As every year on International Women’s Day, the Industrial Workers of the World are particularly amplifying the feminist call for equality and social justice in our society.
We are rightly proud of the long history of radical women in the IWW. Since our beginnings Wobblies have been led by women, sought to recruit women when others would not, and stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the fight for women’s rights.
We take great inspiration from the Bread and Roses strike, led by a labour force of mostly migrant and female workers in the textile industry in Massachusetts, USA, guided in large part by the revolutionary strategy and vision of the Industrial Workers of the World, and which has become one of the most powerful moments in the history of working class revolutionary struggles led by women.
Why Bread and Roses? Bread represented the bare necessities of life, the ability for workers to feed themselves and their families. Roses represented the beauty, joy, and dignity that make life worth living.
However, the demand for “Bread and Roses”, which was ground-breaking in that historical context, is no longer sufficient today.
IWW recognises women who are multiply oppressed by the patriarchal hyper capitalist system; women who are targeted by racism, ableism, religious hatred, queerphobia, and intolerance of migrants. We take this opportunity to stand together against capitalism, to fight racism and to support the right of all women and non-gender conforming people to live and work in safety, free from the threat of social marginalisation, police brutality or deportation.
We also send our solidarity at this time particularly to the women in Palestine, Kurdistan, Sudan, Congo and all women in situations of war and conflict. We salute the struggle of women worldwide in their effort to organise against exploitation, oppression, precarity and for their human rights and freedom.
At this time more than ever, it feels necessary to return to the radical revolutionary principles that founded the IWW:
> It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism.
> The army of production must be organised, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown.
> By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
We don’t want anymore to simply demand that the oppressive system of patriarchal racialised hyper capitalism give us enough to be able to live well.
We want the destruction of this system. We want Bread, Roses, the reappropriation of the means of production, and the creation of a new egalitarian ecosystem based on mutual aid, cooperation and collaboration.
“Our lives shall not be sweated
From birth until life closes
Hearts starve as well as bodies
Bread and roses, bread and roses”