Adele reviews ‘Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality: 1920 to 2020’ by Elizabeth Griffith, a history of the U.S. feminist movement from the years leading up to the achievement of women’s right to vote to 2020.
women’s liberation movement
‘Women, Life, Freedom!’ The transformation of Iran
September 28, 2022The Iranian hardline regime should be very afraid. The cries of: “Women, life and freedom!” “Death to the head scarf!” “Death to the dictator!” fill the streets. Iranian women have inspired the world and put Iran’s oligarchs on notice that their repressive regime is in grave danger.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Letter to Adrienne Rich–Women’s liberation, Gay liberation & dialectic
September 13, 2022This letter expands on the reason for writing Philosophy and Revolution, and on the concepts of “woman as revolutionary reason as well as force” and “new forces and new passions” of revolution. It illuminates Dunayevskaya’s view of multilinearity in Marx’s late writings as a dimension of his concept of revolution in permanence concerning not only class but all social relations, and speaks to the question of method in today’s debates about sexuality, women’s liberation and new subjects of revolution.
Woman as Reason: Violence against women on the rise
November 16, 2021After over 50 years of a Women’s Liberation Movement unthinkable numbers of women continue to be brutally raped and murdered worldwide—with the COVID-19 pandemic spiking that number even higher. What can help us gain that needed confidence is to understand the meaning of our own actions and thoughts which is the role of a philosophy of human liberation.
Support Hlengiwe Gasa
September 29, 2020In an attempt to intimidate Hlengiwe Gasa for leading a peaceful march on July 25 protesting the terrifying levels of violence against women in the community of uMthwalume in South Africa, she was arrested and charged with violating Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2020, Part One
January 22, 2020Readers’ Views on Capitalism and climate; Mideast upheaval; Trump the Mullah?; war crime hero; Trump’s judges; detransition debate; and women’s liberation.
Review: ‘Without Apology’
January 21, 2020Review of ‘Without Apology: The Abortion Struggle Now’, on the history of the women’s liberation movement’s struggle for full reproductive justice.
Woman as Reason: Anti-femicide goes global
Women are deepening a global movement to combat violence against us, from violent rapes to domestic battering to outright femicide. Demonstrations have spread across the globe.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2019, Part 1
February 3, 2019Readers’ Views addressing: challenging fascism across all borders; charter teachers strike; pitfalls of bourgeois politics; women on the march; prison strikes big and small; and the racist criminal injustice system.
Readers’ Views, May-June 2018
May 10, 2018Readers’ Views takes up: women’s liberation, youth in the battle, Blacks vs. racism, border cop thugs, Middle East struggles, and voices from behind bars.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: New moments in Marx form trail to today
To observe the 200th birthday of Karl Marx, we present excerpts of a speech given by Raya Dunayevskaya for the Marx centenary year, originally titled “Marxist-Humanism, 1983: The Summation That Is a New Beginning, Subjectively and Objectively.”
Woman as Reason: The humanism of #MeToo
February 1, 2018The #MeToo movement, with roots in the 1960s, is part of a humanist revolutionary red thread that shows in a visceral way that revolution must deepen at every point in order to finally make the relationships we have with each other into actually human relationships.
Readers’ Views: Remembering Judy Tanzawa and Dan Perron
November 15, 2017Basho, S.B., and Terry Moon remember their Marxist-Humanist comrades, Judy Tanzawa and Dan Perron.
Judy Tanzawa (Judy Tristan) 1939-2017
November 12, 2017In Memoriam for Judy Tanzawa who was a radical union organizer, Los Angeles Local Organizer for News and Letters Committees, fighter for human liberation in all its dimensions. .
#MeToo
October 22, 2017Women’s liberationist and managing editor of News & Letters Terry Moon writes about why she posted #MeToo on social media and how women’s experiences must impact what revolution has to mean.
Woman as reason: Syrian Familes for Freedom
June 30, 2017The activities and meaning of the new Syrian group Families for Freedom, which demands a stop to the forced disappearances of their husbands and children; and refuses to leave their relatives fate in the hands of armed actors.
I. Trumpism as an excrescence of world capitalism’s crises
May 17, 2017Trumpism’s self-perpetuating disorder is based on negation of social movements, trying to stifle the positive in their negation of this exploitative society. His deceit and power grabs express capitalism’s disintegration, exuding racism, sexism, and fascism.
Readers’ Views: July-August 2016, Part 1
July 7, 2016Readers’ Views on Hate: Orlando to Brexit; Black Lives Matter; Muhammad Ali and Dr. King; Duterte in the Philippines; News & Letters Readers Unite!; and Deadly Assault on Women From the U.S. to Israel.
