Free Syria areas have repeatedly demonstrated solidarity with Ukrainians fighting their common enemy, but have had to carry on their fight, for freedom and to avert extermination, without the international support their struggle has deserved.
Bob McGuire
Alabama coal miners keep strike alive
May 14, 2022By May Day 2022 coal miners at Warrior Met in Brookwood, Ala., had been on strike for a year and a month since they walked out April 1, 2021, to demand restoration of their wages, benefits and work rules. Strikers rejected a tentative contract as an insult. The company offered to restore just $1 more in wages.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2022, Part One
March 19, 2022Readers’ Views on: Putin’s Brutal War on Ukraine; War on Yemen; Canadian Convoy; Trucks and Tribes; and Abortion Politics.
Editorial: Sham trucker convoys
The “Freedom Convoy” in Canada was part and parcel of the white Christian nationalism that is a marker of today’s fascism, and not a working-class movement of truck drivers.
World in View: Iron fist at Olympics
March 16, 2022It is no accident that Olympic gold medal winner Nils van der Poel felt compelled to wait until he was out of the grasp of China before he gave away his Olympic gold medal to the daughter of a political prisoner jailed in China: Gui Minhai.
Canadian convoy fuels fascism, not freedom
February 11, 2022Despite 90% of Canadian truckers being vaccinated, organizers counted on a couple hundred semis to mask the fascist movements and money propelling this “freedom convoy.” The mask came off quickly, as participants paraded Nazi and Confederate flags, and even TRUMP 2024 banners, while others desecrated national memorials.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2022, Part Two
February 5, 2022Readers’ Views on: Racist Censorship; Learning from 1619; Backlash to Women, Blacks; Racism and the Far Right; Censorship in Prison; The 13th Amendment and Slave Labor; Incarcerated Immigrants Face Racism; Trans Women Abused in Prison; Prison Activist Resource Center (Parc)
Jonathan Spence (1936-2021)
February 3, 2022Remembering Jonathan Spence, a noted China scholar at Yale and the author of more than a dozen books on Chinese history spanning centuries and social classes.
Workers, from union to gig, reject rules that bosses try to reimpose
November 9, 2021Workers in the U.S. have made 2021 a year that ought to panic giant corporations and small store owners alike. The wave of strikes and other job actions this fall have exploded and not just in numbers.
Nationwide walkout of Nabisco workers
September 12, 2021Nabisco workers nationwide struck over horrendous hours and shifts.
Volvo workers defy UAW to resume strike
July 5, 2021UAW workers on June 7 resumed their strike at the Volvo Truck Plant in Dublin, Va., the day after rejecting for the second time the tentative agreement that Local 2069 Bargaining Committee presented to them. The vote to reject, like the vote on May 16 to strike, was by more than 90%.
Forcing workers back to unlivable wages
July 4, 2021Missouri is one of 25 states on track to reject by July 2021 the $300 a week federal supplemental unemployment insurance. The payments issued to shore up the economy in response to the pandemic, and in fear of unrest that unemployment levels unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s might create, were not scheduled to end until September.
Free Hong Kong rally
Activists from Hong Kong along with emigres from Tibet and the China mainland joined supporters of freedom for Myanmar and Thailand in Chicago, Ill., on June 12 to mark two years since millions filled the streets to protest a threatened extradition law.
The people of Myanmar unite against the military coup
May 8, 2021Defying Burma’s coup has provided time for the forces of old revolutionaries, youth, workers and women to work out what they are fighting for, beyond deposing the military caste that has ruled them, and an opportunity to bridge long-time divisions between the Burmese-speaking majority and the peoples long fighting for self-determination.
Coming soon: ‘What Is Socialism? A Marxist-Humanist Symposium’
March 11, 2021Announcement and pre-publication offer for a new publication, ‘What Is Socialism? A Marxist-Humanist Symposium’
Karen Lewis, 1953-2021
The City of Chicago lost a powerful voice for teachers, and for workers in general, with the death of Karen Lewis, former President of the Chicago Teachers Union.
Hong Kong arrests
Massive marches in Hong Kong that continued until COVID-19 crowd restrictions and the National Security Law , combined with more violent arrests, drove protests underground.
Wave of arrests indicts justice in China
January 31, 2021Journalists in China harassed and detained for exposing COVID-19 reality; Hong Kong dissidents arrested; forced Uyghur labor elicits uneven response from U.S.
P.O. workers thwart Trump’s vote thefts
November 28, 2020Postal workers were at the front line of resistance to Trump’s rigging of the November 3 election.
Workers oppose China’s forced labor camps
Labor unions and human rights groups demand action against China’s incarceration of Uyghurs and forced labor.
‘Liberate Hong Kong’
August 28, 2020China is imposing harsh new repressive measures on Hong Kong, blocking protests that nevertheless have not stopped.
The USPS is a continuing crime scene
Postal workers find themselves on the frontlines of three fronts: saving their jobs under attack from the United States Postal Service under Postmaster Louis DeJoy; saving the USPS from the sabotage of DeJoy and Trump, and saving the integrity of U.S. elections.
Hong Kong: Year two of revolt
July 1, 2020Tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong defied a ban on demonstrations to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Thousands came out to oppose the Beijing government’s intention to impose a National Security Law directly on Hong Kong.
Meatpacking workers sacrificed
May 1, 2020Workers in meatpacking plants across the country are being sacrificed to what Karl Marx called capital’s “werewolf hunger for surplus labor” as packing companies try to reap the benefits of the prevailing level of automation—but substituting intensified sweated labor for the capital investment of automation. If workers die from COVID-19, the capitalist doesn’t care.
