the medical field.

Schwertfeger stated, “Abortion access is access to healthcare and access to freedom. The denial of access is an undue burden on people, disproportionately affecting those who are already marginalized and facing socioeconomic challenges. Our duty as healthcare professionals is to advocate for equitable care ensuring that all people can exercise their right to make informed decisions about their reproductive health. By facilitating an open discussion on this matter, we have a democratic process that is for us, by us!”

The last speaker was Blake Jones of RJAM, who read off a statement from the authors of the Reproductive Freedom Act, Senator Kelda Roys and Representative Francesca Hong. The statement went on to reiterate the three components of the bill and emphasized, “A key piece is about ensuring Wisconsinites have access to evidence-based information to make the best decisions for themselves.”

To close out the press conference, Reproductive Justice Action – Milwaukee called on all Wisconsinites to demand Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to hold a public hearing for the Reproductive Freedom Act. Back in January, the Wisconsin Assembly on Health, Aging, and Long-Term Care held a public hearing for a proposed referendum that would enact a five-week abortion ban. These activists believe that if the committee held a public hearing for legislation to take away healthcare access, they must hold a public hearing for legislation to expand healthcare access.

You can help support this demand by participating in their call-in and email-in campaigns to demand the public hearing. Check out @reproductivejusticeaction on Instagram to find out more information about this ongoing campaign and RJAM’s fight to expand abortion access in Wisconsin.

#MilwaukeeWI #ReproductiveJustice #AbortionRights #AbortionAccess #RoevWade #WomensLiberation #ReproductiveFreedomAct

Paez, Venezuela – Groups of mainly women stand with pride in front of Manuelita Saenz Bolivarian School and Community Center. The new center and school provide classes on music, culture, politics, feminism, sports, etc. Children and adults from all over the neighborhood attend to open their minds and improve their education.

“We are a vanguard. We started workshops on politics, religion, feminism, cooking and much more,” says Adelheidh Salcedo, teacher at the Manuelita Saenz Bolivarian School and Center.

In Venezuela, the communes – community organizations – have the power to choose what projects need to be funded for their communities. Over 47,000 commune councils are registered with the Venezuelan government. They write proposals to the Maduro-led government, then the government provides resources and guidance to support them. These projects are seen all over Venezuela, with communes choosing to build new housing, such as the 93 apartment building built in the community of Antimano, Caracas. Others chose to construct community food gardens, schools, playgrounds, or to meet other needs.

The community members of Paez contacted the government about an abandoned building that they wanted to use to start a new school and community center. The government approved the project, and the group, led by over 75% women, hit the ground running to build the Manuelita Saenz Bolivarian School and Center.

“The Paez community organized everything, with rehabbing the building, finding teachers and planning extensive curriculum. The governor also helped us with supplies, painting and rehabilitation. There is a lot of participation from everyone. Women are critical for our revolution here in Venezuela,” says Karla Mogollon Lucena, Paez community organizer.

In the rural mountains of Monte Carmelo, the community chose to develop a center that includes all women’s food production, workshops and community meetings. The food production collective used local farming to make pasta sauce and sweets. All the ingredients were locally harvested by the local garden and sold to nearby regions. They proudly display their jars that contain a symbol of a woman with flowing hair.

“Not only, do we garden and make our own food, but we hold feminist workshops. We invite women from all over to share their expertise and experiences with us. Some are feminist experts at giving women a voice, others share with us how to do mechanic and fix cars, others tell us ways to improving vegetable gardening. We learn a lot from women from all over Venezuela. Women are most of the ones who lead these workshops. Women are warriors and leaders in the revolution,” said Gaudy Garcia, a leader of the Family and Gender Equity Committee of the Monte Carmelo Commune.

The Systemic Commune Laws, which started under the President Chavez’ government, include 77 articles on how the commune councils are elected, how they make decisions, their popular participation in the economics and production in their communities, their function and duties of serving their community, ideas of possible projects, how to promote justice and equal rights for all genders and members, respect social traditions and cultures, and provide workshops on social justice.

