Showing posts with label struggle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label struggle. Show all posts
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Fight for your rights, never let imposters steal them. This is a detail of my 3rd "Flesh and Acrylic" work with Martin. The above photo has been shot with the Samsung NX11, provided by Samsung Electronics. Co., Ltd.
Mahatma Gandhi - 2 -
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Gandhi was the pre-eminent political and spiritual leader of India during the Indian independence movement. He was the pioneer of satyagraha—resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon ahimsa or total non-violence—which led India to independence and has inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. Gandhi is commonly known around the world as Mahatma Gandhi and in India also as Bapu. He is officially honoured in India as the Father of the Nation; his birthday, 2 October, is commemorated there as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Non-Violence. More
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Mahatma Gandhi
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Gandhi was the pre-eminent political and spiritual leader of India during the Indian independence movement. He was the pioneer of satyagraha—resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon ahimsa or total non-violence—which led India to independence and has inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. Gandhi is commonly known around the world as Mahatma Gandhi and in India also as Bapu. He is officially honoured in India as the Father of the Nation; his birthday, 2 October, is commemorated there as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Non-Violence. More
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International
Women's
Day
Women's
Day
A Rich Tradition:
International Women's Day
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By Kathy Durkin (*)
International Women's Day
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By Kathy Durkin (*)
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“A Salute to Women’s Resistance” is the perfect slogan for the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day (IWD), March 8th. Struggle is what this day signifies and what its traditions are all about. That and solidarity with women in struggle worldwide are at the heart of this special day.
Its origins were in the working-class and socialist movements in New York City and Europe, where the socialist movement was agitating for women’s rights, too.
On March 8, 1908, 15,000 women garment workers, including many immigrants, marched through New York City’s Lower East Side to rally at Union Square to demand economic and political rights. They honored a similar march by their forebears in 1857 on that date.
Inspired by that march, women immigrant garment workers staged a three-month strike, the “Uprising of the 20,000,” from 1909-1910, against Triangle Shirtwaist and other sweatshops. Women as young as 16 years old faced down police in the dead of winter. Sadly, one year later, an estimated 146 immigrant workers, women and girls, perished in the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Subsequent IWD protests demanded workplace safety regulations and remembered those who lost their lives.
This was a rich period of social protest and working-class and socialist organizing. One-third of the 60,000 people who marched on May Day in 1910 in Union Square were women socialists and unionists.
Women in the European socialist movement were closely watching these developments in the U.S. while waging their own struggles. German socialist Clara Zetkin had agitated for several years for a special day to mark working women’s global solidarity.
Further inspired by the New York women garment workers’ struggles and the strong role of women socialists, Zetkin proposed designating International Women’s Day at an International Socialist Congress in Copenhagen in 1910. Women delegates from 17 countries unanimously concurred.
The following year, this declaration’s impact was shown when one million women poured into the streets throughout Europe on the first IWD to demand their rights. And in 1913 and 1914, European women rallied against the burgeoning imperialist war and in sisterly solidarity on that day.
In 1917, Russian women textile workers went on strike to mark IWD, demanding " peace, land and bread.” It sparked the struggle to topple the czar, which then led to the workers’ revolution. The Soviet Union officially recognized IWD in 1921; it was the first government to enact laws codifying women’s rights.
Since then, socialist countries and liberation movements have commemorated IWD. Revolutionaries, progressive forces and women workers have marked it with creative, militant actions—demonstrations, strikes and sit-ins—aimed at imperialist war, globalization, poverty, exploitation, racism and all forms of oppression and inequality.
Although the U.S. and other capitalist governments conceal IWD’s socialist, working-class and struggle origins, its real history and meaning have been demonstrated by women worldwide with displays of solidarity and fight-back.
The courageous struggle of the Vietnamese women against the U.S. war inspired women internationally. Starting in the 1960s, the African-American, Latin@, Chicano and Native liberation movements stirred women’s struggles here.
The Women’s Caucus of Youth Against War and Fascism revived the militant, class-conscious and struggle traditions of IWD in the U.S. in 1970 by rallying at New York’s Union Square. They marched to the Women’s House of Detention to protest racism, poverty and political repression, and to express solidarity with the oppressed women inside, including Joan Bird, members of the Panther 21.
Some global highlights of IWD are:
≤In a stunning action in 1970, the revolutionary Tupamaros freed women prisoners from Uruguay’s jails.
≤In 1971, Philippine women protested against the Marcos dictatorship and, since 2001, have militantly defied the U.S.-backed Macapagal-Arroyo regime.
