Youth in Action: January-February 2023

Takes up: graduate researchers and academic student employees’ strike of the University of California’s campuses won a contract on Dec. 23, 2022; Students at Benito Juarez Community Academy in Chicago walked out of class on Dec. 19, 2022, to protest gun violence; and DACA recipients and other young in Phoenix, Arizona, made 60,000 phone calls and knocked on 4,000 doors to pass ballot measure 308.

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Handicap This!: January-February 2023

Takes up: Vanuatu, a Pacific island country, developed a national sign language, Storian wetem han; in Minnesota personal care assistants have won a wage increase through the SEIU Healthcare Minnesota union; the UN celebrated the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on Dec. 3.

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Essay: Ukrainian self-determination and idea of freedom

Ukrainians’ self-organizing drew in all layers of the population, acting on their passion for independence and freedom from imperial overlords. The new life they have brought to the idea of democracy is deeper than political democracy. Marx’s humanist idea is a future determined by fully realizing that deeper content.

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World in View: After Brexit come strikes

January 22, 2023

Great Britain is in a cost of living crisis. Newspapers are publishing “Heat or Eat Diaries.” Brexit has been an important catalyst for Britain’s dire economic situation. Hopefully the labor militancy now taking place can show a way forward.

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World in View: Migrants die in Qatar

Qatar, one of the richest countries in the world, runs on sweated migrant labor. Since Qatar was awarded the World Cup over 6,500 migrant workers have died there building the infrastructure for the games.

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COP15 and COP27: Ecology summits hide two worlds clashing

Two hotly anticipated global summits on ecology and climate papered over a raging war of capital against humanity and Planet Earth—a war manifested in open conflict between “developed” and “developing” countries, but more deeply in a war of the two worlds of rulers and ruled within each country.

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Editorial: Iranian masses deepen their revolution

Since Sept. 16, 2022, protesters in Iran have carried out remarkable revolutionary protests. The women remain both numerous and radical in the constant demonstrations and actions, and have drawn in many layers of the masses while explicitly calling for the revolutionary downfall of the Islamic Republic’s regime.

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Michigan workers’ victory

December 16, 2022

At last over 600,000 Michigan workers will receive increased minimum wages and earn paid sick leave, thanks to a court ruling this summer overturning a 2018 law the state legislature had quickly and cynically passed four years ago.

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From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Iran: Unfoldment of, and contradictions in, Revolution, parts III and IV

December 10, 2022

Today’s revolt in Iran is illuminated by Raya Dunayevskaya’s March 1979 Political-Philosophic Letter, “Iran: Unfoldment of, and Contradictions in, Revolution.” The first two parts were published in the November-December 2022 issue. The concluding two parts are published here. Written shortly after the massive women’s revolt that tried to open a second chapter of the revolution, this letter was part of a series written during and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and published in both English and Farsi.

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Handicap This! December 2022

December 8, 2022

Asian-American disability rights activist Alice Wong’s memoir “Year of the Tiger”; In Poland, caregivers of children with disabilities called for the right to work part-time jobs while keeping government stipends; and disability rights activists critique California’s CARE Courts Act, where courts can order involuntary treatment plans for people with psychotic disorders.

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Congress breaks railroad workers’ strike

December 3, 2022

Congress has done its best to become the nation’s strikebreaker by forcing a five-year contract on railroad workers who had been set to go on strike on Dec. 12.  Union members in four of the 12 unions had voted to reject a tentative agreement that negotiators had reached with six major rail carriers in September.

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National Costco pact

November 12, 2022

Unionized Costco workers achieved their first national master contract. This needs to form the basis for reaching out and organizing the majority of Costco warehouses that remain non-union.

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World in View: Saied buries Tunisia’s Arab Spring Revolution

Tunisia’s President Kais Saied has completed a counter-revolution aimed at ending the Arab Spring that the Tunisian masses launched in December 2010. He has gotten rid of Parliament and ended judicial oversight, and now has maneuvered a new constitution for the country. This gives him almost total power.

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‘Women Unsilenced’

Review of: ‘Unsilenced: Our Refusal to Let Torturer-Traffickers Win,’ whose authors worked out therapy for victims of what they called Non-State Torture (NST) which goes beyond abuse. Perpetrators of NST employ the same “classic” torture techniques, especially rape, used by state representatives—police, military, or prison guards.

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Women prisoners scammed at CCWF

Prisoners at Central California Women’s Facility paid for Jpay and U-Tab tablets. Some spent thousands of dollars for content and then we were told we must destroy, erase, or send out our paid-for, allowable property and all content without compensation!

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Indigenous Resistance in Mexico

November 11, 2022

The Xonacatlan Indigenous Council (Juanacatlán, Jalisco State) issued a declaration establishing their territory “free of industry, free of megaprojects, free of mining and material banks.”

