Dozens of Texans packed into a Methodist church in San Antonio, Texas for the “Women’s Socialism Conference,” organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation. The gathering was the first of its kind in Texas. Attendees traveled to San Antonio from across the state and the country to talk about the issues that women face in Texas and how socialist ideas and policies could be a solution.
According to Destiney Peña, an organizer with the PSL in San Antonio, the conference challenges the narrative that Texas is a “lost cause” politically, or a “state full of Trump supporters,” rather than a state with a diverse range of political opinions. “The narrative we hear about Texas and in the south in general is that everyone is afraid of socialism and that it’s a dirty word,” Peña said. “We were able to show that the movement for socialism is here and growing in Texas.”
Texas women vow to take on abortion bans
The conference began with a bold assertion by PSL organizer Cynthia Suarez: “There is no women’s liberation under capitalism.” Under capitalism, Suarez continued, “every reform that we’ve fought for, abortion access, childcare, paid leave, that can all be taken back,” referencing the ongoing attacks against abortion rights and the defeat of Roe v. Wade in 2022. “A reform that was fought for AND won by a movement led by working class women in the streets in the 1970s ultimately forced the Supreme Court to act,” said Suarez. “Ultimately, their movement won us abortion rights. But as we are seeing, that right is not guaranteed by courts alone.”
Claudia De la Cruz, who ran as a socialist against then-Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump during the 2024 US presidential election, traveled to San Antonio to address the conference. “If we fight we win, but if we don’t fight, we have already lost,” De la Cruz said to the crowd. “They are chipping away at every single gain that we have historically achieved.”
The abortion rights struggle is especially acute in Texas, in which ultra-conservative politicians have successfully enacted a near-total abortion ban a year before Roe was overturned by the Supreme Court. Analysis by ProPublica has revealed the consequences that the criminalization of abortion has had on Texan women: the sepsis rate soared and in hospital deaths of pregnant and post-partum women soared since Texas implemented its ban. Abortion bans have been linked to an increase in poverty, and a study of hundreds of pregnant women spanning a decade found that 72% of women denied abortion care ended up living in poverty.
Texas organizer, PSL member and medical student Mallika Kodati addressed the crowd at the conference, asserting that “the right to abortion in the United States was won as the result of a long, determined, organized struggle that pushed the courts to legalize abortion.”
“For years, women’s rights advocates organized speak-outs, pickets, referral networks, and underground abortion clinics. Coalitions came together to coordinate local and national action.”
According to Kodati, “In Texas, the impact [of abortion bans have] been especially deadly for women.” Since women are unable to seek abortion care in Texas, where abortion is prohibited under virtually all circumstances, “women are forced to make impossible choices, traveling hundreds of miles just to access the care they need, putting their health and lives at serious risk. This is not just neglect, it is violence. A violence that the system allows to happen because it treats women, especially poor women and women of color, as disposable.”
How do socialist women in Texas propose to win back abortion rights? According to organizers like Kodati, the solution is “struggle.”
“We must rebuild the women’s movement and dismantle this racist, sexist, capitalist system and fight for one that fights for women, workers, and all oppressed people. Now, more than ever, we need to fight for socialism.”
Immigrant women particularly vulnerable to anti-immigrant attacks
Texas, which shares a 1,254-mile border with Mexico, has for decades been a key site of struggle for the immigrant rights movement as waves of migrants have entered the country, fleeing instability in Latin America and the havoc wrought by US imperialism.
“Immigrant women, who are central to our societies, are particularly vulnerable to increasing overexploitation, gendered violence, and poverty,” said immigration attorney Laura Flores-Dixit, addressing the conference. Born and raised in San Antonio, Flores-Dixit has spent over 10 years working as an immigration lawyer in Texas and California. “Immigrant women work in every sector of the US economy – healthcare, education, hospitality, and more – but earn less than every other demographic and have the least amount of protections.”
“They often migrate across the globe alone or with young children simply to survive,” Flores-Dixit continued. “They brave the most oppressive and dangerous working environments and are targeted by imperialist conquest and war.”
Texas labor organizers fight back against “right to work”
Texas is one of the 26 conservative-led states in the US with so-called “right to work” laws, which give workers the option to receive union benefits without paying union dues or formally joining the union – a set of laws designed to undercut organized labor power. The labor movement in the US has labeled such laws as “the right to work for less,” and many have pointed to the blatantly racist origins of “right to work” legislation.
“As women, we’re no strangers to the conditions we’re faced with day in and day out of being forced to work to survive,” said Rachel Domond in her address to the conference, a New York City-based organizer and artist. “There’s a gender pay gap – we do the same work for less pay than men. There’s many barriers – invisible or not – for us advancing in our careers. We disproportionately face sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, and a lack of work-life balance as we’re often forced to take up a second shift at home. So, why then, would we allow the very people responsible for creating and enforcing those conditions tell us how we should or shouldn’t fight back against them?”
“The South is so often smeared with lies about how backwards our people are and how underdeveloped our consciousness about the world we’re living in is,” Domond asserted. “But the reality is, the South, and Texas in particular, is rich not only with history but struggle – with women playing leading roles. In 1919, in the El Paso Laundry Strike, Mexican-American women walked out to demand the recognition of their union. In 1972, garment workers right here in San Antonio took action in the Farah Strike for respect and better benefits. Today, workers across sectors in Texas are battling against the status quo and demanding more.”
“We’re fighting for socialism – a system in which the working class people who make society run actually run society,” Domond said. “We’re coming to get our check, our benefits, our dignity and so much more.”