≤In 1975, socialist Cuba—where women’s rights are codified into law— instituted the Family Code, led by the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which was established in 1960 and which has helped women there make great strides.
≤Women everywhere in 2003 protested the U.S.-led war in Iraq and in solidarity with their Iraqi sisters. The next year, Palestinian women challenged Israel’s apartheid wall and continue to defy U.S.-backed Israeli aggression and occupation.
≤In 2006, the South African government launched a campaign to honor the 1956 women’s march in Pretoria against the repressive pass laws under the apartheid system. The ANC and COSATU have for years honored women participants in the liberation movement.
≤Women garment workers in Bangladesh marched for economic rights in 2006, as their sisters in Mumbai, India, supported Dalits, considered as social outcasts, and other oppressed women.
≤In 2007, women throughout Latin America, including Venezuela, protested U.S.-President Bush’s visit and demanded the U.S. end the Iraq war and military intervention and globalization in their countries.
This year, on the 100th anniversary of the historic march of women garment workers, it is very fitting that the New York demonstration begins in Union Square and ends at the Triangle Fire site. The socialist traditions of struggle and solidarity with working and oppressed women here and everywhere and special recognition of women immigrants’ role, are vital today.
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(*) The writer’s grandmother, Sophie Stoller, an immigrant garment worker, marched in 1908, joined the “Uprising of the 20,000,” and worked for the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, but was ill and didn’t work on the day of the fire.
Its origins were in the working-class and socialist movements in New York City and Europe, where the socialist movement was agitating for women’s rights, too.
On March 8, 1908, 15,000 women garment workers, including many immigrants, marched through New York City’s Lower East Side to rally at Union Square to demand economic and political rights. They honored a similar march by their forebears in 1857 on that date.
Inspired by that march, women immigrant garment workers staged a three-month strike, the “Uprising of the 20,000,” from 1909-1910, against Triangle Shirtwaist and other sweatshops. Women as young as 16 years old faced down police in the dead of winter. Sadly, one year later, an estimated 146 immigrant workers, women and girls, perished in the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Subsequent IWD protests demanded workplace safety regulations and remembered those who lost their lives.
This was a rich period of social protest and working-class and socialist organizing. One-third of the 60,000 people who marched on May Day in 1910 in Union Square were women socialists and unionists.
Women in the European socialist movement were closely watching these developments in the U.S. while waging their own struggles. German socialist Clara Zetkin had agitated for several years for a special day to mark working women’s global solidarity.
Further inspired by the New York women garment workers’ struggles and the strong role of women socialists, Zetkin proposed designating International Women’s Day at an International Socialist Congress in Copenhagen in 1910. Women delegates from 17 countries unanimously concurred.
The following year, this declaration’s impact was shown when one million women poured into the streets throughout Europe on the first IWD to demand their rights. And in 1913 and 1914, European women rallied against the burgeoning imperialist war and in sisterly solidarity on that day.
In 1917, Russian women textile workers went on strike to mark IWD, demanding " peace, land and bread.” It sparked the struggle to topple the czar, which then led to the workers’ revolution. The Soviet Union officially recognized IWD in 1921; it was the first government to enact laws codifying women’s rights.
Since then, socialist countries and liberation movements have commemorated IWD. Revolutionaries, progressive forces and women workers have marked it with creative, militant actions—demonstrations, strikes and sit-ins—aimed at imperialist war, globalization, poverty, exploitation, racism and all forms of oppression and inequality.
Although the U.S. and other capitalist governments conceal IWD’s socialist, working-class and struggle origins, its real history and meaning have been demonstrated by women worldwide with displays of solidarity and fight-back.
The courageous struggle of the Vietnamese women against the U.S. war inspired women internationally. Starting in the 1960s, the African-American, Latin@, Chicano and Native liberation movements stirred women’s struggles here.
The Women’s Caucus of Youth Against War and Fascism revived the militant, class-conscious and struggle traditions of IWD in the U.S. in 1970 by rallying at New York’s Union Square. They marched to the Women’s House of Detention to protest racism, poverty and political repression, and to express solidarity with the oppressed women inside, including Joan Bird, members of the Panther 21.
Some global highlights of IWD are:
≤In a stunning action in 1970, the revolutionary Tupamaros freed women prisoners from Uruguay’s jails.
≤In 1971, Philippine women protested against the Marcos dictatorship and, since 2001, have militantly defied the U.S.-backed Macapagal-Arroyo regime.
≤In 1975, socialist Cuba—where women’s rights are codified into law— instituted the Family Code, led by the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which was established in 1960 and which has helped women there make great strides.
