Uber and Lyft drivers held a 25-hour strike in Los Angeles to protest pay cuts.
Author: Bob McGuire
Letter from Mexico: Remembering Emiliano Zapata
Praxis en América Latina organizer J.G.F. Héctor takes up the revolutionary legacy of Emiliano Zapata, and resistance to the president and his attempt to appropriate Zapata.
Chicago vigil for Syria, Yemen and Crimea
Participant report of a Chicago vigil in solidarity with the people of Syria, Yemen, Crimea, and other lands.
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 closings. Many students and their families showed up on the picket lines.
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 with Chicago Public School teachers by the end of the four-year contract, while paraprofessionals gain parity immediately.
Letter from Mexico: Maquiladora workers strike in Matamoros
On 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, Tamaulipas, began a strike demanding a 20% salary increase and an annual bonus amounting to $1,700 USD.
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.
Landless people are attacked in South Africa
July 25, 2018Landless people in Tembisa near Johannesburg, promised housing by the municipality, occupied empty land and put up houses since February, only to rebuild them with each destruction and eviction by police.
Trump helps Harley-Davidson kill jobs
Harley-Davidson workers found that Trump’s corporate tax cuts made it easier for the company to plan to shutter the Kansas City plant. Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum gave Harley-Davidson an incentive to move more jobs to a new plant in Thailand.
Letter from Mexico: Will López Obrador hear masses?
Since leftist López Obrador won the Presidency of Mexico, the masses will watch him and raise their voices if he fails in his promises for workers and Indigenous and against violence and corruption.
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In Memoriam: Andy Phillips (1924-2018)
May 1, 2018We mourn the loss of a founding member of News and Letters Committees, who participated in the first national strike against automation in the coal mines and later co-wrote its history in “The Coal Miners’ General Strike of 1949-50 and the Birth of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S.”
Only revolt grows in Iran’s deserts
Iran’s planned ecological self-destruction has brought poverty, displacement and mass unemployment and mass revolt to local populations as the regime reduces mighty rivers to trickles by diverting water to be used by the oil industry.
Why teachers strike
Public school teachers, historically underpaid as “women’s work,” have been striking or threatening strikes from West Virginia and New Jersey to Oklahoma, Kentucky, Colorado and Arizona.
Remembering Andy Phillips
Kevin O’Brien takes up Andy’s role in the 1949-50 Coal Miners’ General Strike, the overlooked history of African-American miners, and living up to Wendell Phillips, from whom he took his pen name.
Letter from Mexico: How will Indigenous movement organize?
March 12, 2018The National Indigenous Congress did not collect enough signatures to allow María de Jesús Patricio to run as an independent candidate for President of Mexico in 2018. This has deepened discussions of how to create horizontal, autonomous organizations born from below.
In Syria only solution: ‘revolution, revolution’
As Assad regime and Russian forces continue slaughter in Ghouta with bombs and chemical weapons while world powers refuse to interfere, supporters of Free Syria staged emergency vigils in Chicago on Feb. 18 and 25 demanding the bombing of Ghouta end and the blockade be lifted.
Flint: a TV movie
The TV movie “Flint” presented the human tragedy created by the Flint, Michigan, emergency manager, switching the city to water from the Flint River and rendering it all poisonous and undrinkable.
West Virginia teachers extend general strike
West Virginia public school teachers carried out a general strike across the state beginning Feb 22, first striking for two days with union approval, then forcing the union to extend the strike for two more days until the governor offered a 5% raise.
Boycott Wendy’s!
May 3, 2017Florida tomato pickers with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and dozens of local supporters demonstrated in front of the Wendy’s restaurant on Division Street in Chicago.
Letter from Mexico: Zapatistas support U.S. migrants
May 2, 2017Zapatistas in Mexico issued a statement and provided material support for immigrants resisting expulsion, especially from the U.S. .
Workshop Talks: Don’t let germs and capitalists win
May 1, 2017Excluding some people from healthcare, as well as vaccinations and treating infectious diseases, puts even those with health coverage at risk. Battling healthcare exclusions is essential to confronting capitalism’s class rule. .
Retirees help Detroit schools
Retired teachers and community residents have come to the aid of Detroit high schools abandoned as failing by the State of Michigan and the Detroit school system.
Workshop Talks: Workers’ solidarity can stop fascism
March 23, 2017Fascists like Hitler, Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump can only succeed if they create rifts in workers’ solidarity by demonizing an “Other” that some workers will not defend; which is why opposing fascism depends on workers’ solidarity.
Northwest Indiana demands “No Ban! No Wall!”
March 21, 2017Syrians, Mexicans and Iranians were among the 100 who gathered in East Chicago, Indiana, to demand–under the banner of No Ban! No Wall!–the end of Trump’s demonization of immigrants in his effort to gain support from some white workers.
Voices from the inside out: Parole is broken
March 16, 2017Wisconsin Gov. Walker’s plan to replace the state Parole Commission with a Director of Parole would reduce the likelihood of parole in order to save a mere $1.8 million a year, while spending $200 million a year to keep aging parole-eligible prisoners locked up.
Standing Rock: the struggle continues
March 14, 2017The fight against the Dakota Access pipeline continues despite military-style destruction of resistance camps. The movement for Native American liberation from colonialism and for stopping the fossil-fuel exploitation that drives climate change is still growing.
