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.
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!
Violence against women has worsened in the era of COVID-19. Sexism, like racism, is systemic to almost every culture. Nevertheless women fight back with creative activism and thought. What is new is the internationalization and deepening of that struggle. This year’s International Women’s Day shows women deepening our fight for full freedom and new human relationships.
The people of Burma have taken to the streets daily by the tens of thousands since the army carried out a coup on Feb. 1. This deeper, more human level of opposition is not just to the coup, but the nationalist monks as well as NLD’s positions. A new social solidarity is emerging.
Announcement and pre-publication offer for a new publication, ‘What Is Socialism? A Marxist-Humanist Symposium’
Excerpts from the Introduction to the new pamphlet on ‘What Is Socialism?’
Hegel’s Absolutes never were a series of ascending ivory towers. Revolutionary transformation is immanent in the very form of thought. Our age can best understand Hegel’s Absolute because it has been witness to a movement from practice.
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.
Despite immigration reforms by President Biden that made a significant impact on people’s lives, they fall short in some ways and racism and exploitation continue–not only in abuses by ICE officers but in the overall concept and design of the system.
Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism, by Seyward Darby, is an important contribution towards comprehending why people join right-wing movements, and how to encourage them to leave while inoculating society against hateful and authoritarian thinking.
National Human Trafficking Awareness Day; Saudi activist Loujain Al-Hathloul released but not free; Scotland becomes first country to make menstrual supplies free.
March marks the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Berta Cáceres, Honduran defender of the rivers, the Lenca people and life.
Newly organized as Northern California Unemployed Committee, people marched to draw attention to the disparities within capitalism exacerbated by COVID-19. They demanded the federal government stop taxing unemployment benefits and that it restore the $600 per week unemployment supplement.
What is essential for capital to reinforce its authority and what is essential for people to live as human beings are very different things. Seeing through the rhetoric of the “privilege of having a job,” the reality of life under capitalism becomes clear.
The divide between “reopen schools NOW” and “reopen schools SAFELY ASAP” mirrors the class divide in U.S. education.
Participant report of a solidarity demonstration in Oakland in front of a Whole Foods store, as part of a national day of solidarity to support Bessemer, Alabama, Amazon workers struggling for union recognition.
Coal mines continue to kill in Mexico; the Mapuche nation is resisting Chile’s government and logging companies.
Almost one year after the declaration of the COVID-19 alert in Mexico, the way the government has been “managing” the situation is genocidal.
Autistic man in UK awarded damages in a discrimination case against Virgin Active; professor at Oxnard College put on leave for berating hard-of-hearing student; “little person” banned from a cooking class at Heart of Worcestershire College; London Stansted Airport pulls special assistance from woman because she “didn’t look ill.”
Ohio assailed for refusing to recognize Jack Henning-Sepkoski’s gender identity; Chicago Black Drag Council holds town hall over racism against performers of color in Gay bars; children of same-sex mixed nationality couples in Europe struggle for citizenship.
Readers’ Views on: Trumpism, Racism and the Specter of Fascism; Vaccine Inequality and Injustice; Organizing Amazon; Can Humanity Survive?; Criminal Injustice; Trust Women; Marx’s Humanism and Love; Why Read ‘N&L’?
Readers’ Views on: The Objective Movement of History and Philosophy of Emancipation; Electric Cars are No Panacea; Pricing Nature and Lives; Racism and Anti-Racism in the Queer Community; COVID-19 in Prison.
The City of Chicago lost a powerful voice for teachers, and for workers in general, with the death of Karen Lewis, former President of the Chicago Teachers Union.
A young revolutionary writes about participating in a protest for the first time, in solidarity with Alabama Amazon workers.
The way business and government prepared—or failed to prepare—for the Winter Storm Uri disaster and the way they responded to it tell a bloody tale of climate obstruction, greed, indifference and cruelty.
Young people in Tunisian streets call for jobs and relief from rising food prices; Kavi Vu and friends challenge rampant disinformation on Vietnamese language Facebook pages; 1,000 students at Columbia University withhold tuition, demanding 10% reduction in tuition, a reduction in campus police, and fossil fuel divestment.
