Hilda Torres is a mother, provider, and caretaker from the Rio Grande Valley. For years she has been the sole support for her elderly mother, pregnant and disabled daughter, and family. Now, their lives have been completely uprooted.

In November 2025, Hilda Torres was wrongfully arrested in Los Fresnos, Texas during a traffic stop. The police couldn't find a reason to detain her, so they invented a false DWI charge that was later tested to be negative.

Instead of letting her go, they sent her to the El Valle Detention Facility in Raymondville even though she has a valid visa that expires in 2028. This is the same infamous detention center where the McAllen High School mariachi student Antonio Gámez-Cuéllar was wrongfully imprisoned while his brothers and parents were sent to the Dilley detention center, another facility known for its abuse towards children like 5-year-old Liam Ramos.

Hilda risked everything to get a letter out to her family exposing the abuse, torture, misogyny, and filthy conditions within the El Valle Detention Facility. In retaliation, the officers put her in "The Hole", a freezing cold solitary confinement torture area used to punish women to get them to break down and sign away their rights, but Hilda encourages others to stay strong and not give in.

We honor her powerful strength and will to fight against this unjust system of ICE and police by publishing her full letter today.

We demand freedom and justice for Hilda Torres!

We demand accountability and action from Los Fresnos politicians and their police department for destroying the lives of the Torres family!

We demand that RGV politicians Vicente Gonzalez, Janie Lopez, and Adam Hinojosa shut this concentration camp down and punish the predators who abuse women inside it every day!

In her words, "don’t stay quiet, for you and also for others, this has to stop and it’s only possible if we, the people, raise our voices and speak up!"

CONTENT WARNING - Trauma, torture, abuse, inhumane conditions.

My name is Hilda Torres and I [have] been in detention since Nov. 6 - 25 at El Valle detention facility, I feel like I’m experiencing a nightmare that doesn’t seem to end. My life and my family’s has changed dramatically from one day to the other and I’m not the only one that has been accused of something we didn’t do. By the time I was able to prove my arrest was unfair, I was already facing deportation. I am in [an] appeal process that can take up to 18 months. Every door we see gets closed before we can access it. I have been living in Texas for the last 25 years. I had a work permit for about 2 years due to family violence. I don’t have a criminal record or charges of any [type] I don’t know Mexico or have family there and I’m not a danger to the community. I am a hardworking woman who only takes care of her family, fosters dogs, and cats and helps others, especially elderly my daughter, who is disabled with chronic conditions that have no cure. I have my almost 88 year old mother and even though she isn’t my biological mother, to me she’s my mother and I’m her daughter. For the last 9 years I have been caring for her and dad who passed away Nov 2024 leaving us alone. He was a veteran and [served] this country for another 20 years. I also have 3 sons, 2 of them going to the military this year, and my older daughter who has been caring for my disabled daughter and mom, but she's also sick with a stomach ulcer and vomiting blood. I'm the one who used to take mom and my disabled daughter to their appointments, know their medical history, prepared their meals, fix meds and everything else. Mom has fallen 3 times trying to get up and look for me. She has [congestive] heart [failure] stage 4 and other chronic conditions, her last wish is to see home again. I had promised her and dad I would always be there, my daughter[‘s] condition [has] also worsened due to stress. Sometimes when I start to think of the daily deportations and see the tired faces of the ones [that have been] here over a year I feel like I should sign mine, but how do I put together 25 years of my life and take them with me? My family owes thousands of dollars and yet I’m still here.

Every night I dream of being home, in my dreams the days pass and I really believe I finally made it home but I wake up here day by day, then I start to think of who's doing everything I was doing, who taking my momma or my daughter to the hospital at night when they don’t feel well? [Am] I ever going home again? If the movie, park, or beach days ever [come] back. I can see my children are suffering every time they see me here but I refuse to go [on] without them and mom, they all say they can go with me but their life is here. I will continue to wait, in this horrible place there they keep the water boiling and we are treated like if we are criminals or animals, my phone doesn’t even work I have asked several agents and nothing gets resolved, I can only use tablets, and if I get one that works I’m lucky and I get charged 3 times more than regular phones. [The] sergeants and officers are tired of me asking, and one of them yelled in my face, and at one point, he stepped closer right on [up] my face I thought he would hit me he gives me the worst tablets and after 7 days of not knowing from my family, I saw them in Sunday visitation. My 17 year old had a broken leg, and my heart broke realizing I was used to being there for them, but now I don’t even know how they’re doing. I requested mental health to deal with everything, I did [say] I felt hopeless but I never said I would hurt myself, I have my family to fight for, yet I was told we all have family problems and maybe you’re just being a little bit selfish. I’m not saying we don’t all have problems, but I can’t go home and fix mine, I can’t even talk to my family, I was sent to a dirty room where my clothes [were] removed, I was there in the floor without being allowed to take a shower or brush my teeth since 12-1-12 till 12-5-25. I didn’t like the mental health treatment so I refused to eat, they tried making me eat telling me they would cancel my court and I wouldn’t have visitation and finally they said they would fix my phone line and a 5 minutes call would be given to me, pure lies of [these] people, I ate half of the food they [gave] me.

