Barred from entering City Hall by LAPD officers, LA Black Lives Matter started an occupation of City Hall Plaza protesting Police Chief Charlie Beck’s ruling that shooting Redel Jones five times was within policy.
Articles
How can we, once and for all, end sexism?
September 17, 2016From the September-October 2016 issue of News & Letters
Art by Paul Tanzawa
Women have been fighting for our freedom for centuries and yet we are still raped, beaten, enslaved–treated as less than human. We will never be free under capitalism, which has only made women’s lives worse and now threatens our [=>]
An open letter to the Prisoner Human Rights Movement – The power of humanism: where do we go from here?
At this moment of rethinking, Urszula Wislanka ask prisoners to share their ideas on humanism, as the Prisoners’ Human Rights Movement Blueprint reasserted the humanism upon which the prisoners’ movement was founded.
World in View: Syrian Revolution: humanity on trial
As the big powers push toward their desired “settlement” in Syria, the world is witnessing the most vicious war crimes and there are calls to end the dehumanization that allows this genocide to become accepted as “inevitable.”
World in View: Zimbabwe in crisis
As President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party continues to be roiled by the question of his potential successor, mass protests and strikes have also erupted over unemployment, electoral reform, and failure to pay doctors’, nurses’, and teachers’ salaries.
World in View: Colombia agreement raises hopes, questions
A peace agreement between the Colombian government of President Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has been greeted with hope and skepticism.
Letter from Mexico: Education for the service of society
Teachers, parents and their supporters hold a national strike, protesting Mexico’s so-called “educational reform” and working for education that truly serves society.
Humanism: a way forward for prisoners
Prisoner and hunger striker Faruq looks at the way forward after the historic California prisoners’ hunger strike and emphasizes the importance of “the banner of our humanism that allowed the forging of a tremendous unification across the racial divides.”
Voices from the inside out: Wisconsin prisoner hunger strike
Prisoner Robert Taliaferro writes of the Wisconsin maximum security facility prisoners’ hunger strike to end the inhumane practice of long-term solitary confinement and for improved medical care for prisoners with mental illness in segregation.
Youth In Action: September-October 2016
A look at youth activism including factory workers protest the murder of child laborer Sagar Barman; women’s skateboard team Las Brujas finds creative ways to fight male domination in the sport of skateboarding; Helena High School students supporting Kaitlyn Juvik in her right to choose not to wear a bra; and activists who protested two years ago in Hong Kong for freer elections are sentenced and vow to continue the struggle.
Nuclear waste traveling to your neighborhood
Anti-nuclear activists expose the dangers of high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) being shipped around the country, the conundrum of what to do with it and the lies the U.S. Department of Energy tells to make HLRW appear safe.
Readers’ Views: September-October 2016, Part 2
September 16, 2016Readers’ Views includes: Politics; revolution and the power of philosophy; remembering Olga Domanski; the sports section; national prison action; and voices from behind the bars.
Readers’ Views: September-October 2016, Part 1
September 14, 2016Readers’ Views on: Racism and Revolt Put U.S. on Trial; Life and Death Under the Class Divide; Environmental Struggles; War and Atrocities; and Women’s Lives at Stake.
Queer Notes: September-October 2016
Queer rights supporters at a Pride beauty pageant in Uganda are victims of police brutality; protests break out in Turkey in outrage over murder of Transgender woman, sex worker and LGBT rights activist Hande Kader; LGBT rights activists protest continued discrimination and brutality by Nepalese citizens which is in violation of Nepal’s outlawing of same based on sexual orientation and gender identity; the Court of Arbitration for Sport sets aside the International Association of Athletics Foundation’s limit on naturally occurring testosterone for athletes to compete in women’s events.
Chicago air show opposed
Chicago anti-war activists protest the annual Air and Water Show’s message that war planes and war are cool, simultaneously educating the public on the wars the U.S. is involved in.
Murdering the disabled
Mass murder of disabled in Japan demonstrates humanity’s willingness, all over the world into the U.S.’s Illinois, to ignore the complete humanity of the differently abled.
Shut down all of today’s Alcatrazes!
On Aug. 23, California’s Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition leafletted the staging area for trips to Alcatraz prison raising discussions with locals and tourists about how solitary confinement is torture.
