Irish socialist feminists Camilla Fitzsimons and Isidora Duran, and DRUM Beats organizer Simran Thind

There have been two major socialist and socialist feminist victories in the last month. First was the election of socialist feminist Catherine Connolly to be president of Ireland and the other was the election of Zohran Mamdami to Mayor of NYC. But Mamdami’s election would not have been possible without the groundswell of activism by grassroots groups like Indivisible, Jews for Economic Justice and DRUM Beat, a progressive grassroots south asian group that really turned out the vote for Zohran in the south asian community. And similarly the election of a leftist feminist to President of Ireland wouldn’t not have been possible without the decades of struggle by Socialist feminists in Ireland.

Today we will focus on these successes by talking to the activists that make these victories possible.

In the first half of the show we will talk to two socialist feminist activists from Ireland to see what radical feminist organizing is happening there and what patriarchal forces they are up against. We will be joined by Camilla Fitzsimons who is a long-time socialist feminist and activist who has been involved in radical left-wing politics in Ireland all her adult life and has written two books on feminism in Ireland, “Ireland’s ongoing fight for Reproductive Rights” and her new book “Rethinking Feminism in Ireland.”

And we will talk to Isidora Duran who is an activist with the ROSA socialist feminist movement. ROSA was established on International Women’s Day 8 March 2013 in Ireland as a feminist, anti-austerity and anti-capitalist group, seeking to build the socialist feminist wing of the growing abortion rights movement and was a major force in overturning the ban on abortion in Ireland in 2018.

In the second half of the show I will talk to Simran Thind, a community organizer with the NYC grass roots progressive organization DRUM Beats. DRUM Beats is the sibling organization of DRUM ( Desis Rising Up and Moving) which is a multigenerational grassroots organization in NYC that focuses on building political power within working class South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities to achieve radical social change

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