Maâti Monjib, the Moroccan journalist, historian and human rights activist, has begun another hunger strike and needs your support.
Articles
Tens of thousands march for reproductive justice nationwide
October 3, 2021In Chicago, four to five thousand rallied and marched downtown to make it clear that women in the U.S. are continuing to fight back against the inhuman anti-abortion legislation that has been surging across Republican-dominated statehouses for years—this, despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
Queer Notes
September 30, 2021Queer Notes takes up a Queer rights rally in Madrid, Spain, to call for stronger laws to protect LGBTQ+ people; LGBTQ+ people and their supporters in New York City protested the homophobic assault against Abimbola Adelaja and his friend; and Parents in Tennessee and the Human Rights Campaign are suing the state to overturn its anti-Trans law that allows schools to be sued if they allow a Trans student in a cisgender bathroom.
Support Maâti Monjib!
September 29, 2021A letter from Maati Monjib asking for support from the human rights community in the face of his next hearing before the Rabat Court of Appeal on September 30.
Chicago climate strike
Participant report of the Fridays for Future climate strike in Chicago on September 24, 2021.
Youth Vs Apocalypse
As part of the ongoing Fridays for Future, on Aug. 27 several hundred, mostly youth, gathered in San Francisco to call attention to environmental racism, the climate crisis, and public health.
Climate disaster: Non-solutions by state and private capital, or transformation from below?
Excerpted from a draft report for the Convention of News and Letters Committees, the piece takes on different movements and actions form below fighting for climate justice, as well as the actions from governments and companies blocking them.
New focus on Hegel’s ‘naturalism’ impels another look at Marx
In conversation with Karen Ng’s book “Hegel’s Concept of Life,” Ron Kelch takes up the concept of life and “naturalism” and their relationship to freedom in Hegel, Marx, and Marxist-Humanism. Whether one takes Marx’s starting point of freedom with respect to human life activity that is inextricably part of nature or Hegel’s beginning again from Nature as mediation, the self-determination of the unifying Idea cannot be taken for granted in the face of the spontaneous self-bringing forth of liberty.
Review of: ‘They didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties’ by Lisa Levenstein
September 22, 2021Adele reviews the book “They Didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties” by Lisa Levenstein.
#BlackLivesMatter: Review of ‘The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart’ by Alicia Garza
Susan Van Gelder reviews the book “The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart” by Alicia Garza.
Thoughts from the Outside: After Juneteenth
Today’s descendants of slaves are asked to accept an interpretation of history that centers on acts of the government, not on those of slaves asserting themselves in their lives. Biden’s recognition of the day slaves “received” their freedom from the government, might help secure the African-American vote for the Democratic Party. But even this limited freedom is under attack.
Ed Negron: In Memoriam
Elise Barclay remembers Ed Negron, a Chicago activist for Latinx, LGBTQ+ and especially Bisexual rights.
Daraa and Free Syria
In Daraa, the birthplace of the Syrian Revolution, resistance has continued. Fifty Syrian revolutionaries and their families were forced to leave the city to join other revolutionaries in the Free Syrian enclave in the country’s northwest.
Latin America Notes: September-October 2021
September 21, 2021Cubans revolt and students speak out amid food and medicine shortages and human rights violations; and Latin America suffers under climate change.
Youth in Action: September-October 2021
Youth in several Afghan cities resist Taliban; young Colombians become “First Liners” in resistance actions; high school students march in Los Gatos, Calif., and Ninnekah, Okla., to protest schools’ negligence regarding sexual abuse and harassment.
Queer Notes: September-October 2021
A roundup of Pride events around the world: Pride Afrique; Budapest, Hungary, Pride March; Equality Pride in Warsaw, Poland; Sulong Vaklash in Manila, the Philippines; Pride Parade in Bogotá, Colombia; Resiste Bebita in Lima, Peru; Boston Pride/BP; Chicago Drag March for Change, Pride Without Prejudice and West Side Pride.
Readers’ Views: September-October 2021
Readers’ Views on: Solidarity with Palestinians; Attacks on Democracy; Iranian Revolt; Musicians’ Labor; Damage to Homeless; Covid-19 Killers; Trump and Taliban; Far Right in Portland; Critical Race Theory; Prisoners under Fire; Voices from Behind Bars; Only the Dialectic Can Save Us
To build a new society
From Mexico, a search for agroecology, food autonomy and a truly human world after an experience with green capitalism.
