Takes up: The World Health Organization (WHO) report, ‘Measuring Violence Against Women With Disability’; World Bipolar Day; the “We Are Here” rally in Missouri calling for higher pay for care assistants; and three organizations in Asia sponsoring the UN’s 2024 Project Zero Conference for inclusive education and employment for those with disabilities.
Takes up: The shutting down of Great Britain’s Rainbow Badge Scheme, designed to reduce barriers Queer people face in healthcare; the beating and sexual assault of a Gay man and Lesbian by Serbian police; and the imprisonment of British-Mexican Gay man Manuel Guerrero Avina in Qatar.
Israel’s war against the masses in Gaza reached genocidal proportions. When will Palestinians be able to return to the places where they lived, and will they be able to rebuild? Self-determination must begin with their ideas and aspirations.
Takes up: Amazonian Initiative Movement, a Sierra Leone group fighting genital mutilation (FGM); a two-year, 7,400-mile caravan journey through 20 African countries by #FrontlineEndingFGM; Asian Women for Equality struggling to stop massage parlors and other venues of prostitution in Canada; and France becoming the first country to explicitly guarantee women’s legal right to abortion in its constitution.
Nex Benedict, a gender non-conforming youth, was bullied and knocked down in their school restroom hitting the back of their head on the floor. They died the next day. Demonstrations against bullying and in support of LGBTQ+ youth followed. Nex’s mother said the bullying became worse after anti-Trans legislation was passed in Oklahoma showing the known relationship between those two events.
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.
Argentine President Javier Milei aims to privatize state institutions; eliminate regulations on businesses; prevent strikes; and seek full executive powers. Less than two months after taking office, he was confronted by a one-day mass general strike. What kind of society do Argentinians want to create?
On Jan. 15, Bernardo Arévalo was inaugurated President of Guatemala. It was by no means assured that he would be able to take office. What finally allowed Arévalo to do so was a massive Indigenous outpouring. Now, many questions remain, for his government is far from being revolutionary.
Columnist Terry Moon explains why Marxist-Humanists refer to anti-abortion activists and organizations as fanatics and zealots.
Takes up: In memoriam to Dale Spender, Australian radical feminist activist, author, and broadcaster; a report on U.S. maternal death rates by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and medicine’s #MeToo movement exposing the culture of sexual harassment and assaults by higher ranking male doctors.
Takes up: Transgender Awareness Week 2023 worldwide; Intersex people’s rights; a LGBTQ+ art exhibit in Sao Paulo; the aftermath of the murder of nonbinary Mexican Justice Jesús Ociel Baena Saucedo; and the Lynchburg, Va., City School Board rejecting a grant awarded by the “It Gets Better Project” to high school students to create a safe space.
The situation for migrants in Mexico is dire: the National Guard is used against newly arrived immigrants; gang members kidnap them and demand ransom from relatives in the U.S.; Mexican and U.S. authorities make the journey to the border excruciating.
How often does the media talk about the thousands of hostages, innocent of any crime, who languish in America’s jails and prisons every year? Today, American cops make around ten million arrests per year. How many of those are based on planted or bogus evidence?
After eight years of ultra-nationalist, reactionary rule, Poland’s Law and Justice Party was defeated in parliamentary elections. However, the country’s future direction is by no means assured. Two areas are key: women’s and LGBTQ+ rights.
Reporter Sonia Sodha asked: “Women in revolt achieved so much. Why are decades of progress now being reversed?” The struggle for freedom of all those who have been pronounced as less than human may seem impossible, but as Irish revolutionary James Connolly said: “Revolution is never practical—until the hour of the revolution strikes.”
Venezuela’s president rekindled a territorial dispute with its neighbor Guyana. Not to actually take the territory, but rather to create an issue of patriotism to use in his upcoming re-election campaign.
Argentina’s new President Javier Milei quickly imposed social welfare cuts, while threatening protests. Still, mass resistance from below is developing. Is that enough to break out of the political-economic-social straitjacket that Argentine masses have been living through for decades?
On Nov. 21, 2021, a student shot dozens of their peers in an Oxford, Mich., High School, killing four. Two years later the surviving students demand the resignation of the board members who didn’t do anything for their safety.
Focused on two regions in Sudan—Darfur, where the Masalit ethnic group live, and the region of Sudan’s capital Khartoum—Eugene Walker looks briefly at what the conflict between two warring Generals has wrought to the country since it began on April 13.
Readers’ Views on: Israel/Palestine; Revolt in Iran; in Canada for 2SLGBTQIA+; Trump, Biden too old to run; Racism in Tennessee; Prisoners miss ‘N&L’; Memorial for Paul Geist and Dan Bremer; Texas targets pregnant women & refugees; Ohio targets women and democracy; Revolutionary history; and Raining on those with disabilities.
In October, the Pakistani government announced mass deportations for all migrants without papers by Nov. 1, mostly aimed at Afghans and causing great hardship. It decided on this mass expulsion mostly because of the deteriorating relations between Pakistan and the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan.
Takes up: International Safe Abortion Day; elections in Poland; ‘Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK, 1970–1990’, the first major art museum show covering the feminist art movement; and El Salvador’s anti-abortion laws.
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.
Garment workers poured out of factories in Dhaka and other cities in Bangladesh to demand a wage of about $200 a month. The police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. Bangladesh is the second largest garment-producing country in the world after China.
