The fight for a living wage continues, after Republican and Democratic senators killed the $15 minimum wage provision in the relief bill.
Articles
Anti-abortion violence
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.
Hong Kong arrests
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.
Queer Notes
February 15, 2021The 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.
Prisons mismanage COVID-19 crisis
February 7, 2021A 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.
Review: ‘Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America’
February 2, 2021In 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.
Women worldwide, January-February 2021
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.
Voices From the Inside Out: Debating Trumpism
Prisoner Robert Taliaferro explores what it is like to argue with white racists immersed in Trumpist propaganda.
Review: ‘Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements’
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.”
Georgia requires a new flag!
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.
Queer notes, January-February 2021
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.
Wave of arrests indicts justice in China
January 31, 2021Journalists 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, January-February 2021: part one
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, January-February 2021: part two
Readers’ Views on: What Is Philosophy? What Is Revolution?; Prisoners’ Quest for Self-Development; Voices from Behind Bars; Why Read N&L?
Ray Bazmore 1926-2020
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.
Pompeo worsens war on Yemen’s masses
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.
Handicap This!: January-February 2021
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.
Latin America Notes: January-February 2021
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.
Race & the Capitol mob
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.
Youth in Action: January-February 2021
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.
Governor charged in Flint water poisoning
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 burned out
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.
Pandemic prompts rethinking education
The pandemic challenges assumptions about the purpose of schooling, creating an opportunity to address basic issues, including ways to help students reflect and build on what they have learned, in school or out, and to figure out how to allow those experiences to “count.”
News from Mexico: January-February 2021
While the U.S. and Mexico argue whether General Salvador Cienfuegos and former Mexican President Peña Nieto were involved in abetting a narco-trafficking cartel, the Mexican army and navy have a despicable history of human rights violations never honestly investigated. The Zapatistas issued a “Declaration for Life” and intercontinental call for meetings.
Youth: Lived experience compels Marxism
January 30, 2021No matter how you frame capitalism, there is no way to wipe it clean. We have to start with a conception of society centered on the development of humans. So what is socialism?
Thoughts from the outside: Epidemic #2: fentanyl
In the richest part of the country the Fentanyl epidemic is greater than COVID. What I see on the street every day is what Marx projected: a growing redundant and discarded population.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Uncivilized U.S.: Murder of Rev. King
Originally titled “These Uncivilized United States: Murder of Rev. King, Vietnam War,” this piece speaks to King’s actual, non-sanitized life and legacy, as well as to the ingrained violence of U.S. racism, including what was seen on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol.
Black homes matter
Report on “#Black Homes Matter” podcast with experts taking up how one in three Detroit families have lost their homes, often due to the fact that Detroit homes continued to be assessed as if no change in market value had occurred and that one of the highest property tax rates in the nation.
World in View: Historic mass strike of India’s farmers
An estimated 250 million Indian farmers have been on strike since last September in opposition to a series of new laws, proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
Woman as Reason: Sarah White (Sarah Hamer) 1958-2020
The movement lost a powerful voice for workers’ liberty, self-development and freedom when Sarah White died of a heart attack on Oct. 5, 2020.
World in View: Iran: assassination, imperialism, ‘conspiracy’
Iranian nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated as his car convoy passed through the town of Absard on Nov. 27. No suspect was apprehended. Speculation fell on Israel, the U.S., and Iranian oppositionists.
World in View: EU contradictions
There is danger of neo-fascist parties gaining or taking control in several European countries including Germany, France, The Netherlands and Italy.
Editorial: Green recovery needs a radical struggle
Recovery from current environmental, health and economic devastation needs radical struggles and ideas or it will be funneled into building a new stage of capitalism.
Double scourge of fascism and COVID-19 shakes the world: Trump’s coup threatens U.S. democracy
The Jan. 6 Trumpist coup reveals the depth of the far-right threat, compliticy of major institutions, and the philosophic void of the Left. A liberatory banner of a new society on truly human foundations is needed if we are not to be thrown right back into more oscillations between fascist horrors and the crumbling “normal” of capitalist liberal democracy.
