Grooming Gangs

February 19, 2025

“Grooming gangs” in England have lured thousands of girls into prostitution. Only a few abusers have been convicted. Studying successful tactics and groups created by survivors gives us confidence to replace exploitation with a compassionate society.

read the rest!

Handicap This!: December 2024

December 20, 2024

Takes up: a program in Southeast Asia to help people with disabilities migrate without barriers; scrutiny of abusive educational practices in England against children with learning disabilities and severe mental disorders; and students with disabilities win a Disabled Student Bill of Rights at the American University in D.C.

read the rest!

Black bookstore forced to close

April 17, 2024

Liberation Station, a Black-owned children’s bookstore in Raleigh, N.C., is closing less than a year after it opened on Juneteenth 2023, due to a series of threats.

read the rest!

Handicap This!: February 2024

February 14, 2024

Takes up: disabled children and of color being restrained and secluded in U.S. schools; the All Abilities Ball in Gympie, Queensland, Australia; and the need to ban e-scooters in Toronto, Canada.

read the rest!

Handicap This!: September 2023

September 21, 2023

Takes up: Disability Pride Month; inaccessibility in Montreal’s light-rail stations; proposing cuts to disability payments in the UK, and Case Dominique School in Congo-Brazzaville for children with autism and Down Syndrome.

read the rest!

The Ghost Ship fire

A view of the fire at the Ghost Ship that takes into account the capitalist nature of rents, evictions, land use, and how youth, by the way the live their lives, are fighting back.

read the rest!

Review: We were feminists once

September 6, 2016

Review by feminist Adele of Andi Zeisler’s book, We Were Feminists Once: from Riot Grrrl to Covergirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement, exploring how a once revolutionary feminism is being taken over by “marketplace feminism.”

In 1995 Andi Zeisler

read the rest!

Queer Notes: March-April 2016

March 12, 2016

The Pride Parade celebration in Mumbai, India; Transgender Girl Scout Stormi’s victorious sales of Girl Scout cookies despite those who would discriminate against her; and human rights group Observatorio de Derechos Humanos y Legislacion inspiring the Chilean Ministry of Health to grant healthcare autonomy to Intersex and Transgender children

read the rest!

Women battle war, terrorism and anti-abortion fanatics

March 8, 2016

Foregrounding the new formal solidarity between Trust Black Women with Black Lives Matter, we explore the thought and actions of women worldwide, including the struggle for reproductive justice in the U.S.; women fighting war and terrorism in places like South Sudan and Syria, the successful fight of domestic workers to organize, and the need to make the revolutionary content of such actions explicit.

read the rest!

Women WorldWide: January-February 2016

January 24, 2016

A brief roundup of what women are doing worldwide including: a report to the UN about the appalling status of women in the U.S.; The Cupcake Girls organization that supports sex workers in two U.S. states; and the British group Mumsnet that fights against the gendered marketing of children’s toys, books and clothing.

read the rest!

Queer Notes: November-December 2015

December 11, 2015

Roundup of actions by LGBTQ people including: protests of the movie “Stonewall”; fighting to decriminalize homosexuality in Tunisia; a domestic violence awareness campaign in Boston; high membership in LGBTQ youth group in Russia; and the fight to rename a street in Salt Lake City after Harvey Milk.

read the rest!

Handicap This! September-October 2015

September 6, 2015

A roundup of the situation of people with disabilities and how they are fighting for their rights including in Mexico, a prison in Carlisle, Penn., outrage against the shackling of two young students with disabilities in Covington, KY, the banning of a child with cerebral palsy and autism in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, and disabled people in Iraq who face neglect and isolation.

read the rest!

Readers’ Views, Sept.-Oct. 2015, Part 1

August 31, 2015

Readers’ thoughts on “Srebrenica, Bosnia, 1995; Europe and the World, 2015”; “Struggles against Racism”; “After Cecil, People Are Next”; “Teachers and Children”; “Workers, Customers Pay.”

read the rest!

