Share your story in the next issue of News & Letters: May-June deadline
The deadline for the May-June 2019 issue of News & Letters is Sunday, April 14.
Share your story with the world in our special Draft Perspectives issue! 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 the [=>]
Abahlali baseMjondolo speaks out for immigrants
South African shackdwellers state: “We believe that there is only one human race and that the borders created by colonial rule should be irrelevant to our project to build solidarity among the oppressed and to ensure that South Africa belongs to all who live in it.”
California Uber/Lyft workers strike!
Ex-Lyft driver reports on the strike of Uber and Lyft drivers in California and explains the hell that ridesharing businesses are foisting on their workers, the environment, and their customers.
Women bearing the brunt of reaction lead the resistance
March 6, 2019In a year marked by the contradiction between deepening women’s revolt and activism and neo-fascism rising across the globe, women have been fighting back in unprecedented numbers and ways....
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From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Women’s liberation, experimentation and revolution in permanence
March 10, 2019An interview of Raya Dunayevskaya by Katherine Davenport which aired on WBAI radio in New York City on International Women’s Day, March 8, 1984. It brings together women’s liberation and revolution in permanence, as Dunayevskaya discusses what life might be after...
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Editorial: Fighting gun violence
March 6, 2019New passions and forces alive in the U.S. ensured that the toll of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year would not fade into the political...
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Venezuela is at the crossroads
March 10, 2019Many in Venezuela oppose both U.S. intervention—in league with the right wing and Juan Guaidó—and the government of President Nicolás Maduro and his generals. At the same time we cannot forget that what passed for constructing “21st Century socialism” has been a...
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Essay: What is Socialism? Socialism and a philosophy of revolution
What is socialism? From Left to Right, this question is becoming central to political discussion. For me, it raises another question, too: What is philosophy?...
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Oakland, Calif., teachers strike!
March 14, 2019On Feb. 22 over 3,000 Oakland teachers went on strike, demanding better wages, smaller class sizes, more nurses and counselors and a stop to school...
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Chicago charter school teachers strike!
Chicago Teachers Union paraprofessionals and teachers won a nearly two-week strike against charter school company CICS on Feb. 18, 2019. Teachers will achieve pay parity...
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World in View: Rise of Far Right threatens ‘Europe’
March 13, 2019The Far Right threatens to make significant gains in the European Parliament elections this May. What inheres within the “idea of Europe” that can destroy...
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Letter from Mexico: Maquiladora workers strike in Matamoros
March 14, 2019On Jan. 25 more than 30,000 workers from 45 maquiladoras (foreign-owned factories on the border exempt from certain duties) in the northern city of Matamoros,...
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Presidents Day 2019 demonstration in Oakland, Calif.
March 10, 2019With just 72 hours notice, over 50,000 people came together in 48 states in almost 300 events to protest Donald Trump on Presidents Day. While the...
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Genocide in Idlib
February 24, 2019In-person report from Idlib province,...
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Editorial: Is nuclear war on the horizon?
March 6, 2019The retreat from even modest efforts to control nuclear weapons has brought humanity closer than ever to annihilation. President Donald Trump’s suspension of the 1987...
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Page 2
Woman as Reason: Church abuses nuns
The rape, forced abortion, and sexual abuse of nuns is the newest scandal to plague the Catholic Church. The do-nothing attitude of the Church on this abuse has continued for centuries. Will anything change now?
Detroit women rally
An in-person report of the Jan. 19 “sister march”–sponsored by Women’s March Michigan, a separate organization from the National Women’s March–which brought nearly 1,000 women to a rally at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History.
Review: ‘Incorrect Feminist’
Feminist Adele reviews Phyllis Chesler’s book “A Politically Incorrect Feminist: Creating a Movement with Bitches, Lunatics, Dykes, Prodigies, Warriors, and Wonder Women,” seeing in it an important first-person history that can help today’s movement.
