In our recent article on the Gaza Board of Peace, we regret that portions of the text may have mischaracterized the motivations of Palestinians who choose to remain in their homeland. The article suggested that workers who stay are primarily motivated by firm nationalist commitments and may support Hamas. While nationalism may influence some workers, it was not our intention to imply that remaining in one’s homeland during a genocide is simply an expression of nationalist ideology.

Many Palestinian workers remain because of deeply rooted social, economic, and historical realities — including the lasting trauma of the Nakba in 1948, after which many Palestinians were permanently barred from returning to their homes. For many, the fear of displacement and permanent exile is a profound and legitimate reason for staying. We sincerely apologize for language that may have appeared dismissive or insensitive to these realities.

Additionally, the article stated or implied that there has historically been no class-conscious resistance in Palestine. There were significant efforts toward a binational, communist-led struggle in Palestine during the 1920s and 1930s. However, these movements ultimately fragmented along nationalist lines. Palestinian nationalism has often entailed loyalty to a Palestinian ruling class — a small elite that has, at times, exploited Palestinian workers in its own interests or in collaboration with successive colonial and imperial authorities. To read our analysis on Palestine and Israel visit https: tinyurl.com/4h8c55z4

The following is an excerpt of a speech that was given at our annual Pre-May Day International Women’s Day brunch in Brooklyn, New York. To read the speech in its entirety visit www.plp.org. 

Thank y’all so much for coming out to celebrate International Working Class Women’s Day!! 

Today, we are here for a communist celebration of March 8th—where we recognize the crucial role that women have played in the fight against capitalism. We are here to struggle for a world where this celebration extends far beyond one day in March. That world will be won through the revolutionary leadership of women. 
We know this because it is our very leadership that has historically propelled us toward that world.

Women workers lead the way to revolution!

After the revolution in Cuba, women led education programs to combat high illiteracy rates that disproportionately affected rural women. Integrated groups of urban Cubans moved to the countryside to teach. And just two years after the revolution, illiteracy rates had fallen from 23 percent to 3 percent. Under socialism, the working class was uplifted through a collective antiracist, anti-sexist fight against capitalism’s failings.

In PLP, leadership from women of color has been integral to our growth, and the sharpening of our fight against capitalism. 

Our last chairwoman, Gracie, led with force into the 21st century, providing militant direction as our organization fought against racist neo-nazis and imperialist war. Now, leadership has been passed from that chairwoman to an integrated collective. 

We are here to affirm that, therefore, it will be leadership from women, specifically Black and Brown women, that will liberate ourselves from capitalism’s chains. So we stand here as the fertilizer for our next harvest.

And everyone is necessary in this fight, sexism hurts us all. Women were initially forced into free domestic labor so men could be exploited more heavily at work. But in a communist world imagined by PLP, we would abolish the entire profit system. And  “without that system, there will be no motive for gendered inequality, and without that, gendered exploitation and violence would be collectively confronted and, over time, eliminated.” 

This task is no small feat, but let us be invigorated from the recent communist struggles led by women that are displayed around the room. And let that motivation deepen by the multi-racial, gender-inclusive, multi-generational crowd that fills it. 

Our class is the only one we can truly depend on to liberate ourselves. We confront police terror in Brooklyn, with the families of Kyam Livingston and Shantel Davis. We strike at the Stella D’oro cookie factory in the Bronx. We occupy the La Casita community center in Chicago.

And our fight extends far beyond the US. Sexism knows no borders—it follows through the Darien Gap, at the southern border of Mexico, in the midst of war in Sudan, at the intersection of Church and Nostrand, and in the West Bank. Our revolutionary struggle must be as ignorant to borders as sexism and racism are. We are building an international fight that will abolish capitalism and the divisive borders it creates.  

So though capitalism has cut our movement at the trunk, they have no idea our roots are alive and well, deepening with each action. One root when we take the streets and resist ICE raids. When women in Sudan form grassroots committees against sexual violence in wartime, another root strengthens. “The only solution is a communist revolution” amplified for all of Flatbush to hear, that’s another root. Come to our May Day (May 2nd)—that’s another. Join our Party, another. 

So, while at the surface we may only see a stump, our efforts are deepening, entangling, until we force them to break ground with communist revolution. I’m fighting for the day that my sister, her beautiful friends, you, me, and our class siblings harvest our revolutionary fruit, plentiful and sweet. 

Happy International Working Class Women’s Day.

PLP members in the Bay Area attended a rally for International Working Women’s Day (IWWD), with about 100–150 workers present. Attached is the flyer we distributed and discussed, explaining how the collective action of working-class women led to the creation of this day and contributed to both the 1917 Russian Revolution and the revolution in China.

One new friend met with us and helped distribute the flyer. We also distributed copies of CHALLENGE and gathered a few contacts to follow up with, as well as people interested in joining our May Day celebration. In total, we handed out about 100 flyers, including to people walking by the demonstration.

