Part of the hundreds of concerned people from over 90 disability, aging and civil rights groups which converged on Washington, D.C., for the My Medicaid Matters rally on Sept. 21. Photo courtesy of www.ADAPT.org

Capitalism can’t deal with disability

May 9, 2023

People with disabilities make up 15% of the population. They are in every country and culture on earth. One thing that unites the disabled is that capitalism is a world not made for us, and communism is the only way to establish true freedom and equality for everyone.

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Editorial: Alabama Blacks beat Trump-Moore

January 28, 2018

Black voters in Alabama, led by Black women, overcame blatant voter suppression—including discriminatory voter ID laws—to flood the polls and block Roy Moore from the Senate seat he expected that God would anoint him to.

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Editorial: Abuser-in-chief trashes women

November 12, 2017

The Trump administration’s attack on both abortion rights and birth control panders to their anti-abortion fanatical base–in the process torturing a 17-year-old immigrant who tried to get an abortion after being locked up for illegally crossing the border. .

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Inauguration of neo-fascism faces widespread revolt

January 23, 2017

The lightning move by Republicans in Congress to prepare to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare—before Donald Trump even took office, with only the vaguest idea of what is to replace it, and with full knowledge that a large majority of Americans oppose the repeal of its most important provisions—gave a sign of how far the new single-party government intends to roll the clock back, with dizzying speed.

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World in View: Charleston terrorism

July 8, 2015

The racist murder of nine people at the historic Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., is the characteristic U.S. form of terrorism, directed against the expression of Black self-determination.

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30 Years Later: AIDS activism and ACT UP Chicago

May 9, 2015

ACT UP Chicago grew out of an organization that began in 1984 of Dykes and Gay Men Against Racism and Repression. We became an AIDS activism organization, first called Chicago For Our Rights, then by spring Chicago for AIDS Rights. We pushed for lowering the prices of AIDS drugs, and the release of more of them. By October and the national action in Washington, D.C., we had become ACT UP Chicago. AIDS is a global issue today. This time around, I’d like to see an AIDS activist movement that’s organized by poor, working-class, mostly people of color.

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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.

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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.

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Chicago teachers’ strike reviewed

January 29, 2015

Review of “Strike for America: Chicago Teachers Against Austerity” by Micah Uetricht and “How to Jump-Start Your Union: Lessons from the Chicago Teachers” from Labor Notes.

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Essay: ‘We all can’t breathe’–Reflections on Marx’s Humanism and Fanon

As a Black man, I asked myself: Why—through the dialectical crises of the social relations of production and the subsequent implosion of multiple outlived modes of production—has racism persisted? Why, despite the relations of property literally bursting asunder, does racism survive? How and why does racism, sexism, homophobia survive revolution after revolution? Will we again be left behind after the next revolution?

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Readers’ Views, November-December 2014, Part 2

November 23, 2014

From the November-December 2014 issue of News & Letters

Readers’ Views, Part 2

PHILOSOPHY, ACTIVITY, ORGANIZATION AND SOCIALISM

I appreciate how Dunayevskaya relates Hegel’s Absolutes with the concrete tasks of building a revolutionary organization. History is the process of becoming. Hegel said that Being and Nothing are abstractions, whereas [=>]

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Hegel and Black history

September 30, 2014

There is compelling evidence that the Haitian Revolution of 1803 was a source for Hegel’s narrative on the master/slave relation in the PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT.

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Justice for Ezell Ford

August 29, 2014

From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters

Los Angeles—On Aug. 17 over 1,000 protesters gathered at the downtown LA Police Department (LAPD) headquarters. We were there not only in support of Michael Brown, but also to protest the many killings over the years of Black, Brown and even a few white youths [=>]

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We march in Oakland for #NMOS14

From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters

Oakland, Calif.—Several hundred came out on Aug. 14 to a vigil in Oscar Grant Plaza, as part of a national day of protest over the police murder of Michael Brown. We read out the names of a growing number of unarmed young Black men executed [=>]

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NYC Police murder Eric Garner

From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters

New York, N.Y.–There are certain facts in the case of the police murder of Eric Garner which are not in question. The use of the chokehold by the NY Police Department (NYPD) has been illegal for over 20 years. Eric Garner was a 43-year-old father [=>]

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New York Police murder Eric Garner

July 28, 2014

New York, N.Y.–There are certain facts in the case of the police murder of Eric Garner which are not in question. The use of the chokehold by the New York Police Department (NYPD) has been illegal for over 20 years, since the death of Anthony Baez, and all police officers are taught that it is [=>]

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‘Bring back our girls!’

July 6, 2014

From the July-August 2014 issue of News & Letters

Chicago—Joining actions across the U.S. over Mother’s Day weekend, several hundred people here rallied on May 10 in support of the over 200 Nigerian girls kidnapped by terrorist group Boko Haram on April 15. At the rally, which was overwhelmingly African-American and Nigerian, we called [=>]

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Revolt and retrogression at home

May 6, 2014

Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2014-2015: From the U.S. to Ukraine, crises and revolts call for philosophy. II. Revolt and retrogression at home. A. Women under attack. B. Many dimensions of revolt

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‘A Dreadful Deceit’ and unceasing rebellion

March 30, 2014

Jacqueline Jones’ new book, A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama’s America, is not a call to ignore effects of the concept of race in law and practice. She finds the definition of race repeatedly twisted to suit the needs of the ruling class and wielded as a tool for subjugation of Black and white labor alike.

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Afghan women demonstrate on Feb. 13 in Kabul showing their opposition to violence against women. They chant: "Justice! Justice!" and "No more violence! Photo by Afghan Women's Network, www.afghanwomensnetwork.org.

Women fight for freedom against growing retrogression

March 13, 2014

While experiences in the squares of the Arab Spring, in Turkey’s Gezi Park, in the streets of Spain and Greece, and in the U.S. Occupy Movements have revealed moments of what new human relations between women and men could look like, those moments of hope and exhilaration have been followed by devastating reaction and retrogression.

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Charles Denby, worker-editor

February 8, 2014

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.

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Readers’ Views, Nov.-Dec. 2013, Part 1

December 14, 2013

Readers’ Views from Nov.-Dec. 2013 N&L: U.S. RACISM AND BLACK AND LATINO STRUGGLES; LABOR UNDER ATTACK; CTA vs. THE HOMELESS; DISABILITY AND HUMANITY; ABORTION IS A HUMAN NEED; EGYPT’S CONTRADICTIONS; DETROIT CRISIS; NUCLEAR PERIL; WHY A NEWSPAPER LIKE N&L?

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Maroon the Implacable

December 6, 2013

Faruq, a prisoner at Pelican Bay State Prison in California, reviews “Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz” (PM Press, 2013), written by a revolutionary theorist forced to endure the psychological and physical torture of solitary confinement for the past 40 years.

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Support prison truce

December 5, 2013

Alex Sanchez, co-founder of Homies Unidos in Los Angeles, spoke in support of prisoners’ call to cease hostilities, backing the solutions arrived at by those who used to be part of the problem.

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Tea Party wreaks havoc

November 15, 2013

That a minority faction of one party in one chamber of one branch of the U.S. government could pose a grave threat to the world economy reflects the depth of the capitalist crisis. The sheer nihilism of that Tea Party faction reflects the depravity of American racism, which, as Patrick Buchanan threatened, would not hesitate to “bring down like Samson” the world around it.

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