And no call was provided to me, I actually thought they cared for a minute. They just didn’t want to get in trouble if I continued not eating. I think the pandemic was a joke compared [to] this. I’m a strong woman who doesn’t easily fold but yet I have [been] seeing so much pain, so much suffering, from women of different countries, mothers who have fell from [the] top bunks, suffered other accidents or falls and just hearing [the] people say, we don’t have any type of insurance. But we can give you [Tylenol], like really? Apart from them already being separated from their families, they get deported and sent sick, I would need a lot of pages for their stories, daily they go and daily more arrive, not all officers are bad but sadly they just follow orders. I’ve had seen how without previous notice they took this poor moms in the middle of the night, [untill] it happened to me on 01-31,26 me and 6 other women got woken up around 2:30 am without telling us why or where, most of us with open appeal cases they put us in a intake room in the outside of the building the room smelled bad with trash and dust everywhere and also a clogged toilet, one of the officers asked us to sign a paper that said we received our property but I refused because they didn’t give me any property and also they only give me $40 dollars out of $100 my children had put in my account, the officer started shouting in my face all angry he then left the room and it started to get super cold I kept knocking so they could [raise] the temperature, an officer came and said it ain’t even that cold, it’s just like outside, I responded, exactly outside is so cold, but he just said please stop! I was covering the other women with whatever uniforms and jackets [that were] left by previous inmates.

Soon, we all started to cough, and I could see their faces trying to endure the pain, I could feel the cold in my bones as I kept walking, trying to stay warm, my left arm got numb and I had left chest pain, I kept knocking  Hours later a different officer returned with the property paperwork and I signed it because I wasn’t the only one suffering the consequences. After that, they put the room warmer for some time, I [fell] asleep and then I woke up it was probably 6 or 7 am and cold again, I could hear other people demanding answers in different rooms, about 13 or 14 hours in [dangerous] temperatures in a anti hygienic room without being able to speak to our family and without any type of answers, around 4 PM the officer said let’s go back to your dorms the bus broke down and you all missed your flight. I have been requesting medical but one time they had me waiting for about 2 hours and I was sent back to the form because they said the [doctor] would take a lot longer to come and the next time I was in the gym and they didn’t take me because I was wearing shorts. Finally, a nurse came in 2-16-26 I told him I had a very sore throat I could barely pass my saliva and the pain was going to my ears also my ears [have] been with so much pressure and pain, dried eyes, I’m struggling to breath and had a fever, [I] have random body pains, and occasionally my left chest and bones hurt, he didn't check my temperature or blood pressure he said he give me Tylenol for 7 days and for me to put a request after those 7 days if I was still sick, I asked to please be sent to front medical so they could check me because I can deal with pain but I think I have an infection and I want to get treated, he said, I understand but I have strict orders from ICE to try and treat with Tylenol first. On 2-18-26, I got a really strong pain in my lower stomach that I didn’t think I could walk and even [worse], climb to my bed, I made it, but I got sentimental because it’s the first time in a long time that I’m alone and sick, I don’t usually get sick but when I do my children make me spicy hot soups, we always used to take care of each other, but this time I was shaking alone in bed and I don’t know if I passed out [or if] I just went to sleep, my friends said they tried to wake up but they couldn’t and they thought I just wanted to sleep I didn’t even [feel] anything, they [shouldn’t] have us here if they can’t even have some empathy and respect but here we are just one more number.

I also have to deal with an officer who looks at me when I take a shower and reporting him would be useless; they would probably just move me from [my] dorm, and this is the only one with visitation on Sundays, and that’s when my boys don’t go to school. I am truly sorry for everyone going through this same situation, and I ask everyone to speak up. I’m sorry my oldest son had to sell he’s small farm that took a lot of years and hard work to try and help me. I am sorry I can’t be there for my momma, daughter, and [my] whole family. I am sorry to [now] even my dogs and cats are sad without me. I'm sorry the president think we are criminals, I hope he can be more human. I know for man nothing is possible, but for God all things are possible, I know and have faith God’s hand will touch the heart of whoever is in [charge] of my case. I know my wait will be worth it I really hope I can go home again. I want to enter that door and hug mom especially, I also want to help animals and read about medicine, especially natural medicine, also know I’ll probably have nightmares, here I dream I’m free, I dream of days passing in my dream and telling myself oh [its] been a whole week this time it’s real, or even pinching myself in the dreams but with God’s help and the love my family and dogs, I will be fine. One more thing I would like to add and I know many won’t [believe] it, neither I would if I didn’t [experience it] myself, this place is haunted, many of us get touched and seen a little girl, a [blonde] woman, and an officer dressed in black, even women get raped by this demons, spirits, or whatever they are, its a very normal thing for mental health officers, this place needs to get closed down or a priest needs to come and help this spirits with [holy] water and prayer so they can rest in peace.