World in view: Massacre in Tigray
Thousands have died—including an undetermined number of civilians—and tens of thousands become refugees in the current conflict between Ethiopia’s central government and the regional government of Tigray. The central government of Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is being aided in its war by the Eritrean regime of long-time dictator Isaias Afwerki.
Double scourge of fascism and COVID-19 shakes the world: Vaccine rollout inflames global inequalities
Vaccine rollout has been mired in poor planning, profit-centered thinking and indifference, with discrimination both within countries and against poor countries. Worldwide, a rat race ensued.
Women, incarceration and justice
January 29, 2021Participant report of a seminar on ongoing abuses of women in prison, women’s organizing against the abuses, and the limitations of reforms.
Argentine women win abortion rights
After years of struggle by women, the Argentine Senate finally passed an abortion rights bill, making it legal to terminate a pregnancy in the first 14 weeks. Abortion will be free in government hospitals, crucially important for poor women.
Stop border closures! — Abahlali
January 17, 2021Abahlali baseMjondolo calls on all to oppose border closures and xenophobia and build solidarity among the oppressed.
Pandemic changes education
January 14, 2021The pandemic challenges assumptions about the purpose of schooling, creating an opportunity to address basic issues, including ways to help students reflect and build on what they have learned, in school or out, and to figure out how to allow those experiences to “count.”
Trumpist coup reveals fascist threat and Left’s philosophic void
January 11, 2021The Jan. 6 Trumpist coup reveals the depth of the far-right threat, compliticy of major institutions, and the philosophic void of the Left. A liberatory banner of a new society on truly human foundations is needed if we are not to be thrown right back into more oscillations between fascist horrors and the crumbling “normal” of capitalist liberal democracy.
Trump’s election obsession shreds a flawed democracy
Amid COVID-19 deaths and economic decline, a fascist mob stormed the Capitol. If U.S. democracy lives to see another day, it was because of the unprecedented turnout of Black voters, reflecting the mass movement on the streets that continues to put that democracy on trial.
Free Maâti Monjib, arrested again in Morocco!
January 10, 2021The Moroccan Association for the Defense of Human Rights denounces the arrest and unjustified detention of the Moroccan historian and human rights activist Maâti Monjib and invites you to sign a statement in his support.
Argentina’s feminist revolution
At four in the morning on Dec. 30, the Argentine Senate finally passed an abortion rights bill, making it legal to terminate a pregnancy in the first 14 weeks. The procedure will be free in government hospitals, crucially important for poor women.
Zapatista Declaration for Life
January 2, 2021The Zapatistas have just issued a new declaration signed by hundreds of organizations regarding their work in the last several months establishing contacts with many groups and discussing what unites and divides them and working out what allows them all to move forward. They agreed to continue to have meetings around the globe, inviting those [=>]
Women WorldWide: November-December 2020
November 29, 2020Women in Lima, Peru, demonstrate against a judge who ruled a woman could not have been raped because of her red underwear; a plaque was given to honor Mary Heaton who spent years in an insane asylum for interrupting a vicar’s sermon; a Nigerian woman started an organization in Italy to support trafficked survivors of prostitution; and in Egypt, the Cairo Criminal Court began hearings on a male university student from a wealthy, influential family accused of rape by hundreds of women worldwide who gave anonymous testimonials on social media.
Review: Women Are Blamed for Everything
A feminist review of a book by Jessica Taylor, ‘Women Are Blamed for Everything: Exploring the Victim Blaming of Women Subjected to Violence and Trauma’ that explores how and why each victim of abuse was always blamed in some way although it was never her fault, even internalizing self-blame.
‘Virtual’ teaching or hazardous workplace
A teacher of six-year-olds in a low-income Illinois suburb tells of her experience teaching during COVID-19 and how those who run the schools have no comprehension of what the job entails and no interest in protecting the mental and physical health of teachers, staff, or children.
Editorial: Polish women’s revolutionary moment
What is happening in Poland is revolutionary as women lead a movement that is protesting the Catholic Church’s inhuman attack on women’s freedom as well mounting a deep challenge to the fascist-leaning Polish government.
Uber and Lyft put drivers in peonage with the passage of Proposition 22
Proposition 22 will allow app-based transportation and delivery sector employers to keep classifying their employees as private contractors. They will not have to offer workers any of the benefits afforded to employee-classified workers under state law.