Communist roots ground International Working Women’s Day in class struggle

In the liberal mainstream world, International Women’s Day is hailed as a day for all women to celebrate women’s innate strength, nurturing ability, power to sway legislators, give birth, and challenge sexism by moving into positions of power in the capitalist system.
All these sexist lies conceal the key contributions of militant, communist, working class, women leaders who understood that you can only fight sexism with a multiracial, multi-generational, and most of all, a working-class movement.
In 2019, the average woman still makes 79 cents for every dollar men make (Payscale.com). The number is even lower for Black, Latin, and indigenous women, who make 26 percent less than white men workers.
Furthermore, we reject the ideology that bosses like Hilary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Kamala Harris help women workers. These ruling-class women perpetuate sexist divisions in our class.
The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) celebrates the history of working-class women—who often put their life on the line—in the fight towards a communist future without sexism, racism, and exploitation.
This month we revisit a few stories, emphasizing that sexism doesn’t just hurt women workers, but the whole working class. The only solution to sexism is nothing short of communist revolution.
Inspired by May Day
Inspired by a May Day demonstration, Clara Zetkin began to lay the groundwork in 1889 to establish International Women’s Day as a communist holiday for working class women (JSTOR, 2019). In 1910 at the Second Women’s Conference of the Second International, she proposed the following resolution, “In agreement with the class-conscious, political and trade union organizations of the proletariat...the socialist women of all countries will hold each year a Women’s Day...” Zetkin went on to become a communist leader in Germany.
Smashing racism at the border
One of those women was a Mexican labor organizer and anti-racist activist, Emma Tenayuca. Born in San Antonio, Texas in 1916, Emma was arrested after joining her first picket line against Finck Cigar Company at age 16 (La Aztlan, 2000). Her political ideology was shaped by two major historical events—The Great Depression during the 1930s and The Mexican Repatriation, a mass deportation of Mexican and Mexican American workers from 1929-1936. As a young person she visited La Plaza del Zacate where socialist and communist working class leaders gave speeches on the plight of the working class and discussions would take place on how to organize.
Emma began organizing workers and by 1934, at age 18, had already helped form the Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. She was arrested as a leader of the 1938 Texas Pecan Shellers Strike. She also organized unemployed workers with Mrs. W.H. Ernst, another radical leader of the Finck cigar strike to form the Workers Alliance. She continually protested over the abuse suffered by Mexican migrants at the hands of U.S. Border Patrol agents. In 1937, Emma joined the American Communist Party.
Organizing against big tobacco
In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, thousands of Black women went on strike against exploitation by the Big Tobacco company R.J. Reynolds (RJR)  and formed the labor union, Local 22. RJR ruled over schools, hospitals, parks and many of the available jobs. 16,000 of those workers were women and more than 80 percent were Black. However, higher-paying jobs were not available for Black workers and women were paid even less (Winston-Salem Monthly, 2018).
Women worked in sweltering rooms thick with tobacco dust. One woman, a widow and mother of five, was too ill to work, but was told by the foreman “if she didn’t catch up, there was the door” (Our State, 9/18). The women met at lunchtime and organized a plan to stop working immediately after lunch. They recruited men in the adjacent casing room to join them.
Velma Hopkins helped mobilize 10,000 workers into the streets of Winston-Salem. Local 22 was integrated and led primarily by Black women. Before Local 22 faced set-backs from red-baiting and the power of RJRs anti-unionism, it gained national attention for its vision of an equal society. Women workers like Velma Hopkins, Theodosia Simpson, Viola Brown, Moranda Smith and Christine Gardner were active Communist Party members.
Soviet women pilots help defeat the Nazis
With working-class women on the forefront, the Red Army battled and smashed the fascist Nazi army. In World War II, women served in the Soviet Air Force.  Dubbed the “night witches” by the Germans, they took off at three-minute intervals, sometimes 10 times a night.  They flew more than 30,000 combat sorties in conditions unimaginable today, They slept two-three hours near their planes in freezing temperatures. “The control stick was heavy to move, and our arms and legs were so short ...”
Nineteen-year-old Lieutenant Yekaterina Musatova-Fedotova, recalled, “The navigators helped us by pushing on our backs as we pushed on the stick to get the tail up for take off.” (NYT, 12/4/1994)
Fifteen women pilots died at Stalingrad, “We hated the German fascists so much that we would have even flown a broom to be able to fire at them.”
Continuing the tradition of communist women
In PLP, we have women like Clara, Emma, Velma, and Yekaterina continuing the tradition of fightback and building amongst the working class. In New York, the women in the family of Shantel Davis, a young woman murdered by the police, continue to speak out against police brutality and  organize with other working families that have been forever changed by the racism of Killer KKKops. Founders of Moms 4 Housing are battling against exploitative tenant laws, racism and sexism in California. Teachers from Chicago have protested on picket lines against racism underlined in school closings and exploitation of teachers in schools. Women are fighting against environmental racism in Newark and building with communities to see past liberal politicians’ false promises. We as a party fight against sexism because it means the super-exploitation of women, and because overall, it divides the working class. No matter the gender, we all must join in on mass fightback and speak out about the communist history of International Working Women and anti-sexism everyday. Join PLP today!