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  February 2016

Democrats and Republicans Against Women’s Rights

Portland: Class Struggle Picket Slams
Right Wing Anti-Abortion Rally

We won't go back! Union militants determined to confront antiabortion bigots, Portland, OR January 17.
(CSWP photo)

By Class Struggle Workers – Portland

The following article is reprinted from the Bridge City Militant No. 2, Winter 2016, published by Class Struggle Workers – Portland. The CSWP, an opposition tendency in the Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington labor movement, is politically supported by the Internationalist Group.

For a video of the action, see Portland Labor Defend Abortion Rights Rally.

On Sunday, January 17, a group of 50 union activists picketed a “youth rally” held by Oregon Right to Life, an anti-abortion group that held a day of action nationally to “mourn” the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and attack women’s right to abortion. With a banner calling on labor to defend abortion rights, Class Struggle Workers – Portland led a determined picket with members of the Painters, Stagehands, Carpenters, Teachers, Teamsters, IWW, and Laborers unions participating, as well as members of Black Rose Anarchist Federation, Portland Solidarity Network and many others. The crowd picketed the entrances to the event, causing delays and confusion for attendees.

Event organizers and attendees were shaken by the unexpected militant opposition, as pro-abortion chants drowned out their Jesus rock and soured their misogynist pizza party. They threatened to call the police, then tried shoving matches, and when that failed, resorted to juvenile taunts as they tried in vain to hide from the noisy protesters that surrounded the swank Pearl District catering facility.

Protesters chanted “Pro-life, your name’s a lie, you don’t care if women die” and “Not the church, not the state, women must decide their fate” as anti-abortion fanatics arriving from a rally held earlier in Pioneer Courthouse Square dodged the picket lines covering both entrances to the building.

Demonstrators chanted, “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Christian fascists go away!” Organizers of the anti-abortion rally included Oregon Right to Life executive director Gayle Atteberry, prominent in the far right of the local Republican Party, and ORL president Harmony Dawes, well-known for her virulent anti-Semitism and support of her Holocaust denier uncle Ted Pike’s National Prayer Network. Dawes (formerly Grant) has several anti-Jewish articles published on fascist David Duke’s website.

It will take nothing short of workers revolution to free women from domestic slavery.
(CSWP photo)

As the presentation inside got underway, pickets moved to cover large windows through which participants could hear their chants and see their signs. Speakers at our counter-rally highlighted the danger women face from anti-abortion bigots, and pointed out the need for a workers revolution to overturn capitalism and liberate women.

An IWW member addressed the crowd: “For them, you are a baby factory, an incubator for the worker of tomorrow, who can be exploited by a boss, another body to keep replicating the system of profit, a system that keeps your boss living large and you from getting the services you need…We need a revolutionary organization.”

A member of Class Struggle Workers Portland addressed the crowd, saying, “What does that mean for women when abortion is illegal? When there are no clinics? When you can’t get access? Women die every year from trying to self-terminate pregnancies because they can’t obtain a safe, legal abortion. We need a society that can collectivize all aspects of housework, of child rearing, in order to truly liberate women. But in order to do that we need a working class revolution, an international revolution.”

An Internationalist Group spokesman explained, “We’re calling on labor to defend the right to abortion, to defend the clinics, which are under attack by terrorist elements supported by some of the people in there.”

Union militants intend for the January 17 picket to be a beginning for organizing more solid and numerous labor-centered defense of abortion clinics. Speakers at the rally recalled the recent terrorist attacks on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs and the firebombing of a Pullman, Washington Planned Parenthood last September. CSWP picket signs called for “Free Abortion on Demand,” while speakers warned that the Democratic Party was no friend of working women. This party of bloody imperialist war supports restrictions on abortion access that make a mockery of the “right” to abortion for poor and working class women. We need a class struggle workers party to lead the fight for the emancipation of women, an essential part of the struggle for the emancipation of the working class.

Why CSWP Says “Labor: Defend the Clinics!”

“Right to Life, your name’s a lie, you don’t care if women die!” Labvor picket outside January 17 anti-abortion rally. (CSWP photo)

Point six of the Class Struggle Workers – Portland program states: “Fight sexism, defend the rights of women. For free, high quality 24-hour child care. For full reproductive rights, including free abortion on demand as part of a socialized universal health care system. For labor defense of abortion clinics against reactionary terrorists....” And for us, program is not just some nice words, but a set of principles for action.

We are an opposition tendency in the trade unions, a tendency seeking to change the policy of the unions and to replace the current union leadership with one committed to the policy of class struggle. CSWP is not the only left opposition in the labor movement. But there is no other group in the Portland-area unions that is trying to get the unions to take a stand on the abortion question.

Most union lefts don’t draw the line in the unions on the right to abortion because it’s “divisive,” so in practice these not-so-radicals limit themselves to issues of “bread and butter” and “democracy.” Sure, so long as nothing serious is at stake, they will carry on about all sorts of “social justice.” But in pursuit of opportunist alliances and temporary popularity, they won’t fight the capitalist system and all the oppression it creates — oppression of women, blacks, immigrants, gays and lesbians, etc. In our epoch of decaying capitalism, however, if you can’t fight the capitalist system politically you can’t win any serious labor struggle.

At the January 17 picket, we chanted “Pro-life, your name’s a lie, you don’t care if women die.” It is often noted that the anti-abortion movement’s professed concern for the “life” of the fetus is simply a hypocritical ploy in their agenda to put the woman in her “place.” And while the religious bigots truly believe that they are marching under the banner of heaven, the oppression of women is not just a relic of biblical times. The drive to put women in their place, as incubators and house-slaves, comes from the capitalist system.

It is immensely beneficial to the bosses to keep half of the working class in that special place, tasked with doing most or all of the unpaid work that keeps the labor supply coming back to work from day to day and from generation to generation. So long as a woman, by reason of a pregnancy that she is not allowed to abort, can be condemned against her will to 20 or so years of this second shift, then you can forget about “equal rights.” And the bosses have even got some of the workers believing that this is the way things ought to be, that this arrangement is some kind of “human nature.”

It doesn’t have to be this way: oppression is not “human nature” but the product of a specific social order, the rule of capital. The fight against capitalism – the class struggle – is not just about wages and benefits. The class struggle includes the fight for the liberation of women: for the right of women to control their own bodies, for the socialization of “women’s work,” free child care, cooking, cleaning and laundry services. Likewise, the struggle for black liberation, including of doubly oppressed black women, is part of the class struggle.

With working-class women standing at the forefront of the class struggle, leading together with their male comrades, our class will become an unstoppable force. ■

To contact Class Struggle Workers – Portland, write to: cswp@csw-pdx.org. Visit the CSWP website at http://csw-pdx.org/