Surviving at Kroger

April 29, 2020

Working at Kroger grocery store, you truly appreciate the saying that “goodness is its own reward” because, despite all the news and advertisements touting grocery store employees as heroes, I sure don’t feel rewarded like one.

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Health worker speaks

As a healthcare worker in a community setting, I see that the response from clinic administration to COVID-19 has been but a microcosm of Trump’s: rooted in denialism, optimism, and the capitalist-realist ethos (fetishizing production while denying the possibility of an alternative world).

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Woman as Reason: The torture of abortion bans

Abortion bans during the COVID-19 pandemic are cruel, based on lies, and constitute torture against women, causing not only more deaths, but also revealing the contempt with which women are held and the danger in forcing women to give birth against their will at this time.

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II. The true pandemic war

Draft thesis for discussion about where the world is heading, and what to do about it from a revolutionary standpoint. Part II. The true pandemic war: A. The capitalists’ class war; B. Subjects of revolution fight back; and C. Pandemic class war reveals the social structure.

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Detroit Dispatch #2: Easter Sunday

April 13, 2020

As elsewhere, in Detroit numbers of cases and deaths continue to rise, the lockdown is intensified, school is on hold, Black citizens are sick and dying in large numbers, and unemployment grows.

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Prisoners make COVID-19 Masks but can’t use them

Press release from the California Coalition for Women Prisoners reporting on the incarcerated women at the California Institution for Women, who are producing masks to protect people from COVID-19 but report that the vast majority of incarcerated people are not receiving these masks for their own use.

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Capitalism is the real pandemic

April 6, 2020

Neither the coronavirus nor the ongoing climate changes are merely “acts of nature.” Rather both have emerged at this moment because humanity is grounded—entrapped—in the economic-social-political system(s) of capital/capitalism. It is the behemoth that we must examine: the monster we must free ourselves from.

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Thoughts of COVID-19 in prison

April 1, 2020

In prison here in Wisconsin, the guys are not as engaged as people in the community simply because of the nature of where we are. We are still in a relatively sterile environment which would change dramatically if someone comes in from the world and is a carrier. Healthcare inside is marginal during the best of times.

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Free Lyris Wolfe!

After almost three years in jail, Lyris Wolfe was finally released. There is video evidence that the offense was an accident.

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Mental health strike

Four thousand mental health workers at Kaiser Permanente HMO held a five-day strike, once again calling attention to a serious lack of resources to provide timely care.

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Queer notes, March-April 2020

Queer notes on youth in Vietnam; anti-LGBTQ actions at the University of Louisville; and the firing of two teachers at John F. Kennedy High School after announcing their engagements to same-sex partners.

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Prison slave labor

Federal prisoner slave labor is producing comic books and other materials for the U.S. market. UNICOR corporation pays federal prisoners from 23¢ to $1.15 per hour, often working 15½-hour shifts, with unpaid lunch and dinner times, but no other breaks.

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‘Leftover Women’

Review of ‘Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China’ by Leta Hong Fincher, which debunks the Chinese government’s propaganda that the status of women has been soaring since the introduction of corporate capitalism.

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Youth in action, March-April 2020

Youth in action column on the Valentine’s Day’s Fridays 4 Future and Climate Strike protests, and the student group Teens Take Charge’s actions against segregation in New York schools.

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Copper miners strike

The strike of more than 1,500 copper miners and smelters in Arizona and Texas against Asarco/Grupo Mexico has entered its fifth month, part of a new wave of labor solidarity and revolt.

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Editorial: Trump after impeachment

In the aftermath of Trump’s impeachment trial, impunity and purges rage while checks and balances failed. Armed with a philosophy of freedom, the opposition to Trump and to the capitalist system that spawned him would give Trump the challenge that fellow politicians could not.

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Women worldwide, March-April 2020

Women worldwide column on Wet’suwet’en women fighting Coastal GasLink Pipeline; the Murang’a County Women savings and credit cooperative in Kenya; artist Jimini Hignett; dress codes for women in Japan; and Indian women demonstrating against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new racist citizenship law.

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COVID-19: A world-historic threat

March 7, 2020

Gerry Emmett analyzes the meaning of the current coronavirus pandemic from the point of view of what Karl Marx called humanity’s metabolism with nature, which formed the basis of his critique of capitalism.

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Women’s movements reach for new global stage

March 6, 2020

What has become clear in 2020 is the global nature of the women’s movements. It is a new stage which has announced itself by the international fight against femicide; the Women’s Marches; and by the National Women’s Meetings in Latin America, also called Encuentros.

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#FixTheElevators

March 4, 2020

A coalition of students and workers at Wayne State University in Detroit have been conducting a campaign since November 2019 for the elevators on campus to be repaired. It is a disability, safety, and working conditions issue.

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Workers strike Aptiv!

More than 18,000 workers at the U.S. company Aptiv’s maquiladora plants in Mexico walked out because, after a 120-peso wage increase, Aptiv withheld much more than that for taxes.

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New pamphlet: Pelican Bay prisoners speak

Oakland meeting: Revolutionary journalism and Prisoner Human Rights Movement

February 11, 2020

Sunday Feb. 16th, 6:30PM 6501 Telegraph, Oakland
We’ll explore the contrast between the practice of revolutionary journalism shaped by freedom as human essence and freedom as a “special privilege” in press freedom under censorship.
Discussion led by: Urszula Wislanka, long-time prisoner-activist, writer/editor for The Fire Inside, publication of California Coalition for Women Prisoners, and journalist for News & Letters.
Faruq, Marxist-Humanist writer-participant in the 2011-2013 hunger strikes at Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit.

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Nuevo número de Praxis en América Latina (febrero-marzo 2020)

Los diálogos revolucionarios de los zapatistas y el CNI: ¿Cuál es el desafío para nosotr@s? * Voces del Foro en Defensa del Territorio y la Madre Tierra * ENSAYO: El Foro en Defensa de la Madre Tierra, la unidad de las luchas desde una perspectiva dialéctica y ¿qué sigue ahora? * Crónicas de dos asistentes al Segundo Encuentro Internacional de Mujeres que Luchan * De los escritos de Raya Dunayevskaya: Notas preliminares sobre la Ciencia de la lógica de Hegel * Además, textos sobre los megaincendios en Australia; la huelga en las maquilas de Chihuahua, Durango y Zacatecas; la rebelión continua en Hong Kong y varios más… 

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