The deadline for the September-October 2020 issue of News & Letters is Sunday, August 16th. Share your story with the world! Send in reports on your workplace, your town, your country; conditions, events, ideas, and debates. Write up your experiences of how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting your work, life, and community, and how people are oppressed, fighting back or engaging in solidarity, mutual aid… Send your articles/reports to arise@newsandletters.org
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.
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.
Report on the #ClemencyCoast2Coast virtual town hall held on April 8, in which former prisoners took the floor to speak about the “death camps” that prisons have turned into in the midst COVID-19 pandemic and to demand early release.
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.
Uber, Lyft, and Amazon workers struggle to hold their employers to account and demand protection from COVID-19 as well as a living wage and sick days.
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.
Shack dwellers, and other poor people, including street traders, casual workers and undocumented migrants, have not been taken into consideration when it comes to the prevention of the coronavirus, or included in decision-making about the crisis.
The battle against the COVID-19 pandemic is a battle over how society will change, mirroring the battle over how to confront and adapt to the climate and extinction crisis. Strikes are erupting across the world.
What was new this International Women’s Day was larger marches, greater militancy of women participants, the new places where they took place, and the attacks against them which escalated significantly from previous years.
Más allá de la mayor o menor eficacia de la respuesta de uno u otro gobierno ante la pandemia, es el capitalismo en su conjunto el que muestra su incapacidad para darle solución a los problemas que amenazan la vida humana.
Beyond the greater or lesser effectiveness of the response of one or the other government to the pandemic, it is capitalism as a whole that shows its inability to solve the problems that threaten human life.
Review-essay (longer version) on the book ‘Syria After the Uprisings: The Political Economy of State Resilience’ by Joseph Daher. With a combination of ruthless criticism and consistent solidarity, the author situates the Assad regime and Syria’s three counter-revolutions into a broader trend of global neoliberalism.
Most Detroiters are adjusting to new habits of sanitation and social distancing required because of the coronavirus, but the response of city government has been mixed.
Lead: Women’s movements reach for new global stage; Editorial: Trump after impeachment; COVID-19: A world-historic threat; Voices from the inside out: On becoming human; From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: African revolutions at the crossroads; Essay: Ecosocialism and post-Marx Marxism; Copper miners strike; Torture of immigrants in the U.S.; World in view: France, Ireland & the ‘idea of Europe’; Review: ‘Syria after the Uprisings’; more…
Participant report of women’s strike in Mexico City, March 9, 2020.
POSTPONED: Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2020-2021
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…
A changed world spurs wars and decimates the earth: • Lead: Australia’s megafires lay bare capitalism’s climate death march, • Editorial: The death of counter-revolutionary Qassem Soleimani; World in View: Revolution and genocide in Idlib, Syria; From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Crises of retrogressive Changed World; Voices from the inside out: A ‘free world’ view; Rebellion in Hong Kong spreads; Woman as Reason: Anti-femicide goes global; Google and Amazon workers rebel; Essay: Revolution in Permanence, Trotsky, Marx, Dunayevskaya; The fall of Evo Morales; Whither Bolivia?; Mass protests challenge India’s Modi; World in View: Reactionary Brexit; more…
The spread of the coronavirus cannot be viewed in isolation from the corruption of China’s state-capitalism and the danger the virus poses especially to the poor, homeless and refugees.
An Editorial in News & Letters taking up who General Qassem Soleimani was, what he did in aiding counter-revolution in the Middle East, and ramifications of his death.
Reseña publicada en La Jornada Semanal del libro La filosofía de la revolución en permanencia de Marx en nuestros días, Escritos selectos de Raya Dunayevskaya.
News & Letters interviews some of the Global Climate Strike participants.
On Dec. 16, 4,000 mental health workers at Kaiser Permanente HMO in Oakland went on a five-day strike, calling attention to a serious lack of resources to provide timely care.
Con artículos sobre a) las rebeliones continuas en América Latina; b) el Segundo Encuentro zapatista de Mujeres que Luchan;
c) editorial: Bolivia bajo la extrema derecha, y d) una sección especial sobre mujeres.
Participant report of the Dec. 6, 2019, climate strike in Chicago, part of global climate strike.