Essay: Epigones discard Marxist-Humanist philosophy
September 12, 2016The retreat of former Marxist-Humanists into post-Marx Marxism is analyzed by Franklin Dmitryev through the books “Marx at the Margins” by Kevin Anderson and “Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism” by Peter Hudis, which appropriate some of Raya Dunayevskaya’s conclusions while quietly dismantling their philosophical framework.
Landless women meet
Abahlali baseMjondolo Women’s League South Africa commemorates the 60th anniversary of women who marched against apartheid Pass laws and for gender and racial equality as they plan for future economic development for women.
Slutwalk nixes shame
Women and men showed their opposition to rape culture and support for victims of sexual harassment, assault and rape by marching in the annual Slut Walk, in Chicago.
Kaepernick sit-down ‘bigger than football’
San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s sit-down during the USA’s national anthem draws criticism and support while protesting racism and police brutality.
Detroiters insist: water is a human right
The book Mapping the Water Crisis: The Dismantling of Black Neighborhoods in Detroit and the film Detroit Minds Dying, expose that the preponderance of water shutoffs in Detroit occur in poor neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color, the lies of Detroit city officials, and the difference determined activists can make.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Nigeria: a retreat, not a victory
September 11, 2016Raya Dunayevskaya gives a revolutionary history of the war for independence of Biafra from Nigeria while commenting on Conor Cruise O’Brien’s article published in the New York Review of Books, Dec. 21, 1968.
Flint water still not safe to drink
Citizens of Flint, Michigan, continue to be poisoned by lead in their water and pipes as Governor Rick Snyder requests grossly inadequate funding for needed repairs and refuses to take responsibility for the crisis.
Women WorldWide: September-October 2016
A roundup of women’s actions including: Feminists in Chile demanded access to abortion by participating in International Day of Action for Women’s Heath events; Immigrant women in detention at Pennsylvania’s Berks County Residential Center on hunger strike protesting both the Department of Homeland Security’s lies and terrible living conditions; women prisoners in Egypt including lawyer Mahieour El-Massry join Basma Refaat in her hunger strike to demand visitations with her children; women throughout Peru march protesting violence against women and the light sentences given to perpetrators; feminist station Radio Shaista, in Kunduzu, Afghanistan, returns to the air after the Taliban burned it to the ground.
Help keep News & Letters going and growing
September 7, 2016An appeal for funds to help keep the paper, News & Letters, going and growing; and to help us expand our subscriptions to prisoners.
Turkey’s Erdoğan – the pious dictator
A view of what the failed coup in Turkey has wrought, including mass arrests of teachers, trade unionists, doctors, medical personnel, and others as Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, makes a grab for total power.
Workshop Talks: Why allow Assad to kill the sick?
Healthcare worker Htun Lin takes up the relationship between workers in healthcare in the U.S. who are told “not everyone can be saved,” and what is happening in Syria where the Syrian government, Russia and Iran are bombing civilians including–or especially–hospitals and healthcare workers.
Fascism rising from Russia to India, from the U.S. to the Philippines
An expansive look at the rise of fascism worldwide beginning in the U.S. with Donald Trump and the U.S. election, and taking in European fascism, and the situations in India, the Philippines, China, Japan and the opposition by rulers worldwide to those fighting for a free existence and new human relations.
Review: We were feminists once
September 6, 2016Review by feminist Adele of Andi Zeisler’s book, We Were Feminists Once: from Riot Grrrl to Covergirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement, exploring how a once revolutionary feminism is being taken over by “marketplace feminism.”
In 1995 Andi Zeisler
Lakota protest Dakota Access oil pipeline
Citizens of the Standing Rock Lakota Nation and allies are maintaining a Camp of the Sacred Stones along the proposed route of the Dakota Access oil pipeline to defend the water, sacred and burial sites and wildlife habitat despite having their water and medical care removed as well as threats from the state government.
Share your story in the next issue of News & Letters: Sept.-Oct. deadline
August 17, 2016The deadline for the September-October 2016 issue of News & Letters is Sunday, August 28.
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.
July-August 2016 N&L available on the web
July 16, 2016The July-August 2016 issue of News & Letters, Vol. 61, #4, is available on the web.
View the issue online or as pdf.
Lead article: Fires in Canada, drought in India inspire creative revolt
The wildfires sweeping Alberta’s tar sands region provide a window onto the state of the environment and the multidimensional worldwide struggle against pollution and [=>]
World In View: France rebels again
The attempt by Socialist President Francois Hollande to ram through labor law changes has been met by nationwide strikes and social mobilizations. Resistance is heated.
