March 8 is International Women’s Day (IWD), a revolutionary holiday to declare our determination to break ALL the chains that hold women down and to fight and work for a radically new world, beyond all the traditional relations and old ways of thinking that keep humanity enslaved.
This year, for IWD, The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less—Show on YouTube aired a special episode in celebration of the day. The episode includes inspiring scenes and words from around the world challenging women’s oppression. And there were calls for people to rally, celebrate, and protest in various cities across the U.S.
Think about how children’s fate is being determined before they are even born, disfiguring their humanity and suffocating their full potential. Think of the violence that maintains and enforces all this: honor killings, domestic abuse, genital mutilation, rape culture, bashing LGBTQ folks, femicides, self-harm, and on and on. Why have we not moved past this ridiculous, outmoded, and CRIMINAL way of life? One reason: this system of capitalism-imperialism that has patriarchy BUILT IN to it.
On International Women’s Day, March 8, the Revcoms shut down a major intersection in Hollywood for a “gender reveal party” like no other to tear the lid off of this popular fad, revealing what it really means to be born female in a male-supremacist society. We declared our determination to overthrow this system and completely abolish the oppression of women, as part of a communist revolution to end ALL oppression—connecting people up with Bob Avakian, a leader who speaks passionately about the horrors women go thru and lays out the science of how those horrors can be ended.
Our gender reveal party in Hollywood started like any other “reveal” might—with a very pregnant woman, lots of pink and blue, and a lot of anticipation to find out the “gender” of the baby-to-be. Passersby were encouraged to choose “team boy” or “team girl.” Then all of a sudden the revcoms and some new volunteers stepped into the middle of the busy intersection, bringing traffic and any promise of a normal afternoon commute to a halt, releasing clouds of pink smoke into the air. One volunteer in a “Handmaid’s Tale” costume held up a big sign exclaiming “IT’S A GIRL!.” For 10 minutes, as cars honked and police hovered, volunteers laid in the road in a dramatic die in. On top of the corpses were signs exposing how women are abused and killed all over the world. One read “I will be murdered in Juarez, Mexico.” Others read, “I will be molested by age 3,” “I will be forced into prostitution,” “I will be beaten and killed by my boyfriend.”
On #InternationalWomensDay The Revcoms hosted a “gender reveal party” like no other, revealing what it really means to be born female in a world of male domination, & declaring our determination to overthrow & abolish this whole system as soon as possible.
Watch what happened 👇 pic.twitter.com/kNweis7fFc
— The Revcoms (@therevcoms) March 10, 2021
After a few minutes, as international photographers (from the AP and AFP) and others took photos and video, the Revcoms stood up with the signs visible to all who passed, and a Revolution Tour member read the moving quote from Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:10, which speaks to what women face for being born female in a world of male domination. A banner that read “A Better World Is Possible” next to Bob Avakian’s image was unfurled, photos of women rising up in Mexico, Myanmar, Venezuela and Iran were held, while Noche Diaz and Michelle Xai gave brief, but powerful remarks. Noche spoke to how young boys are trained to dehumanize women, to treat them as sex objects, and how we can reclaim our humanity by fighting for a revolution to get rid of this system which had male supremacy built into it. Michelle really made you feel how intolerable it is that all this brutal oppression goes on while people are misled by superficial “solutions” that don’t deal with the problem: “this is why the leadership of Bob Avakian is so crucial, to get the root of where this oppression comes from… in this moment, if you want to get free, if you want to put an end to all forms of oppression, you follow Bob Avakian.”
After leaving the intersection we marched down along the “walk of fame” on Hollywood Blvd, chanting the main slogan of the day “Break the chains! Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!” and “There’s a whole better way that the world could be—make revolution, get humanity free!” The Revcoms were joined by others who made it out to the event, as well as a few young people who joined us on the spot, including a couple who raised the “Break the chains!” banner for the whole march.
The event ended with a speak out. A young Black man who joined on the spot said he was sick of seeing women treated lesser than men. Another person from out of town said that they had never seen people speak about the oppression of women in this way.