Letter from Mexico: On ‘Life’ and feminism
May 18, 2016The 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.
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.
Essay: Revolutionary feminism and Hegel’s notion of Life
March 15, 2016Olga Domanski delves into G.W.F. Hegel’s section on “Life” in his Science of Logic to show its meaning for the women’s movement today, facing lethal attacks on abortion rights and an alarming increase in rapes, battering, poverty and unemployment as well as an ever-widening gap between feminist theory and the lives of Black and working women.
Olga knew ‘what a revolution entails’
March 11, 2016A remembrance of Olga Domanski by Kevin O’Brien, who felt that Olga knew what revolution meant and strove persistently, tirelessly and cheerfully for it.
Women battle war, terrorism and anti-abortion fanatics
March 8, 2016Foregrounding the new formal solidarity between Trust Black Women with Black Lives Matter, we explore the thought and actions of women worldwide, including the struggle for reproductive justice in the U.S.; women fighting war and terrorism in places like South Sudan and Syria, the successful fight of domestic workers to organize, and the need to make the revolutionary content of such actions explicit.
Comrades and friends remember Olga
January 25, 2016Remembrances of Olga Domanski by comrades and friends.
From The Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Women as thinkers and revolutionaries
January 24, 2016Olga Domanski’s summary of the series on “Women as Thinkers and as Revolutionaries” by Raya Dunayevskaya.
Woman as Reason: Olga Domanski: embodiment of Woman as Reason
January 23, 2016An in memoriam to Olga Domanski from a women’s liberationist’s point of view.
Readers’ Views, May-June 2015
May 3, 2015Letters and comments sent in by readers or taken down, to and about the articles in News & Letters or current events.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The dialectic and women’s liberation
April 30, 2015The article excerpts a summary of a talk by Dunayevskaya to a conference on Women’s Liberation in Detroit. The purpose of the meeting was to help Dunayevskaya work out the final chapter of her book then in progress, Philosophy and Revolution. That last chapter would take up the “New Passions and New Forces” for the reconstruction of society. The Conference was also the beginning of the News & Letters—Women’s Liberation Committee.
Review of ‘She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’
She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry is a documentary of the women’s liberation movement (WLM) in the U.S., from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. Filmmaker Mary Dore used a wealth of historical news coverage to give a sense of the breadth of organizations and depth of demands in the explosive growth of the WLM. Activists, identified within archival footage—including women like Fran Beal of the Civil Rights Movement’s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Lesbian rights activist Karla Jay, and Judith Arcana of the abortion underground organization Jane—gave contemporary interviews interspersed in the film.
Readers’ Views, March-April 2015, Part 1
March 8, 2015Revolt and Counter-Revolution, from Greece to Syria; Here Come the Reformers; Women’s Freedom; Against Racism
60 Years of News & Letters (Readers’ Views, March-April 2015)
Readers’ Views on the 60th anniversary of News & Letters and Terry Moon’s column on it.
UltraViolet goes live
March 7, 2015UltraViolet, a mostly online petition-generating organization, recently went out into the real world by holding 25 or so “meet and greet” events in 15 different states. The one I went to was on the north side of Chicago.
‘On political divides and philosophic new beginnings’
September 7, 2014From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya
From the May-June 2012 issue of News & Letters.
Editor’s Note: “On political divides and philosophic new beginnings,” written 25 years ago, is the last writing of Raya Dunayevskaya, who died on June 9, 1987. It was first published in the In Memoriam special issue of News & [=>]
Women WorldWide September-October 2014
August 29, 2014Protect Aminetou Mint El-Moctar in Mauritania; female genital mutilation in the U.S.; Maryam Mirzakhani is the first woman to win “Nobel Prize of mathematics.”
Woman as Reason: Fighting rape is in our hands
Since the beginnings of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the early 1960s, we have been fighting rape, and rape culture. Finally, 50 years later, a U.S. president issued some mild recommendations on how to fight rape on college campuses, and two Democratic women have introduced legislation to make colleges more accountable for preventing and dealing with campus rapes.
For disability rights
July 7, 2014From the July-August 2014 issue of News & Letters
Chicago—On May 26, a group of 14 people from Chicago ADAPT went to Springfield, Ill., to push for the passage of House Bill #349 whose purpose is to make the 5% temporary personal income tax in Illinois permanent. Without that happening, we face huge cuts in [=>]
Women Worldwide, January-February 2014
February 19, 2014Doris Lessing; Margherita Hack; gender segregation at UK universities
Review: Sweetening the Pill
February 17, 2014Sweetening the Pill: or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control by Holly Grigg-Spall has provoked controversy among feminists, especially over its contention that the birth control pill and other hormonal contraception are unsafe.