Thank you to everyone who read [these] long pages, and I again ask to please speak up if you or your family is being mistreated in [these] places, don’t stay quiet, for you and also for others, this has to stop and it’s only possible if we, the people, raise our voices and speak up!    

Today is International WORKING Women's Day, not a celebration of women who manage empires, enforce borders, or bomb other women's children. It was born on picket lines, in factories, in the streets, out of the organized rage of working women.

We center all working women, including those whose unpaid labor in the home keeps this whole system running, because seizing the means of production means accounting for every form of labor.

We carry this day with militancy in our ideology, our politics, and our organizing, until abusers and ruling classes alike are afraid of the justice of the communist woman.

That is the legacy we carry. That is the fight we continue.

As fascism continues to grow in the U.S. it is easy to desire for things to "go back to normal" and place the blame on Trump, but what does "normal" mean to an empire? Endless wars, genocides, children in cages, imprisoned slave labor, sex trafficking, all the atrocities happening now, but out of sight and out of mind? We are stuck in the ratchet effect where Republicans march us towards fascism while Democrats help them and brutally crush all organizing movements.

Fascism is a symptom of capitalism in decay, a last push to preserve the rule of the capitalist class, via unchecked violence, propaganda, and criminalization of dissent. These have been tools used by big business elites and their comprador government representatives long before Trump was elected. Women, children, and men from oppressed nations have experienced imperialist violence, displacement, colonization, and control from the beginning of their relationship to the US. Even without Trump in office, the system would still be as brutal and murderous as it is now, through neocolonial and militaristic control of nations. As their power expands and consolidates, the US currently survives off of the destabilization of sovereign nations and despair of forced migration, exploiting nationally oppressed women to gain profit and power.

Conditions of Migrant Women and Children in Detention - Dilley, TX

What are some of the hurdles working class and poor women are facing today? The current regime has increased the normalcy of kidnapping people including children and pregnant women and sending them to rot in detention centers under the guise of an "immigration crackdown against violent illegal aliens". These terrorist tactics leave women afraid to leave their homes for work and send their kids to school - causing huge economic strife and anxiety.  Unfortunately, their hundreds of stories and locations we could speak on, but lets take a moment to focus on the Dilley Detention Center in Texas.

Dilley has been in the headlines recently due to the the kidnapping and detention of a 5 year old child known as Liam "Conejo" Ramos in January 2026. This spotlight as well as numerous interviews with children and women being detained there helped get out to the public the disgusting, cruel, and unsanitary conditions, including lack of medical care, unsafe food and water, and poor quality education. It should be noted that conditions were so horrid that dozens of the detained children staged a demonstration where shouts of "Libertad!" (Spanish for Freedom) could be heard. With story after story of the cruelty and harm people are facing in these holding cells, imagine all the unreported events that have taken place! Including allegations of sexual abuse against ICE employees by detained women - many noting that the employees threatened them with deportation. Many of these women were taken while working and many children used as bait to lure working class parents out, only to be kidnapped along side their parents - with some not even able to stay together upon entering ice facilities. These families deserve better! Unlike the horrendous name this fascist regime likes to give them, "aliens" they are humans and deserve dignity and respect and to be given the right - like any other family - to work and contribute in their communities and not be terrorized!

The Origins of Migration: Destabilization of the Homeland

Let's take a look at why this section of the working class ends up outside of their countries of origin. The World Migration Report from 2024 shows that leading causes of migrants globally are due to reasons such as conflict, natural disaster, seeking education and economic opportunity on top of gender based factors such as inequitable legal systems/social norms/ideologies. Lets take a moment to really think about what this means. Who started these conflicts and for what reasons? How are these "natural" disasters created? Why do they have to leave to seek out education and economic opportunity? What is behind these gender based factors these women are running from? History tells us time and time again that these policies and systems are not born out of a vacuum but born out of imperialist and colonial conquest. Let's make sure to be even more clear: In most cases - U.S. imperialism and western colonial forces have created these devastating conditions! Hiding behind themes of "bringing democracies to an uncivilized third world" and instilling strategic regime change to benefit the western powers instead of the people that work the actual land. No more! Working women all over the world  

The World Migration Report names the leading causes driving migrants from their homes as conflict, climate disaster, lack of economic opportunity, and gender-based persecution. These conditions do not appear out of nowhere. They are the predictable result of imperialism, capitalism in its highest stage, which requires the constant extraction of labor, land, and resources from the Global South to feed the Western ruling class's profits. U.S. imperialism manufactures the conditions that force people to flee, then criminalizes the migration that follows.

