BAsics Bus Tour

Barbershop debate of “Can’t Break All the Chains Except One…” quote in Middle Eastern community

A couple of us went back to a Middle Eastern community where the BAsics Bus Tour had visited last month. It was the middle of Ramadan and it was striking how few women were out, the streets and shops were 95% men. And here we were giving special prominence to the quote from BAsics:

“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.”

We went into a barber shop where on previous visits there was wild debate, as described in a previous blog entry – and not surprisingly, this quote sparked even sharper and very raw controversy, all packed into a few minutes. Here is a rough summary of what happened:

After passing out the cards, we asked for people’s comments. One barber said, “I don’t agree with this. Women have too much power already.” And others chimed in. I posed the question – if women have so much power in this society as you say, how come the most dangerous place for a women, the place a woman is most likely to get beaten or killed, is in her own home, by a boy friend or husband? This really startled the person, and had him stop to think. He said that is really horrible.

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