Workers at Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane in Iran have been on strike for most of November. This is the latest of their walkouts this year over unpaid wages.
Articles
Nurses on strike
Licensed practical nurses and supporters rallied at the University of Illinois Hospitals during their unfair labor practices strike.
Gig road to poverty
Contrary to the boosterism that we always hear from Trump, an MIT study revealed that on average an Uber-type driver’s income declined last year from $1,469 per month to $783, a drop of 47%.
Vietnam is in turmoil
In response to massive protests in Vietnam, Communist Party General Secretary and ideologue Nguyen Phu Trong was named president, becoming the newest of the world’s strongman rulers.
Yemen peace talks
Yemeni civil society organizations have released a statement that should become the basis for peace negotiations.
Murder in Venezuela
Days after the Saudi regime murdered Jamal Khashoggi, the Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro murdered its own critic, Fernando Alban Salazar, in equally horrific fashion.
Bolsonaro’s fascism threatens Brazilians
December 13, 2018Jair Bolsonaro, elected President of Brazil, is a racist, misogynist, homophobic admirer of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship. The coming months will tell whether the masses will mount a crucial resistance.
World in View, November-December 2018: Counter-revolution redefines EU, OPEC
December 11, 2018In OPEC powers’ participation in the counter-revolutionary attacks on the revolutions in Syria and Yemen, and in the anti-immigrant reactionary reshaping of European politics, we see the next stage of bourgeois politics taking shape.
World in View, November-December 2018: Raed Fares
Raed Fares, revolutionary martyr of Kafranbel, Syria, is remembered after his assassination.
Woman as Reason, November-December 2018: Solidarity with Trans
The Trump administration’s latest outrage is its attempt to erase Transgender people. Its tactic this time is to declare that Trans people do not exist, subverting the spirit of Title IX, enacted in 1972.
Essay: Marx’s concept of permanent revolution as philosophy: Exploring it today with Dunayevskaya
December 5, 2018On the occasion of the publication of the new book “Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution in Permanence for Our Day: Selected Writings by Raya Dunayevskaya,” this essay explores Marx’s ideas on the basis of Dunayevskaya’s writings on them as a philosophy of revolution needed for our age.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Karl Marx’s continuous development of the philosophy of revolution in permanence
December 3, 2018Marking the publication of writings by Raya Dunayevskaya on Marx’s philosophy of revolution in permanence, the article presents parts of a lecture in which she gave an overview of this concept in relationship to her just-completed book, “Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution.”
Immigrant caravan born in the USA
Migrants on the immigrant caravan to the U.S. speak for themselves about why they left their home countries, which have experienced problems due to a history of U.S. imperialism.
Voices From the Inside Out: Learning the meaning of parole
Prisoner Faruq writes of his pending parole and the obligation to fight the designation that prisoners are the “worst of the worst,” to fight the dehumanization of prisoners; he forwards the importance of prisoner activism in changing draconian conditions.
Editorial: Massacre of Jews and rising racism
The Oct. 27 massacre of 11 Jewish congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue is the single deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history. The motive, as stated by the terrorist himself, was a hatred of Jewish support for Middle Eastern and Latin American immigrants through the organization HIAS.
Election deepens illegitimacy of Trump’s minority rule
A Marxist-Humanist view of the 2018 U.S. midterm elections that highlights the illegitimacy of Trump’s rule, showing how it is the rule of a minority won because of anti-democratic voter suppression, gerrymandering, racism, sexism, extreme anti-immigration rhetoric, hate speech and lies. It highlights the other America that opposes such neo-fascism.
The many forms of racism in the U.S.
December 2, 2018Prisoner Robert Taliaferro discusses how racism and xenophobia are alive and well in the U.S., and take many forms, both blatant and subtle.
Jackie Lacey, Los Angeles DA, must go!
Concerned groups in Los Angles, Calif., held rallies and delivered a petition to LA District Attorney Jackie Lacey demanding she “Prosecute Killer Cops” or step down as DA.
Frantz Fanon warns Ali Shariati
A new book, “Frantz Fanon: Alienation and Freedom,” reveals that Frantz Fanon warned leftist Islamist Ali Shariati that, despite Islam’s anticolonialist potential, without the spirit of emancipation it risked diversion to sectarianism, approaching the past rather than future, like African nationalisms.
California fires are not ‘natural’ disasters
Climate change and downed power lines from PG&E are the reasons for the unprecedented wildfires in California in 2018, despite Donald Trump’s attempt to put blame elsewhere and open California forests to more logging.
Handicap This!, November-December 2018
FEMA’s failure to include people with disabilities in its response to natural disasters; airline passengers with disabilities gain a bill of rights; George Mason University sororities turn down AnnCatherine Heigl, who has Down syndrome; Texas is penalized for underfunding special education programs.
James Cone (1938-2018)
Obituary of scholar James H. Cone, who founded Black liberation theology and struggled against racism and white supremacy.
Queer Notes: November-December 2018
“The Orlando Traveling Memorial” commemorates those murdered and those who aided the victims of the 2016 Orlando Pulse shooting; Transgender woman Aimee Stephens’ successful employment discrimination lawsuit; protesters decry Trump administration proposal to define gender as fixed at birth; Romania’s referendum defining a family as composed on one man and one woman fails.
Review: The Feeling of Being Watched
The film “The Feeling of Being Watched” exposes the FBI’s “Operation Vulgar Betrayal,” which tracked Muslim organizations only because they were Muslim, and reminds its audiences of other FBI investigations.
Massacre of Jews measures the inhumanity of capitalism
October 29, 2018The 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.
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.