Many of these women are Indigenous to Turtle Island itself, their ancestors having been here long before any borders were drawn. Now the descendants of conquistadors, settler colonizers, and Nazis enforce those borders on stolen land. The same system that destroys the homeland polices the escape route. That is not a coincidence. That is the point.   ​

Venezuelan Women Say: Sovereignty Is Not Terrorism

Who decides what counts as war and what counts as terror? Only U.S.-backed conflicts get the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, women and children in the Global South die under sanctions, blockades, and bombs, and we call it "just the way it is."

The U.S. invokes the "war on drugs" to justify threatening Venezuela while remaining the world's largest consumer and importer of those same drugs. Now decades-old WikiLeaks documents revealed U.S. collusion with the very cartels it claims to fight. The pretext is old. The agenda is oil, land, and power.

Internationalist solidarity is our instrument. Venezuelan women are on the front lines, sustaining life, sustaining community, sustaining resistance. Their struggle is the anti-imperialist feminist struggle. The defense of Venezuela is the defense of all of Latin America.

Iranian Women Hold Up the World

Iranian women do 4x more unpaid labor than men, spending 21% of their time on unpaid domestic and care work compared to just 5% for men. Many more work as unpaid laborers in farms, carpet workshops, and handicrafts, labor that never even shows up in official statistics. Iranian women are already carrying an economy under some of the most far-reaching sanctions on their backs, uncompensated, while the U.S. performs feminism for the cameras, bombs girls in their classrooms, and dismantles abortion rights at home.

On February 28, 2026, a U.S.-Israeli strike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school in Minab, southern Iran, in broad daylight, while it was packed with young pupils between the ages of 7 and 12. Over 165 girls were killed and nearly 100 more wounded. UNESCO called it a grave violation of humanitarian law. The UN Secretary-General condemned it. The U.S. continues its violent onslaught of Iranians.

Amidst liberal calls for "nuance" and condemning both the U.S. and Iranian governments, we call for nothing less than the full and enthusiastic support of nationally oppressed peoples' right to defend themselves. The primary contradiction in Iran is not between its government and its people, but of the U.S. imperialists who seek to destabilize, massacre, and exploit the resources of the Iranian masses. Class liberation is not possible without national liberation, for the Iranian working class cannot exist if the Iranian nation is destroyed.

Congolese Women Sustain Life Under Siege

Women make up nearly half of the Democratic Republic of Congo's labor force, with 80% working in agriculture, feeding families through decades of unending conflict. And that conflict has never been accidental.

In 1961, the CIA assassinated Patrice Lumumba, the Congo's first democratically elected prime minister and communist, who dared imagine the Congo's wealth belonging to its own people. The U.S. has been punishing the Congo for that dream ever since. Today, U.S. corporations profit from minerals extracted from conflict zones where rape is used as a weapon of war, while the U.S. government performs outrage by sanctioning Rwanda with one hand and sending it $150 million in aid with the other. Don't let the propaganda confuse you. The coltan in your phone and the cobalt in your laptop are extracted from lands soaked in Congolese blood.

Yet, Congolese women keep organizing, building healthcare networks, sustaining grassroots organizations under siege and corporate extraction. Their resistance is internationalist feminist struggle in action.

They Want You Exhausted, Not Revolutionary

Capitalism is exhausting. Living in the U.S. is exhausting. And when you are exhausted, escape sounds good. The trad wife aesthetic sells you a fantasy of rest, beauty, and being taken care of. The influencer pipeline sells you the dream of being your own boss. The sex trade is glamorized as empowerment. All of it is the same offer: sell yourself instead of organizing with your comrades.

This is by design. They want you focused on male and ruling class approval, on being chosen, on individual survival. They do not want you asking who owns the land, the warehouse, the factory, the hospital, or the prison. Your home. They do not want you to be revolutionary. They want you to be decorative and dependent.

The trad wife life is not a refuge. She is the most economically vulnerable woman in the room, one divorce away from nothing, in states where pregnant women cannot even file for divorce at all.

Gender-based violence in the imperial core does not only happen in dark alleys. It is encoded in law. Abortion rights stripped away. Trans people legislated out of existence (or so they want). Domestic violence protections quietly rolled back. And a prison system where a significant number of women serving time for violent crimes are there because they defended themselves.

Marriage under capitalism has always been a form of property relations. Archaic laws still on the books in states across the country treat women as dependents, as vessels, as assets. Financial abuse is not incidental to these arrangements. It is the point.

Our liberation cannot be defined by the ruling class, by patriarchal approval, or by how successfully we sell ourselves. It is defined by the freedom of our most marginalized sisters and queer comrades.

As we say, when they are free, we are free. Not before.

Build the Resistance Where You Are

The leftist movement in the U.S. has always had a women problem. Too much of our organizing has treated women's work as secondary, as support, as background. That is not an accident. That is by design. We correct it by showing up differently.

