WHEN: Monday September 25, 2017, 6:30 PM
WHERE: News and Letters Library, 228 S. Wabash, Room 230, Chicago
News and Letters Committees invites you to a discussion:
On its 150th anniversary, let’s talk about Marx’s Capital
¯ As Trump’s racist, sexist neo-fascism threatens to take hold in the U.S., what relevance does Marx’s Capital hold for today’s activists?
¯ [=>]
The September-October 2017 issue of News & Letters, Vol. 62, #5, is available on the web.
View the issue online or as pdf.
Lead article: Rising U.S. racism challenges all freedom movements
A Marxist-Humanist analysis of the history and meaning of the rising of the right-wing neo-Nazi white supremacist movement, its relationship to President Donald Trump and his administration, and its challenge to the [=>]
Hundreds demonstrated Aug. 31 outside Chicago offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, supporting Genoveva Ramirez and all others being threatened with deportation.
Web-only articles: Fascist show of force in Charlottesville; Chicago auto mechanics strike; Venezuela crisis; Keolis Transit strike; online Archives Guide.
A striker speaks from one of the auto mechanics’ picket lines at 140 car dealerships in the Chicago area. .
Analysis of the violent invasion of Charlottesville, Va., the significance of the broader advance of fascism, and the opposite to it in human forces and reason.
As Venezuela’s social crisis deepens, the contradictions always present in Chavismo are coming to a head. A look at the Bolivarian Constitution, Chavismo’s relationship to the Arab Spring, and its dependence on high oil prices and a top leader illuminate the crisis.
Mechanics went on strike at Foothill Transit in Pomona, Calif., and were joined on the picket line by bus drivers.
The new online Guide with links to all the documents is an extremely useful finding tool that helps the reader or researcher locate items and grasp the structure of the Archives. The website of the Raya Dunayevskaya Memorial Fund presents the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection as she organized it, together with the Supplement.
The July-August 2017 issue of News & Letters, Vol. 62, #4, is available on the web.
View the issue online or as pdf.
Lead article: The struggle for immigrants’ rights challenges humanity
The massive increase in inhuman attacks against immigrants and undocumented people in the U.S. is spurring new activism and urgency.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: A concrete [=>]
An activist reports on the June 4, 2017, action by anti-fascist protesters against a rally of hate made up of Proud Boys, Militiamen, and Nazis who were protected by Portland cops who attacked anti-fascists.
From a prisoner’s perspective, Faruq reviews “I Am Not Your Negro,” a documentary film and companion book produced by Raoul Peck that concentrates on the writings and life of James Baldwin.
The May-June 2017 issue of News & Letters, Vol. 62, #3, is available on the web.
View the issue online or as pdf.
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2017-2018: Philosophy and revolt confront Trump’s drive to fascism
Contents:
Introduction
I. Trumpism as an excrescence of world capitalism’s crises
II. The capital relation
III. U.S. forces of revolt as reason; philosophy as force of revolution
IV. International crises
V. Lies, facts and ground
VI. [=>]
WHEN: Wednesday, May 17, 6:30 PM
WHERE: News and Letters Library, 228 S. Wabash, Room 230, Chicago
News and Letters Committees invites you to a discussion on:
The Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2017-2018
Philosophy and revolt confront Trump’s drive to fascism
I. Trumpism as an excrescence of world capitalism’s crises
II. The capital relation
III. U.S. forces of revolt as reason; philosophy [=>]
As the Trump administration ramps up deportations and related abuses, strikes, protests, and sanctuary cities are proliferating. The oppression of a lower caste of workers and the discrimination and violence faced by immigrants present a challenge to the Left, labor and the rest of humanity.
Assad’s chemical attack on civilians reveals the lie the world has been living. Trump’s limited counterstrike was a response to the unprecedented mass opposition to him, not an abandonment of his counter-revolutionary agenda. It is crucial to take the living freedom struggles in Syria and globally as our basis, to oppose the lie that “there is no alternative,” and to clarify what we are for, not just against.
