Readers’ Views on Women’s Marches; Iran in Revolt; Around the Globe; Race and Freedom; Queer Oppression; Why Read N&L?
Articles
Queer Notes: March-April 2018
Queer Notes takes up the launch of The Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project; the Grupo Gay da Bahia, the oldest LGBT rights group in Brazil; and the out LGBT athletes at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Editorial: Youth confront the NRA
March 10, 2018The youth who marched on Tallahassee, Fla., and Washington, D.C., in response to the massacre of 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14 in Parkland, Fla., lead the entire nation in demanding an end to gun violence.
MSU students rally against Larry Nassar
While over 200 girls and women gymnasts testified against long-time sexual abuser Dr. Larry Nassar, less has been heard of the hundreds of MSU students who marched against their university.
‘Pulling Chain’
Do you ever wonder what happens to all of your family members after the courtroom drama? After the news cameras and news articles dry up? After the victim impact statements and the jury’s verdict have been handed down?
Two death sentences
A prisoner talks about why life without parole is a second death sentence.
Treat PTSD from the torture of solitary
Prisoner Human Rights Movement representatives call on California government officials to provide mental healthcare, support groups and other relief to prisoners formerly in solitary confinement who are living with PTSD.
Struggle against solitary confinement continues!
Bay Area Californians rally against all forms of solitary confinement including for those released from indefinite solitary into level IV general population who are experiencing conditions worse than they experienced in solitary.
Iranian women represent ‘bread and freedom’
March 8, 2018An Iranian woman gives her view that the most recent wave of protests in Iran was preceded by a brave act of a woman in Tehran taking off her hijab in a very public way. Ever since Iran’s Revolution was usurped by Islamic clerics, women have been at the heart of every movement.
Prisoners on #MeToo
Prisoners at California’s largest prison for women discuss the #MeToo movement with News & Letters.
Charles Denby’s life story: the story of the struggle for freedom
Excerpts from the introduction to the new French edition of Charles Denby’s book “Indignant Heart: A Black Worker’s Journal.”
Women WorldWide: March-April 2018
Women WorldWide takes up women posting videos on #NoHijab Day in support of Iranian women; Sherry Johnson’s struggle to have the state of Florida ban underage marriage; and a new study showing that the rate of self-harm among girls soared 68% in the last three years.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Rosa Luxemburg as feminist
In celebration of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, we present excerpts from Dunayevskaya’s “Luxemburg as Feminist; Break with Jogiches.”
Editorial: China–Xi Jinping’s global power grab
Xi Jinping’s power grab in China and within the international power vacuum are a threat to the workers of China and the world.
Voices From the Inside Out: What is the objective of prisoner unity?
Prisoner Faruq writes of “those of us confined behind prison walls [who] recognize the pressing need to unify the prison population in the different prisons.”
Fight for $15 and labor’s full potential
On Feb. 12, workers across the country marched in Fight for $15 demonstrations held to commemorate the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike and Dr. King’s visionary, multi-racial Poor People’s Campaign. It is a struggle to realize labor’s full potential.
Woman as Reason: Iranian women embody revolt
On Dec. 28, 2017, demonstrations broke out in the city of Mashhad, Iran, the first of many that swept across Iran for weeks. Women were a vital part of the events, including strikes as well as protests against veiling, drawing on a long radical history.
‘Silence is compliance’: Women march in Oakland Calif.
On Jan. 20 thousands marched, some again wearing “Pussy hats,” in the second annual Women’s March. Police decided beforehand to estimate the crowd at 50,000, though it was clear that many, many more were actually there in one of several huge marches in the Bay Area.
#MeToo, Women’s Marches show the resistance deepens
Women have changed the world through an incredible and sustained activism based on a humanism that runs like a revolutionary red thread through an amazing array of actions, demonstrations and statements. This development is based on over 50 years of a movement that the founder of Marxist-Humanism, Raya Dunayevskaya, characterized as “Woman as Revolutionary Force and Reason.” .
Call for Convention 2018
February 25, 2018OFFICIAL CALL FOR CONVENTION
to Work Out Marxist-Humanist Perspectives for 2018-2019
February 25, 2018
To All Members of News and Letters Committees
Dear Friends:
The deeply ingrained rape culture, already widely known but often hushed up, has been exposed in the broadest way yet by the #MeToo movement. How deep and total is the needed uprooting [=>]
Iranian women embody the resistance
February 8, 2018It is no accident that the most recent wave of protests in Iran was preceded by a brave act of a woman in Tehran taking off her hijab in a very public way. Ever since Iran’s Revolution was usurped by Islamic clerics, women have been at the heart of every movement.
January-February 2018 issue is online!
February 7, 2018Lead: Iranian workers, youth reach for new revolutionary beginnings; Editorial: Alabama Blacks beat Trump-Moore; Help keep News & Letters behind bars; Voices from the inside out: Prisoners discuss impact of 13th Amendment; From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya–Iran: Unfoldment of, and contradictions in, revolution; New French edition of Indignant Heart: A Black Worker’s Journal; World in View: Visage of Hitler rises in Austria; Woman as Reason: The humanism of #MeToo; In Memoriam: Narihiko Ito (1931-2017); Syrians & Iranians unite in D.C. rally; Letter from Mexico: Zapatistas and science for humanity; Another brutal winter of war in Yemen; more …
“Spartans, this is the beginning of our revolution”
Michigan State students marched in protest of the enablers of sexual abuser Dr. Larry Nassar, and demanded immediate, deep-rooted changes in campus culture.
Racist mine boss remembered
February 6, 2018Former coal miner Andy Phillips recalls his close friend Scoots Riley, “a big Black man” and his close friend, who worked with him in the mines and how Riley pranked their racist boss.
