I want us to remember

I want their names on our lips

I want us to remember that International Women’s Day was birthed by the Socialist Party of America. That before it was co-opted and commercialized by corporations, and white washed by the girl boss generation, it was an anti-capitalist commemoration of far-left labor movements.

I want us to remember that the women who embody the true spirit of International Women’s Day do not wear pink pussy hats and pant suits. They wear keffiyehs and armored press vests. They aren’t sitting on the boards of billion dollar companies; they are organizing a revolution.

I want us to remember the over 9000 Palestinian women killed by Israeli bombs, paid for by U.S. tax dollars, in just the past 5 months alone. I want us to remember the 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza without access to food and water, many of whom will be forced to have cesareans without anesthesia. I want us to remember the estimated 37 mothers who die in Gaza every day, and the little girls who will never grow up to be women. I want us to remember freedom fighters like Leila Khaled and Fatima Bernawi who defended their homeland through armed struggle; journalists like Bisan Owda and Hind Khoudary who have risked their lives reporting on the devastation in Gaza for the past 154 days, who persist against all odds.

I want the names of Palestinian women on our lips.

I want us to remember the women of the Congo who are exposed to astronomical levels of gender based violence and sexual exploitation, resultant of a genocide driven by Western Imperialism and corporate greed. The women the world has forgotten. The women the world has forsaken. I want us to remember Congolese activists like Pauline Opango Lumumba and Léonie Abo, the women behind the men of the Kwilu rebellion.

I want the names of Congolese women on our lips.

I want us to remember the women of Iran who fearlessly loosen their headscarfs to reveal their hair, despite compulsory hijab laws brutally enforced by the IRGC. I want us to remember the footage of Iranian school girls ripping and burning and stomping on photos of Khamenei, removing their hijabs and chanting azadi (freedom) in hallways and classrooms. I want us to remember Shirin Ebadi, the first woman from the muslim world to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, a judge and a lawyer who risked her life taking pro-bono cases for dissidents of the 1979 revolution, and was later arrested and jailed for her bold acts of dissent.

And I want us, as always, to remember Mahsa (Jina) Amini, whose death at the hands of the morality police sparked a revolution. I want us to never forget Zan, Zendegi, Âzâdi—Woman, Life, Freedom—the rallying cry that erupted in her name. I want us to remember Niloofar Hamedi, the journalist who broke the news of Mahsa’s death, who is still being held in solitary confinement at Evin Prison.

I want the names of Iranian women on our lips.

I want us to know the names of revolutionary women—the freedom fighters, the martyrs, the poets, the exiles. I want us to put respect on their names, to make a significant effort to pronounce them properly, the way they were meant to be said. I want us to remember their sacrifices, their struggles, their courage in the face of unimaginable circumstances. I want their names to be the ones we associate with Women’s Day because it is they who have acted in accordance with its origins.

Theirs is the honor, the legacy, the path that leads to liberation.

Let us follow.