Kanchi Uttamchandani, Staff Writer
Featured image courtesy of Ontario Federation of Labour
All Women Rise Up Proud and Strong was the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day rally, starting at the University of Toronto.
The event featured a literature fair from different socialist organizations and labour unions which targeted a mixed student audience, senior citizens, and politicians. It was followed by a march toward Ryerson University, advocating for multiple issues such as an end to violence, hate, racism, Islamophobia, and poverty, while emphasizing significance of the Black Lives Matter movement and just-employment for all.
Speakers at the indoor rally discussed issues ranging from racism, ending precarious work, reproductive rights, and the need for reconciliation with indigenous communities.
Though different agendas were highlighted, there was a general concurrence that the new Liberal government must be pressed to take action for full equality, especially with regards to justice for indigenous women.
Farshad Azadian, a recent Osgoode graduate and activist for the Socialist Fightback Club at York, commented on the rally, saying the IWD rally is an annual historic demonstration commemorating long history and tradition of struggles surrounding IWD or International Working Women’s Day, which was the original title.
“To be more concrete, we are living in Ontario where we are seeing federal cuts to health care, nursing, and teaching, which disproportionately affect women.”
IWD is rooted in socialist tradition and was organized by Marxist parties around the world and Socialist Fightback Club is proud to mobilize support for the rally, says Azadian.
“For instance, the rally today has been organized by the Toronto and York Labour Council and trade unions, symbolic of the working class and strong socialist ties with the International Women’s Day.”
As Socialist Fightback Club, it is important to explain that under a profit-driven capitalist system, women’s oppression is inbuilt in the system where the one per cent benefit by sexism for profits, especially from exploitation of racialized and immigrant women. Our intention is to make a strong statement and raise collective confidence.
Jessica Cassell, full-time organizer with Socialist Fightback Club, explains why the struggle against women’s oppression and discrimination is inseparable from the Marxist class conflict.
“Fightback is a revolutionary Marxist organization and we are proud of the long history in the socialist movement of fighting against women’s oppression.”
It was women marching and calling for the workers to strike on IWD that sparked the Russian Revolution, which went on to make significant advances for women.
Socialist Fightback Club highlights that as long as we live in a society in which a few people own and control the wealth in society and exploit the great majority, no oppressed group, including women, can be genuinely emancipated.
“The struggle to end the emancipation of women is the struggle against capitalism, and the struggle against capitalism is the struggle for the emancipation of women,” says Cassell.
For Marxists, these struggles are one and the same.
At IWD, the Socialist Fightback Club discussed the socialist approach to fighting women’s emancipation with them.
“I think Hillary Clinton’s attempt to portray herself as a champion for women’s rights, to galvanize support for her campaign, and to receive the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in the United States has really shown the limits of liberal feminism which accepts the logic of capitalism,” says Cassell.
It is clear to many that Clinton represents Wall Street, the big banks, and multinationals of the world, she adds.
“Her class interests mean that her policies would not benefit a majority of working class and marginalized women in America. That is why we have to fight on a class basis.”
Even within this leftist circle, different organizations such as Socialist Fightback Club, the Communist Party of Canada, Spartacus Youth Club, and so on deferred on account of their ideological and political orientations.
Despite all these theoretical differences, the IWD rally was marked by strong solidarity and unity to demand for women’s emancipation and witnessed the support of thousands of people rallying in the heart of Toronto.
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