“There is a lot of machismo and sexist culture in Latin America. From our feminist classes, I learned how to stand up for myself and tell my husband that he needs to do half the cooking and cleaning. It shouldn’t all fall on the woman. In most of Latin America, women do all of the cooking and cleaning,” said Maria Rodriguez, a community member of the Family and Gender Equity Committee of the Monte Carmelo Commune.

When starting the Systemic Commune Law, Chavez said, “Commune or nothing.”

These communes have been key to political education, building up the communities, increasing the resources and supporting local production. Communes are seen in every part of the country, from the rural areas, small towns to large cities.

“We make a lot of our own materials for our school and use recycled materials too. We work hard and are passionate about improving our community. We are a rural area, but we make sure the kids are educated well. We also teach about sexism in the language and how often society uses male dominant language, we want to change that. Us women are the political leaders here. We celebrate women because we are feminists,” says Maribel, community leader of Monte Carmelo.

The communes have been an effective way to build local leadership, promote collaboration among workers, and improve the economy. Every commune our staff visited tells us about how their commune is helping lead the revolution to improve the lives of the people and promote the people’s democracy.

“We have won national and international awards for our innovation and achievements,” says Gaudy Garcia.

#PaezVenezuela #Paez #Venezuela #WomensMovement #PeoplesStruggles #WomensLiberation #BolivarianRevolution #Americas

Minneapolis, MN – Donald Trump, the U.S. president-elect, embodies an anti-woman agenda. He promotes rape culture, attacking women who dare speak out against him as fat and ugly. He is guilty of serial sexual harassment and believes that women want to be grabbed by him because he is a celebrity. It’s difficult not to read the election of Trump as an attack on women’s gains against sexual harassment and assault and for full equality – not so much because of who didn’t win the election but because of who did. A system run by the rich and powerful, in the interests of the rich and powerful does not serve the interests of the vast majority of us no matter what face represents it.

For most of Trump’s life he said he was pro-choice but changed his position to fit into a right-wing context and win the election. His campaign was filled with racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy proposals. We can expect that his policy initiatives will be bad for poor and working women in many arenas, whether it is the right of women to control our own bodies or raise our children. While it is not enough to focus solely on reproductive rights and the right to choose we can look at that issue and see it as a test on where his policies will come down in terms of how women will be impacted.

It is glaringly clear that his cabinet is full of anti-choice-ers. This isn’t just about possible Supreme Court picks. The proposed cabinet members have the potential to limit and restrict not only abortion access, but all reproductive health services, including standard preventative sexual transmitted infection (STI) screenings, cuts to childcare and early childhood education and dismantling worker protections. Poor and working-class families will suffer the brunt of these policies.

Trump’s attorney general pick, Jeff Sessions, is notoriously anti-abortion. He has voted against Health and Human Services grants and federal funds being given to organizations that perform abortions, he has voted for preventing children and whoever might be accompanying them from crossing state lines to receive an abortion, and has voted against the protection from harassment and violence for those who work in organizations that provide abortion.

These are just a few highlights from Sessions’ anti-choice voting record. As attorney general, we have to acknowledge the real risk of what the Justice Department will be able to dismantle in the area of reproductive rights. Trump wants to repeal completely the Affordable Care Act (ACA). While, most can agree, the ACA does not go far enough, what it has done is provide free access to all methods of birth control and education for female-bodied people. With Sessions as attorney general, the Justice Department could very well decide to stop defending this coverage requirement – allowing employers to not cover birth control. He could also stop enforcing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which protects healthcare workers and patients from violence and intimidation. We know that we have seen a surge of violence against women and oppressed nationalities since Donald Trump was elected. Now, we are facing the real threat of having some of our legal protections ignored by the Justice Department or worse, repealed all together.

Similarly, there is Tom Price, the candidate who is expected to be appointed as secretary of health and human services. He is just as ferociously anti-choice, anti-ACA and anti-Medicaid and Medicare. His position would allow him to rescind the contraceptive coverage aspect of the ACA, making birth control and STI testing probably unattainable for under-insured and uninsured people.