World In View: Zimbabwe succession
President Robert Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since the overthrow of white minority rule in 1980. The succession is now being contested by factions of the ruling ZANU-PF party.
World In View: Jo Cox (1974-2016)
On June 16, Labour Party Member of Parliament Jo Cox was murdered by a neo-Nazi. Cox was murdered for opposing the rising reactionary tendency in European politics.
Readers’ Views: July-August 2016, Part 2
July 14, 2016Readers’ Views on Needed New Beginnings in Philosophy and Revolution; Making One Year Count; Subjugated Knowledge; Free Syria/May Day; and Voices From Behind the Bars.
Upheaval and crisis in Latin America
Venezuela is in ever-deepening crisis–including electricity shortages, outrageous inflation, food shortages–because of neoliberal politics. Colombia sees a cease-fire agreement signed between the government and Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia/FARC while agricultural injustice, a major cause of increasing poverty, remains. Peru elects Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a right-wing neoliberal, as their new president, defeating Keiko Fujimori, daughter of jailed former president Alberto Fujimori, who committed many human rights abuses while in office.
The Syrian Revolution continues
The author is reminded of Arab poet Al-Ma’arri as the inspiring Syrian revolutionaries in Maarat al-Numaan keep up their struggle for freedom against the Assad regime, despite the world ignoring them .
Polarization in Brazil
The impeachment of Brazil’s President Rousseff by right-wing forces in Congress betrays longstanding divisions in Brazil along lines of race and class, but was made possible because Rousseff’s Workers Party tried to demobilize the social forces that had brought it to power, leaving street agitation to Right-wing militants.
Editorial: Homophobic mass murder in Orlando
July 9, 2016Domestic terrorist Omar Mateen’s killing and injuring of Queer people in Orlando exposes racist and anti-Muslim sentiments but also, in reaction to his act, solidarity with the Queer community worldwide. The challenge is whether humanity will create a truly human society where Queer people are considered human.
Making of a disabilities rights activist
Disability rights activist Becky Taylor, who has cerebral palsy, demonstrates through her life, and largely thanks to her supportive family, that the differently abled are self-determing free agents and human beings.
Youth in Action: July-August 2016
In West Auckland, New Zealand, Massey High School students and their parents petition for weather-appropriate summer uniforms; 82 Huntsville, Alabama, Grissom High School students defy the dress code for girls because the code endorses rape culture and violates Title IX rights; across the USA Muslim youth are harassed in a variety of ways making them feel unsafe, so much so that the majority of Muslim youth believe that reporting the harassment won’t make a difference.
Readers’ Views: July-August 2016, Part 1
July 7, 2016Readers’ Views on Hate: Orlando to Brexit; Black Lives Matter; Muhammad Ali and Dr. King; Duterte in the Philippines; News & Letters Readers Unite!; and Deadly Assault on Women From the U.S. to Israel.
Anger & tears in NYC
In light of the Orlando massacre, LGBTQ people and supporters in New York City spontaneously demonstrate against Queerphobia, on and then one day after the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots which started the modern Queer liberation movement.
Queer Notes: July-August 2016
July 6, 2016Caribbean Transgender and Queer rights groups work for Transgender people to have human rights; Transgender teen girl Corey Maison is telling her story of overcoming bullying via The Bully Project; University of North Carolina’s students to use the restrooms and changing rooms that are in accordance with their gender identities despite anti-Transgender bathroom law HB2; and Oregon State University students provide safety to their Transgender classmates by participating in the “I’ll Go With You” movement.
‘We defend the earth’
Indigenous people, mostly women, respond to a video about their community, the ejido of Tila, which struggled against the government who tried to take their land and are now an independent community.
Upon leaving Pelican Bay: my firsts (of many :))
Prisoner Brutha Baridi tells what it means to be released from the hell of solitary confinement and experience several new “first” experiences.
Walking against indefinite detention
Buddy Bell of Voices for Creative Nonviolence tells of their recent 150-mile walk across the state of Illinois on the issues of indefinite detention, solitary confinement and the racist U.S. prison system.
Voices From the Inside Out: Prisoner’s ‘worth’
July 5, 2016Prisoner Robert Taliaferro discusses the profit made from prisoners by the prison industrial complex and the shame of supposed rehabilitative programs that in reality are required, not for rehabilitation but for continued punishment of prisoners and profit for the prisons.