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.
Black Americans
Picketing for jobs
August 29, 2014From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters
Chicago–Altgeld Gardens residents picketed the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) on June 26. They told News & Letters that the CHA contracts with Walsh Construction to work on housing projects like Altgeld Gardens, which is 97% Black. But Walsh refuses to follow Section 3, which requires 30% [=>]
Justice for Ezell Ford
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 [=>]
Review — ‘Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers’
Review of the book “Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers” by Anne Balay.
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 [=>]
Kansas City for Michael Brown
Over 700 people gathered in the Plaza in Kansas City, Mo., to protest the police murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the militarized attacks on protesters.
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 [=>]
Thousands in Chicago: From NY to Ferguson, stop killer cops!
Thousands of people packed into Daley Plaza on Aug. 14 for the National Moment of Silence. Observed in 90 cities, it was called to respond to the police killing of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African American, in Ferguson, Mo.
Photos from National Moment of Silence, Chicago
August 15, 2014Chicago photos here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29775879@N06/sets/72157646490687482/ Send in your own photos and reports to include in our coverage of this nationwide event on Aug. 14, 2014.
New York City and Ferguson, Missouri, police show pattern of violence against Black people
August 11, 2014Queens, New York–The first story was that Eric Garner had died of a heart attack in the ambulance as he was being taken to the hospital. Segments of the New York press were happy to report that the heart attack was probably caused by his obesity and diabetes, letting the cops off the hook. People [=>]
New York Police murder Eric Garner
July 28, 2014New 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 [=>]
Voices From the Inside Out: On prison and race
July 7, 2014From the July-August 2014 issue of News & Letters
by Robert Taliaferro
Race has always been at the forefront of this nation since its founding. It seems ironic that the generation that produced the country’s first Black president is also the generation that is seeing the advances made in civil rights during [=>]
‘Bring back our girls!’
July 6, 2014From 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 [=>]
Revolt and retrogression at home
May 6, 2014Draft 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
Readers’ Views, March-April 2014, Part 1
April 8, 2014Readers’ Views from the March-April 2014 issue of News & Letters, part 1.
Queer Notes, March-April 2014
April 2, 2014CeCe McDonald; Arizona’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act; Global Day of Action called by Solidarity Alliance in Nigeria.
‘A Dreadful Deceit’ and unceasing rebellion
March 30, 2014Jacqueline 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.
Women fight for freedom against growing retrogression
March 13, 2014While 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.
Charles Denby, worker-editor
February 8, 2014As 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.
Readers’ Views, Nov.-Dec. 2013, Part 1
December 14, 2013Readers’ 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?
Cultural critic Albert Murray (1916-2013)
December 11, 2013Remembering Albert Murray, who set out a vision of the African American as the representative “American,” of Black freedom as the soul of this nation’s culture.
Maroon the Implacable
December 6, 2013Faruq, 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.
Support prison truce
December 5, 2013Alex 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.
Tea Party wreaks havoc
November 15, 2013That 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.
Readers’ Views, September-October 2013, Part I
October 11, 2013Readers’ Views, September-October 2013, Part I
Rise Up Texas
September 27, 2013An overflow crowd at Bluestockings Bookstore in New York City heard Hallie Boas speak on “Come and Take It: How the Fight to Protect Wom¬en’s Healthcare Is Launching a New Wave of Feminism in Texas.”
Outrage at Trayvon Martin injustice
September 24, 2013Participant reports from Trayvon Martin demonstrations in Los Angeles, Oakland, Chicago, Raleigh, and New York.
Recreating Detroit
September 12, 2013A different Detroit is struggling to be realized in the minds and hearts of its citizens: individuals (unrecognized thousands of whom routinely maintain nearby abandoned property) as well as organizations—from churches and small businesses to youth and athletic programs, block clubs and neighborhood associations, and social and environmental justice organizations.
