Girls fight dress codes in Israel; mostly young high school women speak out and plan mass demonstrations against police abuse that arose after the murder of George Floyd.
Black Lives Matter
Detroit dispatch #7: art, protests and evictions
June 29, 2020Detroit dispatch #7 saw a multiplicity of daily Black Lives Matter protests, in both city and suburbs, illuminating revelations of and resistance against systemic racism. Art flourishes while evictions loom, Fiat-Chrysler workers walk out while speed-up of workers continues and social distancing and mask wearing fall by the wayside.
Uprisings sparked by George Floyd’s murder by the police: A preliminary statement
June 1, 2020American civilization never ceases to put itself on trial, as shown once again by the revolt in Minneapolis that quickly spread nationwide, a new moment of revolt in an unprecedented situation.
Outrage in San Francisco
May 31, 2020Since May 29, there have been ongoing demonstrations sparked by the outrage over the police murder of George Floyd. They spread throughout the many San Francisco Bay Area cities including ones not especially known for activism like Walnut Creek.
I. The failed pandemic response and the fetishism of the economy
April 30, 2020Draft thesis for discussion about where the world is heading, and what to do about it from a revolutionary standpoint. Part I: Leaders around the world from China’s Xi Jinping to Donald Trump—have focused more on keeping production and the economy going than people’s health and lives.
Women’s movements reach for new global stage
March 6, 2020What has become clear in 2020 is the global nature of the women’s movements. It is a new stage which has announced itself by the international fight against femicide; the Women’s Marches; and by the National Women’s Meetings in Latin America, also called Encuentros.
Readers’ views, March-April 2020: Part two
Readers’ views on philosophy and the retrogressive changed world; pandemics and social control; mental illness and criminal ‘justice’; culture’s bizarre normal; and voices from behind bars.
Sexism, racism and incarceration in Brazil
November 17, 2019A report on a forum with Brazilian Black women activists in San Francisco on sexism, racism and incarceration in Brazil.
Essay: Black August, from 1971 to 2011-13
September 4, 2019Ex-prisoner Faruq takes up the revolutionary history of Black August Memorial and relates it to his life and the historic Pelican Bay Hunger Strike.
Presidents Day 2019 demonstration in Oakland, Calif.
March 10, 2019With just 72 hours notice, over 50,000 people came together in 48 states in almost 300 events to protest Donald Trump on Presidents Day. While the events were organized by MoveOn.org as a response to Trump’s fake emergency declaration, their call was answered spontaneously by many.
Women bearing the brunt of reaction lead the resistance
March 6, 2019In a year marked by the contradiction between deepening women’s revolt and activism and neo-fascism rising across the globe, women have been fighting back in unprecedented numbers and ways.
Essay: How dead thought failed Syrian revolution’s living history
January 28, 2019The Syrian Revolution has been the physical and intellectual battlefield that defines our time. As early as 2012 it was clear that what happened in Syria would determine the next stage of world history.
Readers’ Views, November-December 2018
December 14, 2018Readers’ Views on: Capitalism vs. the Planet; Anti-Semitism’s Inhumanity; Kavanaugh Travesty; Youth Rock!; Freedom Movements vs. Fascism across the Globe; Catholic Church Crisis; Voices from behind Bars
Review: Feminist Awakening in China
An account of #MeToo in China is documented in a new book by Leta Hong Fincher, “Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China.”
Jackie Lacey, Los Angeles DA, must go!
December 2, 2018Concerned groups in Los Angles, Calif., held rallies and delivered a petition to LA District Attorney Jackie Lacey demanding she “Prosecute Killer Cops” or step down as DA.
Editorial: Stop the coming slaughter in Idlib!
September 17, 2018News & Letters editorial taking up how in Syria, attacks are intensifying upon the three million Syrians, mostly civilians, trapped in Idlib province and how so many in the Left have failed them.
