Thousands take part in a wave of protests against North Carolina’s House Bill 2, one of the most anti-LGBTQ laws to ever hit the books in our country.
Articles
March-April 2016 N&L available on the web
March 30, 2016The new issue is available on the web. Lead: Women battle war, terrorism and anti-abortion fanatics; Editorial: Syrian Revolution continues; Racism, workers and freedom ideas; The anguish that is Flint, Michigan; much more…
Readers’ Views: March-April 2016, Part 2
Readers’ Views on: The Movements from Practice and from Theory; Berta Caceres; Why Read N&L?; Women’s Liberation; Voices from behind the Bars.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2016, Part 1
Readers’ Views on: Environment, Labor, Race and Philosophy; Queer Liberation; Black Lives Matter; Bolivian Social Movements; Trumpery’s Fascism & Racism.
Olga Domanski’s revolutionary life, 1923-2015 (March-April 2016 Readers’ Views)
March 22, 2016Readers’ Views from the March-April 2016 N&L marking the revolutionary life of Olga Domanski.
Workers reject Nexteer-UAW deal
March 18, 2016Workers at Nexteer Automotive dealt a blow to the United Auto Workers bureaucracy and the company when 97% of the rank and file rejected the contract the UAW had negotiated, forcing sharp revisions on two-tier wages and healthcare benefits in the contract they ratified.
Letter from Mexico: Meaning of Mexican workers’ struggles
Upsurge of workers’ struggles in 2015 in Mexico, from field workers in San Quintin, Baja California to maquiladora workers in Ciudad Juarez along with ongoing opposition to government educational “reforms” by teachers in the autonomous union CNTE, demonstrate workers’ resistance to the plans of capital and its state. How can organizations of activist-thinkers meet what workers have achieved in our own organizational response?
Hospitals, children bombed: war zone care a nightmare
A Yemeni doctor pleads for help for the tragic and hopeless circumstances of many wounded from the Yemeni Civil War in a Taiz hospital, and the U.S. is called upon to have a grassroots movement to support military pilots who would resist what are clearly illegal bombings of foreign hospitals and healthcare and rescue workers.
Youth In Action: March-April 2016
Students protesting racism at US campuses get some wins; student movement The FeesMustFall student movement at South Africa’s University of Witwatersrand wins a temporary freeze on fees, call for campus jobs to remain on campus and making it more possible for more poor and working class students to be able to afford university; University of Georgia students arrested for calling on the university to grant in-state tuition for undocumented youth; University of Missouri students continue to agitate for racial justice by calling for more Black faculty.
Detroit schools need new ideas, political will
Detroit public school teachers and students win some needed school building repairs, but all Detroit schools need regulation, ideas and political will so that all students receive a high-quality education.
Black youth and labor come together
The Chicago Teachers Union, Black Lives Matter, Labor and disability rights movements work together to oppose racism, government cutbacks and austerity
Remembering Olga Domanski
From the March-April 2016 issue of News & Letters
We remember Olga Domanski (left), pictured with Genora Johnson, who led the Women’s Emergency Brigade, a historic part of the victorious 1936-37 Flint Sitdown Strike, and later Olga’s roommate when both worked at the GM plant in Flint, Mich.
For more on Olga Domanski, see also:
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Stop anti-union Brod
As Host and Crusty Workers Association union contract in New York City with Brod expired, the company threatened to close the union bakery while opening two non-union plants and fired three union officers and activists. Over 200 union members and immigrant activists rallied union and city support on Jan. 28.
Fighting Uber pay cuts
Uber drivers in NYC, facing higher commissions to Uber and lower fares, went on strike and rallied at the Long Island City headquarters. The drivers purchasing cars through Uber are on top of that charged usurious interest.
World in View: Prime Minister Modi’s retrogressive vision for India
Despite retrogressive religious views, Modi sees his ideology as representing the growing Indian capitalist class with its emphasis on high tech.
World in View: Pope Francis in Mexico: pity and contradiction
The Pope has a partial, limited critique of certain transgressions of industrial capitalism. In some areas of human rights, the Pope and the Catholic Church as an institution is not only silent, but in opposition.
World in View: United Arab Emirates’ two-tier society
The United Arab Emirates, a Gulf state ally of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, is the perfect model of a two-tier society.
World in View: For a Free Syria!
In Chicago on Feb. 21, members of the Syrian community and activists demonstrated in opposition to Russian and Syrian regime bombing.
Essay: Revolutionary feminism and Hegel’s notion of Life
March 15, 2016Olga Domanski delves into G.W.F. Hegel’s section on “Life” in his Science of Logic to show its meaning for the women’s movement today, facing lethal attacks on abortion rights and an alarming increase in rapes, battering, poverty and unemployment as well as an ever-widening gap between feminist theory and the lives of Black and working women.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Racism, workers and freedom ideas
March 14, 2016With Trump’s appeal to racism and reaction winning support from part of the working class, we present Dunayevskaya’s letter taking up Enoch Powell’s racist speeches and their impact on the working class.
Maâti Monjib’s trial
March 13, 2016The International Committee to Support Maâti Monjib and the Six Activists reports on upcoming trials, hunger strikes, and petitions.
Program on ‘(in)Justice System’ leaves out ‘the heart’ of the issue
An article by a formerly incarcerated person who gives a critical review of a conference on the criminal (in)justice system that leaves out the heart of the issue because it leaves out those most impacted by incarceration.
No coal trains in Oakland, California
March 12, 2016Protesters succeed in keeping coal trains from passing through Oakland, California, on their way to unload coal at a port terminal.
