Dolly Veale, a co-initiator of the International Emergency Campaign and a contributor to revcom.us, welcomed the in-person and online attendees of the January 28 program at UUSF with substantive and thought-provoking comments. She started by dedicating the program to the late Carol Downer, who co-initiated the IEC together with her in 2020. [Read more about Carol's life and tributes to her after her death one year ago]

Welcome all and thank you to the UUSF for hosting this timely event.

Carol Downer was a witness to the 1979 revolution in Iran that overthrew the Shah but was hijacked by the misogynistic Islamic Sharia law, capitalist theocrats. She was best known as a fierce lifelong advocate for women’s liberation, especially for abortion freedom. She was also a supporter of the revcoms, including the work of revolutionary leader Bob Avakian. I will speak from my own viewpoint as a revolutionary communist who united with my late friend Carol and many others from different perspectives to stand people in Iran who were and are standing up and fighting for a better world.

Because we do live in extraordinary times in world history, I feel a responsibility to speak frankly tonight and not hold back. The film tonight is very powerful capturing the raw fury women feel about the world and the need to end gender oppression. But as much as I admire the courageous people in repeated uprisings in Iran, there is a question that asks itself – uprisings are not revolutions – so what is the way out. To be free or just to be – that is the question. We can here agree that this is unacceptable but why is it accepted? Because too many people have ruled real communist revolution – in particular the work of the new communism – off the map. Are we condemned to just rise up repeatedly or are we reaching for emancipation?

Surrounding the fierce uprising against women’s oppression in Iran that gained a lot of support in the world – not enough in this country frankly – was the situation described in a recent book titled “For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran’s Women-Led Uprising.” To cite one visceral passage:

…from 2021 to 2023 a woman was killed by one of the men in her family every four days in Iran, forty-three were shot with hunting rifles, Colts, even Kalashnikovs. Forty were stabbed to death. Thirty-five were suffocated by hand or with scarves and bedding. Six were burned to death as the men poured gasoline directly onto their flesh. Four were murdered by multiple hammer blows. Thirty more women were murdered in other unusual, violent ways such as mutilated or thrown from the roof of a building.

In April 2025, Ms. Magazine had an online article titled “Thousands of U.S. Women Are Killed Each Year. Where’s the Outrage?” It said that:

The U.N. issues annual femicide reports [in 2025]…finding a woman is murdered by her partner or family member every 10 minutes….In 2020, over 2,000 American women were murdered by men…

The world today is saturated with the most extreme misogyny and forms of patriarchy from top to bottom – from the highest offices – whether in Iran or in the U.S. or China -- down to the most private spaces between people. It is one where an ICE Gestapo can scream out “fucking bitch” after he makes the snuff film of himself shooting Renee Good in the face. Yes, the patriarchy predated capitalism but given where we are in human history of the capitalist imperialist world woven together, the liberation of women cannot happen without the emancipation of all humanity and vice versa. That is, what is required is a total revolution – which is the communist revolution based on the most far sighted and scientific understanding that has been developed by the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian whose work you can find on the website I contribute to, revcom.us  

What is the real problem and real solution to 1000s of years of patriarchy?

Until Mao died in 1976, China was a revolutionary society making inspiring changes towards eliminating oppression and inequality in society overall including the role of women as revolutionaries. It was said during that time that “women hold up half the sky.” Despite secondary weaknesses, it was an unprecedented breakthrough in human history towards a liberatory society.

You can find some of this history on the website of the Communist Party of Iran, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist (cpimlm.org). But more, they have also translated a lot of Bob Avakian’s work into Farsi that is on their website. They have great clarity about the new breakthroughs he has made in the science of communism – summing up the first wave that ended with the capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union in 1956 and then in China in 1976. These revolutions were defeated and Avakian has not only gone to work on why as to the major achievements but also the secondary errors, he has developed the theoretical tools for how we can actually get beyond the capitalist imperialist nightmare of our world today and get to a world based on “from each according to their ability, from each according to their need”, a freely associating community of human beings that is possible in our world. I urge everyone in earshot to read the article by C. Clark Kissinger at the website revcom.us titled “85 Down, I still have 15 to go…but Trump Has to Go Now.”

The film we will watch tonight brings me to this comment from a booklet titled “Break all the Chains. Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution.” It is a work that addresses the foundation and universal horror of class societies and how women and human society from bondage of a world divided in masters and slaves. I want to just read it and direct you to do your own homework by looking into the new communism at revcom.us and the book by that name authored by Avakian.

Others tonight will speak more to the recent uprising and brutal crackdown in Iran, including mass executions on the streets that threaten the lives of all the political prisoners. To the people who were inspired by the uprisings in Iran and to the brave people in the uprisings in Iran, as well as in the U.S., this is what it will take to get free – of ALL oppression and exploitation. This is food for thought and engagement if you are really interested in woman, life, freedom as a clarion call to not stay safe, but get free as we watch this documentary “Inside the Iranian Uprising”.

You cannot break all the chains, except one. You cannot say you want to be free of exploitation and oppression, except you want to keep the oppression of women by men. You can’t say you want to liberate humanity yet keep one half of the people enslaved to the other half. The oppression of women is completely bound up with the division of society into masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited, and the ending of all such conditions is impossible without the complete liberation of women. All this is why women have a tremendous role to play not only in making revolution but in making sure there is all-the-way revolution. The fury of women can and must be fully unleashed as a mighty force for proletarian revolution.