 She's a leader. No cry because of struggle. No, she's a socialist. No cause of struggle. No, hold the vow. Last year, last summer, at the Bicentennial Congress of the Peoples in Venezuela, which was the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Carabobo, we had a meeting of women who were there on behalf of the International Peoples Assembly and on behalf of the Simon Boliva Institute, and we decided that we wanted to take up this brigade, a feminist brigade to visit Venezuela in the next year. For various reasons, we had many different reasons why we wanted to do this. One of them is that all of us who are in different contexts fighting against imperialism and capitalism, we have to engage in the battle of ideas and we've been fighting against, especially as women or as feminists, the way in which imperialist media and imperialist education uses feminism to attack socialist projects like the Bolivarian Revolution or the Cuban Revolution. It's a very effective way that the imperialist media will try to convince people to stay away from socialism and not to defend the Venezuelan project. We know that that's not true, but it's one thing to know it and another thing to see it, and so we really wanted to bring women leaders, feminist leaders of different movements around the world together to experience the Bolivarian project and to interchange with Venezuelan women to help push forward in the battle of ideas. The brigade had 28 women participating from the six different regions where we organize in the International People's Assembly. So the IPA is an international process that's building struggles against imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy across the world, and we organize in six different regions, the Americas, Latin America and North America, the Arab and Maghreb region, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and Asia, and we have over 200 organizations. There could be social movements, mass movements, social organizations, left political parties, a wide spectrum of form of organizations that are participating in this process. So it was really unique to be able to bring women all from different organizations of the IPA together for this brigade. So we really got a global, we had a very global perspective when we were able to have our exchanges on our contexts, on the challenges that we're facing, the victories that we've achieved, and this is really, really important also for the IPA for us to be able to meet each other and continue building our coordination across regions. I am in a movement called Abashali Bassem John D'Molo, where I serve as a French secretary there and part of a youth league. I learnt a lot about popular feminism, of which gives us a tool that if we stick together as women and if we stick together as feminists, it's really, it's really possible that we can one day live under the world of socialism. When we first started the brigade, we had two days in the beginning of conferences to help us understand the context. And we got to meet with major references of the, not only the feminist movement, but also of the building of the Bolivarian project, like Maria Leon, who she is a huge reference for, she advised Chavez on women's issues. She was a guerrilla fighter herself in her earlier life, so to be able to hear from her, her perspectives, not only on the current situation of the anti-patriarchal struggle in Venezuela today, but also her opinions and her thoughts on the brigade. She gave us a very clear definition of feminism that was, there was no way to separate it from class, and there was no way to separate it from the current context. We then also had many visits to different states. We didn't stay in Caracas only, we visited many states, specifically the state of Aragua, the state of Lara, and the state of Ansuato. And we got to see many different communes, and we got to see the roles of women in building the communes. And I won't, there's a lot to say there, I could talk for hours and hours. But one that I found that was very, very impactful was in the state of Aragua, we met the mayor, Johanna Sanchez. She is a young woman mayor. She brought us through not only meeting the community, but meeting all the different people who were in charge of the different kinds of social services and commune projects at many different levels, and we met women at all those levels. And we could see how in the organization of these different social projects, like for example, Barto Monizal, which is the program to accompany women who are pregnant or who have given birth, or the CLAP program, which is the food distribution program, we could see how these programs are not only providing services to the community and to a community that is suffering under U.S. sanctions greatly and helping build resilience and build up possibility for people to survive, but also how it was helping to give women a way to develop their skills to engage politically. So women were intervening in every space in a political way. So one of the experiences that I got is having to visit the communes there, whereby one thing or one action that touched me, whereby women are building themselves, their own homes using their own hands, only provided with the material. So that gave me so much confidence that it is not true that women are lacking power. If women are effortful and want anything in their lives, it is possible. As long as they are given so much support that they need such that, I realized that the government in Venezuela provides material, a building material for women so that they can build their homes, which means that if we are given the right tools, the right material, and given the support to women, it is possible that we can live under the world of socialism as they are now living under socialism in Venezuela. Having to come from the Shek Tula's movement and having to see people living in Shek's every day, for us, people given material means that we will reduce the levels of reconstructing or the building of the Sheiks in our environment, of which plays a huge role in affecting our climate change, our environment and stuff. So there will be a reduction in the Shek buildings or construction in our places also. It will give people a simple basic right to a right to a proper housing, because as here we have like a big family members, so having to live in a two-room house with ten people, it's so much difficult. So when you can be given a material, it means that you can be able to build yourself enough space to live in. Also, it can also provide dignity for us as well, because you find that most people living in Shek's are not well given that respect and they are not provided with the basic services that they are supposed to be given. So having to be given a material also gives dignity to one's life. We also got to, on the last day of the brigade, we also got to have an exchange with the President Nicolas Maduro, which was very exciting for us, not just because he's a President, but all of us come from contexts, and most of us around the world come from contexts in which we are directly fighting against our own governments, especially in the US for example. The government is not an ally of any peoples of the world, including its own citizens. So to be welcomed by a President who is not only an ally of the Socialist Project and who is working in defense of the Venezuelan people, but also calls himself a feminist, was such a new experience for all of us. And it was incredibly inspiring and honoring to be able to have that exchange at the end of our 10 days in Venezuela, and to hear his perspectives also on the activities that we were doing. The importance of internationalism is that it unites us to realize that we are all in the same struggle of capitalism and imperialism. It also provides a platform for us to share the experiences as well as the journey of how to come up with solutions, of how to come up with ideas, and how to continue to live as the struggle continues. Without internationalism, I think that we will not be able to succeed. We learned a lot in the brigade, not just from Venezuela, but also from each other. One of the things that we ended the brigade with was that we needed a lot more time to continue exchanging between all of us. And we're going to do that. That's one of the things that we've committed to do among many other projects to continue this work. Because the systems that we're fighting against are global systems. And especially when it comes to patriarchy and its consequences on not just women, but all of society. These are things that are complex, that change the way they're manifested in different contexts. And so there is no one right way to push forward this fight. If we aren't talking closely to our comrades in each different context, we're not going to have a clear picture of how we can support each other. It also provides a platform whereby different nations come together to build one another because we truly need one another in order to improve one another's life. As we would say in Zulu, Muntungabang, which basically means a person is a person through another person. So if we as nations become together, it is possible that we can fight any struggle that we come across. We are fighting against the same systems, but we're fighting them with much different conditions. And so even our analyses, we need to discuss them. We need to see where we differ. We need to see where we're together. And only in that process can we build the kind of unity that's strong enough to not only resist and paylism, but overthrow it.