Celebrate International Working Women’s Day by Joining the Struggle Against Imperialism!

Celebrate International Working Women’s Day by Joining the Struggle Against Imperialism!

International Women’s Day (IWD) was founded by working-class women who staunchly opposed war and fought for labor rights, peace, and equality.  Rooted in the anti-war and socialist movements of the early 20th century, IWD emerged as a day to challenge oppression and demand justice. However, IWD has been co-opted by intersectional imperialists—women of diverse cultural backgrounds who unite under the banner of the U.S. empire, perpetuating violence and destabilization across the globe. This betrayal of its radical origins demands a reckoning.

The U.S. empire, draped in the language of feminism and empowerment, has weaponized IWD to justify its gangsterism. In Gaza, U.S.-backed Israeli forces have killed and displaced thousands of women and children, destroying homes, hospitals, and schools under the guise of "security." In Sudan, U.S.-aligned forces and foreign interventions have fueled a devastating civil war, displacing millions and leaving women vulnerable to sexual violence and starvation. In Haiti, U.S. imperialism has propped up corrupt regimes and destabilized the nation, leaving women to bear the brunt of poverty, violence, and systemic collapse. Meanwhile, in the U.S., Black women in cities like Chicago and rural areas like the Mississippi Delta face systemic neglect, police violence, and economic exploitation. These are not isolated incidents but the direct consequences of Western imperialism, which prioritizes profit and power over human lives.

The celebration of IWD by those complicit in these atrocities is a grotesque distortion of its founding principles. True solidarity with women worldwide means opposing the systems that exploit and destroy their lives. It means standing against the U.S. empire’s wars, sanctions, and interventions that disproportionately harm women in the Global South. It means reclaiming IWD as a day of resistance against imperialism, capitalism, and patriarchy.

For the Black Alliance for Peace, the task is reclaiming International Women’s Day as a day of struggle, not of celebration—a day to dismantle Western imperialism and fight for a world where all women can live in freedom and dignity.