Black Lives Matter

May 3, 2015

The long-simmering outrage of Black masses has broken out into a movement against this racist society, particularly its pattern of racist killings by the police. It has not only reverberated internationally, but also made itself felt in the battle of ideas and the sphere of theory.

read the rest!

From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The dialectic and women’s liberation

April 30, 2015

The article excerpts a summary of a talk by Dunayevskaya to a conference on Women’s Liberation in Detroit. The purpose of the meeting was to help Dunayevskaya work out the final chapter of her book then in progress, Philosophy and Revolution. That last chapter would take up the “New Passions and New Forces” for the reconstruction of society. The Conference was also the beginning of the News & Letters—Women’s Liberation Committee.

read the rest!

Transgender women must fight for rights

New York—Police here have been told to halt stop-and-frisk policies because they unfairly target Black and Latino youth. But the Transgender community in Jackson Heights, New York, is undergoing its own particular form of stop and frisk. Trans women, especially Trans women of color, are stopped on a daily basis, told that they have to submit to a search (which they don’t) and if they are found in possession of a condom (which is legal) they are arrested for loitering or prostitution.

read the rest!

Woman as Reason: Afghan women demand justice

Is the March 19 murder of Farkhunda by a mob of men who beat her to death with stones and sticks, ran her over with a car, threw her body on the banks of the Kabul River and lit it on fire, a turning point for women in Afghanistan? Some are saying it is.

read the rest!

UltraViolet goes live

UltraViolet, a mostly online petition-generating organization, recently went out into the real world by holding 25 or so “meet and greet” events in 15 different states. The one I went to was on the north side of Chicago.

read the rest!

Godless Americana

May 15, 2014

Review by Adele of “Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels,” by Sikivu Hutchinson (Infidel Books, 2013).

read the rest!

Sudan’s Arab Spring

November 25, 2013

Women are not only fighters in Sudan’s battles to overthrow al-Bashir, but they are also determined to continue the great tradition of women of the Arab Spring: to make sure that their revolution does not stop until all human relationships are transformed.

read the rest!

Lincoln and ‘The Abolitionists’

March 23, 2013

The 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 [=>]

read the rest!

Women Worldwide, January-February 2013

February 16, 2013

by Artemis

On Jan. 2, Gerda Lerner, a founding member of the National Organization for Women and history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, died at the age of 92. She founded the first national graduate program in women’s history and a women’s studies program at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y. She wrote The [=>]

read the rest!

Afro-Colombian Women: Defeating invisibility

February 10, 2013

by Gerry Emmett

In the remarkable documentary film, La Toma (2012), Afro-Colombian woman activist Francia Marquez Mina is threatened by government forces and forced to spend each night sleeping in a different place for her safety. (See “Afro-Colombians Throw Off Shackles,” Nov.-Dec. 2012 N&L.) She has described the experience of people in her community this [=>]

read the rest!

Queer Notes, March-April 2012

April 18, 2012

From the March-April 2012 issue of News & Letters:

Queer Notes

by Elise

A California Girl Scout put out a YouTube video asking the public to boycott Girl Scout cookies because she objects to a troop admitting a Transgender girl. While three Louisiana troops disbanded over the issue, a national Girl Scouts spokeswoman for the 100-year-old organization [=>]

read the rest!

Fanon and Marx

April 8, 2012

When Terry Moon in her column in the last is­sue asks, “How deep does the dialectic need to become when the subject is woman, is Black woman?” she calls for more discussion of Fanon and Women’s Liberation.

Fanon, in breaking with Sartre’s Existentialist Marxism—which acknowledged only one Subject, labor, and consigned the Black dimension to a [=>]

read the rest!

Women Worldwide, January-February 2012

February 16, 2012

Women Worldwide

by Artemis

In December, Ina May Gaskin was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for pioneering the modern midwifery and home birthing movements and for calling attention to the U.S. maternal death rate—one of the highest in the industrialized world, especially for Black and Hispanic [=>]

read the rest!

Women as Reason: No power for bishops or mullahs!

September 24, 2011

by Terry Moon

The racist U.S. Right has used the specter of terrorism in attacking Muslim religious law, Sharia, as a way to build and deepen fear of all Muslims and forward their reactionary agenda of racism against all minorities, sexism, and anti-immigrationism. Genuine feminist organizations like the decades-old Women Living Under Muslim Laws and the [=>]

read the rest!

Vicious attacks on women’s healthcare

March 24, 2011

During February, the Republican Party has led the largest legislative attack on women’s reproductive rights and health in recent history. The U.S. House of Representatives has passed several bills that, if passed by the Senate and signed by the President, would have a devastating impact on women’s health as well as abortion rights. One would [=>]

read the rest!