Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2023-2024: Polycrisis and the need to transform reality. Part I
June 15, 2023Society’s crying need for radical transformation makes itself felt day after day. In response, ruling classes across the globe have split into two main factions...
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From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Marx’s critique of Hegel, and dialectics of organization and philosophy
June 16, 2023As part of renewed attention to the Marxist-Humanist concepts of dialectics of organization and philosophy, we begin with Dunayevskaya’s 1987 exploration of how it is...
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An atrocity: Assad welcomed back
June 7, 2023It is an atrocity that Bashar al-Assad was welcomed back to the Arab League Summit on May 19. This is one more attempt to bury...
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World in View: Sudanese killed by feuding generals
June 14, 2023Sudanese generals—Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on one side and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, “Hemedti,” on the other—are sending soldiers against each other in Khartoum making the masses fair game to be bombed, shot, and forced to flee. Hundreds have been killed since the fighting erupted on April 16. It is the Sudanese revolution that both armed factions fear and aim to suppress....
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The courage of #MeToo
June 5, 2023A defense of women who report abuse, rape, etc. and are accused of lying, etc. Fraudulent accusations are rare, and assaults are vastly underreported. Women...
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Capitalism profits off immigrants’ woes
June 8, 2023U.S. President Joe Biden simultaneously put in place a proposal different from Donald Trump's Title 42 that required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico...
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Capitalism can’t deal with disability
May 9, 2023People with disabilities make up 15% of the population. They are in every country and culture on earth. One thing that unites the disabled is...
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Million Women Rise
June 3, 2023On March 4, over 2,000 women marched through London, organized by Million Women Rise (MWR). MWR is thousands strong and led by a collective of...
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Women protest in Israel
June 8, 2023More than 25,000 women dressed as handmaids formed human chains in 70 locations across Israel on International Women’s Day, protesting against proposed laws to turn...
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School workers strike across Canada
June 5, 2023School support workers in Halifax with Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 5047 have been out on strike for three weeks as of May 26....
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Woman as Reason: Save democracy, save abortion
June 3, 2023Republicans have to destroy democracy if they want to rule because a robust majority of the U.S. population supports legal, safe, accessible abortion; are for...
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Thoughts from the Outside: A view of freedom and self-determination
Ex-prisoner Faruq discusses the idea of freedom. Every one of our discussions has to center on liberation, what would real freedom look like? If revolution means anything, it creates seats for everyone at the table.
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Women WorldWide: May-June 2023
Worldwide domestic violence has intensified: The Strangulation Clinic was opened in Surrey, B.C. Canada, as this form of violence has increased since 2014; Iraqi women and allies demonstrated at the Supreme Judicial Council in Baghdad demanding a strict law to deal with increasing domestic violence and “honor killings”; and there has been an explosion of femicides in several countries, including Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan, and Sudan.
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DTE payment strike
“You’ve heard of a POWER OUTAGE—we are calling for a PAYMENT OUTAGE.” A flyer circulated by Detroit activists responds to the one-two punch of more frequent and longer-lasting widespread power outages AND an 8% rate increase request by DTE Energy, the gas and electric supplier for Detroit and the surrounding suburbs.
Cyclone spotlights disasters in Burma, China
After Cyclone Mocha devastated Rakhine State in Myanmar (Burma) on May 14, the National Unity Group representing civilian opposition and armed resistance reported 200 Rohingya Muslims had been killed as the storm hit with 130-mile-per-hour winds.
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50th anniversary of the Walpole prison union
Fifty years ago inmates at Walpole Maximum Security Prison in Massachusetts assumed the management of the prison for two months until the state and the prison guards’ union pressured the Corrections Commissioner to allow what became a violent retaking of the prison.
Handicap This!: May-June 2023
Takes up: Minnesota Personal Care Assistants (PCAs) who agitated for better wages and overtime pay won; Hereford’s Mercia Learning in the UK applied to convert a day nursery into a Growth, Empowerment and Motivation school, to educate 30 neurodivergent students; and on April 26 people with disabilities protested train travel into Paris, France, as most of the 12 million people with disabilities in France struggle because of taxis and train ramps that cannot accommodate wheelchairs, or no ramps at all.
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Readers’ Views: May-June 2023
Readers’ Views on: Violence and Racism Still Put U.S. in the Dock; American Civilization on Trial; Critical Race Theory; Critical Thinking and Education; 2SLGBTQIA+ Good and Bad News; Is Covid Over?; Remembering the Vietnam War; Syria Genocide Whitewashed; Fanaticism of Reactionaries
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Palestinians silenced
Early this spring, Palestinian-American attorney and activist Huwaida Arraf was invited to speak at Bloomfield Hills Senior High School. The debate among Jewish, Arab and Muslim community members over whether her talk was anti-Semitic and anti-Israel continues to intensify.
Queer Notes: May-June 2023
Takes up: Uganda’s President Museveni who signed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023, which includes the death penalty; That supporters of drag story time at Middlesex County Library in Parkhill, Ontario, Canada, protected the storytellers and attendees from 40 anti-gay protesters; and Namibia’s Supreme Court ruled that the Ministry’s lack of recognition of same-sex marriages conducted in other countries undermines the dignity and equality of the appellants.
Youth in Action: May-June 2023
Takes up: students at 300 schools in 42 states and D.C. participated in a national walkout against gun violence on April 5; at Boston University’s commencement ceremony on May 21 students booed the CEO and president of Warner Brothers, whose one year salary exceeds the sum of raises demanded by his 11,000 writers who are now on strike; and after days of protesting, grad students in Delhi, India, succeeded in blocking a 200% tuition hike at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute.
Preventing recidivism
Prisoner writes about how to reduce refidivism as within the first year post-release from prison, three of every five citizens will relapse back into a state of consciousness that begets physical bondage; one of those five will be murdered; and only the remaining one will maintain enough freedom to gain a job, have a child, and struggle to survive. If prison is perceived as a rehabilitation center, then our tax dollars will be used to restore citizens back into a mental, spiritual and physical state of freedom, justice and equality.
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World in View: Haiti citizens fight gangs
Haiti in general, and Port-Au-Prince in particular, have come under increasing gang siege. Several hundred Haitians have been killed by the gangs, and over 130,000 have fled their homes. Now residents in scattered neighborhoods are taking the situation into their own hands.
World in View: Turkey’s president
Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after 20 years in power—first as Prime Minister, and then with a constitutional change as President—faced a challenging election and failed to receive a majority in the first round, before winning the second round runoff.
World in View: Chile moves to the right
In a stunning reversal on May 7, voters in Chile elected a majority of far-right candidates responsible for drafting a new constitution. The first draft, written by a progressive coalition of elected representatives from below, had insisted on gender equality and Indigenous rights. It was rejected after an extensive negative campaign of misinformation and right-wing media manipulation.
World in View: Thailand’s election
In Thailand’s election, the general who seized power in a 2014 coup was unseated as prime minister. But will the military allow an independent civilian government to be formed?
World in View: Mexico Notes, May-June 2023
Takes up: how Mexico has increased the number of migrants it has detained five-fold, most at the behest of the U.S.–from 88,000 a year a decade ago to 450,000 now; and that Lopez Obrador is pushing the mega-project “Mayan train” that is invading Indigenous communities, as well as a new airport outside Mexico City, a huge oil refinery, a thermo-electric plant.