Jodi Dean Liberation School Editor’s note: The following is the second of a two-part article based on a talk the author gave at The People’s Forum in July 2020. This second part focuses on Kollontai’s writing on the family and love. Part one covers Kollontai’s struggle for proletarian feminism against bourgeois feminism as well as…
Category: Women’s Revolutionary Movements
Alexandra Kollontai: The Struggle for Proletarian Feminism and for Women in the Party
Jodi Dean Editor’s note: The following is the first of a two-part article based on a talk the author gave at the People’s Forum in July 2020. This first part focuses on Kollontai’s struggle for proletarian feminism against bourgeois feminism as well as her struggle to center gender equality within the party’s platform. Part two,…
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free.” —Combahee River Collective Statement The Combahee River Collective, a path-breaking group of radical black feminists, was one of the most important organizations to develop out of the antiracist…
A Women’s Demonstration, Two Revolutions, and the Birth of a Socialist State
Lia Ferrante The following first appeared in the Spring 2020 issue of Breaking the Chains magazine, which you can purchase here. We must not underestimate the immense revolutionary power of women to ignite, fight, and win. The 1917 Russian Revolution that established the first socialist state in the world had two revolutions: one in February…
Annette Joseph-Gabriel’s “Reimagining Liberation”
Roberto Sirvent When fascism was on the march Black women intellectuals and activists imagined, and struggled for, a new world. “Black women are political protagonists, not secondary characters in global movements.” In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Annette Joseph-Gabriel . Dr. Joseph-Gabriel is an…
Black Women With Guns
From Harriet Tubman to female members of the Black Panther Party, Black women have always played a role in armed resistance in the United States, said Jasmine Young, a doctoral fellow at the University of California’s Department of African American Studies. Young is working on a manuscript titled, “Black Women with Guns: Armed Resistance in…
Feminism and the Mass Movements: 1960-1990
Donna Goodman The decade of the 1960s saw rebellions and uprisings that lasted until the mid-1970s and resulted in the overthrow of formal segregation, the rise of a formidable antiwar movement, the lasting impact of the women’s liberation movement and the end of many stultifying conservative cultural conventions. The decades of right-wing and neoliberal reaction,…
Radical Democracy: The First Line Against Fascism
The Kurds’ democratic resistance to ISIS demonstrates that anti-fascism cannot be separated from the wider struggle against capitalism, patriarchy and the state. By Dilar Dirik It was in the fall of 2014, only months after the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) made massive territorial gains inside Syria and Iraq, committing genocidal and feminicidal massacres, that a…
In India, Women Who Fight for Justice
By Cesar Chelala In Bundelkhand, one of the poorest areas of the Uttar Pradesh region in Northern India, a 50-year-old woman is breaking stereotypes, and giving woman a chance to fight for their rights, and even for their survival. This is no small feat in a country plagued by inequality discrimination against women. In 2006,…
The Silencing of Black Women : The Relevance of Ella Baker
Lawrence Ware|LaVonya Bennett The world needs to remember Ella Baker. December 13 marks both her birth and transition date. She was born December 13, 1903, and she went to be with the ancestors on December 13, 1986, at the age of 83. She was a tireless advocate for human rights and worked alongside well-known figures…
Yazidi Women : From Genocide to Resistance
By Dilar Dirik The old Kurdish saying “We have no friends but the mountains” became more relevant than ever when on Aug. 3, 2014, the murderous Islamic State group launched what is referred to as the 73rd massacre on the Yazidis by attacking the city of Sinjar (in Kurdish: Shengal), slaughtering thousands of people, and…
The Women Combatants of Rojava
Interviews with commanders Abdullah and Rangin of the YPJ (Women’s Defence Units) Isis chose the beginning of Ramadan to launch an attack on Kobane in an attempt to retake the city liberated by the Kurdish resistance this past January. No sooner was the attack repelled than Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan began brandishing his scimitar…