Women WorldWide
Women WorldWide takes up the South Korean Escape the Corset movement, Greta Thunberg’s work against global warming, and the struggle by BethAnn McLaughlin to draw attention to the harassment of women in science by prominent men.
Page 3
People of Taiwan wary of China’s reach
China Airlines pilots in Taiwan won a strike over safety and staffing, while survivors of the bloody repression perpetuated by Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang beginning Feb. 28, 1947, demonstrated to remember those killed 72 years ago and to campaign against the threats of forced reunification under Xi Jinping.
Pages 6-7, Readers’ Views
Readers’ Views, Part 1
Readers’ Views on: workers strike back, genocide and Facebook, Mauritius victory, Syrian Revolution under fire, “55 Steps,” debating yellow vests, women’s struggles, and why read News & Letters.
Readers’ Views, Part 2
Readers’ Views on: Rosa Luxemburg’s revolutionary life; the Green New Deal; and voices from behind bars.
Page 8
Voices from the Inside Out: Importance of community support
In Madison, Wisc., during the 1980s, a solitary Black woman roamed the hallways of the Dane County Courthouse for the purpose of attending trials of Black defendants. Her goal was to ensure that every Black woman, man, and child would see at least one Black face in the courtroom other than their own.
‘Poverty and Profit’
Matthew Desmond’s book “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” is an important contribution to understanding the workings of exploitative housing, although he fails to appreciate that, under the capitalist system, the best-intentioned programs will always become conduits to extract money from the poor.
Handicap This!
Handicap This! column on Black Disability History; maltreatment of children with disabilities; and bill aimed at phasing out the subminimum wage paid to over 150,000 disabled workers.
Page 9
Queer Notes
Queer Notes on the Auckland Pride Festival; Denise Ho Wan-sze; two newly-elected Democratic governors making strides for Queer rights; and a history of Compton’s Transgender Cultural District in San Francisco.
Youth in Action
School students in Oakland, Calif. support striking teachers; Belgian environment minister resigns after attacking Strike 4 Climate Action; high school students walk out in Vancouver, Canada, protesting tar sands; medical students’ direct action at Gandaki Medical College in Pokhara, Nepal, against tuition theft.
Page 11
Bruno Latour’s ‘Down to Earth’ buries human revolt
Bruno Latour’s new book “Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime” wants to comprehend the era of global warming but takes a very wrong turn, substituting “Earth” for human subjects of revolution.
Pipeline tragedy in Mexico
The horrendous oil pipeline explosion in Tlahuelilpan, Mexico, which killed over 100 campesinos and injured many more, has shaken all of Mexico. This was a tragedy long in the making.
Page 12, World in View
Trump-Kim summit
The second summit meeting between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, in Hanoi on Feb. 27, ended without any new agreement. But it achieved what it aimed for as theater.
Haitians rise up against corruption
Haitians took to the streets Feb. 7 against a long-simmering background of anger at government corruption.
Netanyahu’s peril
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has allied with the fascist Jewish Strength party, disciples of Meir Kahane. This alliance has crossed a line for many former supporters.
Prisoners of Rukban
In the Rukban camp along the Jordan/Syria border, at least 41,000 displaced Syrians, including women and children, are suffering the ravages of winter weather, hunger, lack of medicine, and the terror of being threatened by the forces of the genocidal Bashar al-Assad regime.
Web only:
What Is Socialism? Socialism and Philosophy
This is the first in a series of four presentations on “What is Socialism?” Shorter versions will be published in News & Letters. The second essay is “Socialism, labor and the Black dimension”; the third is “Socialism and ecology”; and the last is “Socialism and Women’s Liberation.”
News and Letters Committees Call for Plenum
Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2019-2020
Statement on Venezuela by the Anti-War Committees in Solidarity with The Struggles for Self-Determination
We share the Statement on Venezuela by the Anti-War Committees in Solidarity with The Struggles for Self-Determination, which looks at the situation today, its history, and takes the measure of today’s Left.