Real possibilities for social transformation in Latin America, and with it an end to U.S. domination with iron fist or velvet glove, lie not in the choreographed dance between the U.S. and the Latin American governments, including “Leftist” or progressive ones, inside or outside the “Summit of the Americas.”
Articles
World in View: U.S. police blotter
Tulsa: Eric Harris murdered by Sheriff’s “reserve” cop; North Charleston: cop murder of Walter Scott videoed; Chicago: meager reparations for victims of police torture.
World in View: Ukraine Leftists meet
At this year’s World Social Forum in Tunis, Tunisia, Leftists from both eastern and western Ukraine came together to reject the further escalation of armed conflict—and the Russian “Left” ideologue who has been promoting it, Boris Kagarlitsky.
World in View: New Kenya massacre
In a day-long orgy of murder on April 2, four al-Shabaab terrorists invaded the campus of Garissa University College and killed 143 students.
World in View: Death in Yarmouk
The world’s attention was once more belatedly drawn to the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, Syria, by the invasion by IS/Daesh terrorists, facilitated by another fundamentalist faction, Jabhat al-Nusra.
Chicago marches in solidarity with Baltimore protesters
On April 28, hundreds gathered outside Chicago Police Department headquarters, at 35th and Michigan, to show love and respect for Rekia Boyd, Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, and all the others whose Black lives matter. The crowd was largely young and multicultural. What is the truth about Freddie Gray’s death? The truth is that he was murdered by the notoriously racist and brutal Baltimore Police. Baltimore has exploded in anger because of the attempt to obscure this obvious fact, to pretend that the basic life experience of Black people over the last five decades, if not the entirety of U.S. history, can be dissolved into a social mystery. This generation serves notice: that shell game is over.
Marxist-Humanist organization and philosophy
May 6, 2015Spelling out the philosophical breakthrough on Hegel’s Absolutes as the total uprooting of the old and the creation of new human relations, in concrete relationship to struggles for freedom in practice and in theory, is at the heart of projecting Marxist-Humanism, and therefore of its organizational life.
Greek masses in peril
The rulers’ economic squeeze on Greece is intended to be an ideological prison for the working masses of Europe. Left tendencies aim to use the state to save capitalism or move toward socialism—rather than releasing self-activity of masses in motion as the prime mover of social transformation.
Things fall apart
In the absence of successful social revolution, today’s total crisis is shown in a world capitalist order that is falling apart economically, politically, environmentally, and in thought. That does not mean that we can wait for capitalism to collapse and step aside for a new society. On the contrary. Its desperation makes it that much more vicious, and it threatens to doom all of humanity with it.
Decaying social order shows need for philosophy, revolution
Introduction; I. Black Lives Matter; II. Things fall apart (A. Arab Spring: Revolution and war; B. Economic weakness and shifts in global politics; C. Whiff of fascism); III. Greek masses in peril; IV. Marxist-Humanist organization and philosophy.
The fact that the old, crumbling order will not go away quietly explains why we mark the 60 years of activity of the Marxist-Humanist organization News and Letters Committees—not as an anniversary but as an open window onto the needed philosophy of revolution, without which all revolutions and freedom movements remain incomplete.
Readers’ Views, May-June 2015
May 3, 2015Letters and comments sent in by readers or taken down, to and about the articles in News & Letters or current events.
Black Lives Matter
The long-simmering outrage of Black masses has broken out into a movement against this racist society, particularly its pattern of racist killings by the police. It has not only reverberated internationally, but also made itself felt in the battle of ideas and the sphere of theory.
Letter from Mexico: Zapatistas on praxis
May 1, 2015The Zapatistas are not just creating a new world in practice, but in theory—as we have seen by the radical concept Compa/Work Day (CWD), which opens new possibilities to emancipatory social movements. Or, better to say: They can develop revolutionary theory because they develop simultaneously a revolutionary practice (and vice versa).
12 years in the SHU
Pelican Bay Prison, Calif.—Twelve years have passed since I entered the Security Housing Unit (SHU) on gang validation. This year I turned 53 years old. My cognitive skills over this past decade have taken an odd turn. The deterioration is discernible. When I first arrived I was attentive and, if you’ll excuse the expression, bright-eyed. I thought I could beat this thing, whatever this thing was. I confess—I was ignorant.