Chef fights abuse at Azusa Pacific
Mahesh Pradhan, an immigrant, was working as a chef and supervisor at Azusa Pacific University, a Christian college in California, when other supervisors and employees who perceived him as Gay subjected him to chronic abuse, which he fought with support from an underground campus Queer club.
Workshop Talks: Genocide voted in
Through a view of his childhood as ethnic Chinese in Burma, Htun Lin takes up the plight of the Rohingya and the betrayal of democratic ideals by Aung San Suu Kyi.
Letter from Mexico: Zapatistas and science for humanity
At the second gathering of “ConSciences for Humanity,” scientists shared with the Zapatista Indigenous communities their views of “Science in the face of the wall [capitalism].”
Women Worldwide: January-February 2018
February 4, 2018A group in rural Western Kenya fights “widow cleansing”; Mexican women from San Salvador Atenco, raped and tortured by government police in 2007, seek justice at Inter-American Court; El Salvadoran women convicted of aggravated murder after stillbirths or miscarriages seek justice with the help of the Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion.
The limitations of restorative justice
Prisoner Stephen Wilson comments on Faruq’s article on the meaning of legal standing before the law and how restorative justice is not enough as the need is for transformative justice which focuses on the structures that create oppression and inequality in the first place.
‘Corrections’ steals from inmates, families
Exposé on how the Virginia Department of Corrections steals the interest on prisoners’ savings accounts for their own use, revealing that the VDOC encourages recidivism instead of prisoners’ successful reentry into society.
Women’s Marches sweep the world
February 3, 2018Women’s Marches took place around the U.S. and the world in 2017 AND 2018, once again showing that the opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump is alive, thriving, militant and exuberant.
Review of “Flint,” a Lifetime TV movie
February 2, 2018A review of the Lifetime TV movie “Flint,” which brings to life the ongoing four-year battle by four women who became activists against the State of Michigan in the face of serious water pollution in Flint, Michigan.
World in View: Visage of Hitler rises in Austria
Far Right racist parties have continued to make inroads into mainstream politics. 40,000 people marched in Austria against the new governing coalition of the anti-immigrant Austrian People’s Party and the neo-Nazi Freedom Party.
World in View: Australia’s castaways
Since 2012 Australia has held around 2,000 refugees and asylum seekers in brutal detention camps. Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis, Uighurs, Rohingya and Kurds, thrown together, have been subjected to stress, violence, and rape.
World in View: Zimbabwe’s coup
One goal of the military coup of Nov. 24, 2017, that deposed Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe was to end a growing protest movement.
World in View: Another brutal winter of war in Yemen
Yemenis face another winter of war, hunger, disease, and the brunt of Saudi and Iranian imperial rivalry. Over half the population urgently needs humanitarian assistance.
World in View: Honduran election
The U.S.-supported right-wing Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, stole the Nov. 26, 2017, election. At least 31 people were killed by military police people after they took to the streets in response.
A review: Regretting Motherhood
Adele’s review of Orna Donath’s book “Regretting Motherhood: A Study” takes up Donath’s study of 27 Israeli women who regretted becoming mothers; some who had never wanted children and others who had, only to find the reality was not what they expected.
Woman as Reason: The humanism of #MeToo
February 1, 2018The #MeToo movement, with roots in the 1960s, is part of a humanist revolutionary red thread that shows in a visceral way that revolution must deepen at every point in order to finally make the relationships we have with each other into actually human relationships.
Handicap This!, January-February 2018
Santa Barbara’s jail system and sheriff are sued; Texas caps the number of students who can receive special education services; people with disabilities criticize Esther McVey, the Work and Pensions Secretary in the United Kingdom.
Fight nuclear waste
Although Andrew Blowers in his book didn’t include Yucca Mountain in Nevada in his four peripheral sites, it qualifies. The choice of Yucca Mountain for the geologic disposal of U.S. nuclear waste started with forcing it into peripherality—declaring it an arid, empty wasteland, despite the presence of the Shoshone Indians.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2018, Part II
Readers’ Views on Women’s Liberation struggle continue and voices from behind bars.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2018, Part I
January 31, 2018Readers’ views on: U.S. Racism on trial, the right’s crocodile tears, creeping fascism, climate change, nuclear alarms, teachers as labor, Pat Hunt Presente! and Judy and Dan presente!
Readers’ Views: The Dialectic and the Meaning of the Russian Revolution
The dialectic and the meaning of the Russian Revolution.
Help keep News & Letters behind bars
Prisoner Fredd writes about his prison censoring many publications, including News & Letters, for trumped up reasons, and asks for help in fighting for his right to read.
(In)justice system confronted
Various prisoner support organizations gathered before an Alameda County Board of Supervisors Public Safety Committee hearing on jails and detention centers in November, 2017.
Queer Notes, Jan.-Feb. 2018
Queer notes on pastor Judy Peterson suspension; nonessential travel banned to Mississippi over anti-LGBTQ law, and Women of the Kenwood Ladies’ Pond Association in Hampstead Heath, Britain, welcoming Trans women.
Martin Luther King Day in Detroit
A diverse crowd at Detroit’s Martin Luther King Day rally and march was even larger than last year’s turnout, proving that we refuse to acquiesce to the blatant anti-humanism of the 45th president.
In Memoriam: Narihiko Ito (1931-2017)
January 30, 2018We honor the life of Narihiko Ito, one of the world’s foremost scholars on Rosa Luxemburg and a correspondent of Raya Dunayevskaya, and mourn his death.
Syrians & Iranians unite in D.C. rally
More than 200 protesters from the Syrian and Iranian diaspora and solidarity activists staged a joint protest in front of the White House to demand an end to the Assad dictatorship and the Iranian theocracy.