≤Women everywhere in 2003 protested the U.S.-led war in Iraq and in solidarity with their Iraqi sisters. The next year, Palestinian women challenged Israel’s apartheid wall and continue to defy U.S.-backed Israeli aggression and occupation.
≤In 2006, the South African government launched a campaign to honor the 1956 women’s march in Pretoria against the repressive pass laws under the apartheid system. The ANC and COSATU have for years honored women participants in the liberation movement.
≤Women garment workers in Bangladesh marched for economic rights in 2006, as their sisters in Mumbai, India, supported Dalits, considered as social outcasts, and other oppressed women.
≤In 2007, women throughout Latin America, including Venezuela, protested U.S.-President Bush’s visit and demanded the U.S. end the Iraq war and military intervention and globalization in their countries.
This year, on the 100th anniversary of the historic march of women garment workers, it is very fitting that the New York demonstration begins in Union Square and ends at the Triangle Fire site. The socialist traditions of struggle and solidarity with working and oppressed women here and everywhere and special recognition of women immigrants’ role, are vital today.
---------------
(*) The writer’s grandmother, Sophie Stoller, an immigrant garment worker, marched in 1908, joined the “Uprising of the 20,000,” and worked for the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, but was ill and didn’t work on the day of the fire.
--> This opinion appeared on Workers.org
--> Also See the cartoon I made in 2007 for the International Women's Day
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Uncle Che's Message
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40 Years After Death,
Che Lives On as Symbol of Rebellion
40 Years After Death,
Che Lives On as Symbol of Rebellion
By Sify News
Ernesto "Che" Guevara lived fast, died young and left, if not a good-looking corpse, at least one full of mysticism. But the Argentine-born guerrilla fighter also left a legacy of ideals against injustice in Latin America and beyond, which turned him into a global icon, albeit one full of controversy. He remains a symbol 40 years after his death.
Che Guevara's image — particularly as it was immortalised in 1960 by Cuban photographer Alberto Korda, wearing a beret with a single star and looking into the distance — is used around the world as a leftist fetish or just a symbol of juvenile rebelliousness. It adorns millions of T-shirts, flags, posters and key rings, and even the body in the form of tattoos like the one proudly worn by Argentine football legend Diego Maradona.
Aware of the impact of his image, those responsible for Guevara's death on October 9, 1967 in the Bolivian town of La Higuera hid his corpse, which remained missing for 30 years. But that only made Che's legend grow. "For the radical left, the fetish of Che means a cultural victory after a political defeat," Cuban essayist Ivan de la Nuez noted in a recent article.
Communist Cuba has watched almost with satisfaction the commercial success of its great figure, despite the paradox that, in so doing, it is giving its consent to the mercantilist practices that Che criticised so much.
The island is full of murals and posters with the effigy of the "heroic fighter" or his most famous phrases, and street markets are full of Che merchandise — avidly bought not only by tourists but also by many enthusiastic Cubans. Cubans, however, are keen to point out that their sentiment is different.
"Here in Cuba whenever we have the chance to have a Che T-shirt we wear it with great affection and love and not because it is a fashionable object but because we really feel it," medicine student Yendri Gatorno said.
Che's grandson Canek Sanchez Guevara has repeatedly criticised a situation in which the fighter's figure is used by the state in Cuba "as symbolic, moral and ethical capital of the revolution and then as merchandise of the residues of the revolution". A majority of Cuban supporters of the revolution led by Fidel Castro would not agree.
"At the beginning it bothered me to see those symbols, but I realised that I was actually wrong, that nobody becomes a millionaire selling T-shirts," Alberto Granado — Che's friend from youth — said in a recent documentary.
"The presence of Che in T-shirts, for young people, is a way to bother their parents. Even those who did not know who Che was knew that his presence was a way to bother their parents, who have done nothing to achieve a better world. And symbols are also a way to show presence," Granado said.
For Veneranda Fe Garcia, the director of the Che Guevara Memorial in Santa Clara, Cuba, the sale of symbols of the fighter "is part of the impact that Che's figure has in the years in which young people see Che as an expression of rebelliousness, as a spirit of resistance, or of change, of transformation.
"Nobody is going to get rich with those images... All that which is for sale is there because behind it there are always people with different expressions, aspirations," she said. Forty years after Che's death, Cuba does not appear ready to stop exploiting the figure which, along with Fidel Castro, has most contributed to internationalise the ideals of revolutionary Cuba.
"We know that in other countries Che is used to market his figure and sell sweaters, T-shirts... We do not reject that policy because, one way or another, we are left with the joy that those people who have acquired the garments will some day feel more committed to Che," student Yendri said.
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--> This article appeared on Sifi News
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