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For an 8 March of internationalist support for the resistance of the Palestinian people
Rete dei Comunisti – Cambiare Rotta – Opposizione Studentesca d’Alternativa (OSA)
The Rete dei Comunisti and its youth and student organisations Cambiare Rotta and OSA are participating in the mobilisations towards and during the day of 8 March and the general strike called by the Unione Sindacale di Base and other unions outside the concerted order. We will be in the square not only to reaffirm the centrality of the struggle for women’s and gender liberation, but also to continue building opposition to the reactionary government of Giorgia Meloni – outside and against the entire ruling and parliamentary class of this country, from the right to the centre-left – and to reaffirm our support for the Palestinian resistance.
We believe it is crucial, once again, to involve precarious women workers, students, proletarian women, migrants and unemployed women in the mobilisations on a historic and fundamental date for the international class and women’s movement, placing the patriarchal exploitation they experience on a daily basis within the broader question of the exploitation and degradation of productive, social and economic relations within the capitalist development model. And the consequences of which are obvious: lack of autonomy and economic independence, wage gap, involuntary part-time, female unemployment, violence, harassment, discrimination against migrant women, persistence of care and domestic work for a large part of working-class women, school drop-outs in the suburbs, labour exploitation, as well as a cultural and civilisational regression that revives the worst violent, sexist and discriminatory instincts in society. Moreover, beyond the ideological narrative that is lavished in public educational establishments, where institutions and politicians constantly pink/rainbowwash the discriminatory dynamics and work to build a ruling class with ‘liberal-feminist’ connotations, class and gender selection within the school and academic career actually continues to increase: in fact, data show that only for some female students does the so-called social lift work, those in step with the hard and soft skills required for ‘modern’ female workers. The strike of 8 March will therefore be, for us, the strike of the exploited and discriminated against.
But it is not enough. The return to the war economy and the militarisation of society certifies that we are faced with a passage of historical significance that no one can escape, not even the women’s and gender liberation movements, on pain of being unable to influence reality and assuming the role of crutch of western imperialism. The tendency to war and the inability/lack of interest of the Euro-Atlantic ruling classes in resolving through diplomacy the conflicts that they themselves have fostered and fomented are not (only) the consequence of a structurally bellicose and violent tendency of ‘our world’ capitalist and imperialist, but are the symptoms of the deepening crisis of the Capitalist Mode of Production and the consequent end of the West’s hegemony over the world.
In this sense, on the occasion of the 8th of March we cannot but recover the historical function of opposition to war and militarism of women and women’s organisations, which, from the indipensable and (deliberately) forgotten role in the anti-fascist Resistance to the protagonism in the national liberation struggles to the participation in the anti-war movements of the last century, have been decisive in the conquest of favourable power relations at the international level for all peoples oppressed by colonialism and imperialism.
The mobilisations and strike on 8 March today cannot but assume, therefore, a strongly internationalist and anti-militarist connotation, against the NATO wars and in support of the cause of the Palestinian people. A necessary support “without ifs and buts” that the “Donne De Borgata” (Women of Suburbs) in Rome and the numerous collectives, organisations, militants, activists, women, men and non-conformist subjectivities that in recent weeks, throughout Italy, have signed the appeal “Not in our name – Don’t use women to justify the genocide in Palestine” and that from Rome to Turin to Bari to Bologna are producing initiatives to reaffirm their unconditional support for the Palestinian resistance.
A resistance that is to be placed in a context in which, from the western flight from Afghanistan in 2021 to the progressive expulsion of France from the Sahel with the recent uprisings in the sub-Saharan area of Africa, the disengagement from the neo-colonial logic of control and exploitation of territories by western imperialism becomes imaginable and possible. A historical possibility has opened up that must be seized. For our part, in the West, we can only continue to build the direct attack on our imperialism, even and especially on the political terrain on which it builds its supposed superiority, including the battle for women’s and gender liberation.
The wave of genuine rage – outside of political and media exploitation – that swept the country in the wake of Giulia Cecchettin’s feminicide and that invaded our cities in the 25 November mobilisations must be poured back into the streets all over the country on 8 March, from the initiatives, to the pickets, to the demonstrations called by “Non Una Di Meno”, to the strikes. And this time we must return to the streets not only because there is still much to be done in our country to build a perspective of women’s and gender liberation, but also because for us, today, women and free subjectivities are called upon to express their strength and put it to use in support of the urgent struggle for the survival and liberation of oppressed peoples and free Palestine.
We will not be free as long as imperialism and colonialism exist!