Then there is Mike Pence, vice president-elect. Pence knows full well the effects of limiting access to reproductive health clinics that may or may not provide abortions, like Planned Parenthood. In 2011 Pence defunded Planned Parenthood in the state of Indiana which led to clinics closing by 2013. Now, after only a few short months, the state is suffering from an HIV outbreak – 140 new cases in four months at the beginning of 2015.

Finally, there’s Trump, whose ambition is to ban abortion. We know that an estimated 50,000 women die each year worldwide from unsafe abortion. Banning abortion doesn’t make it go away or decrease – it goes underground and becomes unsafe. This endangers all women, but low-income and oppressed nationality women will be the hardest hit. Already, capitalism restricts access to effective contraception and reproductive health care, resulting in a higher rates of STIs and unplanned pregnancies for these women. Trump administration policies promise to make all of this worse.

Women have come a long way over the past few decades, and that progress is worth fighting to defend and expand. Female-bodied people are amongst the many who are under attack, and it is incumbent upon us to resist every policy that undermines our historic victories. While white upper class women may have been the face of yesterday’s women’s movement, but it is working class women, and oppressed women who make up the majority, and must define the way forward.

If there is a silver lining presenting itself in the face of an incoming racist, sexist, homophobic president-elect, it is this: it is the people, not corporate politicians, who are the makers of history. Our movements will become emboldened to move this country forward – this is just a challenge.

#MinneapolisMN #LGBTQ #US #PeoplesStruggles #WomensLiberation #Elections #DonaldTrump #WomensMarch

Minneapolis, MN – Trade unionists, students, anti war and low income activists came together here, March 8, for a spirited celebration of International Women’ s Day. The event, “Women's Liberation from the U.S. to Palestine,” was organized by Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO).

Held annually in the Twin Cities, this year’s International Women’s Day celebration emphasized the case of Chicago Palestinian leader Rasmea Odeh, who is facing prison and deportation on trumped-up immigration charges.

Jess Sundin’s speech

Jess Sundin, of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, gave the opening speech on the oppression of women and the need for liberation, the fight against political repression and the need for revolution and socialism.

Sundin began by telling the crowd about the history of International Women’s Day, stating, “This day came from the struggle of working women right here in the U.S. In 1908, women garment workers in New York City came together to demand a strong union for themselves and the right to vote for all women. They went on strike for 13 cold winter weeks and in the end they won. Inspired by them, German revolutionary Clara Zetkin proposed that March 8 be celebrated around the world as International Women's Day.”

Sundin concluded by saying socialism “engages people in transforming society to meet all of our needs. The riches of a socialist society are used for the benefit of all. Socialism is based on internationalism, rather than criminalizing freedom fighters and international solidarity. Under socialism, our government would be dedicated to ensuring equality, rather than allowing some to profit, while others go hungry. These are values that would make it possible for women to throw off the chains of oppression, to win our own liberation. On the occasion of International Women’s Day, let us rededicate ourselves to a life of struggle. Let us commit to build movements where women lead. And let us march together towards revolution.”

From U.S. to Palestine

Hatem Abudayyeh, a leader in Chicago’s Palestinian community, spoke via Skype on the case of Rasmea Odeh. Abudayyeh told of the many contributions that Odeh had made to the fight to free Palestine and to end the oppression of women. Stating that Odeh’s case is linked to the repression directed against Palestine and international solidarity activists, he expressed confidence that everyone at the Twin Cities event would be part of the struggle to get the charges against Rasmea Odeh dropped.

Misty Rowan, of the Twin Cites-based Anti-War Committee, spoke about the role that strong women leaders play in the anti-war movement and the push back against FBI repression. The Anti-War Committee and Freedom Road Socialist Organization were the targets of FBI raids in September 2010.

Steff Yorek read a message from Cherrene Horazuk, the president of AFSCME Local 3800, noting the fight of women workers past and present.

