Queer Notes takes up: LGBTQ+ Ghanaians’ struggle to to raise awareness of the persecution Queer Ghanaians experience; how supporters of Transgender people are trying to raise awareness and protest the many anti-Transgender rights bills introduced in 25 U.S. states; and that an appeals court ruled that Coon Rapids High School in Minnesota must pay $300,000 to Transgender student.
¡Estamos de vuelta! Con nuevos artículos.
I’m sure I’m not the only woman who, as soon as she heard about the gunning down of seven women and one man who work at massage centers in Atlanta, suspected they were murdered because they were women, or because they were Asian women. In other words, this was a misogynist hate crime.
Support political prisoner Maâti Monjib in Morocco, on hunger strike since March 4!
This review of “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History,” by John M. Barry, views the 1918 deadly flu pandemic with eyes of today’s COVID-19 reality.
The Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland decries Ireland’s denial of asylum for a Zimbabwean Lesbian and for several other LGBTQ+ refugees; and U.S. Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., introduced a bill to block funding from state and local sports organizations that allow Transgender females to participate in girls’ or women’s sports.
A prisoner who got COVID-19 writes about how prisons have reprehensibly mismanaged the COVID-19 crisis, harming prisoners, line staff, their families, and the community at large.
Abahlali baseMjondolo calls on all to oppose border closures and xenophobia and build solidarity among the oppressed.
The pandemic challenges assumptions about the purpose of schooling, creating an opportunity to address basic issues, including ways to help students reflect and build on what they have learned, in school or out, and to figure out how to allow those experiences to “count.”
The Jan. 6 Trumpist coup reveals the depth of the far-right threat, compliticy of major institutions, and the philosophic void of the Left. A liberatory banner of a new society on truly human foundations is needed if we are not to be thrown right back into more oscillations between fascist horrors and the crumbling “normal” of capitalist liberal democracy.
Amid COVID-19 deaths and economic decline, a fascist mob stormed the Capitol. If U.S. democracy lives to see another day, it was because of the unprecedented turnout of Black voters, reflecting the mass movement on the streets that continues to put that democracy on trial.
The Moroccan Association for the Defense of Human Rights denounces the arrest and unjustified detention of the Moroccan historian and human rights activist Maâti Monjib and invites you to sign a statement in his support.
At four in the morning on Dec. 30, the Argentine Senate finally passed an abortion rights bill, making it legal to terminate a pregnancy in the first 14 weeks. The procedure will be free in government hospitals, crucially important for poor women.
The Zapatistas have just issued a new declaration signed by hundreds of organizations regarding their work in the last several months establishing contacts with many groups and discussing what unites and divides them and working out what allows them all to move forward. They agreed to continue to have meetings around the globe, inviting those [=>]
Gig companies pushed through California’s Prop 22 denying workers recognition as employees, and want similar laws in other states and countries. Other workers are bracing to see if the “gig economy” will be able to overtake their own industry.
A high school student, a former prisoner, and a long-time Marxist-Humanist discuss why Marx’s 1844 Humanist Essays are critical to meet the total challenges to humanity today.
Continuing with their bike trip throughout Mexico, the author and his friend have to cross “The Devil’s bridge” and they meet a family that has suffered the consequences of developmentalism.
‘Mexico news’ takes up the thousands of missing people in Mexico and the found clandestine graves; the resistance to Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s developmentalist capitalism; how COVID-19 affects Mexico; and how fare the Zapatistas and their future plans.
While what is happening in Poland may not be a revolution, it is revolutionary. Women are leading a movement protesting the Church’s inhuman attack on women’s freedom, and mounting a deep challenge to the fascist-leaning Polish government.
In addition to pandemic, climate, and economic disasters, we face the specter of pre-emptive counter-revolution. Self-activity of masses in motion is needed not only to defeat Trump but to move beyond society that breeds Trumpism.
Girls revolt against discriminatory dress code at Wisconsin high school; the death of Shere Hite, author of “The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality”; the struggle against mass hysterectomies performed without informed consent on immigrant women detained in Georgia; and in Mexico City feminists seized the National Human Rights Commission building for five days, renaming it “House of Refuge Ni Una Menos.”
The new event, Trans Empowerment Month; Trans founded and run dairy farm colony in Manthithoppu, India; and the alarm in the LGBTQ+ community over the nomination of anti-human-rights judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.
As part of his bike journey throughout Mexico, the author and his partner encounter an amazing local resident and all his tales and knowledge, including the struggle of the people of San Marcos in defense of their water.
Against bureaucratic hurdles, community leaders and activists in Detroit, Michigan are trying to encourage the vote for the November election, especially among young adults.
In 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.
Participant report of a protest against the construction of a bridge that would destroy the wetland of Xochimilco, one of the few natural zones remaining in Mexico City.
