Thousands marched in Mexico City, Feb. 22, to protest the murder of journalist and environmental activist Samir Flores Soberanes. He had been shot twice, execution style, on Feb. 20, at his home.
Author: Kathleen Drury
World in View: The genius of the Sudanese revolution
The brilliant Sudanese revolution is another in a line of rebellions against reactionary rule.
World in View: East Africa unity?
May 3, 2019Exploitative Chinese capital investment is what the East African Community economic zone has in common–a betrayal of their anthem “Jumiya Yetu,” which speaks of community.
World in View: Fascist massacre in New Zealand
Fascist mass murderer and terrorist who murdered New Zealand worshippers embodies today’s very dangerous ideological confusion, calling for genocide while also calling for workers’ rights and environmentalism.
World in View: European Union elections: mixed signals
Elections to the European Parliament will be held in late May and will be a measure of the strength of the far right, racist anti-immigrant parties that have been gaining political power on the continent.
San Francisco Youth Climate Strike
Bay Area youth exuberantly join in a global march for the climate, raising awareness of climate change.
Handicap This!: Nursing home blues
Nursing home resident tells of feeling like a prisoner in her home, and overcrowding, malpractice and mistreatment of residents caused by underfunding and understaffing in for-profit nursing homes.
Youth in Action: May-June 2019
An action against Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School allowing the ranking of girls by boys; K-8 Charter Day School students win against sexist dress code; Savitribai Phule Pune University graduate students win stipends and demonstrate for better meals; University of Illinois at Chicago graduate student teaching assistants strike.
Stop HB6: Ohio nuke industry bailout!
A call by an Ohio Sierra Club Nuclear Free Committee member to oppose Ohio House nuclear bailout legislation that would allow rebuilding two nuclear reactors and bill energy customers for the costs.
The many forms of racism in the U.S.
December 2, 2018Prisoner Robert Taliaferro discusses how racism and xenophobia are alive and well in the U.S., and take many forms, both blatant and subtle.
Jackie Lacey, Los Angeles DA, must go!
Concerned groups in Los Angles, Calif., held rallies and delivered a petition to LA District Attorney Jackie Lacey demanding she “Prosecute Killer Cops” or step down as DA.
Frantz Fanon warns Ali Shariati
A new book, “Frantz Fanon: Alienation and Freedom,” reveals that Frantz Fanon warned leftist Islamist Ali Shariati that, despite Islam’s anticolonialist potential, without the spirit of emancipation it risked diversion to sectarianism, approaching the past rather than future, like African nationalisms.
California fires are not ‘natural’ disasters
Climate change and downed power lines from PG&E are the reasons for the unprecedented wildfires in California in 2018, despite Donald Trump’s attempt to put blame elsewhere and open California forests to more logging.
Handicap This!, November-December 2018
FEMA’s failure to include people with disabilities in its response to natural disasters; airline passengers with disabilities gain a bill of rights; George Mason University sororities turn down AnnCatherine Heigl, who has Down syndrome; Texas is penalized for underfunding special education programs.
James Cone (1938-2018)
Obituary of scholar James H. Cone, who founded Black liberation theology and struggled against racism and white supremacy.
Queer Notes: November-December 2018
“The Orlando Traveling Memorial” commemorates those murdered and those who aided the victims of the 2016 Orlando Pulse shooting; Transgender woman Aimee Stephens’ successful employment discrimination lawsuit; protesters decry Trump administration proposal to define gender as fixed at birth; Romania’s referendum defining a family as composed on one man and one woman fails.
Review: The Feeling of Being Watched
The film “The Feeling of Being Watched” exposes the FBI’s “Operation Vulgar Betrayal,” which tracked Muslim organizations only because they were Muslim, and reminds its audiences of other FBI investigations.
Voting is broken in Michigan
September 26, 2018Michigan voters describe examples of how voting in Michigan is seriously flawed, leading to voter disenfranchisement.
Nicaraguans rise up against Ortega
September 20, 2018Nicaraguans rally in San Francisco to raise awareness and support for the spreading anti-government protests in Nicaragua against President Ortega and his government’s brutal oppression.
Students and adults protest S. Korean airport
Hundreds of South Korean students and adults hold a three-day protest against the building of a second airport in the city of Jeju-Doin in defense of the environment, an elementary school and farmers.
Youth in Action, September-October 2018
University of North Carolina students and workers bring down statue of generic Confederate soldier; Swedish pro-asylum student Elin Errson prevents deportation of Afghan refugee; Iraqi youth and women protest unemployment, electricity shortages and lack of clean water.
50 Years later…The 1968 French general strike–its meaning today.
May 5, 2018A participant looks at the 1968 French general strike, filled with potential to transform society, and discusses why it failed and the ramifications of that for today.
SF walk against rape
Many survivors of rape, and their supporters including youth from City College of San Francisco, and Transgender people took part in the 13th annual San Francisco A Walk Against Rape.
Fight against Duterte’s fascism
May 4, 2018In-person report of the situation in the Philippines. The fragmented Left complicates the struggle against President Duterte and his fascist rule.
Queer Notes: May-June 2018
May 3, 2018A roundup of GLBTQT news including: Trinity College Dublin students march for quality healthcare for Transgender people; study reveals that Bisexual female youth are more subject to depression and suicide than straight women and Lesbians; Lesbian refugees living in an East African refugee camp will soon have a chicken farm; Queer people and their supporters in Bermuda want tourists to support their businesses, rather than boycotting them.