The event concluded with a speech by Angel Buechner of the Welfare Rights Committee, who demanded that state government raise the welfare grants.

#MinneapolisMN #BuildingSocialism #InternationalWomensDay #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #FBIRepression #WomensLiberation #RasmeaOdeh

International Women’s Day was created by the struggle of working women right here in the U.S. On March 8, 1908 a powerful protest of women garment workers took place in New York City. They went on strike for 13 cold winter weeks and in the end they won. Inspired by this struggle, the outstanding German revolutionary Clara Zetkin proposed at a gathering of socialist women that March 8 be celebrated as International Women’s Day. This year International Women’s Day events will be held across the globe, in the socialist counties like Cuba and Vietnam and in the countries oppressed by imperialism like Palestine and the Philippines. It will be celebrated here in the U.S. as well.

We urge all progressive people to organize events to mark International Women’s Day. As a part of these events we urge you to speak out in support of Palestinian American leader Rasmea Odeh, and demand that the outrageous charges against her be dropped. As a part of the repression that the U.S. government has unleashed against Palestinian and Palestine solidarity activists, the Justice Department is trying to jail, and then deport, this heroic sister.

Rasmea Odeh is the Associate Director of the Arab American Action Network and won the “Outstanding Community Leader Award” from the Chicago Cultural Alliance in 2013 for her work with the Arab Women’s Committee and other groups. She overcame vicious torture by Israeli military authorities while imprisoned in Palestine in the 1970s,. She is familiar to millions of Palestinians who have not given up organizing for their rights of liberation, equality and return.

On International Women’s Day we need stand with women like Rasmea Odeh. They are an example to all of us.

As we approach International Women’s Day in 2014, we understand that the system we live under is waging a war on women. There is no equal pay for equal work. There is an epidemic of violence against us. We need full reproductive rights, better health care and a social safety net that ensures our families are taken care of. There are many obstacles to our complete liberation that must be cleared away.

In China it is said that “women hold up half the sky.” We know that women have made great contributions to the struggle to end all oppression. Harriet Tubman stood up to slavery and lead the oppressed to freedom. U.S. working class leader Elizabeth Gurley Flynn stood up to capitalism and demanded it be replaces by socialism. And so many more will do so much more. The future is bright!

Long Live International Women’s Day!

#UnitedStates #InternationalWomensDay #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #WomensLiberation #RasmeaOdeh

Asheville, NC – On Aug. 8, protesters gathered in downtown here, to rally for an end to the attacks against women and against abortion restrictions in North Carolina. The event was organized by WORD (Women Organized to Resist and Defend).

Protesters chanted, “When women's rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up fight back!” referencing the latest abortion restrictions in North Carolina that were first snuck into an Anti-Sharia Law bill, then ultimately added to a Motorcycle Safety Bill.

Emily Parker, an organizer with WORD, spoke saying, “The war on women is apparent. Right now in North Carolina you cannot receive an abortion procedure. Although it is not technically illegal, there are no clinics for one to go to. Femcare in Asheville is being pushed around by right-wing bullies who don't want women to have the right to choose.”

Protesters rallied in support of Femcare, the only abortion provider in western North Carolina which was recently shut down for nearly 24 health and safety violations. This was a clear politically-motivated attack against women. Several protesters noted that the violations don't seem to be serious and that it was very suspicious that they should be inspected and closed right after this bill was passed.

“Femcare has been safely serving this city since 1985. Their staff is nothing but kind and helpful. Their facilities are nothing but safe and sanitary. Femcare has never had an infection since it has opened. Thanks to the new restrictive abortion bill, they are being forced to temporarily shut their doors even though they would've been the last remaining clinic in the state. The North Carolina government says these new laws will ensure women's safety but in reality they are causing women physical harm and hardship,” Parker said.

Protesters marched through downtown Asheville carrying signs that read “End the war on women,” and “We won't go back, we'll fight back!”

#AshevilleNC #PeoplesStruggles #abortion #NorthCarolina #feminism #WomensRights #AbortionBan #Rally #WomensLiberation