Celebrating the 87th anniversary of women's right to vote, the San Francisco-based group Radical Women celebrated with invited guests and supporters on August 30th at their downtown San Francisco headquarters.

The 10 attendees, including an SF State student, spoke in commemoration of past women's rights struggles and emergent human rights issues, beyond the traditional feminist agenda.

“We are the leaders we’ve been waiting for,” said RW organizer Nancy Kato, calling for her supporters to bring back their air of militancy and tenacity.

With the right to vote long secured in the United States, Kato said feminists are now taking a stand for women in the third world, supporting immigrant rights, as well as groups with socialist and anti-capitalist agendas.

She stressed the importance of building alliances with other groups that value national health care, ending wars, enforcement of living wages, immigration reform and decreasing unemployment rates.

Attendee Deborah Gallegos, an SF State junior, came to see what opportunities for activism RW offered.

Gallegos said she is neither a Democrat nor a Republican and she thinks neither party has made a difference in alleviating poverty and inequality throughout the nation.

In the past, other political groups refused to ally with the women’s movement. When 14th Amendment was passed, giving black men the right to vote, women were told to wait their turn, according to RW member Andrea Weever.

Shirley Lee, a longtime feminist activist and Black Panther supporter told the group of her experience being incarcerated in Santo Rita Jail. While in solitary confinement, a barren square room with a hole in the floor, Lee wrote a treaty to the black panthers, on the wall. She wrote, “If I were black, I’d join.”

M.A. Jaimes Guerrero, department chair of Women's Studies at SF State referred to herself as, "The Grandmother of the department."

Guerrero added that the women’s movement has become more inclusive in the last two decades.

The traditional women’s movement focused on equity between men and women, and left issues of race, class stratification, militant nationalism, and holier-than-thou creed unchallenged, according to Guerrero.

“This was a very narrow view for women of color, who wanted racial equity,” said Guerrero.

An alliance with the Chicano movement followed, added Guerrero.

“We are now very much concerned with class issues…and challenging the system head-on,“ said Guerrero.

The change in ideal has arrived with the globalization, and has made allies of groups like the Freedom Socialist Party, added Guerrero.

Today’s “global feminism,” according to Guerrero, seeks to change the capitalist neo-patriarchy that emerged with colonialism, and replace it with an egalitarian society where wealth is distributed more evenly.

Large multinational corporations are exploiting a new younger age of third world women; those that assemble nanotechnology and work in sweatshops, said Guerrero.

With the current increase in raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, RW is allying with immigrant groups, such as The Movement for a General Amnesty for All, to take a preventive stand when they hear of a raid.

RW organizer Kato said that the raids are “terrorizing a group of people based on their looks, not their (legal) status.”

RW hope to prevent further raids by being vocal against the mistreatment of immigrant workers.

As the feminist agenda diversifies and embraces a world of causes and promoting anti-capitalist beliefs, the new global feminism has alienated traditional constituents, such as any female presidential candidate.

“(Hillary Clinton) represents big business interests,” said Kato, who speaks for the position of RW when she denounces Clinton.

RW has an internship available to students who would like to learn how to run a socialist feminist leadership organization. Interested parties can contact Nancy Kato at 415-864-1278.

“We’ll teach you how to be a revolution leader,” says Kato.