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Thoughts from the Outside: ‘If We Must Die’

Claude McKay’s poem “If We Must Die” spoke to hunger strikers at Pelican Bay. We were dying anyway and had nothing to lose with our movement to end perpetual solitary confinement in California prisons. “If we must die,” let us fight back with Marx’s universal of what makes us human, freedom.

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Queer Notes: November-December 2022

The Ohio LGBTQ+ community protested a meeting of the Ohio State Board of Education delaying a vote on a “don’t say gay” bill; Israeli playwright Yochai Greenfeld’s autobiographical play about conversion therapy opened in Israel; there was a memorial on Chicago’s south side for several LGBTQ+ people killed by a hit-and-run driver; and murdered Palestinian Gay man Ahmad Abu Marhia’s body was found in Hebron in the West Bank, and a suspect has been arrested.

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Xi Jinping’s precarious hold on China

The coup that Xi Jinping had long planned to cement his control of the Communist Party of China went according to script: Xi was re-elected to a third five-year term as leader at the Party Congress that ended on Oct. 23.

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Women Worldwide: November-December 2022

Women students protest rape culture at Stanford; feminists in Gaza face backlash for campaigning against family violence against young women; Tunisian feminists protest male-dominated election structure; first woman appointed to Yemen’s Supreme Judicial Council, and women activists there win passport rights.

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Handicap This!: November-December 2022

Disabled women have joined anti-U.S. Supreme Court demonstrations as they are eleven times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth; Disabled South Koreans protested in subways over lack of access to essential services, abuse in institutions, and elevated death rates; a disabled woman in Pakistan founded two organizations which manufacture and donate wheelchairs, employing mostly the disabled.

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60th International Antiwar Assembly

Excerpts of the appeal from the Executive Committee for the 60th International Antiwar Assembly, together with the message of solidarity sent to the Assembly from News and Letters Committees. Against Putin’s war and for revolutionary new beginnings!

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World in View: Haitians demand self-determination

When the U.S.-imposed non-elected, illegitimate government of Ariel Henry decided to raise highly subsidized fuel prices in September, all hell broke loose in Haiti. Mass protests occurred everywhere, particularly on the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

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Election shows women feel the hate

It wasn’t alone the question of abortion rights that helped Democrats do so well in the midterm elections, but also what made women and so many others furious was the extreme cruelty and sickening glee with which Republicans imposed their draconian abortion laws and bans. Women could feel the hate.

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Attitudes to the climate crisis and technology

November 10, 2022

Today’s divide in attitudes to technology and climate solutions is more than a political question. It is a deep divide in philosophy. As crucial as are technological advances and the “energy transition,” they are liable to turn into their opposite if they are the focus instead of struggles of people trying to take control over their own lives.

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From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Contradictions in Iranian Revolution

Today’s revolt in Iran is illuminated by Raya Dunayevskaya’s March 1979 Political-Philosophic Letter, “Iran: Unfoldment of, and Contradictions in, Revolution,” published here in two parts. Written shortly after the massive women’s revolt that tried to open a second chapter of the revolution, this letter was part of a series written during and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and published in both English and Farsi.

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Amazon Prime Day is for job actions

November 8, 2022

On “Prime Day,” Amazon warehouse workers in Moreno Valley, Calif., filed enough signatures to schedule a union vote at their facility. On the same day, dozens of non-union Amazon workers walked out of warehouses in Stone Mountain and Buford, Ga., to rally for $24 per hour.

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Votes that matter

The election of 2020 gave a giant push for the Right to turn elections into weapons for abrogating rights and freedoms, especially those of women and minorities. It is a primrose path to outright fascism.

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‘Exceptions’ are a lie

So-called “exceptions” for rape, incest, and the health or life of the women to draconian abortion bans are a cruel joke, and a means to make rabid anti-abortion Republicans appear “reasonable.” These laws are purposely written to make using these “exceptions” almost impossible.

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Women organize and educate for abortion rights

The Women’s March and other groups held A Women’s Wave Day of Action on Oct. 8, 2022, demanding a nationwide right to abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted that right. Women, youth, and allies are aware of the importance of reproductive justice to our lives and democracy and are motivated to organize and creatively fight back.

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Editorial: Ukraine makes gains, Putin brandishes nukes

November 6, 2022

Putin failed to terrorize Ukraine into submission with massive bombing of civilians and social infrastructure. Ukrainian social solidarity, resilience and massive participation of all layers of the population inspired the world that a people do not have to cave to extortion and terror.

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Queer Notes: October 5, 2022

October 5, 2022

Rainbow Migration demanded the UK Prime Minister “end immigration detention for all LGBTQ+ people,” “scrap the Rwanda plan” and “reverse changes to the standard of proof for LGBTQ+ people’s asylum claims”; Twelve Republican-led states banned Transgender girls and women from competing in sports; and a long awaited center serving LGBTQ+ people opened on Chicago’s South Side.

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