Copper miners strike
March 11, 2020The strike of more than 1,500 copper miners and smelters in Arizona and Texas against Asarco/Grupo Mexico has entered its fifth month, part of a new wave of labor solidarity and revolt.
Editorial: Trump after impeachment
March 8, 2020In the aftermath of Trump’s impeachment trial, impunity and purges rage while checks and balances failed. Armed with a philosophy of freedom, the opposition to Trump and to the capitalist system that spawned him would give Trump the challenge that fellow politicians could not.
Rebellion in Hong Kong spreads
January 21, 2020New Year’s Day, a million people took to the streets in Hong Kong despite police repression. Marchers called for Hong Kong to “resist tyranny, join a union.”
‘For Sama’: video as Syrian revolt
November 17, 2019A report on a speech by documentary filmmaker Joshka Wessels, who talks about the book “Documenting Syria”.
Hong Kong defiance
November 4, 2019Bob McGuire describes the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, triggered five months ago against a colonialist extradition bill to mainland China.
GM strikers fight capital’s drive to impoverish workers
October 30, 2019A Marxist-Humanist analysis of the 40-day strike by the autoworkers at General Motors and its ramifications for the labor struggle in the U.S. and abroad.
Hong Kong masses fight rulers’ grab for power
August 31, 2019An account of the development of the Hong Kong protests to block a proposed extradition bill, which could send residents of Hong Kong to face pre-determined injustice before Beijing courts, tracing them back to the 1989 Tiannamen Square Massacre.
Readers’ Views, July-August 2019: Part 1
June 27, 2019Readers’ Views on rising threat of the Right; corruption of the criminal injustice system; abortion bans attack women; support Maâti Monjib!; nursing home blues; why read ‘N&L?’; and support Crimean Tatars!
Millions in Hong Kong challenge Xi’s ambitions
June 26, 2019This year’s commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre was followed by more than a million people protesting the Extradition Bill that would legalize dissidents in Hong Kong being sent to face China’s injustice system.
Essay: What is socialism? Socialism, labor, and the Black dimension
May 1, 2019Marxist-Humanist Bob McGuire looks through history to Marx’s relationship to labor and the Black movement for freedom and then to our day and the relationship of Marxist-Humanism to labor and the Black struggle for freedom in speaking to the question many are asking today: What is socialism?
People of Taiwan wary of China’s reach
March 14, 2019China Airlines pilots in Taiwan won a strike over safety and staffing, while survivors of the bloody repression perpetuated by Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang beginning Feb. 28, 1947, demonstrated to remember those killed 72 years ago and to campaign against the threats of forced reunification under Xi Jinping.
Chicago teachers win first strike against charter schools
January 24, 2019Chicago teachers speak for themselves, explaining why they fought and won the first strike against charter schools.
First ever charter school teachers’ strike
December 16, 2018Teachers speak about why they struck Chicago’s Acero charter schools on Dec. 4-9, expanding the wave of teacher strikes to the first charter school strike in the nation.
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
‘Striking to Survive’ in China
Report on a talk in Oakland by worker-activists from China, including Fan Shigang, author and editor of “Striking to Survive: Workers’ Resistance to Factory Relocations in China.”
Iran strike solidarity
Workers at Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane in Iran have been on strike for most of November. This is the latest of their walkouts this year over unpaid wages.
Nurses on strike
Licensed practical nurses and supporters rallied at the University of Illinois Hospitals during their unfair labor practices strike.
Election deepens illegitimacy of Trump’s minority rule
December 3, 2018A Marxist-Humanist view of the 2018 U.S. midterm elections that highlights the illegitimacy of Trump’s rule, showing how it is the rule of a minority won because of anti-democratic voter suppression, gerrymandering, racism, sexism, extreme anti-immigration rhetoric, hate speech and lies. It highlights the other America that opposes such neo-fascism.
Chicago hotel workers on strike
September 27, 2018Striking hotel workers by the thousands traded their picket line duties for a rally and march through downtown Chicago on Sept. 13, 2018. They were striking over health insurance among other demands.
Chicago Vigil for the Rohingya
Over 100 people gathered in Chicago’s Federal Plaza on Aug. 25, 2018, for a vigil on the one-year anniversary of the massacre of the Muslim minority Rohingya in Burma.
Jasik workers organize in China
September 26, 2018This generation of Chinese workers, going on strike repeatedly to demand wages and benefits they are owed or fighting to control their own jobs, together with young intellectuals reclaiming Marx’s work, may be a threat to today’s Chinese rulers.
Readers’ Views, July-August 2018, Part 1
July 23, 2018Readers’ Views on: Fighting Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Hysteria; Women’s Liberation; Attacks on Gays; Support Restaurant Workers; Swords into Plowshares; Human Rights Struggles in Iraq…; …And in Russia; Arthur Gursch in Memoriam
In Memoriam: Andy Phillips (1924-2018)
May 1, 2018We mourn the loss of a founding member of News and Letters Committees, who participated in the first national strike against automation in the coal mines and later co-wrote its history in “The Coal Miners’ General Strike of 1949-50 and the Birth of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S.”
Readers’ Views: January-February 2018, Part II
February 1, 2018Readers’ Views on Women’s Liberation struggle continue and voices from behind bars.
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.
Help Puerto Rico now
November 15, 2017In person report on a demonstration in Chicago in support of the people of Puerto Rico, and to demand the Trump Administration give them the help they need.