Stop waiting for the right crowd. Move beyond your friend groups. If you are not sure where to start, find the organizations already doing the work in your community and plug in. Then go further. Talk to the women and gender-oppressed people you already share a building, a block, a neighborhood with. Learn their most pressing problems. Figure out what you share, what you need, and who your real enemies are, from the small bosses to the ruling class and their politician lapdogs.

Organizing is where we get to dream our biggest dreams for one another. Get creative. Get brave, together.

Study, Train, Lead

As you organize, invite the people you meet to go deeper. Our predecessors and comrades currently engaged in people's wars have left us a roadmap. Reading groups build bonds, bridge languages, meet people where they are, and turn individual knowledge into collective power.

ARALING AKTIBISTA (ARAK) — Filipino revolutionary study course on organizing, revolutionary attitude, and how to take ideas from the people, develop them, and bring them back as a plan for action.

MLM BASIC COURSE — Accessible introduction to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the history of the international communist movement.

Leaders are trained and built up. Every one of us is a potential leader, organizer, and fighter. IWWD was born out of communist organizing. That has been scrubbed from the holiday on purpose, because communism has a track record of actually defeating capitalist imperialism. Reclaim the roots.

WE CAN WIN! AND WINNING STARTS WITH YOU!

Continue the Fighting Legacy of International Working Women's Day!

On Saturday July 18th at 6:45am, Milagro Solis Portillo was kidnapped from Glendale Dignity Memorial Hospital by plainsclothed ICE agents. They violently dragged her out of the building against her doctor's orders as she screamed for help. Medical staff physically intervened to protect her, but they were unsuccessful. ICE has taken Milagro to the Anaheim Global Medical Center where she is currently being held.

Half The Sky urgently calls on our community to MOBILIZE to ANAHEIM GLOBAL MEDICAL CENTER now at 1025 S Anaheim Blvd! Community members have been rallying day and night without sleep to stop ICE from disappearing Milagro again! Her life is in danger! WE NEED YOUR HELP!!! 

CALL NOW to demand Anaheim Global to protect their patients and STOP collaborating with ICE, DHS, and Border Patrol: 714-533-6220

Anaheim Global Medical Center Nurse's Station: 714-563-2809

Patient Relations/Quality Department: 714-563-2843
Email: agmc-qrm@kpchealth.com

We are the Southern California chapter of a proletarian feminist organization militantly committed to building revolution around women’s emancipation and towards dismantling imperialism, capitalism, and the sexual commodification of women and gender-oppressed people.

We are writing in response to the unsupported allegations of mass rape which have been circulating across traditional media and social networks, which we believe are a direct attempt at weaponizing feminism against the Palestinian struggle for national liberation.

These claims are unsubstantiated and based on no real evidence

Even Zionist media sources, such as The Times of Israel, have stated that there is no conclusive evidence that even a single case of rape or sexual assault has occurred at the hands of the Palestinian freedom fighters, much less that it has occurred en masse. In an article posted on October 8, 2023, they reported that such cases are only “suspected.” They state that these “concerns of sexual assault” stem from two sources: (1) a video of a woman with blood on her shorts and (2) an image of a woman lying in a truck. While images coming from a war zone are shocking for mostly everyone, absolutely none of the videos released show any conclusive evidence of sexual assault and nor do they reasonably point to the likelihood of sexual assault occurring. Out of many possible explanations, the imperialist and Zionist media has chosen to speculate that these are evidence of sexual assault. Why? In order to organize masses of people into their narrative that Palestinian freedom fighters are evil, monstrous, terrorists. (Not entirely irrelevant, but still important to note, is that the first video actually appears to show the woman being passed off to an ambulance or medical vehicle.)

Another Zionist news source, Tablet Magazine, posted a story alleging that “women have been raped at the area of the rave next to their friends bodies.” Yet, they only attribute this quote to a source called “one survivor” and failed to provide any substantive evidence for these claims. This story by Tablet Magazine was then cited in The Atlantic to substantiate their claim that “many of the women executed at the festival were raped.” Yet this single, alleged source remains unidentified, with absolutely no information on their identity, and there is absolutely no corroborating evidence to substantiate this claim.

Given the lack of any evidence, it is clear that the sharing of viral images alleging mass rape of settler women is a propaganda tool aimed at demonizing the Palestinian resistance in order to garner support for the Zionist project of building an ethnostate on top of the genocide and displacement of millions of Palestinians.

These unsubstantiated claims overshadow the history of sexual violence imposed on Palestinians and others by the Zionist entity

In July 2023, the Zionist entity came under criticism for passing a law that allowed Jewish settlers to have a “lesser punishment for rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment than Palestinian citizens.” Even one of the Zionist politicians acknowledged that this law would “not prosecute Israeli officials harassing Palestinian women at checkpoints, nor Shin Bet interrogators who harass them during interrogations.”

