The Oct. 27 massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue was a modern pogrom, with assault weapons, social media presence, and poisoned roots in the current stage of world counter-revolution represented by Trump, Putin, and their like.
Articles
Solidarity with Trans people under attack by Trumpism
October 28, 2018News and Letters Committees statement on Donald Trump’s latest attack on Trans people by trying to claim that the word “sex” in Title IX does not include them. Trump has chosen to dehumanize a group of people whose whole lives have often been fraught with brutal violence and discrimination, those who are Transgender.
Masses for freedom fight Trump-Kavanaugh’s reactionary grab for power
October 10, 2018Given the moral bankruptcy of Congress and Donald Trump, it was no surprise that Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court was pushed through Congress. The surprise was the vibrancy, strength and determination of the fight against that nomination…
Anti-Kavanaugh protesters slandered
October 9, 2018Just before the final confirmation vote elevating Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put out a confluence of messages that slandered the act of protest itself.
Youth in Action: Yale students protest Kavanaugh nomination
October 8, 2018Youth in Action that takes up how half of the student body at Yale Law School held a sit-down strike in university hallways and refused to go to class on Sept. 24, 2018.
September-October 2018 issue of News & Letters is now online!
October 7, 2018Lead article: Masses vs. capitalism: Climate chaos hangs in the balance; Editorial: Stop the coming slaughter in Idlib!; Editorial: Catholic Church’s sins laid bare; Thousands of Mexican students STRIKE!; 30,000 march for the climate in San Francisco; Voices from the inside out: The need for unity; From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Religion, racism and capitalist crisis; Discussion article: The Left’s response to Syrian genocide; Nicaraguans rise up against Ortega; Israel’s reactionary nation-state law; Say ‘No!’ to life without parole; U.S. prisoners strike; More…;
Discussion article: The Left’s response to Syrian genocide
A U.S. activist in Syria solidarity criticizes the broad Left’s failure to practice revolutionary solidarity and outlines the dangerous political consequences.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Religion, racism and capitalist crisis
October 4, 2018With hate crimes, anti-Semitism, racism and anti-immigrant xenophobia on the rise, Israel’s “Jewish nation-state” law and fascism brewing globally, we excerpt two pieces addressing roots of these phenomena in capitalism’s crises.
Readers’ Views, September-October 2018: Part 2
September 29, 2018Readers’ Views Part 2 takes up: the needed return to Marx’s Humanism, and Voices from behind prison bars.
What is freedom?
A prisoner from Bellefonte, Penn., asks: “In America are we really free or are we going through an act, or through the motions?”
Readers’ Views, September-October 2018: Part 1
Readers’ Views takes up: attacks on immigrants; Syria and the Left’s failure; Democratic Party’s selling out women; Women’s Liberation; Serena Williams; ending money bail the right way; Trump-Kim “peace”; genocide and war heroes; and a discussion on sex crimes and their fallout.
Women WorldWide, September-October 2018
September 28, 2018Pimps target incarcerated women in the U.S. for prostitution; the death of Maria Isabel Chorobik de Mariani, a founder of Argentina’s Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo; the organization World Without Exploitation; nurses at the University of Vermont Medical Center strike for themselves and their non-union coworkers as well.
Masses vs. capitalism: Climate chaos hangs in the balance
With disastrous consequences of climate change making themselves felt, both scientists and movements are pointing to the need for a radically different direction, but capitalism has blocked the way and even put a cult of climate denial in the White House.
The ‘Power of Pink’
September 27, 2018Report of Planned Parenthood’s “Power of Pink” volunteer training conference, which drew over 2,000 young women to Detroit July 27-29, 2018.
Review: How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics
Adele reviews “How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosures to Trump,” by Laura Briggs, which discusses “reproductive labor,” “the work necessary to the reproduction of human life.”
Chicago hotel workers on strike
Striking hotel workers by the thousands traded their picket line duties for a rally and march through downtown Chicago on Sept. 13, 2018. They were striking over health insurance among other demands.
