Sunsara Taylor | |
|---|---|
 Taylor pictured in 2011 | |
| Years active | 2006–present |
| Political party | Revolutionary Communist Party, USA |
| Website | twitter |
Sunsara Taylor is an American far-left political activist and member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. [1] She has been a vocal opponent of the anti-abortion movement, the sex industry, and U.S. imperialism, having previously debated these topics on Fox News.
Taylor has been a co-host of TheRNL – Revolution, Nothing Less – Show, a weekly YouTube show that advocates for global communist revolution grounded in Bob Avakian's work, since its founding in 2020. [2] Many of the groups she leads have been described as front groups for RevCom and Avakian. [3]
In 2005, Taylor co-founded World Can't Wait. [4] In a 2006 article for the group, "Comparing Bush to Hitler: Lessons for Today", she wrote that the presidency of George W. Bush was "fascistic", and called for Bush to be "driven from office". [5]
Taylor is also a frontwoman for Stop Patriarchy and led the group's 2013 promotional tour, the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride. [6] [7] Stop Patriarchy has been described as the "pro-choice group Texas feminists hate" and has been criticized by Texans for Reproductive Justice for its "messaging, tactics, dishonesty, and racism". [6] The group has elicited controversy for wearing chains and chanting, "Forced motherhood is female enslavement!" [8] In response, Taylor accused Texans for Reproductive Justice of hypocrisy, citing their use of a flag that flew over half of Mexico and calling their hypocrisy "stunning". [6] Taylor also led protests against the release of the film Fifty Shades of Grey with Stop Patriarchy. [9]
In December 2015, Taylor and longtime activist Carl Dix announced the formation of Refuse Fascism, with the aim of stopping Donald Trump from being elected president in 2016. [10] As a representative of the group, she spoke at the 2017 Women's March on Washington, [11] protested outside Trump Tower, tweeted video of protesters burning the U.S. flag, [12] and drew media attention for comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler during an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight . [13]
In an interview with KPFK, Taylor called for Trump to be "driven from office". [14]
On August 12, 2018, Taylor and other supporters of Refuse Fascism and the RCP took part in protests organized against the far-right Unite the Right 2 rally in Washington, D.C. [15]
In January 2022, Taylor, Merle Hoffman, and other pro-abortion rights activists initiated Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights (RU4AR), an ad-hoc coalition formed to launch mass protests aimed at preventing the U.S. Supreme Court from overturning Roe v. Wade , affecting abortion rights in the United States. [16] RU4AR's launching statement was signed by prominent figures in the arts, law, and the feminist movement, including Rosanna Arquette, Cornel West, Gloria Steinem, and V (formerly Eve Ensler). [17]
Throughout 2022, Taylor and other members of RU4AR led pro-abortion rights protests at places including St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Union Square in New York City. [18] [19] The group has been accused of being a front for the Revolutionary Communist Party and diverting money away from abortion providers to RevCom's own operating structure, [20] a charge that Taylor and her colleagues strenuously deny. [21]
During the 2016 Republican National Convention, Taylor served as a spokesperson [22] for the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, addressing reporters outside the Cleveland Justice Center in what the Los Angeles Times called a rare moment of attention for the party, and declaring that "America was never great". [23] She later alleged Cleveland police had lied when they said they had intervened to stop a flag burning due to a protester accidentally setting himself on fire. [22]
Taylor hosts the weekly WBAI-FM radio show We Only Want The World, and formerly co-hosted Equal Time for Free Thought on the same station. She has written for Revolution and Truthdig, and been featured as a guest on The O'Reilly Factor , Tucker Carlson, the Sean Hannity Show , and other Fox shows.
The Republican Party, also known as the GOP, is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. It emerged as the main political rival of the Democratic Party in the mid-1850s.
Gloria Marie Steinem is an American journalist, social-political activist, and former CIA-affiliate who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Phyllis Stewart Schlafly was an American attorney, conservative activist, author, and anti-feminist spokesperson for the national conservative movement. She held paleoconservative social and political views, opposed feminism, gay rights and abortion, and successfully campaigned against ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held, 5–4, that burning the Flag of the United States was protected speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as doing so counts as symbolic speech and political speech.
The Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) is an organization affiliated with the Republican Party which advocates for equal rights for LGBT+ Americans, by educating the LGBT+ community and Republicans about each other.
Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson is an American conservative political commentator and writer who hosted the nightly political talk show Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News from 2016 to 2023. Since his contract with Fox News was terminated, he has hosted Tucker on X. An advocate of former U.S. President Donald Trump, Carlson has been described as "perhaps the highest-profile proponent of 'Trumpism'", and as "the most influential voice in right-wing media, without a close second."
Code Pink: Women for Peace is an internationally active left-wing anti-war 501(c)(3) organization that focuses on issues such as drone strikes, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, Palestinian statehood, the Iran nuclear deal, Saudi Arabia, and Women Cross DMZ.
The March for Life is an annual rally and march against the practice and legality of abortion, held in Washington, D.C., either on or around the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a decision legalizing abortion nationwide which was issued in 1973 by the United States Supreme Court. The participants in the march have advocated the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which happened at the end of the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization on June 24, 2022. It is a major gathering of the anti-abortion movement in the United States and it is organized by the March for Life Education and Defense Fund.
The World Can't Wait (WCW) is a coalition group in the United States dedicated to mobilizing mass resistance to what it describes as crimes committed by the US government. Initially formed as an ad-hoc coalition to organize mass protests to force the George W. Bush Administration from office, WCW has also protested against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the continued operation of the Guantanamo Bay prison, the use of torture by the U.S. government under both the Bush and Obama administrations, and against anti-abortion groups and legislation.