Seeking justice for 43 in Ayotzinapa
“Caravana 43” includes some of the parents of 43 students who were “disappeared” in September from the Normal Rural School Raúl Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico, and are touring the U.S. Here are in-person reports from their trips to Berkeley, Calif., and Detroit, Mich.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The dialectic and women’s liberation
April 30, 2015The article excerpts a summary of a talk by Dunayevskaya to a conference on Women’s Liberation in Detroit. The purpose of the meeting was to help Dunayevskaya work out the final chapter of her book then in progress, Philosophy and Revolution. That last chapter would take up the “New Passions and New Forces” for the reconstruction of society. The Conference was also the beginning of the News & Letters—Women’s Liberation Committee.
UAW to fight two-tier?
Detroit—Meeting on March 24-25, some 900 delegates from more than 800 local unions representing automotive, aerospace, education, healthcare, public work and other areas of the economy heard reports and discussed strategies for the United Auto Workers (UAW) contract that expires in September 2015.
Celebrating 60 years: Marx spoke to 1975 economic crisis
In celebrating the first 60 years of News and Letters Committees, we reprint excerpts from the Draft Perspectives for 1975-76 by Raya Dunayevskaya, the first printed in News & Letters.
THE MOVEMENT KNOWS, of course, that the class enemy is at home, within each country. It knows full well that each existing state power is weighted down with fear of revolution. And it does not fail to appreciate that, no matter how deep the intra-imperialist rivalries, capitalist class solidarity holds tightest and strongest against its own people.
BP workers on strike
On March 19 hundreds of workers from the BP oil refinery in Whiting, Ind., massed in front of BP corporate offices in Chicago. The 1,100 workers’ strike has continued over unfair labor practices. The local issues centered on safety and staffing after BP rejected the pattern agreement of the industry with the United Steel Workers.
Fight for $15 and Dr. King
In Chicago, thousands march for a living wage, while in Los Angeles, protesters of all races marched downtown on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s 1968 assassination. They included low-wage workers campaigning to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, uniting with the movement against police killing of unarmed Black and Brown youth.
South Africa bloodies Black workers
Durban, South Africa—On April 8 Abahlali baseMjondolo supported a march against xenophobia organized by our comrades in the Congolese Solidarity Campaign together with the Somali Association of South Africa and other migrant organizations. There was a permit for the march and yet the police would not allow it to go ahead.
Women WorldWide, May-June 2015
A roundup of women’s actions worldwide including: feminists jailed in China before International Women’s Day; the unfair and punitive jailing of Purvi Patel for having a miscarriage; the fightback against the increase in sexist, racist, homophobic and classist harassment in Sci-Fi fandom; and the women’s hunger and work strike against terrible conditions at the Karnes Detention Center in Texas for migrant women and children.
Transgender women must fight for rights
New York—Police here have been told to halt stop-and-frisk policies because they unfairly target Black and Latino youth. But the Transgender community in Jackson Heights, New York, is undergoing its own particular form of stop and frisk. Trans women, especially Trans women of color, are stopped on a daily basis, told that they have to submit to a search (which they don’t) and if they are found in possession of a condom (which is legal) they are arrested for loitering or prostitution.
Review of ‘She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’
She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry is a documentary of the women’s liberation movement (WLM) in the U.S., from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. Filmmaker Mary Dore used a wealth of historical news coverage to give a sense of the breadth of organizations and depth of demands in the explosive growth of the WLM. Activists, identified within archival footage—including women like Fran Beal of the Civil Rights Movement’s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Lesbian rights activist Karla Jay, and Judith Arcana of the abortion underground organization Jane—gave contemporary interviews interspersed in the film.
Woman as Reason: Afghan women demand justice
Is the March 19 murder of Farkhunda by a mob of men who beat her to death with stones and sticks, ran her over with a car, threw her body on the banks of the Kabul River and lit it on fire, a turning point for women in Afghanistan? Some are saying it is.
Workshop Talks: 1949 coal miners’ general strike today
We workers see from the inside that capitalism is coming apart. The 1949-50 Coal Miners’ General Strike is significant, not only because it highlights resistance to the early stage of automation, but because the miners’ self-activity signified “The Emergence of a New Movement from Practice That Is Itself a Form of Theory.”
Cambios gigantes para Praxis en América Latina
March 20, 2015Praxis en América Latina está ahora un periódico imprimida así como digital. Puede ver Praxis #1 aquí.
March-April 2015 N&L available on the web
March 12, 2015The March-April 2015 issue of News & Letters, Vol. 60, #2, is available on the web.
View the issue online or as pdf.