Flint water battles
Michigan’s Attorney General chose the easy route of spending money prosecuting 15 scapegoats as a substitute for replacing the lead service lines that continue to poison citizens of Flint, Michigan.
Review: ‘Labor Notes’ on fighting ‘open shops’
The journal “Labor Notes” published a special issue on organizing strategies which aims to guide members of public sector unions to a concept of an inclusive, participatory unionism.
Say ‘No!’ to life without parole
On Aug. 6, 2018, a new chapter in activism around Life Without a Possibility of Parole (LWOP) in California was opened with a rally at the state capitol steps.
Behind ‘that door’
Prisoner’s view of what is on the other side of that door “they bring your family member through to court, shackled at the waist and feet, wearing that pumpkin orange jumpsuit.”
Chicago Vigil for the Rohingya
Over 100 people gathered in Chicago’s Federal Plaza on Aug. 25, 2018, for a vigil on the one-year anniversary of the massacre of the Muslim minority Rohingya in Burma.
Stand up for change
Prisoner expresses the difficultly with organizing his fellow inmates and the importance of working together “to stand up (or ‘sit down’) for your rights.”
End the Oura Bay landfill in Japan
Activists in Okinawa began walking from town to town, meeting with citizens, mayors and city councils to convince them to stop the Japanese government’s extraction of their soil to be used as bay fill in the construction of two new airport runways at Henoko (U.S. Camp Schwab) on pristine Oura Bay, Okinawa Island.
Queer Notes, September-October 2018
Queer Notes on Intersex children’s rights; LGBTQI struggle in Hungary; The Pride March in Kiev, Ukraine; Cape Verde’s fifth Pride Week; and Brighton Pride group in London.
Turkey on the brink?
Under the whip of global capitalism, so-called emerging economies, like Turkey’s, have little real independence, and their masses live under a no-exit sign.
Voting is broken in Michigan
September 26, 2018Michigan voters describe examples of how voting in Michigan is seriously flawed, leading to voter disenfranchisement.
World in View: Israel’s reactionary nation-state law
On July 18-19 the Israeli Knesset passed a law creating outrage among Arab and Druze citizens who see it as writing their second-class citizenship into law. It encourages the growth of illegal settlements on the West Bank and the continued dispossession of Palestinians.
World in View: Brazil museum burns
On Sept. 2, Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro was devastated by fire after being subject to drastic budget cuts because of its location in the more working class North Zone, as opposed to the South Zone of Rio with its glitzy tourist beaches.
World in View: U.S. prisoners strike
Prisoners in at least 17 U.S. states, and one Canadian prison, took part in a nationwide strike beginning Aug. 21, 2018. The strike presented a list of 10 demands that have been pushed into the national and international consciousness.
World in View: Europe in crisis: Swedish neo-Nazis rise
Europe is at a dangerous crossroads with the rise of Far Right parties rooted in racism and hatred of immigrants. In Sweden’s Sept. 9 elections, the Sweden Democrats, a party rooted in neo-Nazism, received 17.6% of the vote.
Jasik workers organize in China
This generation of Chinese workers, going on strike repeatedly to demand wages and benefits they are owed or fighting to control their own jobs, together with young intellectuals reclaiming Marx’s work, may be a threat to today’s Chinese rulers.
Argentina in crisis
September 20, 2018Argentina has been bouncing this year from one crisis to the next. Today it needs a movement that refuses to separate the slogan “They all must go!” from building an authentically new kind of society.
Nicaraguans rise up against Ortega
Nicaraguans rally in San Francisco to raise awareness and support for the spreading anti-government protests in Nicaragua against President Ortega and his government’s brutal oppression.
Students and adults protest S. Korean airport
Hundreds of South Korean students and adults hold a three-day protest against the building of a second airport in the city of Jeju-Doin in defense of the environment, an elementary school and farmers.
Youth in Action, September-October 2018
University of North Carolina students and workers bring down statue of generic Confederate soldier; Swedish pro-asylum student Elin Errson prevents deportation of Afghan refugee; Iraqi youth and women protest unemployment, electricity shortages and lack of clean water.