Merle Hoffman is an American journalist and activist.
Femen is a Ukrainian radical feminist activist group whose goal is to protect women's rights. The organization became internationally known for organizing controversial topless protests against sex tourism, religious institutions, sexism, homophobia, and other social, national, and international topics. Founded in Ukraine, the group is now based in France. Femen describes its ideology as being "sextremism, atheism and feminism".
The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA is a new communist party in the United States founded in 1975 and led by its chairman, Bob Avakian. The party organizes for a revolution to overthrow the system of capitalism and replace it with a socialist state, with the final aim of world communism. The RCP is frequently described as a cult around Avakian.
Feminism in Mexico is the philosophy and activity aimed at creating, defining, and protecting political, economic, cultural, and social equality in women's rights and opportunities for Mexican women. Rooted in liberal thought, the term feminism came into use in late nineteenth-century Mexico and in common parlance among elites in the early twentieth century. The history of feminism in Mexico can be divided chronologically into a number of periods with issues. For the conquest and colonial eras, some figures have been re-evaluated in the modern era and can be considered part of the history of feminism in Mexico. At the time of independence in the early nineteenth century, there were demands that women be defined as citizens. The late nineteenth century saw the explicit development of feminism as an ideology. Liberalism advocated secular education for both girls and boys as part of a modernizing project, and women entered the workforce as teachers. Those women were at the forefront of feminism, forming groups that critiqued existing treatment of women in the realms of legal status, access to education, and economic and political power. More scholarly attention is focused on the Revolutionary period (1915–1925), although women's citizenship and legal equality were not explicitly issues for which the revolution was fought. The Second Wave and the post-1990 period have also received considerable scholarly attention. Feminism has advocated for the equality of men and women, but middle-class women took the lead in the formation of feminist groups, the founding of journals to disseminate feminist thought, and other forms of activism. Working-class women in the modern era could advocate within their unions or political parties. The participants in the Mexico 68 clashes who went on to form that generation's feminist movement were predominantly students and educators. The advisers who established themselves within the unions after the 1985 earthquakes were educated women who understood the legal and political aspects of organized labor. What they realized was that to form a sustained movement and attract working-class women to what was a largely middle-class movement, they needed to utilize workers' expertise and knowledge of their jobs to meld a practical, working system. In the 1990s, women's rights in indigenous communities became an issue, particularly in the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. Reproductive rights remain an ongoing issue, particularly since 1991, when the Catholic Church in Mexico was no longer constitutionally restricted from being involved in politics.
Anilú Elías is a journalist, publicist, theoretical scholar, professor and feminist activist from Mexico City, who has been on the front lines of the fight for reproductive rights of Mexican women. Her written works focus on gender studies from a feminist perspective and evaluate the impact of patriarchy on women and its ties with sexual violence. She is a professor at the College of Mexico and a publicist at Dirección Creativa, managing advertising in both the United States and Mexico.
LGBTQ+ conservatism in the United States is a social and political ideology within the LGBTQ+ community that largely aligns with the American conservative movement. LGBTQ+ conservatism is generally more moderate on social issues than social conservatism, instead emphasizing values associated with fiscal conservatism, libertarian conservatism, and neoconservatism.
Antifa is a left-wing anti-fascist and anti-racist political movement in the United States. It consists of a highly decentralized array of autonomous groups that use nonviolent direct action, incivility, and violence to achieve their aims. Antifa political activism includes non-violent methods like involving poster and flyer campaigns, mutual aid, speeches, protest marches, and community organizing. Some who identify as antifa also use tactics involving digital activism, doxing, harassment, physical violence, and property damage. Members of antifa aim to combat far-right extremists, including neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
Kyle Howard Rittenhouse is an American man who shot three men, two fatally, during the civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020, when he was aged 17. Rittenhouse was acquitted at his trial in November 2021, after testifying that he had acted in self-defense.
Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights is a U.S. based abortion rights coalition founded by Merle Hoffman, Lori Sokol, Sunsara Taylor and other initiators in January, 2022, aimed at preventing the U.S. Supreme Court from overturning Roe V. Wade and "decimating" abortion rights in the United States.
American rapper and fashion designer Ye, commonly known by his birth name Kanye West, has garnered mainstream attention for his views on numerous political and social issues. West unsuccessfully ran for President of the United States in 2020, focusing on his opposition to abortion. In November 2022, West announced that he is running again for the presidency in the 2024 election, however no progress has been made on this course of action. On December 1, 2022, West stated that he admired Adolf Hitler, denied the Holocaust, and identified as a Nazi.
Fantifa is an umbrella term for anti-fascism movements centering on women as a branch of the feminist movement. The term mostly refers to a formal movement of feminist anti-fascist groups that emerged from German-speaking countries in 1985 but also encompasses historical German groups such as the 1925 Rote Frauen und Mädelbund and broader European groups such as the 1930s Spanish anarcha-feminist group Mujeres Libres, the 1934 French women's branch of the World Committee Against War and Fascism, and the 1942 Yugoslavian partisan group Women's Antifascist Front of Yugoslavia. The main fantifa movement holds an anarcho-communist philosophy and is specifically an anti-fascist variant of anarcha-feminism, as is sometimes represented in the use of a purple and black flag with a symbol derivative of that of the men's antifa group Antifaschistische Aktion.