Voices From the Inside Out: Monopolies hurt prisoners
Not a month goes by when we don’t hear of some city, state or country challenging corporate monopolies, acting as the guardians of citizens’ rights to avoid corporate abuses. But companies are awarded monopoly status to sell inferior products for inflated prices to the prisoner market, exploiting prisoners and their loved ones.
Ocotlán residents defy criminal mine company
September 20, 2021Community authorities and residents of the Ocotlán Valley, Oaxaca, are demanding that the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources not give in to pressure from Compañía Minera Cuzcatlán, a subsidiary of Canada’s Fortuna Silver Mines, to expand their San José II mining project.
Nationwide walkout of Nabisco workers
September 12, 2021Nabisco workers nationwide struck over horrendous hours and shifts.
Taliban reconquest shakes alliances, challenges Left
The Taliban’s reconquest of Afghanistan has shaken world politics and challenged the Left to respond in a revolutionary way. In the absence of truly liberatory revolutionary movements, what looms to fill the vacuum is not only a reinvigoration of fundamentalist political and military movements but the reactionary maneuvering by Russia and China, refugee-scapegoating parties, and repression of social movements on the model of Syria’s Assad and Burma’s Tatmadaw—all of which have been flourishing under the U.S. permanent “war on terror.”
Medicare for all!
A high-school student from San Jose read her poem castigating lousy U.S. health insurance at a Medicare For All (M4A) Rally in San Francisco on July 24.
World in View: ‘Trip to Hyden’
In memory of Tom T. Hall, storyteller (1936-2021)
Women Worldwide: September-October 2021
Women Indigenous leaders in Canada; forced sterilization of Indigenous women in Canada; organic farming collective Green Girls in Gaza; dangers of prenatal sex selection.
World in View: Tunisia put to the test
September 11, 2021Since 2011, the opposition between a largely secular “Left” and a more religious “Right” has delimited bourgeois democratic politics. This could have been the starting point for a revolutionary politics. But the Tunisian Left has been unable to transcend this Enlightenment contradiction, despite the vital working-class participation in the 2011 revolution.
Rideshare & truck drivers fight bosses
September 10, 2021Rideshare drivers struck on July 21; and trucking bosses want robots behind the wheel.
World in View: Central Asia reconfigures imperialism
September 9, 2021The continuing struggle for Afghanistan is not about “tribalism,” or the past—it is an up-to-date product of world capitalism. It is about state power and wealth. This is true whether we consider the remaining influence of Ghani’s Islamic State, which did raise the educational level, and sometimes status, of women; or the continuing threat of Daesh, with its “Caliphate’s” appeal to disturbed and nihilistic urban youth; or the prospect of rule by the Taliban’s Emirate with new diplomatic recognition from China, Russia, and Iran.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: A Post-World War II View of Marx’s Humanism, 1843-1883; Marxist Humanism, 1950s-1980s
September 8, 2021This essay probes ways to make new beginnings in a period of reaction. It includes some of the themes of her work toward the book she had tentatively titled “Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy: ‘The Party’ and Forms of Organization Born out of Spontaneity.”
Review: Outward: Adrienne Rich’s Expanding Solitudes
September 6, 2021Ed Pavlić’s ‘Outward: Adrienne Rich’s Expanding Solitudes’ is the first critical book to appear after Rich’s Collected Poems (2016) and thus the first covering all of Rich’s poetry. The book is especially welcome because Pavlić attends to the latter half of Rich’s career, and acknowledges her Marxism, largely unexplored territory even now.
World in View: Assassination in Haiti
September 1, 2021The labyrinthine conspiracy surrounding the July 7 assassination of Haiti’s controversial President Jovenel Moise embodies the retrogression and violence of bourgeois democratic politics.
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2021-2022: Part VI. Tasks
The urgency of crises underscores the urgency of projecting Marxist-Humanism.
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2021-2022: Part V. Ideology vs. Reason
The delusions and propaganda that recall the spirit of fascism cannot be defeated by countering them with facts. The new universal must be grounded in the Reason of the masses in motion for freedom, and the philosophy of liberation that roots itself in those movements. What is needed is to begin from the Absolute of the projected new society.
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2021-2022: Part IV. The reach for fascism
Fascism has been cultivated by rulers fearing revolution and enabled by the normalization of genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda and Congo, and Syria–and by the philosophical void on the Left, a substantial part of which is still accepted as “Left” despite ideological confusion that aligned it with genocides in Syria and Bosnia.
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2021-2022: Part III. Economic contradictions
The pandemic and the climate and ecological crisis struck when the world capitalist system had shown its inability to extricate itself from a prolonged economic slump. They deepened it. Despite the happy face that government and corporate economists paint, the opposite story is told by people’s lives.