The deadline for the May-June 2017 issue of News & Letters is Sunday, April 16.
Share your story with the world! Send in reports on your workplace, your town, your country; conditions, events, ideas, and debates. Send in Readers’ Views responding to articles in News & Letters and/or to what is happening in the world. Demonstrations and discussions have mushroomed since the [=>]
Workers striking Spectrum-Charter explained that they had struck at the end of March because the new corporation was slashing pension and health plans and because the workers had not had a union contact since 2013.
The March-April 2017 issue of News & Letters, Vol. 62, #2, is available on the web.
View the issue online or as pdf.
Women take the lead against world retrogression
An in-depth Marxist-Humanist view of the state of the women’s movement in the U.S. and worldwide as it responds to the rising fascism of U.S. President Trump and other world leaders.
Women’s liberation, in fact [=>]
On March 8, International Women’s Day, Washington Square Park in New York City was overflowing as close to 5,000 women, many dressed in red, rallied to hear speakers denounce the anti-woman steps taken by the Trump administration and to speak of the need to deepen women’s sense of unity.
An International Women’s Day March in Flint in solidarity with the Selma-to-Montgomery March 52 years ago highlighted Flint residents’ ongoing struggle for civil and human rights.
Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2017-2018
The deadline for the March-April 2017 issue of News & Letters is Sunday, February 26.
Share your story with the world! Send in reports on your workplace, your town, your country; conditions, events, ideas, and debates. Send in Readers’ Views responding to articles in News & Letters and/or to what is happening in the world—such as Trump’s moves to pull the world far [=>]
Links to articles found only on our website. Topics include: African American History Month; Trump’s American fascism; reports of ongoing U.S. protests; Youth in Action; Mexico teachers’ union statement; Chinese “Marxism and Freedom” book.
Report of the “Emergency Community Meeting on School Closings” in Detroit, MI, taking up and condemning Gov. Rick Snyder’s plan to close 38 schools, most of them in Detroit.
Participant report of a 500-strong student rally at the University of South Florida in Tampa in support of immigrants and calling for divestment from companies whose products harm the environment or which produce weapons and supplies for the military.
Prisoner Faruq looks at how African-American History Month came to be, stressing the importance of Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s vision and how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy included a critique of cultural and social relations as well as race, concluding that history is necessary for formerly enslaved people to move towards freedom.
The January-February 2017 issue of News & Letters, Vol. 62, #1, is available on the web.
View the issue online or as pdf.
Lead: Inauguration of neo-fascism faces widespread revolt
The lightning move by Republicans in Congress to prepare to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare—before Donald Trump even took office, with only the vaguest idea [=>]
Protests against Trump’s Muslim ban, and his reorganization of the National Security Council after the model of Hitler’s Reich Main Security Office, signal a profound struggle to be waged over what kind of society the U.S. will be.
Breaking news: participant report of New York protests against Trump’s anti-immigrant actions.
NATIONAL COORDINATION OF EDUCATION WORKERS
PRESS RELEASE January 9, 2017
Translated by David Turpin Jr.
The National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE) recently celebrated 37 years of struggle. Throughout these years we have fought for three strategic objectives: union democracy, democracy in education, and democracy in our country. Within and outside our ranks it is recognized that the [=>]
Now available at the News and Letters Committees website as a pdf file:
Marxism and Freedom, from 1776 until Today: Chinese translation
Raya Dunayevskaya’s classic explication of Marxism in Chinese. The first book on Marxist-Humanism, it was originally published in 1958 and has been in continuous publication. It has been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, [=>]
The November-December 2016 issue of News & Letters, Vol. 61, #6, is available on the web.
View the issue online or as pdf.
Lead-Editorial: No to Trump’s counter-revolution! No to fascism! Fight for a new human society!
Trump’s electoral victory by appealing to racism and sexism menaces all freedom movements. It is the index of this system’s crisis and bankruptcy of thought, which needs [=>]
The November-December 2016 issue of News & Letters has been mailed out and can be viewed online in pdf form.
