July 2, 2011

AMP Political Statement

From Anarchist. TransFeminist. Amazon. by Jennifer Amelia Rose (author's profile)

Transcription

AMP Political Statement
(Amended and Revised March 8, 2011)
By the Central Committee AMP

I. Historical Analysis
The Amazons of classic Greek mythology were a nation or tribe of warrior women who inhabited lands and territories in the region of ancient Scythia (i.e. modern Ukraine) and Anatolia (Turkey). In Pontus, near the Black Sea, they formed an independent nation-state under the government and leadership of Queen Hippolyte, and they built the ancient cities of Ephesis, Paphos, Sinope, and Smyrna.1

The Amazon civilization and culture was strictly matriarchal, and their society was structured and militarist. Religion and spiritual practice were centered around devotion to the goddess Artemis, the divine huntress. Amazon girls were trained from an early age in the arts of war.2

The Amazons are thought to be the first humans to domesticate horses. They were the fiercest enemies of the Greeks and rejected any form of patriarchy. Amazon warriors are known to have participated in the epic Trojan War.3

Eventually, the Amazon nation was conquered, their territories occupied, and their feminist culture suppressed by their enemies—the imperialist Greeks. Since then, for over 2,000 years, women have suffered every form of femicide, rape, and slavery imaginable under Christian, Islamic, and [redacted] European colonial patriarchy.

II. The Women's Liberation Movement
Throughout the sad history of odious misogyny, pockets of feminist resistance and examples of heroine leadership have continued to inspire hope for the liberation of women.

On July 20, 1848, at the Seneca Falls conference of abolitionists and suffragists, the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments was officially approved by 64 women and 36 men, leading to the eventual passage of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.4

In 1910, at an international conference of communists and socialists (including Lenin), March 8 was proclaimed International Women's Day on the anniversary of a general strike by women workers in New York.5

The Women's Liberation Movement of the 1960s and '70s gave us feminist leaders such as Gloria Steinem and Simone de Beauvoir, and theorists such as Bell Hooks, who published Ain't I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism in 1981.6

Jiang Qing (1914-1991), the wife and successor of Mao, was the world's foremost revolutionary feminist leader of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the so-called Gang of Four in China. She was arrested and imprisoned during the counter-revolutionary coup d'etat by revisionists that occurred after Mao's death, from 1976 until her May 14, 1991 "suicide".7

The movement has reached an impasse and has been co-opted by an imperialist gender aristocracy of First World psuedo-feminists; thus the condition of the majority of the world's women, particularly those in Third World oppressed nations, have not improved. In many cases, they have only gotten worse.8

The failure of the movement is the direct result of a lack of organizational structure and vanguard leadership. "It now needs to establish its priorities, articulate its goals, and pursue its objectives in a coordinated way."9

III. Organization and Objectives
On this 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, a new offensive from the vantage point of the Third World proletarist is imperative to realize Women's Liberation as an integral part of the internationalist anti-imperialist movement. When women all over the world RISE UP, that will be the day of victory for the People's Revolution!

The Amazon Maoist Party (AMP) was formed in late 2010 in response to a perceived absence of feminist leadership and women's projects withing MIM (prisons) as well as a line disagreement on gender.

After extensive political debate, criticism and self-criticism, and accusations of subjective opportunism, the Central Committee AMP (CCAMP) has conducted a thorough reassessment of its organizational and strategic objectives and has unanimously passed the following resolutions:
1. AMP upholds the Six Main Points of MIM (prisons) and is in general agreement with MiM except for its gender line.10
2. AMP advocates the concept of Feminist Resistance and Amazon national liberation in order to secure Women's Liberation, including women's collective rights to self-determination, land and territory, and ownership of the means of production.
3. AMP stands in solidarity with the anti-imperialist united front and strategy urges ALL women (biological, LGBTQ, oppressed nations, etc.) and revolutionary comrades to join and support our movement.

Viva las Amazonas!

Central Committee AMP

Notes
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazons
2. http://www.essortment.com/amazons-warrior-women-ancient-myth-64788.html
3. Ibid
4. Michael Schuman, "The Other Declaration", The History Channel Magazine, March/April 2011.
5. "International Women's Day", Maoist Sojourner, No. 4, August 1995, (Maoist International Movement, 1991), p.4
6. Jennifer Williams, "What Would Bell Hooks Say?", Ms. Spring 2011, (Liberty Media for Women LLC, 2011), p. 40 http://msmagazine.com/blog/2010/09/10/what-would-bell-hooks-say/
7. "Death of a People's Hero", MIM Notes, No. 54, July 1991, (Maoist International Movement, 1991), p.7
8. "Gender and Revolution", MIM Notes Special Supplement, March 1991, (Maoist International Movement, 1991)
9. Jo Freeman, "The Tyranny of Structurelessness", Berkeley Journal of Psychology (1970)
10. "What is the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons?", Under Lock and Key, No. 18, January/February 2011, (MIM Prisons, 2011), p.2 https://www.prisoncensorship.info/
11. Article draft written by comrade Jennifer Gann (https://betweenthebars.org/blogs/490/john-jennifer-gann)

"If the feminist struggle maintained its ties with the class struggle, it could shake a society in a way that would completely overturn it."
—Jean-Paul Sartre

Support
The
Proletarian Feminist Vanguard!

Write to:
J. Gann, E-23852
California Correctional Institute
P.O. Box 1902 (4A-6C-205)
Tehachapi, CA 93581-5902

[Drawing of animated Wonder Woman jumping and whirling around her lasso.]
AMAZON WARRIOR
Viva las Amazonas!
Gann 2011

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