We don’t think the numbers are the most important aspect of this action. Rather, what matters is the struggle that this flyer represents—the discussions it can spark with friends, family, and comrades.

International Working Women’s Day (IWWD)

Today the media often shortens this to International Women’s Day, but International Working Women’s Day began as a working-class holiday, rooted in the long history of women-led struggles around the world.

The history below highlights collective action, not individuals. Working-class women organized, fought, and led struggles against class oppression. In 1977, the United Nations officially recognized March 8 as International Women’s Day, but the day itself was built through decades of struggle by working women.

These examples show how class consciousness and multi-racial, multi-ethnic unity—among women, men, and all workers—develop through collective struggle, often with leadership from women.

Hidden histories of women’s struggles in the U.S.

Much of the history of women-led struggles has been hidden or erased.

• Women and slave revolts: Historian Rebecca Hall, in Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, documents rebellions on slave ships during the Middle Passage. Through research into slave ship manifests, she shows that enslaved women fought their captors throughout the Americas, though these stories were largely erased from official history.
• Indigenous resistance: There are many untold stories of Indigenous women who fought European colonization and westward expansion in the Americas.
• Women abolitionists: Black and white women organized against the system of slave labor and helped lead the Underground Railroad.
• 1832: Black women founded the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society in Massachusetts. Black women were leading abolitionists in both the North and the South, though many of their stories remain buried.
• 1833: Quaker women founded the Female Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia. In 1838, racist mobs attacked their interracial meetings. The Second Anti-Slavery Convention brought together 175 Black and white abolitionists.
• 1848: These struggles helped lead to the first Women’s Rights Convention in New York.

Women lead labor struggles

Women workers also led major labor battles against capitalist industrialization.

• 1857: On March 8 in New York City, garment workers organized a strike against inhuman working conditions, a 12-hour workday, and poverty wages. Hundreds of women demonstrated across the city.
• 1907–1908: Women on the Lower East Side of New York organized a rent strike that lasted until January 1908.
• 1908: About 15,000 women marched through New York City, demanding shorter hours, better pay, and improved working conditions in the garment industry.
• 1912: The “Bread and Roses” Strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, led largely by immigrant women and children, became one of the most famous labor struggles in U.S. history.

Women workers and revolution

Women’s struggles have also helped spark revolutionary movements.

• February 23, 1917 (March 8 in the Western calendar): After nearly three years of brutal World War I, women textile workers in Petrograd struck over food shortages. Within days:
• 75,000 workers struck
• Then 200,00.0
• Eventually nearly 400,000 workers, including students, teachers, and office workers.
• Their demand for “Bread and Peace” helped ignite the Russian Revolution, forcing the Tsar to abdicate. Later that year, the October Revolution overthrew the Provisional Government and established a workers’ state.
• China’s Revolution: During the Chinese revolutionary movement, the slogan “Women hold up half the sky” reflected the central role women played in building the revolutionary movement led by the Communist Party, even though many individual stories remain untold

Today

Today, March 8, 2026, living conditions for workers are worsening around the world. War, genocide, and economic crisis continue under capitalism and imperialist rivalry.

At the same time, resistance is growing.

Let’s build a movement capable of overthrowing capitalism and creating a communist world based on sharing and collective power.

Israelis are systematically lied to by state run media about the costs of war and results of their government's military campaigns. After the Hamas incursion of 2023, untrue stories of mass rape and beheaded babies were widely disseminated. The mass destruction and genocide in Gaza has also been hidden from view.

A friend in Israel writes that the same holds true in the current war. There are five major TV channels in Israel that broadcast 24/7, but they are state run. Panels of ex Israeli Defense Forces generals, Mossad (Israeli CIA), Shin Bet (internal security) and pro-government professors monopolize the newscasts and glorify Israel's military actions. They also give warnings about incoming Iranian missiles, but are forbidden from telling where strikes have occurred. 

During a recent day, our friend had to enter a shelter seven times, four times from 1-6 AM. People sleep with their phones by their ears to hear the warnings to be near a shelter. For the first week of the war no one had to go to work and schools were closed, but then work was opened but not schools. Parents with small children then have a quandary.

Major media outlets in the U.S. also agree to allow the Israeli military to censor their reporting in order to maintain access. In general, this applies most strictly to any video of live action. Some arrests have even been made for violating this policy (CNN 3/6). And we know that no international journalists have ever been allowed into Gaza.

There have been some small antiwar protests, but these are also not publicized except on social media. A small wildcat demo by 20 young people was broken by the police who declared it to be an illegal demo (you need a license for a demo with more than 10 people). They arrested two and released them a few hours later.

This media control is only an exaggeration of what takes place around the world, adding ignorance to the nationalism, racism, and pro-capitalist propaganda doled out to all workers to make them support the bosses' wars. The only antidote is to build a mass international movement uniting students, workers and soldiers to build a world they run - a communist world.