Detroit 1967: ‘Law and order’ from the barrel of a gun
September 10, 2013“Abolish the slums!” was so clearly and loudly the demand of the Negro Revolt in every single part of the country–North, South, East, West–that even President Johnson couldn’t pretend not to have heard it. In words, the President even claimed that that was part of his “war on poverty.” Hadn’t he asked for rat control, and hadn’t Congress denied him even that piddling sum? … As Commander-in-Chief he need not plead. He orders, and his orders were clear and unequivocal: 1) Shoot first…
Racism and the fight against it take center stage in the U.S.
September 5, 2013Nationwide protests erupted immediately after the outrageous July 13 acquittal of George Zimmerman for murdering 17-year-old African-American high school student Trayvon Martin last year. Within three days, thousands of protesters came out in dozens of cities, and a new group called the Dream Defenders began a 31-day occupation of Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s office.
September-October 2013 issue of News & Letters available
September 3, 2013The new September-October 2013 issue of News & Letters is online.
News & Letters, Vol. 58, No. 5
Lead
Racism and the fight against it take center stage in the U.S.
Nationwide protests erupted immediately after the outrageous July 13 acquittal of George Zimmerman for murdering 17-year-old African-American high school student Trayvon Martin last year. Within three days, thousands [=>]
Django Unchained
April 27, 2013Django Unchained is a Quentin Tarantino movie and thus, by definition, a bloody movie. There are horrific close-ups of violence in the latter part of the movie. But the reason that the movie has struck such a chord among millions of viewers is not the violence, but the type of violence that it is.
In the [=>]
Readers’ Views, March-April 2013, Part 1
April 25, 2013AMERICAN CIVILIZATION REMAINS ON TRIAL
American Civilization on Trial (ACOT) is not “Black history.” Rather, Blacks play such an enormous role in the U.S. that their history that is in ACOT is a history of America.
Octogenarian
Midwest
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The movie Django Unchained could have been an ad for the NRA’s position on the current [=>]
American Civilization on Trial
April 8, 2013Raya Dunayevskaya’s sublimely researched American Civilization on Trial: Black Masses as Vanguard (ACOT) deserves a place among the U.S.’s most honest historical treatises.
Lincoln and ‘The Abolitionists’
March 23, 2013The 150th anniversary of the Civil War, and of the Emancipation Proclamation in particular, has a lot of people talking about that history and race relations today. Steven Spielberg’s movie Lincoln is less the cause than the effect of this surge in popular interest. Lincoln is very moving and beautifully made, with excellent acting and shrewd writing.
Tony Kushner’s screenplay [=>]
The Black dimension and Women’s Liberation as revolutionary reason
March 18, 2013From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya:
Editor’s note: For Women’s History Month, we present excerpts from “An Overview by Way of Introduction; the Black Dimension,” Chapter 6 of the book Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution. The chapter serves as an introduction and overview for the book’s Part Two, “The Women’s Liberation Movement as Revolutionary [=>]
March-April 2013 issue of News & Letters is available on the web
March 16, 2013The March-April 2013 issue of News & Letters is available on the web.
News & Letters, Vol. 58, No. 2
March – April 2013
Lead
From India to Egypt to U.S., women fighting for freedom
Two recent events have shown the deep and seemingly intractable worldwide oppression of women and, at the same time, revealed women’s militancy and determination to [=>]
Readers’ Views, January-February 2013, Part 2
March 10, 2013ARCHIVES AS LIVING
I have been following the readings for the 2012-2013 Marxist-Humanist discussions with great enthusiasm. I was especially energized by the “Women as force and reason of revolution” selections. Raya Dunayevskaya’s 1970 piece “The Women’s Liberation Movement as Reason and as Revolutionary Force” was fresh and relevant to today. This is no surprise [=>]
Readers’ Views, January-February 2013, Part 1
March 9, 2013RAVAGES OF CAPITALISM SHOW NEED FOR NEW WORLD
The article on “Climate chaos and capitalism” (Sept.-Oct. 2012 N&L) is very relevant, especially the conclusion about how capitalism’s contradiction is that the growth of the economy, of capitalist production, means more global warming and climate change worldwide.