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2021-2022: The dialectic of crises worldwide is testing liberation struggles
As another wave of the COVID-19 pandemic swells, too many people are stuck in a recurring nightmare. The world faces multiple existential crises–a global state-capitalist system shot through with racism, xenophobia, sexism, heterosexism, ableism and authoritarianism. That calls for the confluence of labor and liberation struggles through a unifying philosophy based in the dialectic of liberation in those movements.
Woman as Reason: Afghan women pay price for U.S. hubris
August 31, 2021In Afghanistan the Taliban are murdering men who helped the U.S., UK, and other forces who fought them; and murdering and beating women and girls who have made even marginally independent lives for themselves. Yet, despite the terror, Afghans, especially women, continue to demonstrate against Taliban rule.
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2021-2022: Part II. Climate disaster now
Adaptation to climate change is protecting the rich and powerful and leaving the oppressed in the dust. A human way of adapting to and mitigating climate change is possible, a way of transforming society so that most people’s lives become better, not worse; but it requires throwing off the chains of capital.
Afghanistan turmoil shakes world politics, challenges Left
August 21, 2021The Taliban’s reconquest of Afghanistan has shaken world politics and challenged the Left to respond in a revolutionary way. In the absence of truly liberatory revolutionary movements, what looms to fill the vacuum is not only a reinvigoration of fundamentalist political and military movements but the reactionary maneuvering by Russia and China, refugee-scapegoating parties, and repression of social movements on the model of Syria’s Assad and Burma’s Tatmadaw—all of which have been flourishing under the U.S. permanent “war on terror.”
Afghan women pay the price for U.S. hubris
In Afghanistan the Taliban are murdering men who helped the U.S., UK, and other forces who fought them; and murdering and beating women and girls who have made even marginally independent lives for themselves. Yet, despite the terror, Afghans, especially women, continue to demonstrate against Taliban rule.
Online event: Meeting the challenges of this year of pandemic, climate, economic, and political disasters
August 7, 2021You’re invited to a discussion of News and Letters Committees’ “Call for Convention”
to work out perspectives for 2021-2022
DATE: Thursday, August 12
TIME: 7:30 PM Central Time
Ꮬ What should a revolutionary group do to meet the challenges of the next year?
Ꮬ How will the philosophy of Marxist-Humanism impact these decisions?
Ꮬ How will we meet the challenges arising [=>]
Autonomous trucks vs drivers’ pay
July 29, 2021Large trucking companies are teaming up with others to inaugurate test runs of “Autonomous Relay Convoys” where an autonomous truck is programmed to follow a human driving a leader truck, as a way to eliminate human truck drivers and lower wages.
Youth demonstrate for Medicare For All
July 26, 2021A high-school youth from San Jose read her poem castigating lousy U.S. health insurance at a Medicare For All (M4A) Rally in San Francisco on July 24.
KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng are burning, we need to build a just peace
July 25, 2021The shackdwellers’ organization addresses riots in South Africa and the underlying hunger, poverty and corruption, and the need to oppose xenophobia and tribalism and work towards a world in which each person counts as a person.
Queer Notes
July 20, 2021More Russian youth are accepting LGBTQ+ people because for years many have been coming out publicly; the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya is demanding USAID and the UK redirect their aid–which has been funding conversion therapy in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda–to LGBTQ+-run organizations; and two businesses in Tennessee won an injunction against an anti-Trans law.
Call for Convention 2021
July 11, 2021Call for Convention of News and Letters Committees, 2021
‘Care, not jail’
July 5, 2021On June 22, Decarcerate Alameda County called on Oakland’s City Council to move $43 million from the sheriff’s proposed budget and designate a total of $122 million to fund mental health and housing.
Celebrating Juneteenth
Oakland, Calif., celebrated Juneteenth 2021 with a couple hundred booths selling food, clothing, beauty products, etc. But there were also book stalls featuring Black history and tables staffed by people from various movements.
Abiy Ahmed’s bloodbath in Tigray
Ahead of parliamentary elections, Ethiopia’s President Abiy Ahmed proclaimed that he was aiming for a country “where every Ethiopian moves around relaxed, works and prospers.” but instead he launched a brutal civil war against the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray.
Readers’ Views: July-August 2021, part two
Readers’ Views on Covid-19 in Prisons; Labor and Capitalism; Weeds and Flowers; Censorship; Politics of Snitching, and Voices from Behind Bars.