Woman as Reason: Language and death in Juárez
February 12, 2014The way we construct experience with language has effects on its transmission and on the configuration of subjectivity, not only in aesthetics and ethics, but also in understanding politics. That is the case in the crimes committed against women in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and other states in Mexico.
Charles Denby, worker-editor
February 8, 2014As a contribution to Black History Month we reprint Raya Dunayevskaya’s memorial for Charles Denby (1907-1983), her comrade of 35 years, Editor of News & Letters from its founding in 1955 until his death and the author of Indignant Heart: A Black Worker’s Journal.
Tahrir three years later
February 7, 2014Three years ago, the Egyptian Revolution was fighting for its life in Tahrir Square. For 18 days and nights, the women and men of the Square faced off against President Hosni Mubarak’s security forces and thugs. In the end Mubarak was forced to follow Tunisia’s President-for-life, Ben Ali, into retirement and shame. The light of freedom spread–Square to Square, occupation to occupation. It was a historic turning point.
It was this global struggle that the military coup that ousted Morsi, and led to the massacre of over 800 of his supporters, was meant to stop short. Now, revolution continues, and the freedom idea lives, but the old world has tried hard to destroy it. Egypt’s newest new Constitution, passed Jan. 15 under the military rule of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, evokes only faint echoes of Tahrir. As artist Hanaa Safwat said, “The referendum is stained in innocent people’s blood. It has been built on the dead bodies of 800 people in Rabaa al-Adawiya.”
Readers’ Views, September-October 2013, Part I
October 11, 2013Readers’ Views, September-October 2013, Part I
Communization theory and its discontents truncate Marx’s dialectic
July 5, 2013The persisting economic crisis has spurred new interest in Karl Marx including “Communization Theory” which projects Marx’s dialectic as a total break with capitalism but without posing a need for dialectical mediation beyond capitalism.
Violence ‘normalized’
May 17, 2013We are living in contradictory times, especially when it comes to women’s struggle for freedom. On the one hand you have a Women’s Liberation Movement that has never been more radical, unified and global. On the other hand there is more repression, and the violence is more brutal and deadly than ever before.
Readers’ Views, March-April 2013, Part 1
April 25, 2013AMERICAN CIVILIZATION REMAINS ON TRIAL
American Civilization on Trial (ACOT) is not “Black history.” Rather, Blacks play such an enormous role in the U.S. that their history that is in ACOT is a history of America.
Octogenarian
Midwest
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The movie Django Unchained could have been an ad for the NRA’s position on the current [=>]
From India to Egypt to U.S., women fighting for freedom
March 17, 2013From the March-April 2013 issue of News & Letters
by Terry Moon
Two recent events have shown the deep and seemingly intractable worldwide oppression of women and, at the same time, revealed women’s militancy and determination to change their oppressive reality. First was the vicious gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh Pandey at the end of [=>]
March-April 2013 issue of News & Letters is available on the web
March 16, 2013The March-April 2013 issue of News & Letters is available on the web.
News & Letters, Vol. 58, No. 2
March – April 2013
Lead
From India to Egypt to U.S., women fighting for freedom
Two recent events have shown the deep and seemingly intractable worldwide oppression of women and, at the same time, revealed women’s militancy and determination to [=>]
Readers’ Views, January-February 2013, Part 2
March 10, 2013ARCHIVES AS LIVING
I have been following the readings for the 2012-2013 Marxist-Humanist discussions with great enthusiasm. I was especially energized by the “Women as force and reason of revolution” selections. Raya Dunayevskaya’s 1970 piece “The Women’s Liberation Movement as Reason and as Revolutionary Force” was fresh and relevant to today. This is no surprise [=>]
News and Letters Committees Call for Plenum 2013
March 7, 2013OFFICIAL CALL FOR PLENUM
to Work Out Marxist-Humanist Perspectives for 2013-2014
February 24, 2013
To All Members of News and Letters Committees
Dear Friends:
The world today is riven between the creativity of masses in revolt and the violent degeneracy of counter-revolution, whose destructiveness even extends to the revived specter of nuclear war two decades after the collapse of [=>]
January-February 2013 issue of News & Letters is now online
February 2, 2013Lead
Uprisings in Egypt and Syria confront counter-revolution
Slightly over two years since the beginning of Egypt’s revolution, those heady days can seem distant. The current government of Mohamed Morsi was able to push through a reactionary Constitution. It includes anti-working class Articles allowing for child labor and forced labor, in certain circumstances; limits the right to [=>]