Proposition 22 will allow app-based transportation and delivery sector employers to keep classifying their employees as private contractors. They will not have to offer workers any of the benefits afforded to employee-classified workers under state law.
Buddy Bell
Trump’s immigrant policies challenged
November 28, 2020Both the “Remain in Mexico” policy, in which border guards stop asylum seekers from approaching U.S. border stations, and the family separation policy on the border which has failed to unite families of over 650 children are being challenged by immigrant rights activists and organizations.
Readers’ views, November-December 2020: part one
Election battles, reaching for the future, and the pull of the past; Sabotage of the post office; Food recycling workers strike; Anti-labor statue downed; Oil and biden; COVID-19: where’s the vision?; Racism and fascism; Polish women’s revolutionary moment; News & Letters is back in print!
Youth in Action: November-December 2020
November 27, 2020Youth and others in several places in Nigeria protest against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) who rape, extort, and otherwise abuse youth; residential advisors at several big name universities are striking over COVID-19 related issues; and students at Hong Kong Polytechnic University creatively used hundreds of padlocks hanging on a bridge to spell: “Save the 12,” referring to 12 Hong Kong youth abducted from a boat who are now being held in mainland China.
Workers vs. Proposition 22
November 10, 2020Gig companies pushed through California’s Prop 22 denying workers recognition as employees, and want similar laws in other states and countries. Other workers are bracing to see if the “gig economy” will be able to overtake their own industry.
Youth in action: September-October 2020
August 29, 2020Starbucks barista fired for demanding that police also wear masks in the store; California State University in Los Angeles students rally in support of hiring organizer Melina Abdullah as Dean of the College of Ethnic Studies; Dallas, Ga., high school student suspended and threatened by classmates for taking a picture of a crowded school hallway and posting it on social media.
Readers’ views, September-October 2020, part one
Readers’ Views takes up: Black revolt and racism; dialectics of liberation; school battles; election victories; history and freedom; class struggles; and fighting the Right wing.
Trump threatens DACA, ignores court
Trump subverted the Supreme Court decision upholding Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“dreamers”). It must be “upheld” by ordinary people who recognize and reject the actions of a president who poses imminent danger to their freedom.
The Gig Economy’s Highway toward Increasing Surplus Labor
July 14, 2020A veteran of working in the gig economy shares first-hand experience and analysis.
Trump bars immigrants but invites in COVID-19
July 1, 2020Trump’s administration directed border agents immediately to deport immigrants, no hearing required. Refugees in the border region of northern Mexico, already waiting in line for months, are now stranded indefinitely.
Youth in action, July-August 2020
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.
Youth in action: May-June 2020
May 3, 2020Dominican-American youth protest in New York City; Emma Theofelus, 23, Namibia’s youngest cabinet member; and Sudanese dancers, DJs, and musicians performing in public after a popular women’s and youth movement toppled the regime of al-Bashir and its “morality police.”
Workers in revolt against Amazon, Uber, and Lyft
April 29, 2020Uber, Lyft, and Amazon workers struggle to hold their employers to account and demand protection from COVID-19 as well as a living wage and sick days.
Uber, Lyft, Amazon workers revolt!
April 2, 2020Uber, Lyft, and Amazon workers struggle to hold their employers to account and demand protection from COVID-19 as well as a living wage and sick days.
Youth in action, March-April 2020
March 17, 2020Youth in action column on the Valentine’s Day’s Fridays 4 Future and Climate Strike protests, and the student group Teens Take Charge’s actions against segregation in New York schools.
Torture of immigrants in the U.S.
March 11, 2020As millions of immigrants improve the U.S. in various ways, Donald Trump continues a crusade to keep his most vile campaign promises, like stopping dark-skinned immigrants.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2020, Part One
January 22, 2020Readers’ Views on Capitalism and climate; Mideast upheaval; Trump the Mullah?; war crime hero; Trump’s judges; detransition debate; and women’s liberation.
Right’s war on voters
January 21, 2020Republican state officials around the country are enacting policies to depress the vote of poor people, students, and people of color to extend their minority control of state and federal government.
Youth in Action, January-February 2020
The students’ strike at Syracuse University; the attacks of pro-Iran militias against demonstrations in Nasiriya, Iran, and the U.S. Youth Climate Strike.
Frightening refineries
November 17, 2019Dangers of refineries to nearby inhabited areas. .
L.A. plans gains for rideshare drivers
Lyft and Uber drivers forced Los Angeles to move toward a minimum wage for them.
Youth in Action, November-December 2019
November 4, 2019Youth in Action column on protests by Papuan students in Jakarta; an appeal by youth to “Save DACA in the Supreme Court now!” during the Sept. 12 presidential debate in Houston, and the national student strike for the climate on Sept. 20 in Miami Beach, Florida.
Editorial: Supremacists are ‘coming for you!’
August 31, 2019After revelations of horrendous conditions at concentration camps for immigrants, hundreds of immigration-rights activists and workers rally in several parts of the U.S. against anti-immigration policies, far-right actions and militarization. The El Paso massacre underscores the threat. The true power of the pressure campaigns lies in their potential to open this path to both immigrant poultry workers and working-class Trump voters.
They’ll be coming for the immigrants–and for you
July 22, 2019“We’ll be coming for you” begins with the immigrants of color but will not end there.