Fight for $15 and Dr. King

April 30, 2015

In Chicago, thousands march for a living wage, while in Los Angeles, protesters of all races marched downtown on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s 1968 assassination. They included low-wage workers campaigning to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, uniting with the movement against police killing of unarmed Black and Brown youth.

read the rest!

Review of ‘She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry is a documentary of the women’s liberation movement (WLM) in the U.S., from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. Filmmaker Mary Dore used a wealth of historical news coverage to give a sense of the breadth of organizations and depth of demands in the explosive growth of the WLM. Activists, identified within archival footage—including women like Fran Beal of the Civil Rights Movement’s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Lesbian rights activist Karla Jay, and Judith Arcana of the abortion underground organization Jane—gave contemporary interviews interspersed in the film.

read the rest!

Stop blaming migrants

November 24, 2014

Los Angeles—On Oct. 7, 150 Latina/o, Black, Asian and white youths gave public comments at the Board of Supervisors (BOS) meeting against extending Regulation 287g, which was to expire. The regulation allowed the L.A. County Sheriff to act as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents putting into practice the so-called “Secure Community” policy allowing deputies to question anyone who appears to be a Latina/o migrant as a criminal suspect. It has resulted in thousands of working class migrants and even U.S. citizens to be stopped, detained and deported….

read the rest!

Another look at Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology of Mind’

September 14, 2014

From the January-February 2002 News & Letters

From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya

Editor’s Note: We publish here a discussion of what Marx considered Hegel’s greatest philosophic work—The Phenomenology of Mind. The first piece is a letter written by Raya Dunayevskaya to an Iranian colleague on June 26, 1986[1] ; the original can be found in the [=>]

read the rest!

Intersex voices

July 7, 2014

From the July-August 2014 issue of News & Letters

Germany recognizes a third gender on legal documents such as birth certificates. Australia’s Sex Discrimination Amendment Bill 2013 makes Intersex people a protected class, with no religious exemptions. In the U.S., Chicago’s Lurie Children’s Hospital has a Gender Identity Clinic which provides physical and mental [=>]

read the rest!

Low-wage workers strike, reach for a new way of life

July 1, 2014

The recent wave of strikes at Walmart and fast food restaurants signals the discontent brewing among the growing number of low-wage U.S. workers. They give notice that the far-reaching restructuring of jobs that was accelerated by the Great Recession also has a subjective side of revolt.

A week of strikes and demonstrations at Walmarts across the country peaked with events in 20 cities on June 4 alone. Chants of “Respect! Now!” joined the official demands of “$25,000 per year and enough hours to support our families” and an end to retaliation against workers who strike or speak up.

read the rest!

Queer Notes, September-October 2013

October 7, 2013

Chicago: pediatric gender-identity clinic; Bisexual men more anxious and depressed; United for Marriage Coalition apologize to Transgender and undocumented immigrant supporters of marriage equality

read the rest!

Disabled are human, deserve transplants

October 13, 2012

A 23-year-old man was denied a heart transplant by the University of Pennsylvania Hospital because of his autism, says his mom, Karen Corby. Paul Corby has autism and a mood disorder. He has a good quality of life and a social network to support him after the surgery. Paul was diagnosed with a deadly heart [=>]

read the rest!

Fukushima activists testify in New York

December 19, 2011

Fukushima activists testify in New York

New York City—A delegation of grassroots environ­mental activists from Japan came to share with their U.S. counterparts heart-rending eyewitness accounts of the health impact and continued contamination pro­duced by the Fukushima-Daiichi reactor units that suffered catastrophic damage on March 11. They met with the public at three different venues Sept. [=>]

read the rest!

California nurses strike for healthcare

November 14, 2010

From the Nov.-Dec. 2010 issue of News & Letters:

California nurses strike for healthcare

 

California nurses strike for healthcare

 

Oakland, Cal.–On Oct. 12-14, nurses at Oakland’s Children’s Hospital staged a three-day strike over the proposed takebacks in their healthcare benefits. Practically all the nurses (95%) walked out. Here is what some said:

Martha: I’ve worked at Children’s Hospital, [=>]

read the rest!