The Zionist entity has a long history of sexual violence against Palestinian women. One Zionist soldier was convicted of raping a Palestinian woman, sexually assaulting other Palestinian women and men, and extorting them to demand sexual favors. The occupation put a “gag order” on the case in order to prevent news outlets from reporting on it.

Staff Sgt. Omer Tabib, a 21 year old occupation soldier, was killed near the Gaza Strip in 2021. Only a year earlier, he was bragging about committing sexual violence against Palestinian women. In August of 2019, Tabib posted a photo on Twitter along with a caption that read “I took this puff right after I raped a Palestinian lady.”

Palestinian women visiting one of the thousands of Palestinians detained by the Zionist entity have documented cases of the Israeli Occupying Forces subjecting them to sexual violence, including sexual harassment, forced nudity, and forced touching. Palestinian women detained by the occupation often face even worse violence.

Some stories were documented by a report submitted to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in 2005. One 25 year old Palestinian woman, named Samira Hadar Mahmoud Algenzazra, was arrested in 2002, where two female occupation soldiers forced her to open her blouse in front of a group of boys, threw a copy of her Quran on the ground, and then blindfolded her with her hands tied behind her back. When she was later interrogated, the occupation forces threatened to rape her and torture her loved ones if she did not confess. Another woman, Kahara Sa’adi, was arrested in her home, beaten in front of her four children, and detained in a solitary cell for over 115 days after a 9 day interrogation. In Israeli prisons, she also faced rape threats, along with threats of beating and retaliation against her family. Yet another woman, Suheir Issan Abd’Alrazek Alhashlamon, who was only 26 at the time, was threatened with rape, beating, and prolonged solitary confinement by the Zionist occupation.

When the Zionist entity recently arrested a 16-year old Palestinian girl, the adult male soldiers flirted with her, sexually harassed her, and threatened to retaliate by arresting her family. Another Zionist officer ordered the search of a Palestinian woman’s genitals and, in return, got promoted despite being under investigation for rape.

Zionist sex crimes are not limited to women. In 2010, a 15-year old Palestinian boy came forward stating that the Israeli Occupation Forces attached a car starter cable to his penis and threatened that he won’t be able to have children once they’re done with him. This is only one of many countless stories. According to a study based on the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) between 2005 and 2012, thousands of Palestinian men were tortured by Israeli Occupying Forces and a significant amount of these cases were involved sexual torture and sexual violence. Palestinian men and boys alleged that Israeli Occupying Forces subjected them to forced nudity, sexual harassment against them and their family members, physical sexual assault, kicking and pressing of their genitals, simulated rape, and actual rape by a blunt object. Another man was forced by Zionist border patrol to have sex with a donkey.

In 2023, a report was released that unveiled a stunning 86% of Palestinian children detained by the occupation are beaten, 69% strip searched, 42% injured at the point of arrest, and many who face violence of a sexual nature, such as being touched and hit in the genitals, before being placed in small cages. Of course, this narrative also comes at a time when five Israeli settlers are set to plead guilty to gang raping a British woman after abducting her in Cyprus.

Tear feminism out of the hands of the colonizer

While we can recount the many instances of Zionist settler sexual violence against Palestinian women, this brief but horrifying overview is sufficient to show that sexual violence is part and parcel of the Zionist entity. The allegations of rape at the hands of Palestinian freedom fighters are unsubstantiated and we refuse to allow the imperialist media to weaponize feminism at the service of a genocidal settler-colony.

In times like these, where a revolutionary movement or movement for national liberation makes a significant advance, the imperialist media will respond swiftly with their well-funded propaganda networks in order to siphon off support. They will often try to pull on the sympathies of left-leaning people by alleging violence against marginalized groups, such as women. We have to remain steadfast in our commitment to the cause of national liberation and proletarian revolution and we must debunk imperialist propaganda step-by-step.

We call on all organizations and people who struggle for the emancipation of women to stand with the Palestinian resistance and explicitly denounce the weaponization of the women’s movement — a liberatory politics — against the oppressed fighting for their freedom.

Free Palestine!

Long live the struggle against Zionism and imperialism!

Tear feminism out of the hands of the colonizer!

Originally published on March 8, 2024

All around the world, women are taking up arms and fighting for the liberation of their class and their nation. From the national liberation war in Palestine, the people's wars in India, the Philippines, Turkey, and Peru, and the revolts against bureaucrat capitalism and imperialism in Sudan, the Congo, and elsewhere, Half the Sky sends a militant salute to all working women fighting to break their chains and build a new society in service of the majority of working masses and not simply a minority of exploiters. Amidst this global eruption of struggle, we are reminded of the involvement of girls and young women in particular. Like the iconic chant of the young girls revolting in Sudan, we agree that "the youth will build anew, revolution! And if we only have one hand left, revolution!"¹

Of course, building a new society is no easy task. Instead, it requires that the masses and their advanced detachment engage in a long and protracted struggle based on correct theory and a correct analysis of our current conditions. As our name suggests, to build a new society not based on exploitation requires the participation and leadership of the other "half of the sky." For us, this means that we must organize and unite working women, trans people, and non-binary people in our common struggle for a liberated future.

