A unionization wave at Starbucks continues to percolate. As of April, workers at 28 stores have had their unions certified. Workers at about 200 other stores are still in the process of getting to a certification vote.
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San Francisco holds May Day rally
Participant report: the San Francisco May Day demonstration addressed labor organizing, bread and butter issues, and political repression in Iran and Turkey.
Voices from the Inside Out: When ‘rehabilitation’ equals slavery
A Colorado bill redefined prison as “rehabilitation.” But the prison still controls how much of the minimum wage goes to the prisoner who works for capitalists.
Workers self-organizing at Amazon
Workers at Amazon’s JFK8 facility on Staten Island voted in the first union shop in Amazon’s history. By talking to and supporting each other, the workers were able to stand up to unionbusters and create a union by self-organization.
The French election
On April 24, Emmanuel Macron won a second five-year term as president of France. The rise of right-wing politicians posing as populists is a worldwide phenomenon aided by the neoliberal economic policies of centrist candidates such as Macron and Joe Biden
LGBTQ+ are under fire in Ukraine
LGBTQ+ Ukrainians are reacting in a variety of ways to the Russian invasion. Some are fleeing, others have enlisted or been drafted to fight; and others are staying to help their country in other ways.
Youth in Action: May-June 2022
May 19, 2022Takes up: student workers at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, who struck on March 3 to protest the elimination of a farm residency program; graduate students at Indiana University went on strike April 13 for better wages, benefits, and to stop fee hikes, and for recognition of their union; and on April 25, about 20 students at Tufts U. held a protest against General Dynamics recruiting on campus.
Tens of thousands march for abortion rights
In San Francisco on May 14 over 10,000 people marched for the right to abortion and against the U.S. Supreme Court which has now lost all legitimacy. A million people marched in over 450 events across the U.S. to show their anger at the Supreme Court’s impending reversal of Roe v. Wade, which had legalized women’s right to abortion.
What tyrants fear the most: revolution
Like repression in Iran, the war against Ukraine is, more than anything else, understandable on the basis of fear of revolution and the overthrow of the existing order.
Where’s the solidarity with Syria?
Free Syria areas have repeatedly demonstrated solidarity with Ukrainians fighting their common enemy, but have had to carry on their fight, for freedom and to avert extermination, without the international support their struggle has deserved.
Thoughts from the Outside: Capital’s discarded lives
The shooting of a former prisoner working to help homeless people revealed the prison outside, and a cry for a new humanity.
Prisoner strikes and struggles through Marxist-Humanist lens
Commemorating the 10th anniversary of the historic prison hunger strikes that ended California’s permanent solitary confinement, Faruq and Urszula Wislanka give a retrospective/perspective on our involvement in prison issues with two talks on “Historic hunger strikes: 10 years after” and “Listening to women prisoners with Marxist-Humanist ‘ears’”
Readers’ Views: May-June 2022, part one
Readers’ Views on: Abortion Bans vs. Women and Freedom; Anti-War, Pro-Democracy Voices from Russia; Patriarchy Attacked; Putin’s Brutal War
Handicap This!: May-June 2022
Takes up: Difficulty for a disabled raped women in Kyrgyzstan to get justice; Mexican women marching on International Women’s Day for disabled women’s rights; the Disability Rights Coalition of Nova Scotia hailing a victory; and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons’ ad seeking psychologists boasted of all the mentally ill people in U.S. prisons.
Readers´Views: May-June 2022, part two
Readers’ Views on: Philosophy vs. Capitalism; Education for What?; Homelessness and Humanism; Religious Oppression; Voices from Behind Bars
World in View: Will Yemenis survive the proxy war?
After seven years of war in Yemen, the UN estimates that almost 400,000 people, primarily civilians, have died, 60% from hunger and disease, with children being 70% of the deaths. The war has become a proxy for the Saudi Arabia-Iran Middle East conflict.
World in View: Latin American Notes
El Salvador: President Bukele’s response to a spike in gang violence was to arrest 18,000 people, mostly youth, and suspend civil liberties.
Peru: a state of emergency was declared at the Cuajone copper mine, where nearby residents shut down the mine’s water supply, demanding compensation and a share of future profits.