Idlib: Syria’s 21st century concentration camp
September 10, 2018Syria’s Idlib province faces imminent slaughter by Russia, Iran, and Assad regime forces, which have already made it into the model of the 21st century concentration camp. We call upon all of humanity to oppose this and to demand protection for these millions whose only “crime” was to fight for freedom against a fascist regime.
Los Angeles Rebellion revisited
June 18, 2018Report of a meeting in Los Angeles to commemorate the April 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion, which was a reaction to an accumulation of racist actions and policies in Los Angeles and the country, directed against Black people day after day and generation after generation.
Students in Vermont decry campus racism
May 10, 2018Report on a series of meetings at the University of Vermont (UVM) in Burlington on Feb. 13 and 14, 2018, of several hundred students who gathered to protest school administrators’ lack of response to campus racism and to support a UVM staffer who was on a hunger strike.
Youth March for Our Lives
Participants at the March for Our Lives against gun violence in the Bay Area, Calif., Detroit, Mich., and Chicago, Ill. report on the militancy and humanism in the marches in their areas.
Readers’ Views, May-June 2018
Readers’ Views takes up: women’s liberation, youth in the battle, Blacks vs. racism, border cop thugs, Middle East struggles, and voices from behind bars.
III. The reality and the myth of contemporary capitalism
May 5, 2018We look at the world economic situation that must be changed: the role of state-capitalism, labor, climate change, the law of value, exploitation, alienation, and revolution and counter-revolution in Syria.
50 Years later…The 1968 French general strike–its meaning today.
A participant looks at the 1968 French general strike, filled with potential to transform society, and discusses why it failed and the ramifications of that for today.
II. Spreading revolt opens new doors
May 3, 2018We look at the true opposition to Trumpism: mass revolt worldwide of women, youth, Black people, labor…–the context to work for new beginnings.
Students in Vermont decry campus racism
April 5, 2018Students demonstrate at the University of Vermont in Burlington over racial inequality on campus, calling for mandated diversity and equity training for university staff as well as increased recruitment and retention of faculty and staff of color.
Editorial: Youth confront the NRA
March 10, 2018The youth who marched on Tallahassee, Fla., and Washington, D.C., in response to the massacre of 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14 in Parkland, Fla., lead the entire nation in demanding an end to gun violence.
‘Silence is compliance’: Women march in Oakland Calif.
March 8, 2018On Jan. 20 thousands marched, some again wearing “Pussy hats,” in the second annual Women’s March. Police decided beforehand to estimate the crowd at 50,000, though it was clear that many, many more were actually there in one of several huge marches in the Bay Area.
#MeToo, Women’s Marches show the resistance deepens
Women have changed the world through an incredible and sustained activism based on a humanism that runs like a revolutionary red thread through an amazing array of actions, demonstrations and statements. This development is based on over 50 years of a movement that the founder of Marxist-Humanism, Raya Dunayevskaya, characterized as “Woman as Revolutionary Force and Reason.” .
Women’s Marches sweep the world
February 3, 2018Women’s Marches took place around the U.S. and the world in 2017 AND 2018, once again showing that the opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump is alive, thriving, militant and exuberant.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2018, Part I
January 31, 2018Readers’ views on: U.S. Racism on trial, the right’s crocodile tears, creeping fascism, climate change, nuclear alarms, teachers as labor, Pat Hunt Presente! and Judy and Dan presente!
Editorial: Alabama Blacks beat Trump-Moore
January 28, 2018Black 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.
World in View: U.S. military in Africa
November 16, 2017At least 358 civilians were killed and over 400 wounded in a truck bombing by al-Shabaab in Mogadishu, Somalia, Oct. 14, 2017.
NFL players defy owners and Trump
November 15, 2017A hundred people marched to Soldier Field before the Chicago Bears’ first game this season, to “Stand with Kaepernick” for his taking a knee during the National Anthem before games of the 2016 season.
Voices from the inside out: Ferguson, Mo., at three
November 14, 2017Black prisoners ponder if Black Lives Matter, as a functional organized entity, can develop philosophically, and thereby become capable of generating something beyond a national discussion of U.S. racism?
