On this Page: Racist Sexist Atrocities in Immigration Jail here ♦ Communism, Not Feminism, will end Sexism here ♦
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Fight Racist-Sexist Atrocities in US Immigrant Concentration Camp, Not with Calls for Reforms — With Communist Revolution
A line has been crossed.
We’ve known about the terrible health conditions in US immigration prisons — paid for by workers’ tax dollars. Most are for-profit prisons. The US government guaranteed investors a minimum of 40,000 prisoners per day, at $700 each.
But now a courageous nurse has brought to light a sickening new horror. In the Irwin County (Georgia) ICE Detention Center, women have been subjected to hysterectomies (surgical sterilization) without full knowledge or consent.
Dawn Wooten, a Black LPN, risked her job by exposing this racist-sexist atrocity. Her allegations remind us of the Nazi war criminal, Dr. Joseph Mengele, who tortured Jewish children and women in Auschwitz.
They remind us of Dr. J. Marion Sims, “father of American gynecology.” He developed his techniques through 30 experimental surgeries, without anesthesia, on Anarcha, Betsy, Lucy and seven other enslaved women in the 1840s. Regarded as property, they couldn’t refuse or consent.
And of the Rockefeller-funded mass sterilization of women (and some men) in Puerto Rico from 1954-1965.
And of the Latina and other immigrant women in labor who were pressured and tricked into “consenting” to sterilization at LA County Hospital in the early 1970s.
And thousands of Indigenous women sterilized by the US Indian Health Service in the same decade.
And hundreds of Black women sterilized in California prisons through at least 2014.
We are inspired by the action of Dawn Wooten, a worker who stuck her neck out on behalf of immigrant women at the mercy of fascist ICE. Three non-profit organizations are pursuing the issue.
More of us need to rise to these times.
We have fought before against racist-sexist abuse. The struggle against LA County Hospital brought reforms. Monuments to Sims are falling. Yet we haven’t eradicated it. They are still doing it.
These times call on us to destroy capitalism, the system whose very nature brings forth these atrocities. Where everything – including medicine and prisons – is driven by money and profit.
Capitalism makes sure that everyone has someone to keep underfoot so you feel like you’re not at the bottom; you’re doing better than someone else. Racism and sexism divide and disempower the masses.
Capitalism turns everything and everyone into commodities to be bought or sold so capitalists can profit. It feeds us the idea that others are there for us to use as we please – as prison guards and doctors have done at Irwin and other immigration concentration camps.
This idea is a big part of sexism. It enabled the powerful men exposed by the #MeToo movement. It enabled coaches and gynecologists at Michigan State, USC, UCLA and other universities to get away with sexually abusing hundreds of young women athletes.
These times call on us to build communism. A society based on working collectively to meet everyone’s needs without money or profit. Where we are comrades, not commodities.
Where the fabric of everyday life will support the struggle against sexist and racist habits and ideas instead of reinforcing them. Where sexist-racist abuses will be prevented, suppressed, and increasingly rare. And, one day, unimaginable.
Communism, not Feminism, Will End Sexism
The popularity of the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is disappearing, little by little. The handling of the pandemic, the corruption within his own party, public insecurity and femicides that continue rising, are beginning to undermine the trust that many placed in him.
Feminist collectives in Mexico initially supported him. Now they are against his government. Not surprisingly, the president had turned his back on them by not taking their demands seriously.
More than 22 million women participated in the International Women’s Day march and the strike on March 9, showing their strength. Bosses estimate that they lost up to $1.49 billion in those two days. During those days of struggle, the masses faced police, neo-Nazis, and anti-abortion groups.
The feminist struggle in Mexico is massive and militant, but we must not believe that patriarchy is the source of the workers’ suffering. Its source is the racist and sexist profit system of private property, and the wage labor of the capitalist system.
Sexism is as old as the class struggle. However, capitalism has made it exponentially worse. In capitalist society women are forced to work outside the home, for a wage, and inside the home without pay. In Mexico, 65% of women work in unpaid household work. But there’s more than that: it divides the working class, for the benefit of the bosses. That is one of the dangers of sexism.
Feminism is another creation of the bosses to divide the working class. Feminist demands are reformist. Some of these can be achieved, but they do not end sexism, which is entrenched in the capitalist system.
Many people who participate in these struggles honestly believe that feminism will liberate the working masses from sexist exploitation. But that is a divisive mistake, which is why the bosses promote it. We must attend the protests of the feminists, and distribute our Communist literature to show the alternative of a classless society.
Communist Revolution is the only thing that can crush sexism. The International Communist Workers’ Party is committed to fighting for Communism; to building communist social relations, and to consciously fight to end sexism. It will be an arduous struggle but we are certain that we will achieve our goal. We have already started and we are in the struggle.
Comrades in Mexico
Read our pamphlet:
The Communist Fight Against Sexism: available here.