World in View: Citizens’ revolt erupts across Sri Lanka
A massive citizens’ revolt is taking place in Sri Lanka. It is focused against the authoritarian President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his family members, who occupy many government posts. Tens of thousands of Sri Lankans have taken to the streets in the capital, Colombo, demanding that the President leave.
World in View: Tunisia in turmoil
Ever since Tunisian President Kais Saied suspended parliament in July 2021, followed in March 2022 by the dissolution of parliament, Tunisia has been in turmoil. Masses in the street protest the lack of jobs and a shortage of basic food items, especially bread for lack of wheat, massive corruption with black markets and Saied’s single-handed decision-making.
World in View: Resistance in Myanmar
The military junta is detaining 10,000 political prisoners while at the same time there is a growing resistance movement. Tens of thousands of youth from the cities have left for the countryside to join the hundreds of civilian militias across Myanmar, organized loosely into what are called the People’s Defense Forces.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Hegel’s Third Attitude today
May 18, 2022Thought disjointed from objective truth is running amok today—even including self-described Marxists who oppose self-determination of Ukraine and side with Putin, the avowed enemy of Lenin. This compels a new look at Hegel’s category philosophically comprehending that phenomenon, which he called “The Third Attitude of Thought toward the Objective World.”
Editorial: Climate report: revolution or disaster
The battle over the latest UN report on climate change laid bare the stark alternative between business as usual and the forces fighting for social transformation to stave off catastrophe. Protesting scientists called for “climate revolution.”
Reactionary Supreme Court attacks freedom
May 17, 2022Having control over what happens to your own body is the difference between fascism and freedom. A woman’s right to control her own body is inherently a fight for a universal freedom. Contempt and hate have worked so well for Republicans that they will go after birth control and LGBTQ+ people.
Russian invasion and Ukrainian resistance shake up the world
May 15, 2022Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resistance to it are shaking up the world and revealing the ideological pollution of society, including of the Left.
COVID and the Diné
May 14, 2022The Diné, one of the largest Native American tribes in the U.S., show a strikingly different attitude to the COVID-19 pandemic. They have a strong sense of group responsibility as opposed to the phony “rugged individualism” that reveals a warped idea of what freedom means.
Avalanche of book bans
As banning books that take up racism, feminism or LGBTQI+ subjects alarmingly escalates, students fight back, creating groups to read censored books.
Review: ‘The 1619 Project’
‘The 1619 Project’ tackles U.S. history since the first enslaved Africans were brought to Virginia—from multiple perspectives. Each essay is grounded in original sources, scholarly works, interviews and oral histories. Historical events, photographs of ordinary African-Americans and poetry surround each essay, adding a human touch.
Voices from the Inside Out: Quality care needed
Pennsylvania prisoners are not afforded any quality healthcare or meaningful relief, even from debilitating conditions; not even from disability.
Biden complicit in border brutality
Trump’s national health emergency, continued by Biden, had asylum seekers wait in Mexico for processing. This breaks U.S. law and though other pandemic emergency measures have lifted, virtually all Republicans and a growing number of Democrats are urging the Biden Administration to keep breaking this law past May 23, despite the suffering it causes.
Alabama coal miners keep strike alive
By May Day 2022 coal miners at Warrior Met in Brookwood, Ala., had been on strike for a year and a month since they walked out April 1, 2021, to demand restoration of their wages, benefits and work rules. Strikers rejected a tentative contract as an insult. The company offered to restore just $1 more in wages.
Strike threat wins
May 11, 2022Porters, doorpersons, superintendents, concierges and handypersons in more than 3,000 New York City high rise buildings were able to avoid a cutback in benefits by insisting they would rather go on strike.
U of Illinois faculty threaten strike
University of Illinois, Springfield, faculty members have been working since Aug. 16, 2021, without a contract and on April 21 filed an intent-to-strike-notice.
Women WorldWide: May-June 2022
Takes up: feminist-led protesters in London hurling 1,000 rape alarms at Charing Cross police station on the first anniversary of the Clapham Common vigil for Sarah Everard; the launch of Somalia’s first all-female media house, Bilan; a worldwide roundup of actions on International Women’s Day; and Women Take the Wheel, an all-woman volunteer service driving women fleeing Ukraine to homes or shelters in Poland.
How women’s trauma is used against them
Review of ‘Sexy but Psycho’: Taylor is trying to change how institutions and the public view the effects of trauma. Drawing upon years as a feminist therapist in rape crisis, domestic violence, and child trafficking centers, she describes staff’s success calming distressed clients and helping them live their lives after abuse.
