The totalitarian attack on thought

July 20, 2025

Part I of Franklin Dmitryev’s Organization Report, The Idea of Freedom Strikes Back, given to the Convention of News and Letters Committees on May 31, 2025, takes up the attacks on freedom movements as not just an attack on facts. It is a rush to totalitarian thought control. It is an attempt by the oppressors to project the false idea that resistance is futile, and you are powerless. It is also a confession that radical ideas are dangerous which implies a recognition that the ideas, imagination and philosophy are consequential.

Draft Perspectives 2025-2026, Part I: The sound of bootheels

May 2, 2025

From immigrants to Transgender people, from workers to students to women, no one is safe. Attacks on many fronts are part and parcel of what is widely recognized as a Trump/Musk coup, but is usually portrayed as normal politics in the media. Institutions cannot be trusted to save us and they need to feel the pressure from people fighting back.

Bad [cuts] to the bone: DOGE at work

March 30, 2025

DOGE is slashing grants, contracts and jobs in federal agencies. Especially Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility, climate change, education and food safety. Resisting fascism means looking for ways to fight for real reform as steps toward revolutionary development by and for humanity.

Essay: Scientists link climate/ecological crisis to social transformation

February 4, 2025

The climate crisis, biodiversity, food, water, and human health are so closely linked that efforts to address one without taking the others into account often backfire. This finding from scientists reflects their hearing climate justice movements.

Editorial: California fires reveal human power to ruin and heal

January 20, 2025

In California’s worst wildfires in its history, important factors include a century of land and water mismanagement and fossil fuel use that generates global warming. The fires brought out the best, mutual aid from below, and the worst, hateful scapegoating disguising climate denial. A global vision and humane principles in organizing ourselves are fundamental to a sustainable future.

Women WorldWide: June 2024

June 5, 2024

Takes up: In memoriam Faith Ringgold, a seven-decade Black American artist; research by Dr. Debby Herbenick about violent sexual behavior among college students; a paper by the Snow Leopard Trust about “Applying a Gender Lens to Biodiversity Conservation in High Asia”; and the documentary ‘You Are Not Alone: Fighting the Wolf Pack’ (2024) about the trial inspiring Spain’s #MeToo movement.

Draft Perspectives, 2024-2025: Part Two, Trump 2.0: A global threat

May 4, 2024

Part II of the 2024-2025 Draft Perspectives. Takes up: the global retrogression that a second Trump period would mean.

COP28 climate summit submits to oil capital’s war against movements and science

January 24, 2024

Scientists and climate movements highlighted the urgent need to take real climate action. Opposed are fossil fuel industries and their nation-states, who dominated COP28 and guaranteed its emptiness. The path forward can be built on the movements from below, posing liberation from capitalist exploitation and the release of full human development.

El mandamás del petróleo al-Jaber es perfecto para encabezar la COP

December 7, 2023

El presidente de la Conferencia Climática Internacional (COP28) es el sultán al-Jaber de Emiratos Árabes Unidos, quien también encabeza la compañía petrolera estatal de dicho país. Las empresas de combustibles fósiles son el enemigo de la humanidad. Lo que se necesita es derrotarlas: no rogarles que hagan lo correcto, sino quitarlas del poder (Traducción del artículo: “The perfect COP head is the oil honcho al-Jaber”).

The perfect COP head is the oil honcho al-Jaber

December 2, 2023

The president of the international climate conference COP28, is president, Sultan al-Jaber of the UAE, who also heads UAE’s state-owned oil company. Fossil fuel companies are the enemy of humanity. What is needed is to defeat them, not to beg them to do the right thing, but to remove their power.

World in View: Hurricane Otis and the ‘Other Acapulco’

November 18, 2023

Hurricane Otis on the coast of Guerrero on Oct. 25 left more than 80% of the hotel infrastructure unusable and hundreds of houses without roofs. The population was already suffering from hunger and organized crime.

Climate activists march in Chicago

September 21, 2023

In-person report of the Sept. 15 mobilization in Chicago to protest political inaction in the face of climate emergency.

World in View: Amazon Summit–Much talk, little action

August 19, 2023

Eight South American countries met in Brazil for a summit to combat deforestation in the Amazon basin. The summit’s failure to agree on a pact protecting Amazon forests points to the global failure of forging concrete agreements to combat climate change.

Climate toll sparks revolt

July 23, 2023

The climate crisis is already disrupting billions of lives. Yet the economic and political powers are more concerned with eliminating safeguards for workers and pushing more fossil fuels. It is no time to despair. It is a time of crisis that opens the door to a revolutionary transformation of society.

Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2023-2024: Polycrisis and the need to transform reality. Part IV

June 15, 2023

The oil companies and allied capitalists and politicians admit the need for a transformation of economies in the face of the climate emergency, but have managed to frame it as an energy transition. That is a political and ideological victory narrowing the transformation down to a technological-centered change. Thus the transition, as it is being designed, is a nontransformational transformation that will solve nothing—and climate militancy continues.

