The January-February issue of News & Letters is online.
News & Letters, Vol. 59, No. 1
January – February 2014
Lead
Rampant U.S. surveillance slouches toward totalitarianism
So overwhelming has been the past year’s flow of revelations about the U.S. government’s spying on virtually everyone that even President Obama’s hand-picked review panel had to acknowledge it. Though noting the potential for abuse of the state’s mountains of covertly gathered data, nowhere does the report by Obama insiders grapple with the question of just what sort of totalitarian instrument the militarized top secret government has become.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya:
Charles Denby, worker-editor
As a contribution to Black History Month we reprint Raya Dunayevskaya’s memorial for Charles Denby (1907-1983), her comrade of 35 years, Editor of News & Letters from its founding in 1955 until his death and the author of Indignant Heart: A Black Worker’s Journal.
Editorial
Tahrir three years later
Three years ago, the Egyptian Revolution was fighting for its life in Tahrir Square. For 18 days and nights, the women and men of the Square faced off against President Hosni Mubarak’s security forces and thugs. In the end Mubarak was forced to follow Tunisia’s President-for-life, Ben Ali, into retirement and shame. The light of freedom spread–Square to Square, occupation to occupation. It was a historic turning point.
Syrian revolution ‘brought us together’
“If there was no revolution in Syria, I almost feel like there would be no reason for me to exist. You don’t get tired of it. Revolution is what brought us together, as Syrians, for the first time.”
Essay
Communization theory’s missing link: dialectical mediation; what happens after
The impasse in the anti-capitalist movement after Occupy has led to theoretical stirrings over what to do organizationally, not just about the abolition of capitalism, but a positive concept of the future after capitalism. This is an opportunity to engage Marx’s view of these concerns, which was rooted in his 1844 declaration of a revolutionary humanism as the positive in the negative that opens up to a totally new future by refusing to be defined by what it is against.
Workshop Talks
Let RNs give care
On Jan. 6, RNs from the California Nurses Association (CNA) picketed a new state-of-the-art facility at Kaiser Oakland to protest increasing restrictions on access to care while decreasing frontline care staff. The opening was timed to coincide with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Woman as Reason
Language and death in Juárez
The way we construct experience with language has effects on its transmission and on the configuration of subjectivity, not only in aesthetics and ethics, but also in understanding politics. That is the case in the crimes committed against women in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and other states in Mexico.
Prison privatization is a crime
On Dec. 1, Aramark Correctional Services will begin running Food Service for the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC), creating another sector of low-wage workers in Michigan. In a state struggling with a high unemployment rate and flooded with low-wage dead-end jobs, 60,000 in the fast-food sector in the metro Detroit area alone, why would the state government choose to add to these statistics?
World in View
Social crisis in Central African Republic
Violence between Christian majority and Muslim minority communities has torn the social fabric of the Central African Republic, one of the world’s poorest countries. Over 1,000 people have been killed since Michel Djotodia seized power in March 2013. Reciprocal massacres have led many observers to see a real possibility of a Rwanda-type genocide.
MORE ARTICLES …
p. 2:
“Sweetening the Pill”
“Handicap This!”
“Women World Wide”
p. 3:
“‘We can’t survive on $7.25′”
“McDonald’s walkout”
“Cambodian massacre”
“LA garment dialogue”
“Anti-worker robots”
“Ukraine: New Unions and Democratic Left meet”
p. 6-7:
“Readers’ Views”
p. 8:
“Kansas City confronts anti-immigrant Nazis”
“La escuelita zapatista (Zapatista Little School)”
p. 9:
“Hyper-‘gentrification'”
“Solidarity with Guantanamo hunger strikers”
“Queer Notes”
p. 10:
“Illegal evictions sully Mandela’s legacy”
“For Nelson Mandela”
p. 11:
“Stay Solid! A Radical Handbook for Youth”
“Teach-in on the Revolution in Syria”
“Protests at CUNY”
“Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”
p. 12, World in View:
“South Korea on strike, North Korea on ‘ice'”
“Racism in Israel”