05 Mar COME OUT, FIGHT! We want a choice (elections)! We choose equality, freedom, anti-fascism!
March 8th March / March 8, 2026. At 3:00 PM, Republic Square, Belgrade
Over the last year and a half, the belief that change is possible has reawakened in our country. This year, we join the appeal for calling fair elections. Not as a formal demand, but as a demand inseparable from our feminist and anti-fascist struggle and the fight for a just society. We invite you to join us in realizing our long-won rights to vote and be elected, and to actively shape the society we live in: free, solidary, and just for all.
We remind everyone of the long and persistent struggle of women for the right to vote, which was emancipatory and deeply political from its beginnings, and in historical moments of rising fascism, clearly anti-fascist. In this region, it began in the 19th century, under conditions of pronounced legal and social inequality between women and men. Women were denied basic political and civil rights. After mass interwar gatherings for suffrage, anti-fascist women finally won this right through participation and victory in the Second World War. It was not “given” to us; it was won.
Along with the right to vote, anti-fascist women won our inclusion in political and social life: the right to education, the right to work, the right to divorce, the right to decide about one’s own body, the right to abortion… These were the achievements of the anti-fascist revolution.
Today, as in the past, we know that the right to vote is not an abstract freedom. Contemporary fascism directly limits our ability to choose. It narrows our space for free movement, controls us through unemployment and poor working conditions, the unavailability of social services, the prohibition of abortion, the criminalization of LGBTQ+ identities, the revocation of the right to gender self-determination, and the disciplining of sexuality. It reduces us to the roles of mothers and wives. It recognizes us as workers only as much as capitalism needs us—as cheap, insecure, and expendable labor. We work in miserable conditions for minimum wage, without enough money to pay for housing and food, while simultaneously caring for others for free. Our bodies are shaped to be obedient, disciplined, reproductive—bodies without a voice.
The right to choose is deeply connected to many other spheres of life. It is connected to the right to strike and the right to express opinions. Last year, more than ever, we saw the violation of these rights. Women employed in the public sector, in kindergartens, social work centers, and factories in small towns and big cities, suffered pressure and threats in situations where they tried to express their opinions. Threats of getting fired arrived regardless of whether the women were near retirement with little chance of re-employment, single mothers, or women from multiply marginalized groups. In many cases, firings, workplace harassment, and wage confiscation occurred for those who dared to express their stance.
We are holding this year’s March 8th with a year behind us that carries the largest and most massive violations of labor rights and the suppression of free thought. We saw the crudest examples of this massive violation of the right to choose and opine in education, where hundreds of female teachers and professors were left without salaries in an attempt to intimidate and silence them. Those who stepped forward were punished by having their livelihood threatened, their dignity violated, and their right to work and earn denied. Pressures were systematically created to make these women fall silent and be punished for speaking out. Female students who spoke up and stepped forward were persecuted, beaten, targeted, and had their private data exposed.
Fascist methods of punishment are not part of the past and paragraphs in history textbooks; they are here among us. Political power is in the hands of the privileged, while our resistance is systematically suppressed, disciplined, and criminalized. In a capitalist repressive state, this is not accidental, but a mechanism of control used to stifle our resistance, break solidarity, and prevent political action by all who want freedom, equality, and an anti-fascist future. Therefore, we will not be silent!
Therefore, we demand to exercise the right to choose and not suffer consequences for it. The right to express our stance, to vote, and for our voice to be the product of freely formed will. We no longer want to circle the “lesser evil” at polling stations. Therefore, this year we insist that all women, and especially Roma women, trans women, Muslim women, lesbians, queer persons, women with disabilities, and all others, have a true right to choose in a state that supports and celebrates life. Women know that all struggles are one struggle.
Therefore, we want fair elections. Not within a fascist, violent, and unequal society, but against it. We want a choice for a free and just society within a free and just society.
WE DEMAND:
Because of the loss of human lives, because of years of denial of basic rights, because of corrupt institutions and the absence of justice, we join the student, assembly, and demands of other social actors and demand early parliamentary elections. Women make up 51.4%; with allies, we are a force whose voice cannot be ignored.
We demand from all political actors equal participation of women at all levels of government; we demand parity in the assembly and all representative bodies. We demand that women’s voices be visible in decisions and actions at all levels of government.
Fascism is strengthening globally; we call on all anti-fascist actors—unions, environmental, student, anti-war, anti-colonial, and other related movements—to unite in a broad anti-fascist front. Only with joint forces will we be a bulwark against fascism!
The gathering begins at 3:00 PM at Belgrade’s Republic Square, from where the march will start. We invite all participants to prepare for the march according to weather conditions, but also to have with them a clothing item or other object of their choice that is red, as a symbol of labor, anti-fascism, and the fight for equality and equity.
KROKODIL on behalf of the Self-organized collective
8.mart.svaki.dan
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