Turkish women challenge Erdoğan
In April Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey, had his public prosecutors demand that We Will Stop Femicide, Turkey’s largest women’s rights group, be disbanded for “activity against law and morals.” Protests immediately broke out across the country with hundreds marching in Istanbul and Ankara.
COVID and the Diné
April 30, 2022The Diné, one of the largest Native American tribes in the U.S., show a strikingly different attitude to the COVID-19 pandemic. They have a strong sense of group responsibility as opposed to the phony “rugged individualism” that reveals a warped idea of what freedom means.
Women demonstrate against Erdoğan’s closing of WWSF
In April Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey, had his public prosecutors demand that We Will Stop Femicide, Turkey’s largest women’s rights group, be disbanded for “activity against law and morals.” Protests immediately broke out across the country with hundreds marching in Istanbul and Ankara.
Biden complicit in border brutality
Trump’s national health emergency, continued by Biden, had temporarily superseded certain statutes so that asylum seekers had to wait in Mexico for an appointment. While other pandemic emergency measures have lifted, virtually all Republicans and a growing number of Democrats are urging the Biden Administration to keep breaking the law past May 23.
Threatening a strike wins it
Porters, doorpersons, superintendents, concierges and handypersons in more than 3,000 New York City high rise buildings were able to avoid a cutback in benefits by insisting they would rather go on strike.
May-June 2022: Women WorldWide
April 29, 2022Takes up: feminist-led protesters in London hurling 1,000 rape alarms at Charing Cross police station on the first anniversary of the Clapham Common vigil for Sarah Everard; the launch of Somalia’s first all-female media house, Bilan; a worldwide roundup of actions on International Women’s Day; and Women Take the Wheel, an all-woman volunteer service driving women fleeing Ukraine to homes or shelters in Poland.
Review: ‘Sexy but Psycho: How the Patriarchy Uses Women’s Trauma Against Them’
Taylor is trying to change how institutions and the public view the effects of trauma. Drawing upon years as a feminist therapist in rape crisis, domestic violence, and child trafficking centers, she describes staff’s success calming distressed clients and helping them live their lives after abuse.
Freedom vs. the war against women
April 27, 2022The Republican attack against women won’t stop with trashing our right to control our bodies. Hate has worked so well for them that they will also come down harder on LGBTQ+ people, especially Trans people who trample every notion the Right has of “how things are supposed to be.”
Avalanche of book bans
April 16, 2022As banning books that take up racism, feminism or LGBTQI+ subjects alarmingly escalates, students fight back, creating groups to read censored books.
Online meeting: War in Ukraine
March 23, 2022March 28 @ 2 PM Pacific Time
Online meeting: War in Ukraine
News and Letters Committees invites you to a zoom meeting on:
Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine puts the future of humanity in doubt
The bravery of Ukrainians echoed in Russia, where protesters in over 50 cities denounced the war, knowing that they risked arrest, blacklisting, even torture [=>]
Readers’ Views: March-April 2022, Part One
March 19, 2022Readers’ Views on: Putin’s Brutal War on Ukraine; War on Yemen; Canadian Convoy; Trucks and Tribes; and Abortion Politics.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2022, Part Two
Readers’ Views on Absolute Idea and Self-Liberation; Labor and Ecology; Avoiding Race; and Voices from behind Bars.
Women in defense of the territory
A call from women living in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico, to meet together to fight developmentalist capitalism, and stop the rampant violence against women in the area.
Discussion Article: Towards a dynamic unity of struggle
Discussion article on the question of unity and diversity of struggles, theory and practice, Marxism and other currents of thought, exploring briefly the Zapatista Indigenous movement from 1994 to the present.
Queer Notes: March-April 2022
LGBTQ+ students are protesting injustice in Kenya, Florida and Texas; the suspected suicide of Gay mayor Kevin Ward highlights suicide risks for gay men; Black Trans woman Ju’ Zema Goldring’s unjust arrest; and the banning of conversion therapy for people under 18 in New Zealand.
Russia’s revolutionary International Women’s Day in 1917
Ad for ‘Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution’ by Raya Dunayevskaya with excerpts showing women’s role in bringing on the 1917 Russian Revolution.