Governments across the world are conducting a war against the freedom of thought, from France’s assault on critical race theory to U.S. criminalizing of Indigenous water protectors to Poland’s legal enshrinement of Holocaust denial.
The fight for a living wage continues, after Republican and Democratic senators killed the $15 minimum wage provision in the relief bill.
Women needing abortions face violence, from harassment by fanatics to oppressive laws. Countless deaths, misery and increased poverty caused by forced pregnancy have forced some countries to abandon anti-abortion laws.
Massive marches in Hong Kong that continued until COVID-19 crowd restrictions and the National Security Law , combined with more violent arrests, drove protests underground.
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.
In her book, Ijeoma Oluo discusses the serious damage caused when we expect white men to have all the leadership roles in a society. The damage is not only to women and people of color whose voices are not heard, and to society, which loses their input, but to white men themselves.
Lenn Keller, a Black Lesbian feminist activist, historian, and documentary photographer, remembered; women sue MindGeek/Pornhub and pressure credit card companies; Chile women win demand for half the seats in constitutional convention; women win reinstatement in First Nation bands in Canada.
Prisoner Robert Taliaferro explores what it is like to argue with white racists immersed in Trumpist propaganda.
A feminist review of “Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements.” The author, Charlene Carruthers, sees it as “a book for all people who are curious about and committed to the struggle for Black liberation.”
It is urgent that this flag be acknowledged for what it is—a Stars and Bars Confederate flag except for the Coat of Arms of Georgia inside the circle of 13 stars—and removed.
Murders of Trans and Gender Nonconforming people; vigil for Avril, a Trans student harassed at a French high school; New Orleans’ underserved and at-risk communities, including LGBTQ+ people, and the homeless and poor living with HIV/AIDS; swell of support for Trevor Wilkinson, suspended in Texas high school for nail polish.
Journalists in China harassed and detained for exposing COVID-19 reality; Hong Kong dissidents arrested; forced Uyghur labor elicits uneven response from U.S.
Readers’ Views on: Trumpist Coup and Fascist Threat; Black Revolt and Social Movements; Right’s War on the Mind; Love Is Love; The Unfinished Battle; Women’s Liberation; What Is Capitalism? What Is Socialism?; Ray Bazmore
Readers’ Views on: What Is Philosophy? What Is Revolution?; Prisoners’ Quest for Self-Development; Voices from Behind Bars; Why Read N&L?
Raymond Bazmore, who died Nov. 4 at the age of 93 in Detroit, was active and engaged all his life in numerous social justice struggles.
In huge swaths of Yemen—particularly in areas controlled by Houthi rebels—famine and mass starvation are rampant. To add to this tragedy, U.S. President Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s parting shot before leaving office was to declare the Houthis a terrorist organization, thus creating draconian difficulties for food aid to reach famine-suffering masses.
During the pandemic Supplemental Security Income has been steadily collapsing, severely affecting handicapped and elderly people; In Ghana people with disabilities face confinement and in some cases physical violence and prejudice; and in the U.S. there has been an increase in the number of women killing their disabled children and then committing suicide.
Honduran migrants from the first caravan since Joseph Biden’s election speak about why they are leaving their homeland; and São Paulo, Brazil residents, thrown out of work by the pandemic, are occupying buildings in order to have a place to live.
A view from Los Angeles of the Capitol mob and a pro-Trump rally in downtown L.A.: the policing system was built against Black and Brown people.
Massive youth demonstrations oppose military rule in Thailand and dictatorship of their schools; students at Bogazici University in Istanbul march to oppose Prof. Melih Bulu’s elevation to rector by Turkey’s President Erdoğan; and rural Pakistani youth pedal 100 miles in protest of a rise in the price of flour.
Rick Snyder, former Governor of Michigan, was charged with two counts of willful neglect of duty, escaping the more serious charges facing other defendants.
Rohingya Muslims have faced extreme hardship at the hands of Burma’s military with the cooperation of the civilian government under once opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, spurred on by Buddhist religious leaders encouraging genocide.