The Lead-Editorial of this new issue takes up the election results: “No to Trump’s counter-revolution! No to fascism! Fight for a new human society!” A second editorial on the struggle over the Dakota Access Pipeline is [=>]
Trump’s electoral victory by appealing to racism and sexism menaces all freedom movements. It is the index of this system’s crisis and bankruptcy of thought, which needs to be met with a truly revolutionary vision.
Participant report from Indigenous Peoples Day observation in Tucson, celebrating expanding human freedom rather than colonialism and imperialism.
Participant report of a cross-border protest at Nogales, Mexico, and Nogales, Arizona.
Teachers at Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York, with support from students and staff, won their strike against the University who locked them out after they refused to accept a bad contract.
As part of over 200 solidarity actions on Sept. 13, 150 people gathered in Chicago to support the people of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe fighting to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The September-October 2016 issue of News & Letters, Vol. 61, #5, is available on the web.
View the issue online or as pdf.
Lead-Editorial: Fascism rising from Russia to India, from the U.S. to the Philippines
An expansive look at the rise of fascism worldwide, beginning in the U.S. with Donald Trump and the U.S. election, and taking in European fascism, and the situations [=>]
The deadline for the September-October 2016 issue of News & Letters is Sunday, August 28.
Share your story with the world! Send in reports on your workplace, your town, your country; conditions, events, ideas, and debates. Send in Readers’ Views responding to articles in News & Letters and/or to what is happening in the world.
The July-August 2016 issue of News & Letters, Vol. 61, #4, is available on the web.
View the issue online or as pdf.
Lead article: Fires in Canada, drought in India inspire creative revolt
The wildfires sweeping Alberta’s tar sands region provide a window onto the state of the environment and the multidimensional worldwide struggle against pollution and [=>]
With Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, the Far Right has been emboldened worldwide. As the economic and social crisis deepens, so does the brutality, while the Right seeks scapegoats for the results of capitalism’s objective laws, which only have force as long as humanity’s struggle to be free is not yet complete. The only solid ground for opposing this latest stage of reactionary retrogression is that of revolution in permanence.
We stand in solidarity with those murdered and wounded in the attack on a Gay Florida nightclub, and their families and communities. The struggle for LGBTQI freedom must continue unabated. A response requires developing, practically and philosophically, the uncompromising assertion of human freedom and dignity common to the Black Lives Matter movement, the Arab Spring and the Syrian Revolution, which has long struggled against ISIS and its related ideologies. It means uncompromising solidarity with the LGBTQI community, the target of reactionary attacks across the world, from Trump’s America to Putin’s Russia to ISIS’s “caliphate.”
The deadline for the July-August 2016 issue of News & Letters is Sunday, June 19. Share your story with the world! Send in reports on your workplace, your town, your country; conditions, events, ideas, and debates. Send in Readers’ Views responding to articles in News & Letters and/or to what is happening in the world.
The May-June 2016 issue of News & Letters, Vol. 61, #3, is available on the web.
View the issue online or as pdf.
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2016-2017
The need for new beginnings in thought and in action
Contents:
Introduction
I. Discontent, revolt and reaction in the U.S.
II. The worldwide war against women
III. Chinese labor in revolt
IV. Counter-revolution and revolution in the Middle East and North [=>]
Participant report of Chicago May Day demonstration in solidarity with the Syrian Revolution.
April 30, 2016
Dear Sisters and Brothers of LALIT,
We in News and Letters Committees are honored to send you whole-hearted revolutionary greetings and hopes for a successful Labor Day gathering. Your struggles against capital in league with the Mauritius government are a reminder of how capital is now global, and so are the struggles [=>]
Thousands take part in a wave of protests against North Carolina’s House Bill 2, one of the most anti-LGBTQ laws to ever hit the books in our country.
The new issue is available on the web. Lead: Women battle war, terrorism and anti-abortion fanatics; Editorial: Syrian Revolution continues; Racism, workers and freedom ideas; The anguish that is Flint, Michigan; much more…