Letter from Mexico: Zapatista and other women meet
May 2, 2018The First International Gathering of Politics, Art, Sport, and Culture for Women in Struggle, organized by the Zapatista Indigenous women, took place in Chiapas from March 8-10. More than 5,000 women from all over the world shared their thoughts on feminism, art and work.
L.A. vendors protest
Women street vendors and their supporters demonstrated for legalization, elimination of fees and freedom from police harassment on March 9 as part of International Women’s Day.
Women Worldwide: May-June 2018
A roundup of women’s news including: the Boston Women’s Health Collective will no longer update the iconic Our Bodies Ourselves; Maxine Hammond is fundraising to preserve the Suppressed History of Archives of women resisting oppression; protests against the murder of Black Lesbian Brazilian feminist Marielle Franco; and Belfast Feminist Network’s protest outside an Ulster Rugby team match after players were acquitted of rape.
Review: Specters of Revolt
March 12, 2018Richard-Gilman Opalsky is a rare intellectual who recognizes revolt as a form of theory. Does his book “Specters of Revolt” grasp theory in a one-sided way and restrict the movement of negation of the negation? .
‘Pulling Chain’
March 10, 2018Do you ever wonder what happens to all of your family members after the courtroom drama? After the news cameras and news articles dry up? After the victim impact statements and the jury’s verdict have been handed down?
Two death sentences
A prisoner talks about why life without parole is a second death sentence.
Treat PTSD from the torture of solitary
Prisoner Human Rights Movement representatives call on California government officials to provide mental healthcare, support groups and other relief to prisoners formerly in solitary confinement who are living with PTSD.
Struggle against solitary confinement continues!
Bay Area Californians rally against all forms of solitary confinement including for those released from indefinite solitary into level IV general population who are experiencing conditions worse than they experienced in solitary.
Women Worldwide: January-February 2018
February 4, 2018A group in rural Western Kenya fights “widow cleansing”; Mexican women from San Salvador Atenco, raped and tortured by government police in 2007, seek justice at Inter-American Court; El Salvadoran women convicted of aggravated murder after stillbirths or miscarriages seek justice with the help of the Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion.
The limitations of restorative justice
Prisoner Stephen Wilson comments on Faruq’s article on the meaning of legal standing before the law and how restorative justice is not enough as the need is for transformative justice which focuses on the structures that create oppression and inequality in the first place.
‘Corrections’ steals from inmates, families
Exposé on how the Virginia Department of Corrections steals the interest on prisoners’ savings accounts for their own use, revealing that the VDOC encourages recidivism instead of prisoners’ successful reentry into society.
Women’s Marches sweep the world
February 3, 2018Women’s Marches took place around the U.S. and the world in 2017 AND 2018, once again showing that the opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump is alive, thriving, militant and exuberant.
A review: Regretting Motherhood
February 2, 2018Adele’s review of Orna Donath’s book “Regretting Motherhood: A Study” takes up Donath’s study of 27 Israeli women who regretted becoming mothers; some who had never wanted children and others who had, only to find the reality was not what they expected.
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.
Voices from the Inside Out: Death by incarceration
September 5, 2017Among the reasons U.S. prisoners die in prison or are unable to reintegrate into society upon release are: lengthy incarceration, especially for minor crimes; lack of mental and physical healthcare; lack of effective rehabilitation.
The struggle in Diego Garcia continues
Mauritians get closer to reunification as the UN General Assembly Resolution for an Advisory Opinion from the UN’s International Court of Justice is approved by a wide margin, much to the disappointment of the UK and US.
Queer Notes, September-October 2017
September 3, 2017Round up of news about LGBTQ people including: Transgender people rally against Texas discriminatory bathroom bill; International Non-Binary Day celebrations; World Pride 2017 was celebrated in Spain; and Illinois becomes the second state in the U.S. to pass legislation banning so-called Gay and Transgender panic defense.
Humanity confronting annihilation
The peace march on Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to commemorate over 70,000 lives lost at the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on Aug. 9 in Livermore, Calif., bring up questions of Marxism, humanism, and the alternative necessary new society.
Cyclists demand bike lanes in Skid Row
On July 8, 60 residents and activists rode bikes from Skid Row to City Hall to protest the lack of bike lanes in their neighborhood, despite the large number of bicycle riders living there.
Readers’ Views: July-August 2017, Part 2
July 6, 2017Readers’ Views on Cooperative Form of Labor vs. Abstract Labor; Marx vs. Trump-Putin; Voices From Behind Bars
Readers’ Views: July-August 2017, Part 1
July 2, 2017Readers’ Views on Philosophy and Revolt vs. Trumpism; Trump and the Left; Injustice to Immigrants; Anti-Woman, Anti-Labor Uber; ACT UP; From Iran; To Mexico; Why Read News & Letters?
World In View: War-torn Congo faces new round of violence
May 15, 2017Congo’s President Joseph Kabila finally agreed to step down after his second term after large protests in Kinshasa; however, tribal militias Kamuina Nsapu and Bundu kia Kongo arose and many thousands are perishing from wars as the world looks the other way.
World In View: South Africa protests
Protesters in South Africa agitate against President Jacob Zuma, the ruling African National Congress, the high unemployment rate and elections, and in support of the poor and workers.
World in View: French elections
France’s national elections will head to a run-off between fascist Marine Le Pen of the National Front party and liberal bourgeois centrist Emmanuel Macron of the En Marche party.
World in View: Korea war threats
The U.S. is increasing its military activity in the far East as tensions rise between it and North Korea that could lead to an unthinkable and devastating nuclear and chemical war that could affect multiple nations.