From: DSP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 13:44:25 +1100 To: DSP National Office <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Greetings for International Women's Day January 22, 2001 Dear comrades, Attached is a message of greetings for International Women's Day from the Democratic Socialist Party. DSP comrades are involved in the organisation of IWD marches and rallies in most major cities around Australia, and would very much appreciate receiving greetings from your organisation that could be read out at these rallies, which take place on Thursday March 8 and Saturday March 10 this year. Messages should be sent to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with copies to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Comradely greetings, John Percy National Secretary Democratic Socialist Party Australia _______________________ Dear comrades, We are very pleased to send our greetings and best wishes for your activities on this March 8, International Women's Day 2001. For the Democratic Socialist Party, this is an important day on which to forge stronger links between all those struggling for the liberation of women around the world. It is a day with a proud history for the socialist movement - a history of internationalism, unity, solidarity and struggle. It was at the 1910 International Conference of Socialist Working Women in Copenhagen that German Marxist leader Clara Zetkin first raised the idea of organising an International Working Women's Day to mark the important victories of women workers in the United States and to provide a focus for women around the world to organise public actions to win the right to vote. That conference broke vital new ground for the world socialist movement with its decision that every year, in every country, they should march under the slogan: "The vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for socialism". The sparking of the February Revolution in Russia by women defying the law to march in Petrograd on IWD in 1917 demanding bread and an end to the war vindicated the decision that women must be mobilised in the struggle for socialism, and that it is in their interests as the oppressed sex to do so. Those early marches marked the beginning of women's central role in leading the struggle for socialism. The first IWD rally was held in Australia in 1928, also organised by communist women through the Militant Women's Movement. It demanded an eight-hour day, equal pay for equal work, paid annual leave and a living wage for the unemployed. These demands have yet to be met for the overwhelming majority of women in Australia, and under the current neo-liberal offensive by Australia's capitalist rulers, they are becoming further out of reach for most women. All working people in Australia are being hit hard by government policies which are attacking working people's right to organise and take action in trade unions; to have a job, and decent wages and working conditions; to receive welfare support when they are elderly or disabled or unemployed or sole parents; and to have access to education. Women are hit hardest by these attacks, but are also being targeted by new efforts to remove altogether their limited access to public child-care services, and to force them into ``secondary'', casual waged work and to take full responsibility again for unpaid domestic labour. The DSP and the youth organisation Resistance have been leading many of the IWD march and rally organising committees in Australia for many years. This year we, along with thousands of others, will be marching in all major cities on March 8 and 10 under the theme ``Fighting for global justice for women'', reflecting our hopes and aspirations for the exciting new anti-capitalist movement that is emerging in the imperialist countries after Seattle, including in Australia. Under that theme, the IWD marches will demand: End corporate tyranny! Women workers' rights, in Australia and overseas! Open the borders, let the refugees stay! End global violence against women! A treaty for Aboriginal people! and Full reproductive freedom for women!. For the moment, the women's liberation movement in our country is, after a decade of cooption and demobilisation by social democracy, followed by the assault of neo-liberalism, small, disorganised and easily diverted by the latest fads in feminism. However, the DSP and Resistance are working consistently among women students, trade unionists and other campaigners, and through our newspaper Green Left Weekly and our public forums and classes, to rebuild a broad, campaigning women's liberation movement that can not only repel the escalating attacks on the mass of women, but, through making alliances with other oppressed people in struggle, play the central role that it must in rebuilding a mass working-class movement in Australia. Our aim is to revive the great tradition of International Working Women's Day: a day of political struggle for women's liberation and for socialism, for without women's liberation there can be no socialism and without socialism women cannot be liberated. In that common, worldwide struggle for an end to all oppression, we extend our solidarity to all of your comrades and campaigns. Comradely, Lisa Macdonald On behalf of Democratic Socialist Party Political Committee _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
