Protesters in South Africa agitate against President Jacob Zuma, the ruling African National Congress, the high unemployment rate and elections, and in support of the poor and workers.
Articles
World in View: French elections
France’s national elections will head to a run-off between fascist Marine Le Pen of the National Front party and liberal bourgeois centrist Emmanuel Macron of the En Marche party.
World in View: Korea war threats
The U.S. is increasing its military activity in the far East as tensions rise between it and North Korea that could lead to an unthinkable and devastating nuclear and chemical war that could affect multiple nations.
World In View: Venezuela in chaos
During this time of economic, political and societal crisis, including shortages of food and medicine, can Venezuela’s people build a society that is truly human, thus showing the way for the rest of the world?
Boycott Wendy’s!
May 3, 2017Florida tomato pickers with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and dozens of local supporters demonstrated in front of the Wendy’s restaurant on Division Street in Chicago.
No to police during mental health crisis!
A forum on “Responding to Mental Health Crises without Police” heard from a number of local groups attempting to organize our communities to deal with mental health crises.
World In View: The crisis of Turkish democracy
Protests occur across Turkey in resistance to the controversial constitutional referendum/power grab of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he has devolved into a capitalist counterrevolutionary ruler. .
Woman as Reason: International Women’s Day 2017
May 2, 2017Terry Moon writes of the meaning of the 2017 International Women’s Day strike, including its origins in the Ni Una Menos movement in Argentina, the October 2016 strike of women in Poland and the Jan. 21 Women’s March on Washington. .
Left’s blame game
A reflection on the question “Where are all the women?” posed by a speaker at one of the several recent and massive immigrants’ rights marches in downtown L.A.
Day Without Women
In-person report of a rally in New York’s Washington Square Park on International Women’s Day denouncing the anti-woman steps of Trump’s administration.
Women World Wide, May-June 2017
Women World Wide column reporting women´s actions in Tunisia and Turkey, as well as the development of a male contraceptive by a university start-up in rural India.
Women for Syria
Recollection of voices from the April 13, 2017, Day of Action for Syria, in which the Women’s March movement came together with supporters of the Syrian people.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya, May-June 2017: The cooperative form of labor vs. abstract labor and despotic plan
As part of observing the todayness of Marx’s Capital on its 150th anniversary, we present Raya Dunayevskaya’s analysis of Marx’s concept of Cooperative Form of Labor vs. Abstract Labor, as preparation for her book “Marxism and Freedom.”
Letter from Mexico: Zapatistas support U.S. migrants
Zapatistas in Mexico issued a statement and provided material support for immigrants resisting expulsion, especially from the U.S. .
Youth In Action: May-June 2017
Students in Puerto Rico agitate against government slashing funds to higher education; classmates and parents of high school student Hunter Bailey, who committed suicide, protest memorials to him being destroyed by his high school’s superintendent; students of North Carolina’s Salem College sit in demanding diversity training; students of the University of North Texas successfully rallied for the university to become a sanctuary campus.
Handicap This!: May-June 2017
ADAPT takes over Thompson Center in Chicago to demand a meeting with Governor; 40 Guatemalan girls killed in a fire where disabled and children were housed in inhumane conditions; a British conservative councilor and special needs teacher accused disabled persons who protested cuts and privatization of the National Health Service of making false claims to avoid work.
Readers’ Views: May-June 2017
May 1, 2017Reader’s Views on Women vs. Reaction; Women and Philosophy; Syria and Humanity; Support Trans Children!; Animals and Us; Repression vs. Justice; Why Read “N&L”; Voices from Behind the Bars
Stop jail censorship!
Prisoner invites readers to fight for the right of prisoners to read all ideas, including those that critique the criminal injustice system. The Mecklenberg County, North Carolina, Sheriff’s Office is violating this right. .
Voices From The Inside Out: Resisting Trumpism
Through the study of theory and philosophy and by solidarizing and striking, prisoners seek a humanist society that rejects Donald Trump, his plutocratic regime and the U.S. criminal injustice system. .
Workshop Talks: Don’t let germs and capitalists win
Excluding some people from healthcare, as well as vaccinations and treating infectious diseases, puts even those with health coverage at risk. Battling healthcare exclusions is essential to confronting capitalism’s class rule. .
Retirees help Detroit schools
Retired teachers and community residents have come to the aid of Detroit high schools abandoned as failing by the State of Michigan and the Detroit school system.
1967 Detroit Rebellion, 50 years later
April 30, 2017“12th and Clairmount” is a new movie created by the Detroit Historical Museum from primary sources and tells the story of the Detroit Rebellion of 1967.
Queer Notes: May-June 2017
Lesbian feminist Azza Sultan’s Bedayaa and Mesahat Foundation for Sexual and Gender Diversity fights for Queer rights in Egypt and Sudan; LGBT federal workers and senior citizens face rollback of their rights by President Trump; straight male politicians of The Netherlands solidarize with a Gay couple who were assaulted; Chechnya is arresting, detaining in concentration camps and killing men who are suspected of having a “nontraditional sexual orientation.”
Fukushima is never going away
Problems from the damaged nuclear reactors at Fukushima are not going away because the government is not dealing with them seriously and refuses to ask for international help.
Futureless people
April 27, 2017For-profit CoreCivic prison inmate’s lament on lack of hope because of slave-like treatment in prison and outside of jail, if one is lucky enough to be paroled.
New York healthcare rally
Supporters of universal healthcare rally for proposed bill that will provide single-pay healthcare for New York state residents.
