Today marks the centenary of the birth of Norma Jeane Mortenson, the woman the world knew as Marilyn Monroe.
While the bourgeois press continues to gape at the ghost of a manufactured icon, the Communist Party of Britain reclaims the intellectual and the comrade.
Her politics were born of the assembly line. From the foster homes of Los Angeles to the Radioplane munitions factory, Monroe’s class consciousness was forged in the heat of proletarian survival. She was a woman of fierce intelligence, possessing an IQ that dwarfed the men who sought to manage her, yet she was reduced to a commodity to be bought, sold, and traded by the parasitic studio system.
The FBI files, which tracked her until her final breath, confirm what the establishment feared - a sex symbol who had read Marx and admired the Chinese Revolution. She was a militant anti-racist who used her platform to shatter the colour bar for Ella Fitzgerald, and she stood firm against the cowardice of the McCarthyite witch hunts when she married the blacklisted playwright Arthur Miller.
We must recognise that Monroe’s struggle was the intersection of class exploitation and patriarchal violence. She was a worker whose labour was her own body, super-exploited by a system that demanded she be beautiful and silent. Her life was a constant act of rebellion against the male gaze of capital. On her 100th birthday, we do not celebrate a "bombshell". We honour a clear-minded socialist who understood that the liberation of her class was inseparable from the liberation of her sex.
Happy Centenary, Comrade Marilyn. The struggle continues.
#MarilynMonroe
Heeding the call of the leftist trade unions, a mighty procession erupts in Kolkata to protest against the brutal attacks on working class people: street hawkers, railway hawkers, and all toiling masses!
#HawkerEviction#AntiPoorBJP
Comrade Pradeep & Kamal Gayen were beaten to death with bricks. Dipankar's parents burned alive before Panchayat polls. No human rights outrage then. In 15 years,we've counted 276 martyr comrades.
This Trinamool is mafia,nothing but thieves & goons.
And yes-class hatred matters
The demons come at night!
Last night, bulldozers,CRPF’s lathis & the cold machinery of a double engine govt's gift to the working class at Dum Dum station.
Today CPI(M) staged a protest march in Dum Dum against the eviction of hawkers from Dum Dum stn and its adjacent premises.
In Bengal,every home has a little prayer corner.That's where mothers pray for peace. Now BJP,just few days in power,is barging in,inspecting gods,asking why the room is "too small."Then threatening to call police? They don't know our culture.This isn't governance.This is cruelty.
A poor 'Hindu' street vendor.The bulldozer that ran over his stall was likely driven by the very Hindutva govt he once voted into power.He couldn’t save a thing except the idols he worshipped.Has he realized by now that the BJP’s Hindutva is only for the rich?
Yesterday at Dumdum
A hawker's cart isn't just a cart,it's a child's school fee,a family's dignity.
Last night in DumDum,the 'double engine' BJP govt's bulldozers & batons smashed hawkers' only way to earn bread.
This is the true face of BJP's "vikas"- not for the poor, but for crony corporates.
Let Bengal wake up to this picture: a 'Hindu' hawker, crying after Hindutva bulldozers destroyed her livelihood at Dum Dum station.
Let it be a messenger of the future-the state's poor, regardless of religion, facing this under the double-engine BJP government.
Since the BJP came to power in Bengal, large-scale evictions have been carried out. Street hawkers & railway hawkers are being bulldozed by the 'double engine' govts and only left-leaning trade unions are demanding that no hawker be evicted without rehabilitation.
Fight is on.✊🏽
Indian Railways cut 54,000 trees for Panna–Khajuraho line in Madhya Pradesh. It was found that plan had flaws! Now 50,000 more to be cut according to the new plan. Meanwhile, North/Central India reels under heat & water crisis. These forests are India's lungs. 🌳🔥
#SaveForests
The Delhi police brutally repressed a protest by #CPIM leaders and workers against the ED raids at the residence of Polit Bureau member and former Kerala Chief Minister @pinarayivijayan
The police detained General Secretary @MABABYCPIM, Polit Bureau members Mariam Dhawale and @VijooKrishnan, party leader Brinda Karat, and other leaders and workers.
Down with the barbarity of the Delhi police!
The BJP government of PM Narendra Modi used its political police to raid the home of the former Chief Minister of Kerala, @pinarayivijayan, a leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI (M). In Delhi, the CPI (M) held a demonstration at the political police headquarters. The police reacted with characteristic force, arresting a range of leaders, including MA Baby (@MABABYCPIM - here in white), being dragged to prison.
Condemn the behaviour of the BJP government and the police.
CITU, AITUC, INTUC protested at Dum Dum, demanding an immediate stop to reckless hawker evictions. Citing the mysterious death of hawker Promotho Mondal at Chakdah, we called for tripartite talks between railways, state govt & hawker orgs. A joint memorandum was submitted.