May-June: Women WorldWide

May 11, 2023

Takes up: Canadian Dawn Dumont Walker’s struggle to keep her son and escape her abusive ex-partner; the Spanish parliament passing legislation for paid leave for debilitating menstrual pain and decriminalizing abortion, including for minors; and the life-altering and horrendous suffering of women in Bangladesh due to climate chaos.

Readers’ Views: March-April 2023, Part Two

March 21, 2023

Readers’ Views on: Ukrainian Self-Determination and the Idea of Freedom; N&L for the Study Group; Sharing the Paper; Climate Movements vs. Summits; Unsanitary Prison Conditions; Prison Exploitation; Voices from behind Bars

Police murder of Tyre Nichols puts U.S. civilization on trial yet again

March 16, 2023

The murder of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police reveals the racism permeating police departments and sparked protests across the U.S. calling into question the system in which the violence is rooted. The police murder of tree-sitter Tortuguita in Atlanta showed how deep the rot is and the uprooting needs to become.

COP15 and COP27: Ecology summits hide two worlds clashing

January 22, 2023

Two hotly anticipated global summits on ecology and climate papered over a raging war of capital against humanity and Planet Earth—a war manifested in open conflict between “developed” and “developing” countries, but more deeply in a war of the two worlds of rulers and ruled within each country.

Attitudes to the climate crisis and technology

November 10, 2022

Today’s divide in attitudes to technology and climate solutions is more than a political question. It is a deep divide in philosophy. As crucial as are technological advances and the “energy transition,” they are liable to turn into their opposite if they are the focus instead of struggles of people trying to take control over their own lives.

Climate strike, Oakland, Sept. 2022

September 26, 2022

Hundreds of youth participated in the Oakland event of the international climate strike on Sept. 23, 2022.

World in View: Grave contradictions plague Mexico

September 13, 2022

Two ongoing events in Mexico: 1) The state finally admitted its role in the 2014 murder of 43 Ayotzinapa students, and 2) the administration’s construction of an oil refinery in Dos Boscos.

Climate law: Capital’s strategic retreat

A critical view on the first big U.S. climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, showing its deep limitations and the truly transformational alternative reached for by climate justice movements, including Indigenous struggles and youth climate strikes and occupations.

War is excuse to ravage the climate

July 19, 2022

Country after country reacted to the war by increasing oil and gas trade and production. Only movements from below can keep the fossil fuel capitalists from turning the opportunity for a greener, freer future into opposite.

Readers’ Views: July-August 2022, Part One

July 12, 2022

Readers’ Views on: Supreme Court’s Attack on Women’s Freedom; Abortion, Healthcare and Women’s Movement; Abortion Unseparated from All Freedom Struggles; Gay Pride: Whose Bodies? Ours!; Colonizers Past and Present; Let Them Eat Rockets; Oppression of Homeless; Only 14 More Mass Shootings!; Church, State and Football

Youth in Action: July-August 2022

High schoolers refuse to live in fear of being gunned down at school; Fridays 4 Future “dies in” to shame carbon-happy Wall St. financiers; teenager highlights Palestinian human rights at Tel Aviv Pride.

War, climate chaos, capitalism, COVID: World food crisis spreads

July 7, 2022

With Russia’s war on Ukraine, a food crisis is emerging globally with lightning speed. Capitalism, with its agricultural-industrial system of commodity food production for the world market, is the cause of, and suffers from the consequences of, multiple, linked crises of war, COVID, and climate. There is radical opposition to this perfect storm of capitalist crises.

Editorial: Climate report: revolution or disaster

May 18, 2022

The battle over the latest UN report on climate change laid bare the stark alternative between business as usual and the forces fighting for social transformation to stave off catastrophe. Protesting scientists called for “climate revolution.”

Readers’ Views: March-April 2022, Part Two

March 19, 2022

Readers’ Views on Absolute Idea and Self-Liberation; Labor and Ecology; Avoiding Race; and Voices from behind Bars.

Climate change report

March 16, 2022

A new report issued by a body of scientists convened by the UN, gives the most detailed description of the dangers posed by the climate crisis: a frightening future of flooding, fire and famine which will displace millions, species extinctions and the earth irreparably damaged.

Brazil: floods and inequality

March 15, 2022

A Brazilian city of over a quarter of a million people close to Rio de Janeiro, was hit in February by a huge rainstorm, the heaviest in nearly a century—almost 10 inches in two hours. It caused 26 landslides which killed 176 people, with more than 100 still missing.

Madagascar reveals climate crisis

The near-famine in Madagascar starkly reveals the reality of the climate crisis, which cannot be separated from the ravages of colonialism and capitalism.

‘Don’t Look Up’ movie speaks to threat of climate chaos

February 2, 2022

The film “Don’t Look Up” summed up the alarm so many of us feel about the climate crisis, including activists and scientists. The reviewer hopes it will serve as a wake-up call.