The struggle for the meaning of history
September 19, 2017On Aug. 27 in Berkeley, Calif., thousands came out to protest an “alt-right,” “No to Marxism,” demonstration including Black Lives Matter, feminists, Muslims, immigrants, leftists, and ordinary citizens against “hate.”
Readers’ Views: September-October 2017, Part 1
September 5, 2017Readers’ Views: facing far right’s threat; don’t scapegoat; Canadian strike; Transgender troops; women’s liberation; homeless in Los Angeles; defend dissidents; why read N&L.
Humanity confronting annihilation
September 3, 2017The peace march on Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to commemorate over 70,000 lives lost at the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on Aug. 9 in Livermore, Calif., bring up questions of Marxism, humanism, and the alternative necessary new society.
Rising U.S. racism challenges all freedom movements
September 2, 2017A Marxist-Humanist analysis of the history and meaning of the rising of the right-wing neo-Nazi white supremacist movement, its relationship to President Donald Trump and his administration, and its challenge to the freedom forces arrayed against it who are fighting for a humanist world. .
Fighting back against the rise of neo-Nazi hate
August 28, 2017In-person reports of demonstrations in Chicago, Memphis, Oregon, Los Angeles and Halifax in Canada in solidarity with activists in Charlottesville, Va., fighting against neo-fascism and demanding to take down Confederate statues. .
Fascism declares civil war in Charlottesville, Virginia
August 13, 2017Analysis of the violent invasion of Charlottesville, Va., the significance of the broader advance of fascism, and the opposite to it in human forces and reason.
Counter-fascist rally in Portland, Oregon
July 4, 2017Participant report on the June 4 rally against the fascists’ “Free Speech Rally” in Portland, Oregon, and the police intervention on the side of the fascists. .
Protesters counter fascist rally in Portland, Oregon
June 9, 2017An activist reports on the June 4, 2017, action by anti-fascist protesters against a rally of hate made up of Proud Boys, Militiamen, and Nazis who were protected by Portland cops who attacked anti-fascists.
III. U.S. forces of revolt as reason; philosophy as force of revolution
May 17, 2017The unprecedented Women’s March on Washington the day after Trump’s inauguration revealed the blossoming of a universal movement with many particulars, from women’s demand to control their own bodies, to Black Lives Matter, to the struggle at Standing Rock.
I. Trumpism as an excrescence of world capitalism’s crises
Trumpism’s self-perpetuating disorder is based on negation of social movements, trying to stifle the positive in their negation of this exploitative society. His deceit and power grabs express capitalism’s disintegration, exuding racism, sexism, and fascism.
Northwest Indiana demands “No Ban! No Wall!”
March 21, 2017Syrians, Mexicans and Iranians were among the 100 who gathered in East Chicago, Indiana, to demand–under the banner of No Ban! No Wall!–the end of Trump’s demonization of immigrants in his effort to gain support from some white workers.
Essay: Marx’s Marxism vs. Trump-Putin’s barbarism
Trump’s barbarism in power is a crisis for bourgeois democracy and revolutionary thought. Opposition from below is far deeper than bourgeois opposition to Trump. To have efficacy today, Marx’s body of ideas must be grasped and projected as a whole. The movement from theory needs to meet the challenge of history, of freedom struggles and revolution.
Women take the lead against world retrogression
March 8, 2017An in-depth Marxist-Humanist view of the state of the women’s movement in the U.S. and worldwide as it responds to the rising fascism of U.S. President Trump and other world leaders.
Flint-Selma International Women’s Day Solidarity March
March 7, 2017An International Women’s Day March in Flint in solidarity with the Selma-to-Montgomery March 52 years ago highlighted Flint residents’ ongoing struggle for civil and human rights.
News and Letters Committees Call for Plenum 2017
February 26, 2017Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2017-2018
Readers’ Views: January-February 2017, Part I
January 31, 2017Readers’ Views on: environmental and social crises; Martin Luther King Day; healthcare crisis, Donald Trump and the election; brutal “justice”; and who reads News & Letters.