Prisoner rights activist Tasha Williams relays reports from prisoners at Soledad State Prison of a brutal attack by guards on Black prisoners. Guards beat them, used chokeholds on them and several other attacks as well as being maskless and yelling at the Black men: “By the time this is over, you N—ers will have COVID-19!”
In the wake of the March 7, 1965, “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama, where the recently deceased John Lewis was one of the freedom marchers clubbed and beaten, News & Letters issued this statement highlighting both the new revolt that was sparked and the contradictions between the leaders and ranks in the Freedom Now movement in a way that speaks powerfully to today’s movement.
In light of the Forum in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth, J.G.F. Héctor explores the search for unity by diverse movements in relation to Hegel’s dialectic of the whole and the parts.
Educator Susan Van Gelder breaks down the difficulties and political realities of what happens to school children, teachers, and others trying to educate children during the crisis caused by the pandemic and Donald Trump’s and Betsy DeVos’ attempts to destroy public education.
Detroit resident Susan Van Gelder recounts a tense confrontation between Detroit citizens and police and quotes a Black resident about the need to defund the police and fund conflict resolution instead.
A veteran of working in the gig economy shares first-hand experience and analysis.
Urszula Wislanka reviews the book “Prison Truth: The Story of the San Quentin News” by William J. Drummond. Prisoners’ humanity is not alone their individual transformation or “personal redemption” as a “human interest” story, as shown by the Pelican Bay hunger strikes.
Italian American Tom Siracuse argues that statues of Christopher Columbus in New York should be torn down and more worthy Italians could be honored.
Detroit dispatch #7 saw a multiplicity of daily Black Lives Matter protests, in both city and suburbs, illuminating revelations of and resistance against systemic racism. Art flourishes while evictions loom, Fiat-Chrysler workers walk out while speed-up of workers continues and social distancing and mask wearing fall by the wayside.
Nestlé Corporation is now being allowed to withdraw up to 400 gallons of water per minute from three wells in northern Michigan, including a well near the headwaters of Twin and Chippewa Creeks, Michigan. It is unsustainable.
The COVID-19 pandemic is hitting minority communities especially hard. The LGBTQ community is no exception and Transgender people are particularly hard hit. This is an international phenomenon.
American civilization never ceases to put itself on trial, as shown once again by the revolt in Minneapolis that quickly spread nationwide, a new moment of revolt in an unprecedented situation.
Since May 29, there have been ongoing demonstrations sparked by the outrage over the police murder of George Floyd. They spread throughout the many San Francisco Bay Area cities including ones not especially known for activism like Walnut Creek.
Special coverage of COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Watch this space for periodic additions. Latest: Detroit Dispatch #6: Hospitalizations, funerals and the need for justice; Discussion article: Neoliberal necropolitics and Indian migrant workers; Detroit Dispatch #5: Education and individualism; COVID-19 has generated a lot of “free time” for workers, but how can we create full, human “free time”?; Detroit dispatch #4: The rush to reopen; Detroit dispatch #3: a pall over the city; Woman as Reason: Abortion in the time of COVID-19; Detroit Dispatch: Easter Sunday.
In Detroit most people have been practicing social distancing, enforced by the police who recovered from their own COVID-19 outbreak. The most difficult situations are hospitalizations and funerals, and sadly, Detroit’s “Right to Literacy” case was short-lived, overturned by the full panel of judges. Plaintiffs are regrouping to resume the struggle.
The coronavirus crisis has compelled the Indian state to haphazardly effectuate a lockdown in order to properly practice social distancing. But it has unaccountably forgotten that social distancing is a privilege of the elite class if well-thought-out arrangements are not made.
Susan Van Gelder reports on Detroit including: a Supreme Court ruling saying Detroit children have been “deprived of access to literacy”; how children are faring in obtaining internet access so they participate in distant learning; and how “individualism” needs to be framed in relationship to society as a whole.
The measures adopted in the face of the spread of COVID-19 in the world have caused billions of people to suddenly have excess “free time.” But this is not a full “free time,” conducive to the enjoyment and development of new skills, but a “time without work” that is exacerbating the enormous economic contradictions already existing in our society. Is it possible to imagine and bring about a form of free time that is truly human time?
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the print edition of News & Letters is suspended until it is safe to resume it.
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2020-2021: Shattered by pandemic, world needs new beginnings in revolutionary activity, thought; Thoughts from the outside: A mind of one’s own vs. COVID-19; Woman as reason: The torture of abortion bans; From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The methodology of Perspectives; Canada on trial: War on Wet’suwet’en Nation; Duterte uses COVID-19 pandemic to further fascist rule, and more.
Many in Detroit are concerned about the rush to reopen and the false dichotomy between “the economy” and health. The death rate is still high.
Two weeks of chilly weather—including a little late-spring snow—combined with increasingly dangerous Presidential “leadership,” a quarter of Michigan’s workers claiming unemployment, and more deaths of friends and relatives has cast a pall over the city and state.
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.
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.