COP26: Rulers strive to stifle youth response to climate emergency

January 24, 2022

In the face of climate justice movements from below, the rulers are determined to keep control in their hands. With creative new actions and thinking raising the possibility of alternative, anti-capitalist paths of development, the powers that be are working hard to reduce that to a mere “energy transition.”

U.S.-Mexico collusion against immigrants

November 19, 2021

Once again a migrant caravan—primarily Central Americans and Haitians—is proceeding from southern Mexico towards Mexico City, with hopes of reaching the U.S. While Mexico has historically been a safe haven for exiles the Haitians are facing Mexican government hostility, including National Guard soldiers who have attacked caravans near Mexico’s southern border.

Readers’ Views: November-December 2021, Part One

Readers’ Views on Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives 2021-2022; Labor shortage?; Workers as reason; Support El Milagro workers!; Detroit women’s march; Chapelle’s sexism; Afghans dead and buried; Betrayal of Haitians; and Which side are you on?

Readers’ Views: November-December 2021, Part Two

November 17, 2021

Readers’ Views on Philosopher-revolutionaries; Youth, climate and the freedom idea; Climate crisis; California fires, FDA fails women, and Voices from behind bars.

Youth hold Climate Strike in San Francisco

November 10, 2021

As part of the ongoing Fridays for Future, on Aug. 27 several hundred, mostly youth, gathered in San Francisco to call attention to environmental racism, the climate crisis, and public health.

Chicago climate strike

Participant report of the Fridays for Future climate strike in Chicago on September 24, 2021.

Editorial: Rulers say to the world: ‘Burn in hell!’

While climate justice movements are increasingly radical, COP26 is run by capitalist states and private capital, greenwashing to block any kind of real self-determination from below to take the reins.

Chicago climate strike

September 29, 2021

Participant report of the Fridays for Future climate strike in Chicago on September 24, 2021.

Youth Vs Apocalypse

As part of the ongoing Fridays for Future, on Aug. 27 several hundred, mostly youth, gathered in San Francisco to call attention to environmental racism, the climate crisis, and public health.

Climate disaster: Non-solutions by state and private capital, or transformation from below?

Excerpted from a draft report for the Convention of News and Letters Committees, the piece takes on different movements and actions form below fighting for climate justice, as well as the actions from governments and companies blocking them.

Latin America Notes: September-October 2021

September 21, 2021

Cubans revolt and students speak out amid food and medicine shortages and human rights violations; and Latin America suffers under climate change.

Taliban reconquest shakes alliances, challenges Left

September 12, 2021

The Taliban’s reconquest of Afghanistan has shaken world politics and challenged the Left to respond in a revolutionary way. In the absence of truly liberatory revolutionary movements, what looms to fill the vacuum is not only a reinvigoration of fundamentalist political and military movements but the reactionary maneuvering by Russia and China, refugee-scapegoating parties, and repression of social movements on the model of Syria’s Assad and Burma’s Tatmadaw—all of which have been flourishing under the U.S. permanent “war on terror.”

Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2021-2022: The dialectic of crises worldwide is testing liberation struggles

September 1, 2021

As another wave of the COVID-19 pandemic swells, too many people are stuck in a recurring nightmare. The world faces multiple existential crises–a global state-capitalist system shot through with racism, xenophobia, sexism, heterosexism, ableism and authoritarianism. That calls for the confluence of labor and liberation struggles through a unifying philosophy based in the dialectic of liberation in those movements.

Afghanistan turmoil shakes world politics, challenges Left

August 21, 2021

The Taliban’s reconquest of Afghanistan has shaken world politics and challenged the Left to respond in a revolutionary way. In the absence of truly liberatory revolutionary movements, what looms to fill the vacuum is not only a reinvigoration of fundamentalist political and military movements but the reactionary maneuvering by Russia and China, refugee-scapegoating parties, and repression of social movements on the model of Syria’s Assad and Burma’s Tatmadaw—all of which have been flourishing under the U.S. permanent “war on terror.”

Readers’ Views: July-August 2021, part one

July 2, 2021

Readers’ Views on: What Is Socialism?; What Is Marxist-Humanism?; Nuclear Socialism?; Nuclear Capitalism; Flat Earth Society; Indigenous Genocide; Indigenous Liberation; Racism Takes its Toll; Rape Culture; Coming Out in Sports; Colonialism and Liberation

Native Americans challenge Line 3

July 1, 2021

The protests over the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota are the latest front in a long struggle of Native Americans. It is also part of the movement to confront climate change in a way that benefits Black, Indigenous and People of Color, women, workers and youth, rather than narrowly aimed to help capital.

‘Generation on fire’ youth march

June 29, 2021

Participant report of the Sunrise Movement youth march, “Generation on Fire,” June 10-14 in Northern California, and the lively discussions of ideas during the march.

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