“The new woman...is first and foremost a militant." The new woman, she said, "is one who can stay whole days and nights with striking workers, learning from them the social realities which her bourgeois education has kept from her.” -Lorena Barros

We understand that the question of a new society necessitates the question of a new woman, new man, new person. For us, the new woman, the new person, is built through the flames of militant struggle where we shed the ideas of the old society and embrace the qualities of the new one. We can learn how to do this by studying the proletarian revolutions of the past and the people's wars being waged today. Lorena Barros, the Filipina martyr and founder of the militant women's organization MAKIBAKA, said this clearly: “the new woman...is first and foremost a militant." The new woman, she said, "is one who can stay whole days and nights with striking workers, learning from them the social realities which her bourgeois education has kept from her.”²

The bourgeoisie, which is the ruling class in capitalism, has kept our history from us. We are not told about the real history of International Working Women's Day (IWWD). We are not told about the advances made by the USSR and Revolutionary China towards the emancipation of women. We are not taught that the real root of women's oppression lies in class society itself, and instead are sold counterfeit solutions based on "individual empowerment" and the idea that women's emancipation means that women too can become exploiters like their bourgeois male counterparts.

The Real History of International Working Women's Day (IWWD)

On this International Working Women's Day, let us pay homage to its revolutionary roots, forged in the fires of history by the strength of working women. Established in 1910 by Clara Zetkin, IWWD commemorates the indomitable spirit of the 15,000 women who in 1908, amid the clamor of New York City, marched in solidarity, demanding their "Bread and Roses", the rights to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Their fervor was not in vain, for it echoed across continents and time, finding resonance in the 1917 women's strike in St. Petersburg, Russia. There, their rallying cry inspired the February Revolution, toppling Russia's Czar and heralding the Bolshevik October Revolution.

We uphold the moniker "IWWD" as a testament to its communist heritage and to champion the working women at the forefront of our struggle. For IWWD is not merely a day of commemoration; it is a call for unity amidst class struggle. In embracing IWWD, we shun the divisiveness of bourgeois feminism, recognizing its complicity; complicity to the very structures of capitalism it claims to oppose, as it turns our oppressors into idols if they so be women.

Let us, instead, forge an inclusive, proletarian feminism—one that confronts the systemic injustices inherent in capitalism, and one that unites workers of all stripes in our common quest for liberation. On this IWWD and beyond, let us pledge ourselves to the timeless cause of emancipation for all, emancipation from the tyranny and violence of imperialist capitalism.

Our role and responsibility in the current struggle

Our organization has a decades-long history rooted in the struggle for new democracy in the Philippines and an affirmation of the role of nationally oppressed working women in the struggle for a new society. However, over the last decade, our organization became disconnected from the national democratic struggle and the broader anti-imperialist movement. Furthermore, the movement of women and trans people today is generally dominated by ruling-class feminism, liberal individualism, or revisionism, which can be understood as the packaging of capitalist ideas in the language and imagery of socialism. Seeing the need for a genuinely revolutionary movement of women and gender-oppressed people in this country, we decided to reconstitute ourselves to answer the call.

"The same ruling classes, whether imperialists, capitalists, feudals and the State they control, are the enemies of women because they uphold and perpetuate the patriarchal family, gender discrimination and the patriarchal ideology within that society. They get the support of ordinary men undoubtedly who imbibe the patriarchal ideas, which are the ideas of the ruling classes and oppress women. But the position of ordinary men and those of the ruling classes cannot be compared." -Anuradha Ghandy

Moreover, in a time where the bourgeoisie is attempting to turn the class antagonism into a gender antagonism—inciting working men against working women, working cis people against working trans people—we aim to expose these tactics and to unite our class against its common enemy. On the one hand, the reactionary bourgeoisie blames the problems of cis women on trans women and the problems of men on women. On the other hand, the bourgeois feminists blame ordinary men for the creation and maintenance of women's oppression. Both of these approaches exploit the insecurity and problems faced by working people of all genders. These approaches scapegoat oppressed sectors of society, like women or trans people, while obscuring the central role and fault of the capitalist ruling class. 