‘Care not cages’
Immigrant rights and prisoner rights activists held a demonstration outside the largest immigrant detention facility in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Immigrants and allies challenge Trump’s inhumanity
April 22, 2017As the Trump administration ramps up deportations and related abuses, strikes, protests, and sanctuary cities are proliferating. The oppression of a lower caste of workers and the discrimination and violence faced by immigrants present a challenge to the Left, labor and the rest of humanity.
Trump won’t smash Assad’s genocidal regime—support the Syrian Revolution!
April 9, 2017Assad’s chemical attack on civilians reveals the lie the world has been living. Trump’s limited counterstrike was a response to the unprecedented mass opposition to him, not an abandonment of his counter-revolutionary agenda. It is crucial to take the living freedom struggles in Syria and globally as our basis, to oppose the lie that “there is no alternative,” and to clarify what we are for, not just against.
Share your story in the next issue of News & Letters: May-June deadline
The deadline for the May-June 2017 issue of News & Letters is Sunday, April 16.
Share your story with the world! Send in reports on your workplace, your town, your country; conditions, events, ideas, and debates. Send in Readers’ Views responding to articles in News & Letters and/or to what is happening in the world. Demonstrations and discussions have mushroomed since the [=>]
Time Warner workers strike and rally
April 5, 2017Workers striking Spectrum-Charter explained that they had struck at the end of March because the new corporation was slashing pension and health plans and because the workers had not had a union contact since 2013.
We stand with Planned Parenthood
March 23, 2017Report of the pro-choice Feb. 10 rally in Chicago, a day before anti-abortion fanatics planned to mob Planned Parenthood clinics across the U.S.
Mass rallies denounce Trump and defend immigrants: Florida students rally
Florida college students rally for immigrants, against U.S. President Donald Trump’s first immigrant ban and against the University of South Florida’s support for companies that harm the environment or support the military.
The view from Mexico
In Mexico, U.S. President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and actions are close to the number one topic of discussion and have inspired protest marches and rallies.
Workshop Talks: Workers’ solidarity can stop fascism
Fascists like Hitler, Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump can only succeed if they create rifts in workers’ solidarity by demonizing an “Other” that some workers will not defend; which is why opposing fascism depends on workers’ solidarity.
Northwest Indiana demands “No Ban! No Wall!”
March 21, 2017Syrians, Mexicans and Iranians were among the 100 who gathered in East Chicago, Indiana, to demand–under the banner of No Ban! No Wall!–the end of Trump’s demonization of immigrants in his effort to gain support from some white workers.
Queer Notes: March-April 2017
News on LGBTQ struggles: the first judge to rule for equal protection for Gay women and men, dies; Lebanon Judge rules that courts must protect homosexual people; a fundraiser for Chicago LGBT Asylum Support Partners; Tennessee legislators introduce several anti-Queer bills; the Center for Victims of Torture provides therapy for victims of torture, including LGBTQ people.
Michigan prisoners rise up!
Michigan prisoners protest in various ways–including a hunger strike–the inhumane, unhealthy, unlivable conditions in Michigan Department of Corrections prisons.
I just want to be free!
A prisoner speaks against the U.S. criminal injustice system and declares that he–like so many other prisoners–is a boy who just wants to be free.
Women WorldWide: March-April 2017
Movement du Nid’s fake escort service raises awareness of violence against women; Argentinian feminist collective Ni Una Menos organized the first regionwide Latin American march against femicide; Russia’s new law reduces first-time domestic violence assaults to civil offenses; huge outcry of Arab-Israeli women against fundamentalist Muslims’ claims that 19-year-old Arab-Israeli Lian Zaher Nasser deserved to be murdered for celebrating a Christian holiday with men where alcohol was served.
Women’s liberation, in fact and in philosophy
Raya Dunayevskaya on the first and second women’s movements, the Black dimension, working women, and a total philosophy of liberation.
Essay: Marx’s Marxism vs. Trump-Putin’s barbarism
Trump’s barbarism in power is a crisis for bourgeois democracy and revolutionary thought. Opposition from below is far deeper than bourgeois opposition to Trump. To have efficacy today, Marx’s body of ideas must be grasped and projected as a whole. The movement from theory needs to meet the challenge of history, of freedom struggles and revolution.
World In View: In 2017 ‘The world is a Syrian issue’
March 2017 marks the sixth anniversary of the Syrian Revolution. Syrian revolutionaries have articulated a necessary step in organizing outside and beyond the aims of state powers.
End degenerate fascist private prisons!
March 19, 2017For-profit private prisons need direct action by the people to close them down permanently, a task made much harder now that Jeff Sessions is the Attorney General.
Scientists march to safeguard the truth
March 17, 2017Report on the March for Science and other actions from scientists to protest the Trump administration’s attack on science.
San Francisco clears more land for rich
Report on the resistance against eviction and “development” in the Bay View/Hunters Point (BVHP) area in San Francisco, California.
Chicago, NYC rally for Transgender students
Reports on rallies at New York’s Stonewall Inn and in Chicago to denounce the Trump administration’s decision to cease to protect and defend the rights of Transgender students in U.S. schools.
Prisoners: ‘Shout Their Names’
Families of two prisoners at the California Institution for Women whose deaths were declared suicides testify.
‘The Disappearing L’
Adele’s review of Bonnie Morris’ “The Disappearing L,” which takes up why the Lesbian culture of the 1970s through the 1990s is disappearing and what was worthwhile in it.
Youth in Action, March-April 2017
March-April 2017 Youth in Action column, including reports on youth activities in Minneapolis, New York City, Kerala (India) and Tehran.