Emma Tenayuca, Mexican American labour leader
Emma Tenanyacu – Mexican American labour organiser, civil rights activist and Communist
Throughout her life Tenanyuca fought for the rights of workers, particularly for migrant women workers in the American south. She organised in labour unions, led strikes and within the Communist Party USA. She advocated for social justice, equality and disarmament.
Clara Zetkin – German socialist, revolutionary and anti-war campaigner
Zetkin was a member of the German SPD, working for many years against ‘anti-socialist’ laws, struggling through exile and editing SPD publications. She had a deep understanding of the many ways that sexism shapes women’s lives. Zetkin broke from the SPD when they pandered to imperialism at the outbreak of the First World War and joined the Communist KPD. After the failure of the German Revolution she countinued to struggle against the growth of fascism.
Lucy Parsons – Trade unionist, anti-racist and women’s rights fighter
Parsons fought for women’s rights to work, against hunger and poverty and was fearless in the face of the state’s attempts to silence her. Thrown into the turmoil of the Haymarket Affair, Parsons campaigned for the martyrs and for her family in teh face of explicit racist abuse. Throughout her life she played a pivotal role in the women’s and labour movements in the US and saw the need for the black and white working class to unite.
Elaine Brown in 2010 at a rally against the killing of Oscar Grant (Photo: Steve Rhodes)
Elaine Brown – The first women chair of the Black Panthers
Brown is an American anti-racist and prison activist, writer and singer. As a young woman she immersed herself in the Black Panther Party and ideas of black self-organisation against police violence and all forms racism and imperialism. In the 1970s she became the first woman chair of the Black Panther Party and challenged sexism within their ranks. She continues to fight for radical prison reforms and for those suffering miscarriages of justice.
Bhikaiji Cama – Anti-imperial revolutionary
Cama was born in India and spent her life engaging in the global socialist upsurge of the late 19th and early 20th century. She stated that people in Europe must fight against imperialism at home, not on behalf of those oppressed under imperialism. Cama fought against the idea that Asian women were objects of pity and saw the necessity to join the fight for women’s liberation with the fight against imperialism internationally.
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey – Irish civil rights and anti-imperialist
Bernadette was a leader of the student civil rights movement in Ireland, becoming the youngest women MP at the time in 1969. She led the Battle of the Bogside modled on the American civil rights movement. Bernadette survived an assassination attempt, toured the US gaining support for the struggle in Ireland and led campaigns for the prisoners held by the British state at Long Kesh. She continues the class struggle in Ireland working with People before Profit.
Predictably, the racist right has seized on the pamphlet
Hundreds of academics get away with far worse than anything Arday was accused of
Violence and abuse is baked into how the army operates
Cops are still a danger to women
