On March 8, International Women's Day, Kurdish women issued a call to women around the world to come together to build a radical movement for women's liberation. They stated "We are in the midst of a historic process...  the patriarchal system...is undergoing a deep structural crisis" and called on women everywhere to join together so that "We can turn the 21st century into the era of women’s liberation!"

It has been long known that Kurdish women are part of an historic experiment in creating a new social model that centers women's equality and socialist ideas--as they fight in their own women's militias (against ISIS/Daesh and Iraq) in the mountains of Kurdestan. 

Who are the women who released this statement and what is the nature of their historic experiment?

On Sunday, March 18, Joy of Resistance will interview Meredith Tax, a renowned feminist pioneer, who has been a writer and political activist since the late 1960s; a member of Bread and Roses, an early socialist-feminist group in Boston; whose 1970 essay, “Woman and Her Mind: The Story of Everyday Life,” is considered a founding document of the US women’s liberation movement and who was founding cochair of the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse/CARASA--for starters!

We will be speaking about the Kurdish radical experiment, based on Tax's recent book: "A Road Unforeseen: Women Fight the Islamic State." It tells the story behind the secular feminist army courageously challenging ISIS/ISIL. On this show we will also read from the recent historic and exciting manifesto of the Kurdish Women (and play music of that movement).

In the earlier part of the show, after the Worldwide Feminist News segment, we will speak with Jaclyn Friedman (best known as the co-editor, with Jessica Valenti of "Yes Means Yes: Visions of Sexual Power and a World Without Rape" and as the founder and executive director of Women, Action & The Media) on  HER take on the recent Oscar award ceremony, in the light of the expectations of Hollywood taking sexual harassment seriously as the #metoo and Times UP! movements have unfolded. We'll review the rape allegations against Kobe Bryant and the assault allegations against Gary Oldman, both Oscar winners this year and the response of feminists.