March 8th, a new international feminist strike. A date that we historically consider as a date of struggle because of its origin. In this new context of global polarization and the rise of the far-right, it is key to strengthen our banners and raise our voices against a system that resorts to increasingly destructive and authoritarian elements, for the benefit of a few. We continue to denounce the genocide in Palestine, and we confront denialism and all who seek to silence our voices. They will not pass.

By: Andrea Lanzette

I don’t want flowers, I want a struggle agenda

Despite wide capitalist propaganda to make March 8 a celebration, where “being a woman” is cheered at, and all content of struggle is absent, it has not managed to bury the international and struggle nature of this day as working women. Despite the debates on why the 8th was defined as International Women’s Day, the truth is that its origins are undeniably linked to the international socialist women’s movement of the late nineteenth century.

It was at the II International Conference of Socialist Women in Denmark in August 1910, that having a day of women’s struggle was proposed, although with no exact date. The following year the German socialists celebrated International Women’s Day on March 19, the Swedish ones did so on May 1st. It was not until 1914 that the socialists of Germany, Sweden and Russia agreed to commemorate it on March 8th. So they did in the following years and the rest of them as well.

Not until 1975 did the UN itself spread it massively. Of course it did so with the intention to remove its element of struggle, with which it was born.

From that moment until today, our claims have been felt around the world, mainly in the framework of the latest feminist wave that exposed the most decayed aspects of patriarchy at the service of the system.

On October 9, 2016 the femicide of Lucía Pérez was announced, and aligned with the struggle of the Polish women, there was a women’s strike against sexist violence and for justice. There were expressions of massiveness in the women struggle during the first Ni Una Menos (Not One Less) in 2015 triggered by Chiara Paez femicide. After these events, the following March 8th, in 2017, for the first time and throughout the country there as an international Women’s Strike coordinated by more than 170 countries.

This brought women out of home and out of every workplace and a new dynamic of struggle emerged. While denouncing male violence, revealed how violence is anchored in the precariousness of life to which the capitalist system crudely subjects us. Since then, the feminist strike became international. In addition, women were the ones who made the first strike against Macri in Argentina.

The far-right is currently trying to advance against our rights, not only with disastrous policies but also through denying the existence of patriarchy and inequality, reinforcing the most backward stereotypes. It is more necessary than ever to rescue those origins of struggle. The far-right is based on the reaction to the last feminist wave, and that together with the polarization encourage ideas of a new “chauvinism” that feels victimized by our advances.

In the world, these policies have affected our living conditions and the limited access to our rights, deepening male violence, labor inequalities, abuse and femicide.

Faced with this scenario, this date is important, it is an opportunity to strengthen our class based feminism, understanding that the structural fight is necessary and we must not only continue to organize our specific demands, but we must also strengthen anti-capitalist organization to fight with all the workers, against the system.

That fight is of great importance, any advance in the rights of our agenda will soon vanish in the framework of this system, and with any bourgeois government, much more with accomplices such as bureaucratic unions, justice and bourgeois opposition, which guarantee any governability. We also need to fight the cultural and political battle for a kind of feminism that takes these banners and together with the working class fight for a more just and egalitarian society.

Our struggle has no borders

This date sweeps across borders, and thousands of women this March 8, will raise their flags against oppression and exploitation, sided with the most attacked women in this world, who need all solidarity.

Especially Palestinian women, who are the most harmed in all concepts. Gaza was and remains “a genocide especially against women” simply by the number killed and wounded, and by the general level of devastation faced by women there. More than 10,000 women have died since the beginning of the Zionist genocide on October 7, 2023. Conditions in the Palestinian territory are appalling. More than half a million women “suffer from severe hunger, are the last and least likely to eat of their families, skip meals and go without healthy food for months on end.” That is why we continue to raise our voices against this planned genocide of Zionism, and much more than before we state that denouncing it is not a crime, it is an obligation.

Therefore, we continue to demand the acquittal of Alejandro Bodart, who is condemned by the Argentine justice system for denouncing the Zionist genocide, in a clear expression of the colonization of justice by Zionism and power, in an attempt to silence our voices. They will not succeed!

Goodbye far-right fraudsters

The far-right in Argentina is part of a polarized world situation. On the one hand, the rise of the far-right, and on the other hand, huge struggles that are still looking for a leadership. Our country is part of this global polarization, the great challenge of activism in Argentina is how to confront Milei, and his brutal attack on human rights and the achievements of the feminist and dissident movement.

There are plenty of examples of hatred against women and the LGBT+ community and against the policies for the eradication of sexist violence: he eliminated programs and public policies that were expressed in disfinancing or shuttingdown the Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity and the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism; he was the only one to vote negatively in the United Nations Assembly to prevent violence; and he wants to overturn Law no. 27.705 of social security moratorium in March, which will mean that only one out of every 10 women will be able to retire, as a result of their precarious jobs without contributions. The list goes on.

In Davos, Milei clearly stated that gay marriage is “pedophilia” and that gender ideology is a cancer to be exterminate. His government wants to eliminate the concept of femicide from the Argentine Criminal Code, gender and disability quotas. To this must be added his constant hate speech against women and the LGBT+ community, enabling abuse and violence against us; the crypto swindle, his bribing sister and a national broadcast that only announces lies and provocations.

That is why it is necessary to say clearly: “Milei, you are a fraud”, and because of his conservative far-right nature and fraud, he has to go. That’s right, Milei and all his accomplices must go. The complicit justice, the servile trade unionism and his political opposition that barks, but does not bite, must go. It is time that with the strength of our green tide together with the working class and the organized people we sweep away all this scum. And that once and for all the left and the workers govern. That is also a necessary slogan to confront the ultra-right.

This March 8th includes all that and the most heartfelt claims that are part of our immediate agenda. To defend our conquests we need to transform everything and include the most important expressions to stand up a socialist society, the only fair and egalitarian society.