Takes up: The right of disabled people to be part of the reproductive justice discussion; Indigenous Disability Awareness Month in Canada; and European Union countries requiring people to prove their percentage of disability in order to have free access to culture.
Takes up: Italy’s Premier Giorgia Meloni reversing progress on Queer rights; Queer Trans K-pop group QI.X performing at the Seoul Queer Culture Festival; and Mount Dora, Florida, voting in August to be a Safe Place Initiative city.
A recent response to Faruq’s essay on Black August and George Jackson: Deep in the ‘hole,’ Jackson went to theory to maintain his sanity. Subjective reason, or revolution in permanence, is necessary to prevent falling into fixed moments in our liberation. What is granted by the legal arena can be taken away again by new laws.
Electronic monitoring is the use of automatic, remote technology to track the exact location and current activity of selected individuals. Timothy Koenck argues that it is a reasonable alternative to the current U.S. policy of mass incarceration and mandatory minimum sentences.
Takes up: Mexico’s Supreme Court ruling state laws against abortion are unconstitutional; Britain’s first cohousing community exclusively for women over 50; and #SeAcabo, (It’s Over), the Spanish women athletes’ #MeToo movement.
On Sept. 11, 1973, the Chilean army brutally overthrew the elected government headed by Salvador Allende. This coup should have destroyed, but evidently did not fully destroy, the illusion that bourgeois democracy will allow any authentic socialist transformation process to proceed peacefully.
Torrential rains on Sept. 12-13 caused the collapse of two dams in Derna, Libya. 11,000-plus people were swept away in the flood and over 30,000 displaced. A government spokesman insisted the collapse was “a natural disaster.” Was it?
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.
There is an “Eastern route” for migrants from Africa that crosses Yemen and lands in Saudi Arabia. A new report from Human Rights Watch documents the violence of Saudi border guards against Ethiopian migrants. The U.S. has chosen not to raise the issue publicly.
On Aug. 25, the flag of revolution flew high in villages, towns and cities across Syria. The Syrian revolutionary process of the second decade of the 21st Century was one of the most important developments to arise from the Arab Spring. Now is the time to solidarize with it, a solidarity that has been sorely missing.
The military coup against Gabon President Ali Bongo on Aug. 29, 2023, was welcomed with jubilation in Gabon’s capital, Libreville. Whether that leads to a move toward civilian participation and something approaching democracy remains to be seen.
The crucial question after the military coup in Niger is what will it mean for Niger’s 25 million plus people? What is their attitude to the present moment? This is the difficult question which few seem interested in exploring.
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.
Students in Pine Ridge, S.D., changed their school’s name to Maȟpíya Lúta, after the Oglala Lakota leader who defeated a contingent of the U.S. Army in 1866.
Takes on: Lebanese woman-led media platform “Khateera”; a fine in Chihuahua, Mexico, for singing lyrics in live performances that sexually objectify or promote violence towards women, and the deaths of Dr. Susan Love and Sinéad O’Connor.
Takes up: New ultraconservative members to the board of trustees of New College of Florida, once known for its Queer-friendly progressive education; transphobia increasing in Pakistan; and Pride marches across the Philippines during Pride Month 2023.
San Diegans defended books about sexual orientation and gender identity when queerphobic Amy Vance and Martha Martin removed almost all the books from Rancho Penasquitos library.
More than 50,000 migrants are known to have died worldwide since 2014, revealing inhuman conditions that force so many people to flee their homes, indifference of governments, and official acts that caused the deaths of hundreds of migrants.
Since the April outbreak of fighting between rival forces in Sudan, civilians have suffered and died. Willfully forgotten is the Sudanese Revolution of 2018-19 and the powerful participation of the Sudanese masses who carried it out.
Takes up: the Taiwanese TV drama that is inspiring a #MeToo movement; the struggle to get authorities in India to take seriously accusations of rape and harassment against the chief of the Wrestling Federation of India; the legislation passed by Maine to help survivors of prostitution rebuild their lives; and Canada’s failure to implement the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls after three years of federally ordered hearings and testimonies from survivors and victims’ families.
The Israeli military occupation of Jenin is the latest manifestation of the state terrorism the government is carrying out against the Palestinian population. What is new about this repression? How can continued occupation and neo-fascist tendencies in Israel be overcome?
After Nahel Merzouk, a teenager of Algerian-Moroccan descent, was killed by police at a traffic stop in a Paris suburb, French youth, many of North African descent, responded with outrage. How did France come to this explosive moment?
Takes up: how Mexico has increased the number of migrants it has detained five-fold, most at the behest of the U.S.–from 88,000 a year a decade ago to 450,000 now; and that Lopez Obrador is pushing the mega-project “Mayan train” that is invading Indigenous communities, as well as a new airport outside Mexico City, a huge oil refinery, a thermo-electric plant.
In Thailand’s election, the general who seized power in a 2014 coup was unseated as prime minister. But will the military allow an independent civilian government to be formed?
Readers’ Views on: Violence and Racism Still Put U.S. in the Dock; American Civilization on Trial; Critical Race Theory; Critical Thinking and Education; 2SLGBTQIA+ Good and Bad News; Is Covid Over?; Remembering the Vietnam War; Syria Genocide Whitewashed; Fanaticism of Reactionaries
Haiti in general, and Port-Au-Prince in particular, have come under increasing gang siege. Several hundred Haitians have been killed by the gangs, and over 130,000 have fled their homes. Now residents in scattered neighborhoods are taking the situation into their own hands.