Like Alexandra Kollontai said:

"It is true that several specific aspects of the contemporary system lie with double weight upon women, as it is also true that the conditions of hired labour sometimes turn working women into competitors and rivals to men. But in these unfavourable situations, the working class knows who is guilty..."³

Anuradha Ghandy further explained:

"The same ruling classes, whether imperialists, capitalists, feudals and the State they control, are the enemies of women because they uphold and perpetuate the patriarchal family, gender discrimination and the patriarchal ideology within that society. They get the support of ordinary men undoubtedly who imbibe the patriarchal ideas, which are the ideas of the ruling classes and oppress women. But the position of ordinary men and those of the ruling classes cannot be compared."⁴

The widespread promotion of patriarchal ideology today, through all major cultural institutions, lends support to the reactionary ideas of the ruling class. Understanding this, we believe it is necessary to win over and transform the ordinary people who are imbued with patriarchal ideology. And, at the same time, it is necessary to oppose class-collaboration and bourgeois feminism that obscure the role of the ruling class and its state in upholding gender discrimination and violence. That's why, this IWWD, we want to promote the call to organize and unite working women and gender-oppressed people against our common enemy. 

In order to correctly identify who our common enemy is, we first have to understand that there are generally two different types of societies: advanced capitalist and semi-feudal, semi-colonial. Examples of advanced capitalist countries would be the United States, and semi-feudal, semi-colonial countries would be India, the Philippines, Peru, and Ethiopia. In the semi-feudal countries, the structures maintaining the oppression of women are imperialism, bureaucrat capitalism, and feudalism. In the advanced capitalist countries, the structure maintaining women's oppression is capitalism-imperialism, including its ruling class and its state. This is important to understand because it explains why patriarchy manifests differently in different types of countries.

Imperialism “first allies itself with the ruling strata of the previous social structure, with the feudal lords and the trading and money-lending bourgeoisie, against the majority of the people. Everywhere imperialism attempts to preserve and to perpetuate all those pre-capitalist forms of exploitation (especially in the villages) which serve as the basis for the existence of its reactionary allies”. “Imperialism, with all its financial and military might, is the force in China that supports, inspires, fosters and preserves the feudal survivals, together with their entire bureaucratic-militarist superstructure.” - Chairman Mao

As activists in the United States, on occupied Turtle Island, we recognize that our fight against our own imperialist ruling class has reverberations to the struggle of women and gender-oppressed people everywhere. Like Mao said, "everywhere imperialism attempts to preserve and to perpetuate all those pre-capitalist forms of exploitation"⁵ In semi-feudal countries, patriarchy manifests as a result of feudalism, which is maintained in large part by imperialist domination. By weakening U.S. imperialism and building the revolutionary movement here, we also aid the struggle of women in semi-feudal countries. This IWWD, let us also reconfirm our commitment to internationalism and our responsibility to the oppressed and exploited masses of the world as the activists living within the belly of the beast.

Build the militancy of working women

As a militant organization of women and gender-oppressed people, we claim the legacy of militant women who came before us. We honor Comrade Jiang Qing from China, who Anuradha Ghandy called the "living symbol" of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and who was the wife of Chairman Mao. We honor Comrade Norah from Peru and her role in building the Popular Women's Movement which had international reverberations. We honor Comrade Anuradha Ghandy from India who gave her life in service of the revolution. We honor Comrade Martha Mebrahu from Ethiopia/Eritrea, who gave her life in service of the struggle for socialism and national liberation and became an international icon of resistance and revolution.  We also honor the women who contributed to the struggle for socialism and national liberation and against revisionism in our own country, like Comrade Claudia Jones.

And as oppressed people everywhere are enthused with revolutionary fervor, it is no coincidence that militant women have risen to the forefront. We honor Comrade Leila Khaled of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who has emerged as an international icon of the Palestine national liberation war. We recognize the women's units of the Martyr Omar Al-Qasim Forces of the National Resistance Brigades, the military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). We also honor the women who, although their name might not be mentioned, have given their life in service of the struggle for socialism and national liberation.

Join us for our IWWD Events

As we commemorate International Working Women's Day, let us become united in our resolve to smash the structures that perpetuate oppression and exploitation. Together, let us continue to organize, resist, and fight for a future where every woman worker is valued, empowered, and truly free. Join us in this collective struggle for our liberation! For more details, check out our instagram pages:

• Austin, Texas: Friday, March 8, 6:30pm (IG: halftheskyTX)
• McAllen, Texas: Saturday, March 9, 6:30pm (IG: halftheskyTX)
• Seattle, Washington: Friday, March 8, 4pm - 6pm (IG: halftheskyPNW)
• Los Angeles, California: Saturday, March 9, 10am - 2pm (IG: halftheskySoCal)
• Harlem, New York: Sunday, March 10, 1pm (IG: halftheskyNYC)

The new woman, new person, is first and foremost a militant and her place, our place, is in the struggle.  

References

1. Arthur Larie Gidam, Drums Of Protest In Khartoum​​​​​​​, 2022.

2. Lorena Barros Liberated Women II, 1971.

3. Alexandra Kollontai The Social Basis of the Woman Question, 1909.

4. Anuradha Ghandy Philosophical Trends in the Feminist Movement.

5. Communist Party of China and Communist Party of Peru, On Bureaucrat-Capitalism.