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 Africa
V. Toward organizational new beginnings
The fact that the old, crumbling order will not go away quietly explains why we print the Marxist-Humanist Draft Perspectives in the pages of the paper of News and Letters Committees. It is an open window onto the needed philosophy of revolution, without which all revolutions and freedom movements remain incomplete.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Nixon’s ‘racist mayhem’ lingers today
Our era, when racist police gun down Black men, women and youth, continues a history as old as the U.S. The piece excerpted here shows some of that history and how racism can be spurred on by this country’s leaders and would-be leaders, out for power. It takes up how Left movements respond to racism and the attempt to answer the question by funneling liberatory impulses into the dead end of electoral politics. The relationships between the Black freedom movement, anti-war youth, workers, and philosophy of revolution remain as critical today as when this article was written.
Workshop Talks: Alive in struggle
Chinese university students’ struggle at Tiananmen Square for better living conditions; Kaiser workers’ fight against two-tier wages and the continuous miner; and today’s Hong Kong youth’s Umbrella Revolution, Occupy Movement and Black Lives Matter all show that workers are alive in struggle.
Voices From The Inside Out: Criminal Prisons
Article by prisoner comparing the U.S. prison system–which commits extortion, assault, theft, substandard medical care, racism and a host of other crimes–to an erupting volcano whose magma destroys all it touches.
Widespread solidarity with Chicago Teachers Union strike
Black Lives Matter activists, low-wage workers, disability rights group ADAPT, students and many other people solidarize with striking Chicago Teachers Union members by participating in the “Shut It Down” day of action, which exposed the Chicago Public Schools making Chicago’s public school system broke on purpose.
Letter from Mexico: On ‘Life’ and feminism
The late Revolutionary Olga Domanski is remembered for reminding us that Absolute Method is the only way for feminism, as part of a totally new society built on truly human foundations, to be completely realized.
North Carolinians protest anti-LGBTQ law
North Carolina’s Queer community and their supporters agitate against the state’s anti-Transgender/anti-LGB/anti-labor legislation.
World in View: Brazil meltdown opens a door to Right
Brazil is in a meltdown. President Dilma Rousseff has been impeached and will possibly face trial in May. The upheaval has less to do with stamping out corruption than with an effort to shift power by lawmakers with questionable records themselves.
Woman As Reason: Exploitative reproductive industry
The assisted human reproduction industry treats women donating eggs as commodities, giving them no voice about their compensation and no regard for their healthcare.
More
Page 2
Trans theatre a hit!
Review: ‘Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting’
Women WorldWide
Page 3
One year for 29 lives
‘China on Strike’
Boycott Driscoll’s
Page 5
End solitary confinement at Rikers Island
Plutonium and death
In Memoriam Luis V. Rodriguez
Page 6
Readers’ Views
Page 11
‘Leaderful’ movements
Queer Notes
Youth In Action
Page 12
World in View: Refugee crisis measures world’s inhumanity
World in View: ‘Panama’ tip of iceberg
World in View: Murder in Honduras
For prisoners, ‘lack of education is education’
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