From International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI)
On November 25, 1960, the sisters Minerva, Patria and Maria Teresa Mirabal were brutally murdered in the Dominican Republic for being women and for daring to confront the Trujillo dictatorship. On this date the women of the world commemorate their struggle and go out to fight against the patriarchal and capitalist violence that harasses and kills us all over the world.
A year ago, the women of Iran led the way with their cry of “woman, life and freedom” with a historic mobilization in response to the murder of young Amini and against the dictatorial regime. More recently, women in Mexico achieved the decriminalization of abortion throughout the country, following the path of the Green Tide in Argentina. Women in Spain mobilized massively in defense of national soccer team player Jenni Hermoso to denounce the aggression and abuse of power on the part of soccer federation president Luis Rubiales. In Nicaragua, the comrades continue to confront the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, who has imprisoned and exiled dozens of social activists. Weeks ago Syrian women led days of protests against the economic crisis and retaking the cry for freedom and dignity. Last October 24, the feminist movement in Iceland called a labor strike against male violence and the gender gap. In Turkey, women and dissidents are organizing against the government’s plan to change the constitution and family strengthening policies that ignore our rights and freedoms. Undoubtedly, and despite the reactionary and retrograde response that is sweeping the world, the feminist movement continues to fight.
This N25 we turn our gaze towards Palestine, to denounce the occupation and genocide suffered by the Palestinian people for more than 75 years by the Zionist State of Israel. We particularly denounce the complicity and support of US and European imperialism that finance and support Israel as an instrument of intervention in the Middle East. We reject any attempt to present Israel as “the only democracy in the Middle East” while it applies an apartheid regime against an entire people. Since October 7, Israel has killed more than 11,000 people, in addition to the thousands wounded and missing, 70% of whom are women and children. From the feminist movement, as a movement that fights against oppression, we express our support to the struggle and resistance of the Palestinian people against the colonizer. We are and will always be on the side of the oppressed in their struggle for liberation. More than ever we reclaim the internationalist character of our struggle and raise a cry of solidarity, particularly with the women and children of Gaza, even more vulnerable.
Today November 25, we also mobilize against the impunity and cover-up of the governments that have provoked the upsurge of feminicidal violence. We denounce that they have preferred to allocate larger budgets to the armed forces and to the payment of foreign debts, instead of to health, education and public programs that attend to victims of gender violence. Women and dissidents are the most precarious people, the first to be laid off in crisis contexts, and we are the ones who bear the brunt of the adjustment that all governments apply against the working class. We are in charge of the most humble homes and we are forced to migrate from our territories with our daughters and sons, and sometimes having to move away from our families.
But we are also at the forefront of the struggles against layoffs, adjustment, the plundering of natural resources and environmental pollution. As in Panama, where women are an active part of the mobilizations against a transnational mining company that intends to plunder the country’s natural resources, devastating and impoverishing the population.
With the mobilization in the streets and independent organization we must strengthen the struggle around the world for our rights: for those we have yet to conquer, but also against the aggression of governments and conservative sectors that seek to take away the rights we have acquired for decades. Such is the case of the United States and its attack on the right to abortion or the threat posed by the ultra-right-wing Milei in Argentina.
For all these reasons, from the International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI) we call to organize actions against all governments that legitimize the patriarchal violence of the capitalist-imperialist system that hits us women and dissidents the hardest. Let us go out to conquer each one of our rights while we continue fighting for a society without oppression and exploitation, for the liberation of the oppressed peoples of the world, for a society where, as Rosa Luxemburg said, we are socially equal, humanly different and totally free.
We demand an urgent budget to fight against sexist and patriarchal violence.
Not one step back. Against the conservative reaction we continue in the streets fighting for our rights.
Stop the genocide against the Palestinian people. The governments of the world are accomplices and responsible. Break off relations with the Zionist State of Israel. For a free, secular and democratic Palestine and in all the historical territory.
For a feminist movement independent of governments, of struggle with the working class, internationalist and socialist.