Lead: From Turkey to USA, women as force and reason fight inhumanity
Another savage sexual assault and murder—this time in Turkey—brought forth thousands of demonstrators, mostly women, throughout the country and beyond. Özgecan Aslan was a student taking a bus home. Worldwide, [=>]
Marx and Transgender
March 11, 2015Leelah Alcorn’s last words, making her suicide an appeal for Transgender people to be “treated like humans” and to “fix society” if her death is to “mean something,” were stunning.
Letter from Mexico: Guerrero in a national focus
By putting their bodies between the army and the community police, by accepting and sheltering the latter in their town, the community of Petaquillas put their ideas into the struggle as well: the right to autonomy and self-government.
Youth in Action, March-April 2015
Justice for Jane; Syrian refugee children in Turkey; Howard University Middle School walkout; University of California Student Association call for divestment
Oakland March for Climate Leadership
The March for Climate Leadership demanded justice for people of color, as they are disproportionately harmed by toxic waste and sea level rise.
Stop nuclear power’s addiction to $$
Nuclear Energy Information Service of Chicago activists protested nuclear power outside a City Club luncheon. Former EPA administrator Carol Browner was one of the speakers who carried water for the nuclear industry’s foundering finances.
L.A. march against police brutality
About 500 people, mostly Black and Latino youth, gathered in Los Angeles. Anti-police brutality and anti-ever growing surveillance society has radicalized youth as well as concerned people from all walks of life.
Review: ‘The Value of Radical Theory’ by Wayne Price
Price presents a clear explanation of what Marx wrote in Capital about the capitalist mode of production…He correctly sees state capitalism as the final stage of the capitalist mode of production, where private capitalist property is replaced by state capitalist ownership of the means of production and distribution.
Queer Notes, March-April 2015
Jessie Hernandez; China LGBT Awareness Campaign; Tennessee Trans Justice Project; Michael Mason
World In View: Do Black lives matter in Brazil?
Police in Brazil kill five times more people than do police in the U.S. So what’s it going to take to create a sustained movement of resistance and international coverage?
World In View: Threats to Rohingya
Over one million Rohingya, a Muslim people living in Burma (Myanmar), are once again being subjected to threats from the state.
World In View: Africa, oh Africa!
Today’s African tragedies compel one to return to the great promise, and then great tragedy and betrayal, of the African Revolutions that emerged after World War II.
World In View: Nihilist Daesh attacks humanity, history
The late Syrian writer Alisar Iram, for one, saw where IS/Daesh were heading, long before they took their hammers into the Mosul Museum.
King March transformed
The annual Martin Luther King march here on Jan. 19 was changed after Michael Brown, the unarmed Black teenager, was shot dead by the police in Ferguson, Mo., under circumstances that some called an outright murder.
Stop Israeli settlements
We protested RE/MAX involvement in Israeli settlements that have displaced thousands of Palestinian families in direct violation of international law.
Readers’ Views, March-April 2015, Part 1
March 8, 2015Revolt and Counter-Revolution, from Greece to Syria; Here Come the Reformers; Women’s Freedom; Against Racism
Reader’s Views, March-April 2015, Part 2
The thoughts of News & Letters readers on: MARXIST-HUMANIST PHILOSOPHY IN THE WHIRLWIND OF EVENTS; SAVING THE PLANET; and VOICES FROM BEHIND THE BARS.
Will UAW represent rank and file again?
There will be a laundry list of grievances presented at the United Auto Workers (UAW) union bargaining convention to be held in Detroit, Mich, in March. Many of these grievances have been festering throughout auto plants in the country since 2009, when General Motors and Chrysler went bankrupt.
60 Years of News & Letters (Readers’ Views, March-April 2015)
Readers’ Views on the 60th anniversary of News & Letters and Terry Moon’s column on it.
CTU strike frames vote
Election Day in Chicago, Feb. 24, made the historic nine-day Chicago Teachers Union strike in 2012 a pivotal issue again as the candidate supported by the CTU forced Mayor Rahm Emanuel into a runoff.
The todayness of Selma, USA, 1965
In acquainting readers with coverage of the forces of revolution in News & Letters over its first 60 years, we present “Continuing Magnolia Jungle terror exposes reality of ‘Great Society,’” written by Charles Denby in February 1965, in the midst of the bloody campaign for voter registration in Selma, Alabama.
Philosophic Dialogue: On the 1953 letters
In Hegel we witness subjectivity coming out of objectivity, and the opposite movement. Dunayevskaya’s May 20, 1953, Letter interprets the Hegelian dialectic in a revolutionary way. What philosophical-political conclusions can be made?
Maldives coup defied
A coup overthrew the Maldives’ first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, a long-time pro-democracy activist and an internationally recognized leader on climate issues.