Activist for humans and environment
Los Angeles
***
The technologies we [=>]
News and Letters Committees Call for Plenum 2013
March 7, 2013OFFICIAL CALL FOR PLENUM
to Work Out Marxist-Humanist Perspectives for 2013-2014
February 24, 2013
To All Members of News and Letters Committees
Dear Friends:
The world today is riven between the creativity of masses in revolt and the violent degeneracy of counter-revolution, whose destructiveness even extends to the revived specter of nuclear war two decades after the collapse of [=>]
March against violence
February 25, 2013Chicago—Dozens of people marched on Chicago’s South Side to take a stand against violence on Jan. 15, followed by a speakout and vigil. Occupy the Southside organized this “King on King march” down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive from 63rd to Emmett Till Road.
“We’re here,” explained a Black woman activist with Occupy the Southside, “because [=>]
American Civilization on Trial: Black masses as vanguard and the dialectic of history
February 4, 2013From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation
Editor’s note: This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Marxist-Humanist classic American Civilization on Trial,originally with the overline “100 Years after the Emancipation Proclamation,” whose 150th anniversary was January 1, 2013. The original subtitle, “The Negro as Touchstone of History,” was [=>]
Chalking a felony?
December 14, 2012[Update: If in Chicago, please support Marissa Brown at her court date, Monday, Dec. 17, at 2:30 PM, at 2452 W. Belmont, Chicago. Details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/206707866130402/]
Chicago—On Nov. 9 we held a “Budget Showdown” protest at the Federal Building. We were protesting the threatened budget cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, rallying around the Robin Hood tax [=>]
Obama’s re-election doesn’t end clash of two worlds
November 26, 2012by Franklin Dmitryev
The two worlds of the rulers and the ruled shone through the suffocating blanket of propaganda surrounding the election in which Barack Obama won a second term. A pronounced gender gap and long lines at the polls in African-American and Latino areas reflected the determination to defeat the reactionary Republicans and retain the [=>]
Readers’ Views, September-October 2012, Part 1
October 15, 2012CAPITALIST CRISIS AND REVOLT
I appreciated Franklin Dmitryev’s Lead article in the July-August N&L, on “Spain, Greece, Europe: Capitalist crisis and revolt,” for showing how the so-called “radical Left” is not really so radical. They think they can solve things through managing the economy and redistributing wealth, and channel energy into politics.
The boldfaced paragraph in the [=>]
Tensions over race in Occupy Chicago
October 12, 2012Chicago—Tensions over race came to a boiling point within Occupy Chicago (OC) in August. A working group making plans for four days of protests at President Obama’s campaign headquarters here, to coincide with the Democratic Party convention in North Carolina, included in the plans the burning of voter registration cards. This was opposed by a [=>]
Reactionary U.S. election shows capital’s contradictions
September 10, 2012by Ron Kelch
“We built it!” roared the delegates at the Republican Party convention in Tampa. It was the perfect expression of the presidential campaign and of capitalist thinking in general. The truth is that workers built the social wealth. Capitalists take it from the workers, and the government gets a portion.
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan [=>]
Commemorating the Los Angeles Rebellion
August 5, 2012Los Angeles, Calif.—On April 28, people from the Black community, some from Occupy LA, and others gathered at the 71st and Normandie Ave. block party on the 20th anniversary of the 1992 LA Rebellion.
The event was moderated by Mollie Ball—long-time community activist and part of the LA-4-Plus Defense Committee. That committee was formed to support [=>]
Women Worldwide, July-August 2012
July 25, 2012by Artemis
In May, delegations of Japanese officials came to Palisades Park, N.J., where more than half the community is of Korean descent, to request the removal of a memorial to the Korean “comfort women.” They shockingly claimed that the more than 200 women, who were forced to be sex slaves for the Japanese military [=>]
Women as thinkers and revolutionaries
March 18, 2012Editor’s Note: For International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, we print below brief excerpts from Raya Dunayevskaya’s 1975-76 lectures on “Women as Thinkers and as Revolutionaries,” which were also excerpted in Women’s Liberation and the Dialectics of Revolution: Reaching for the Future.
* * *
I. Mass Creativity and the Black Dimension
What today we call Women’s [=>]