Youth in Action, Sept.-Oct. 2019
July 17, 2019Moroccan medical students boycott their exams; boys in a New Zealand rugby team’s solidarity for the team’s one girl; and a high school senior makes a documentary film about the protest against a U.S. Navy base on Okinawa.
Trumpism aims to bleach the census
June 26, 2019The Trump administration’s attempt to manipulate the census could undercount some communities by 17% in an effort to calcify white minority rule.
Youth in Action, July-August 2019
Students protest in Brazil; students protest in Spain; and a sit-in at Princeton University’s Title IX administration against the way the university adjudicates reports of sexual assault.
Youth in Action: May-June 2019
May 3, 2019An action against Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School allowing the ranking of girls by boys; K-8 Charter Day School students win against sexist dress code; Savitribai Phule Pune University graduate students win stipends and demonstrate for better meals; University of Illinois at Chicago graduate student teaching assistants strike.
Uber and Lyft drivers strike against pay cuts
April 27, 2019Uber and Lyft drivers held a 25-hour strike in Los Angeles to protest pay cuts.
California Uber/Lyft workers strike!
April 4, 2019Ex-Lyft driver reports on the strike of Uber and Lyft drivers in California and explains the hell that ridesharing businesses are foisting on their workers, the environment, and their customers.
Youth in Action, March-April 2019
March 10, 2019School students in Oakland, Calif. support striking teachers; Belgian environment minister resigns after attacking Strike 4 Climate Action; high school students walk out in Vancouver, Canada, protesting tar sands; medical students’ direct action at Gandaki Medical College in Pokhara, Nepal, against tuition theft.
Editorial: Fighting gun violence
March 6, 2019New passions and forces alive in the U.S. ensured that the toll of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year would not fade into the political ether.
Youth in Action: January-February 2019
January 26, 2019Peking University Marxist Society students protest to support their detained club president; student workers at Grinnell College vote to be represented by a union; and a movement against climate change started by three Australian high school girls has spread to students in Japan, the UK, U.S. and Belgium.
Trump aids capitalism’s attack on labor; workers strike back
January 24, 2019A Marxist-Humanist analysis of the state of the U.S. economy and the revolt of labor in the wake of country-wide teachers’ strikes, an historically long government shutdown, and an unsteady, uncertain worldwide economy.
Youth in Action: November-December 2018
December 14, 2018Yale Law School students sit in to protest the rush to confirm Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court; three Australian eighth-graders boycott school over plan to open coal mines on indigenous land overlooking the Great Barrier Reef; and California high school students attend school board meetings en masse to demand the right of 16-18 year olds to vote in school board elections.
Protesters slandered
Just before the final confirmation vote elevating Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put out messages that slandered the act of protest itself.
California fires are not ‘natural’ disasters
December 2, 2018Climate change and downed power lines from PG&E are the reasons for the unprecedented wildfires in California in 2018, despite Donald Trump’s attempt to put blame elsewhere and open California forests to more logging.
Anti-Kavanaugh protesters slandered
October 9, 2018Just before the final confirmation vote elevating Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put out a confluence of messages that slandered the act of protest itself.
Youth in Action: Yale students protest Kavanaugh nomination
October 8, 2018Youth in Action that takes up how half of the student body at Yale Law School held a sit-down strike in university hallways and refused to go to class on Sept. 24, 2018.
End the Oura Bay landfill in Japan
September 27, 2018Activists in Okinawa began walking from town to town, meeting with citizens, mayors and city councils to convince them to stop the Japanese government’s extraction of their soil to be used as bay fill in the construction of two new airport runways at Henoko (U.S. Camp Schwab) on pristine Oura Bay, Okinawa Island.
Students and adults protest S. Korean airport
September 20, 2018Hundreds of South Korean students and adults hold a three-day protest against the building of a second airport in the city of Jeju-Doin in defense of the environment, an elementary school and farmers.
Youth in Action, September-October 2018
University of North Carolina students and workers bring down statue of generic Confederate soldier; Swedish pro-asylum student Elin Errson prevents deportation of Afghan refugee; Iraqi youth and women protest unemployment, electricity shortages and lack of clean water.
Protesters march against planned airport in South Korea
September 3, 2018Nearly 200 students and 150 adults participated in a three-day march in opposition to the construction of a second airport on Jeju-Do, South Korea.
Youth in Action, July-August 2018
July 25, 2018Youth in action column on a student demonstration in Delhi, India; a student rally against the alt-Right at Michigan State University, and revolt in Nicaragua headed by students.
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
Millions denounce Trump’s heinous immigration abuses
July 19, 2018Marxist-Humanist analysis of the nature of President Donald Trump’s inhuman immigration policy, the damage it is causing and the outcry against it, including from his own base.
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.
Youth In Action: Students in India protest tainted test
June 11, 2018Nearly 1,000 college-age youth jammed the street in front of the Staff Selection Commission (SSC) in Delhi when official questions to exams were found on social media on Feb. 28.
Inhuman Iraqi rush to judgment
May 28, 2018Iraq’s court system has been blind to the element of coercion as they rush to put to death not only ISIS fighters but their hostages as well. On one April afternoon, two hours was all a judge needed to convict 14 women…
Uprising in Honduras
March 12, 2018Protesters in Honduras consider the Nov. 26, 2017, reelection of President Juan Hernandez to be fraudulent. In the capital, Tegucigalpa, people lay down day after day to block the streets in front of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.