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Breaking the Chains is excited to announce a Patreon-exclusive series, “She Who Struggles,” a biographical series that tells the story of women who led the way in many fronts of struggle for liberation.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s fierce commitment to working class struggle stemmed from a love of her country and its people. In her own words: “ I fell in love with my country – its rivers, prairies, forests, mountains, cities and people. No one can take my love of country away from me! I felt then, as I do now, it’s a rich, fertile, beautiful land, capable of satisfying all the needs of its people. It could be a paradise on earth if it belonged to the people, not to a small owning class.”
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After her own escape to freedom, Harriet Tubman dedicated her life to the liberation of enslaved African Americans. Over the next ten years, she helped 300 people escape slavery through the Underground Railroad and never lost a single “passenger”. She was a woman of iron discipline – when someone decided to turn back, she would point her gun at them and say “You’ll be free or die.”
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She described the untold violence of the South African apartheid regime in a memoir: “They honestly believed that it was impossible for a [B]lack woman to have this kind of stamina, to be this stubborn. Because they were meant to break us and they could not believe that anyone would resist them like that?… We were the cannon fodder, we were the foot soldiers, we were vulnerable, and we were exposed to the viciousness of apartheid.”
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Petra Herrera was a woman who refused to let sexism define her revolutionary contribution and was determined to serve the advancement of her country. She recruited other women to join her in destroying the patriarchal expectations of the roles women played in the Mexican Revolution and defended their rights with both wily tactics and bullets. Her accomplishments have withstood the test of time, despite the attempts of men to erase her work from history.
Through skill and grit, the women dodged enemy fire and rained terror upon Nazi forces, denying them any hope of a peaceful sleep. In total, the Night Witches damaged or destroyed 17 river crossings, nine railways, two railway stations, 26 warehouses, 12 fuel depots, 176 armored cars, 86 prepared firing positions, and 11 searchlights.
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