Editorial: Yemen as world’s future?
March 13, 2017The U.S. raid that destroyed Yakla in Yemen, killing 25 civilians, drew world focus on slaughter of Yemenis since the 2011 uprising in Change Square in Sana’a toppled the Saleh dictatorship.
Letter from Mexico: Indigenous organize to contest 2018 vote
January 31, 2017The National Indigenous Congress in Mexico announced that 430 communities had created an Indigenous Governing Council to prepare for selecting a woman to contest the presidential election in 2018, not with the goal of taking power through the ballot box, but to elicit the voices and actions from below.
Women prisoners: ‘Shout Their Names’
Continued testimony from relatives of prisoners at California Institution for Women who had been pushed into suicide by malign official indifference.
Columbia University stalls union victory
January 30, 2017Graduate workers at Columbia University who won representation with the UAW in an historic August 2016 NLRB election face further delays as Columbia seeks to overturn the results, seeking to stall union certification until after Trump stacks the NLRB with anti-union appointees.
Postal workers stop Staples
Postal workers won a major victory. In the face of an international campaign of boycotts, leafleting and picket lines, the multinational company Staples stopped pursuing a deal to provide postal services within their stores.
Workers reject Nexteer-UAW deal
March 18, 2016Workers at Nexteer Automotive dealt a blow to the United Auto Workers bureaucracy and the company when 97% of the rank and file rejected the contract the UAW had negotiated, forcing sharp revisions on two-tier wages and healthcare benefits in the contract they ratified.
Letter from Mexico: Meaning of Mexican workers’ struggles
Upsurge of workers’ struggles in 2015 in Mexico, from field workers in San Quintin, Baja California to maquiladora workers in Ciudad Juarez along with ongoing opposition to government educational “reforms” by teachers in the autonomous union CNTE, demonstrate workers’ resistance to the plans of capital and its state. How can organizations of activist-thinkers meet what workers have achieved in our own organizational response?
Remembering Olga Domanski
From the March-April 2016 issue of News & Letters
We remember Olga Domanski (left), pictured with Genora Johnson, who led the Women’s Emergency Brigade, a historic part of the victorious 1936-37 Flint Sitdown Strike, and later Olga’s roommate when both worked at the GM plant in Flint, Mich.
For more on Olga Domanski, see also:
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Stop anti-union Brod
As Host and Crusty Workers Association union contract in New York City with Brod expired, the company threatened to close the union bakery while opening two non-union plants and fired three union officers and activists. Over 200 union members and immigrant activists rallied union and city support on Jan. 28.
Fighting Uber pay cuts
Uber drivers in NYC, facing higher commissions to Uber and lower fares, went on strike and rallied at the Long Island City headquarters. The drivers purchasing cars through Uber are on top of that charged usurious interest.
World in View: Prime Minister Modi’s retrogressive vision for India
Despite retrogressive religious views, Modi sees his ideology as representing the growing Indian capitalist class with its emphasis on high tech.
World in View: Pope Francis in Mexico: pity and contradiction
The Pope has a partial, limited critique of certain transgressions of industrial capitalism. In some areas of human rights, the Pope and the Catholic Church as an institution is not only silent, but in opposition.
World in View: United Arab Emirates’ two-tier society
The United Arab Emirates, a Gulf state ally of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, is the perfect model of a two-tier society.
World in View: For a Free Syria!
In Chicago on Feb. 21, members of the Syrian community and activists demonstrated in opposition to Russian and Syrian regime bombing.
Two-tier ruins Muni
January 25, 2016The two-tier contract between the San Francisco Municipal Railway and the Transit Workers Union was shoved down workers’ throats.
Detroit teachers’ sick-out
Teachers in Detroit held a sick-out closing 60 schools, directed against Gov. Snyder and his Emergency Manager for Detroit schools.
Workshop Talks: Urgency of solidarity
Workers often ignore borders to solidarize with fellow humans. Solidarity needed now against atrocities against Syrian civilians and in support of Larycia Hawkins risking tenure to stand with Muslims under attack.
Risking jobs for union and respect
Workers in four maquiladoras in Ciudad Juarez began organizing to form an independent union and for higher wages, better working conditions and against sexual harassment.
World in View: Deadly war waged on Yemen’s civilians
December 10, 2015Saudi’s seven-month-long campaign of death and human suffering has been abetted by logistical support from the Obama administration. The Houthis they purport to oppose wasted the popular welcome they received entering Sana’a in 2014 by allying with former oppressor, ex-ruler Saleh, and imposing their own brand of narrow sectarian rule.
World in View: Terror and old prejudice in a changing Turkey
Behind the bombing that killed over 100 peace marchers in Ankara, the state equated the Kurdistan Workers Party with ISIS despite the heroic struggle to defend Kobane.
World in View: Mexico’s ‘La Migra’
Mexico takes millions of dollars from the U.S. to stop Central American immigrants from crossing Mexico’s southern border. Gangs prey on those who make it into Mexico.
World in View: South African protests
Students at University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg opposed a proposed 10,5% fee hike, and defying some student leaders to march on ANC headquarters, demanding no increase. Students at University of Cape Town had in April forced removal of racist imperialist Cecil Rhodes from campus.