Queer Notes: March-April 2016
The Pride Parade celebration in Mumbai, India; Transgender Girl Scout Stormi’s victorious sales of Girl Scout cookies despite those who would discriminate against her; and human rights group Observatorio de Derechos Humanos y Legislacion inspiring the Chilean Ministry of Health to grant healthcare autonomy to Intersex and Transgender children
Handicap This!: March-April 2016
Pasadena schools deny equal education to students with mental health needs; Florida prisons deny disabled prisoners access to wheelchairs, canes, sign language interpreters and hearing aids; and a proposed rule requires federal agencies to work toward more workforce representation of the disabled.
Oil: bad both ways
People’s suffering, no matter the price of oil, demonstrates capitalism’s inherent deep ties with climate change and economic destruction.
Voices From The Inside Out: Olga Domanski’s passion for justice and freedom
March 11, 2016Prisoner Robert Taliaferro remembers Olga Domanski as a pillar of News and Letters Committees who helped define the organization for decades and wrote a remarkable letter to his parole board.
Olga Domanski: Taking organizational responsibility
In remembering Olga Domanski, Ron Kelch writes that she embodied organization as beginning from Hegel’s idea of freedom as a self-moving process that inspires generations of humanity
Olga Domanski: Part of ‘a generation of revolutionaries’
Gerry Emmett remembers Olga Domanski as one who embodied “revolutionary” in organizational form, making the idea of freedom exist.
Olga knew ‘what a revolution entails’
A remembrance of Olga Domanski by Kevin O’Brien, who felt that Olga knew what revolution meant and strove persistently, tirelessly and cheerfully for it.
Women WorldWide: March-April 2016
A look at women’s activity and thought worldwide including women comics acting against harassment in their industry; the Toronto Newsgirls Boxing Club coming out strongly against violence against women; and Filipina women used as sexual slaves by Japan in WWII demanding that government acknowledge and apologize for what they had done.
Review: Headscarves and Hymens
March 10, 2016A Review of “Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution” by Mona Eltahawy, reviewed by Adele an expert on the theocratic Right.
Woman as Reason: Trust Black Women in solidarity with Black Lives Matter
A statement of solidarity issued by Trust Women Partnership to Black Lives Matter that highlights the importance of reproductive justice in the struggle for freedom and self-determination.
Editorial: The Syrian Revolution continues
March 8, 2016On the challenges facing the Syrian Revolution, the lie of the current ceasefire, the forces lined up against the Revolution including Russia and Iran, and the insufficiencies of much of the international Left when it comes to supporting a genuine revolution and comprehending revolution in permanence.
The anguish that is Flint, Michigan
Greed and racism promulgated the crisis in Flint, where water with high lead content was used by the mostly poor Black residents for over a year, poisoning an entire city with especially terrible consequences for Flint’s children.
Workshop Talks: Do job, get fired
A critique of HMO practices that sanction nurses for giving quality care, showing the relation of that practice to what Marx worked out about labor time.
Women battle war, terrorism and anti-abortion fanatics
Foregrounding the new formal solidarity between Trust Black Women with Black Lives Matter, we explore the thought and actions of women worldwide, including the struggle for reproductive justice in the U.S.; women fighting war and terrorism in places like South Sudan and Syria, the successful fight of domestic workers to organize, and the need to make the revolutionary content of such actions explicit.
Russian imperialism’s genocidal attack on Syria aims to destroy the revolution
March 3, 2016Russian airstrikes create havoc in Syria, embodying a philosophy of unfreedom. Revolutionary unity in Syria isn’t just a tactical issue, but a philosophic question, on the revolution’s ground of freedom and dignity, needing philosophic as well as material solidarity.
‘You have to share the pain I feel’: A Yemeni doctor speaks
March 1, 2016A Yemeni doctor in Taiz tells of a little girl who has lost her limbs in the war and others he has treated, revealing a stark picture of the physical and mental toll of this war on civilians.
Call for Convention 2016
February 28, 2016Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2016-2017
New! N&L as ebook
February 5, 2016New! N&L (January-February 2016) as an ebook (epub 2.0.1 format). This is useful:
1. For people who are blind or visually impaired or have difficulty reading visually. This format is ideal for text-to-speech applications.
2. For reading on a smartphone or small tablet. Unlike a pdf, text in an epub can be magnified to [=>]
January-February 2016 N&L available on the web
January 26, 2016The new issue is available on the web. Lead: Paris climate accord’s suicidal complacency spurs protests; Editorial: Chicago’s racism on trial; Editorial: Erdogan slaughters Kurds; Olga Domanski, 1923-2015; much more…
Stop campus racism!
The last quarter of 2015 was marked by a national campaign against racism at campuses across the U.S.
Youth in Action, January-February 2016
Colorado student-teacher-parent walkouts lead to recall of reactionary school board members; Oxford students campaign to remove images of racist imperialist Cecil Rhodes; student activism sweeps South Africa.
Witnessing revolution in Rojava
Eyewitness report of a trip to Rojava in Syria in mid-2015.
World In View: David Bowie’s legacy
David Bowie was unprecedented in his injection of social enlightenment into the lives of working-class youth.
World In View: Paris massacre heralds more reaction
The fascist terror attacks in Paris herald further reaction. Syria and its tortured twin, Iraq, have become the umbilical cord connecting ISIS to the bourgeois imperialism that is its model.
World In View: Venezuela’s election
It was a stunning defeat. Where to now for the Venezuelan masses who supported Chavez in power, but many of whom feel disappointed in the post-Chavez period?
World in View: Ruqia Hassan’s dignity
The Syrian Revolution has brought forward a generation of citizen journalists who risk everything to report the truth, like the late Ruqia Hassan.
China in crisis moves to crush dissent
In the face of an upsurge of strikes, China struck back with new weapons against the spread of job actions and demonstrations.