Letter from Mexico, September-October 2018: Next in the struggle
September 19, 2018The Zapatistas called for a gathering Aug. 3-5 in Chiapas of the support networks that participated in trying to register the spokeswoman of the Indigenous Governing Council as an independent candidate for the presidential election in Mexico.
Thousands of Mexican students STRIKE!
On Sept. 5, 2018, a march of tens of thousands of students and other social groups flooded the UNAM campus in Mexico City to demand an end to porrismo, or pro-government thugs, used against students’ movements. Voices of several striking students are featured.
30,000 march for the climate in San Francisco
On Sept. 8 over 30,000 came out in San Francisco for the Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice, which had counterparts worldwide.
Voices from the inside out: The need for unity
September 17, 2018Prisoner Faruq writes about new beginnings after the California prisoners’ hunger strike and the need for unity for any new movement forward.
Editorial: Catholic Church’s sins laid bare
Editorial that takes up the evil that the Catholic Church has imposed on children and women; how movements from below, especially by women, have challenged it; and how future church crimes will be revealed, signaling the beginning of the end of the Catholic Church.
Editorial: Stop the coming slaughter in Idlib!
News & Letters editorial taking up how in Syria, attacks are intensifying upon the three million Syrians, mostly civilians, trapped in Idlib province and how so many in the Left have failed them.
Idlib: Syria’s 21st century concentration camp
September 10, 2018Syria’s Idlib province faces imminent slaughter by Russia, Iran, and Assad regime forces, which have already made it into the model of the 21st century concentration camp. We call upon all of humanity to oppose this and to demand protection for these millions whose only “crime” was to fight for freedom against a fascist regime.
Climate change, capitalism, and Trump
September 5, 2018Climate change, capitalism, and Trump
Presentation to the Chicago Local of News and Letters Committees
By Franklin Dmitryev, August 27, 2018
“…the spirit of the time, growing slowly and quietly ripe for the new form it is to assume, disintegrates one fragment after another of the structure of its previous world. That it is tottering to [=>]
Protesters march against planned airport in South Korea
September 3, 2018Nearly 200 students and 150 adults participated in a three-day march in opposition to the construction of a second airport on Jeju-Do, South Korea.
July-August 2018 issue of News & Letters is now online!
July 25, 2018The July-August 2018 issue of News & Letters, Vol. 63, #4, is available on the web.
View the issue online or as pdf.
Lead article: Millions denounce Trump’s heinous immigration abuses
Marxist-Humanist analysis of the nature of President Donald Trump’s inhuman immigration policy, the damage it is causing and the outcry against it, including from his own base.
Editorial: Trump-Kim ‘peace’ threatens masses
Marxist-Humanist analysis of [=>]
Landless people are attacked in South Africa
Landless people in Tembisa near Johannesburg, promised housing by the municipality, occupied empty land and put up houses since February, only to rebuild them with each destruction and eviction by police.
Trump helps Harley-Davidson kill jobs
Harley-Davidson workers found that Trump’s corporate tax cuts made it easier for the company to plan to shutter the Kansas City plant. Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum gave Harley-Davidson an incentive to move more jobs to a new plant in Thailand.
Youth in Action, July-August 2018
Youth in action column on a student demonstration in Delhi, India; a student rally against the alt-Right at Michigan State University, and revolt in Nicaragua headed by students.
Demonstrations for refugees cover the entire U.S.
“Families Belong Together!” was the rallying cry for in over 700 cities and towns across the U.S. and some in other countries. Rallies of tens of thousands were held June 30 in Chicago, Los Angeles, and several other cities.
Queer Notes, July-August 2018
Queer notes on Delaware’s anti-Transgender legislation; Gay asylum seeker and detainee Udoka Nweke; Lesbian activist Constance Kurt; Aryman Menem, founder of Tea and Talk for Syrian LGBT; and Baltic Pride’s Pride Parade in Riga, Latvia.