Takes up: the opening of Poland’s first abortion clinic; International Women’s Day in Argentina; and a march in South Africa demanding the government declare escalating levels of femicide and violence against women and children a national emergency.
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Queer Notes: May 2025
Takes up: 2025 International Transgender Day of Visibility; the organization Free Mom Hugs; LGBTQ+ people in Germany; and the reinstatement of a colonial-era “buggery law” in Trinidad and Tobago.
Draft Perspectives 2025-2026, Part I: The sound of bootheels
May 2, 2025From 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.
Draft Perspectives 2025-2026, Part II: What new world order?
What kind of new world order is Trump heading for? Forced annexation of territories (as in Russia’s war on Ukraine), genocide (as in Israel’s war on Gaza), and neocolonialism (as in the Democratic Republic of Congo) are crucial parts of it. The word “multipolar” cannot hide its imperialist nature.
Draft Perspectives 2025-2026, Part III: Trumpism and the present moment of capitalism
What it is about this moment of this capitalist society that brought a creature like Trump to the top? The crumbling of society goes beyond economic measures. The symptoms are everywhere of a system that increasingly does not believe in its own future.
Draft Perspectives 2025-2026, Part IV: Where is the Left?
Why did the massive resistance eight years ago not prevent Trump’s return? And what is the “Left” today? More important than the unity of the Left is the unity of the movement from theory and the movement from practice.
Draft Perspectives 2025-2026, Part V: Our tasks
The 20th century revealed statist socialism to be a dead end. It is a substitute for the self-activity of the masses in motion, which is the only basis for workers’ control of the labor process. Without revolutionary humanist philosophical mediation capitalism will reconstitute around us and block the total reorganization of society. The philosophy of revolution demands an organizational expression.
Eyes on Education 👀 : April 2025
April 25, 2025Takes up: Administrators, teachers, staff, parents and supporters protest bills in Indiana that would reduce public education funding; the fight against a program that separates low-performing schools from their geographical districts in Tennessee; and Trump misusing Title IX to strip Maine of education funding.
World in View: Sudan’s human tragedy ignored
April 9, 2025A new turning point has been reached as the Sudanese army has just forced the Rapid Special Forces out of Khartoum. Amid the horrendous level of carnage, not to be forgotten is the need for the Sudanese masses to return to their revolutionary moment.
Letter from Mexico: ‘Because All of Mexico is Teuchitlán’
Letter issued by activists, searching families, artists and writers following the recent discovery of an extermination camp in Teuchitlán, Jalisco, where hundreds may have been executed. The camp was not discovered by the State, but by families of the disappeared.
Women World Wide: April 2025
April 5, 2025Takes up: the life of feminist philosopher Sandra G. Harding, who coined the term “standpoint theory”; researched effects of online misogyny on British primary and secondary school students; and increasing global rates of incarceration of women.
World in View: The weaponization of anti-Semitism
March 30, 2025Anti-Semitism is being fomented by Trumpism and extreme right-wing parties in Europe. At the same time they attack Palestine solidarity as “anti-Semitic.” Its weaponization endangers Jews, for it obscures the line between false anti-Semitism, and the very real anti-Semitism that exists today and that must be fought.
Handicap This!: March 2025
Takes up: potential budget cuts in New Jersey affecting people with disabilities; a plan in Nova Scotia, Canada, to relocate all of its citizens living with disabilities from institutional settings; and Frances Vicioso, a Black-Latina storyteller with mental illness and physical disabilities, leading a “Black Disability History” webinar.
Women WorldWide: February 2025
March 2, 2025Takes up: Three Thai women rescued from a human egg farm in the country of Georgia; the third African Women in Dialogue conference; and the UN Human Rights Committee ruling Ecuador and Nicaragua responsible for violating the human rights of three girls denied abortions.
Official call for convention to work out Marxist-Humanist Perspectives for 2025-2026
Trump’s return is a manifestation of capitalism’s tendency toward fascism when destabilized by systemic crises. The questioning of the foundations of this decaying society is linked to a search for an alternative. We have a responsibility to help the movement set its direction by working at the concrete projection of a liberatory banner.
World in View: Trump to Ukraine/Europe: Drop dead
February 20, 2025In its latest incursion into Europe, the Trump administration ranted against European liberalism, calling it the greatest threat to Europe, “the threat from within.”It not only campaigned for far-right parties but demanded their elevation to power. Trumpism aims to remake the world under the domination of new forms of fascism.
Queer Notes: February 2025
Takes up: Transgender Day of Remembrance in Chicago; Russian LGBTQ+ activist Andrei Kotov; filmmaker of ‘Crossing’ not showing it in home country, Georgia; and the Constitutional Court of Lithuania striking down “anti-LGBT propaganda” law.
Woman as Reason: In Memoriam: Maria Teresa Horta
February 17, 2025Maria Teresa Horta, one of the feminist authors of “The Three Marias” who were freed in the Portuguese Revolution, died on Feb. 4. The book was explicitly revolutionary and made clear that to change women’s lives revolution would have to be so deep as to transform human relationships, including sexuality.
Trump grabs power, spreads hate, stirs resistance
February 3, 2025President Donald Trump is encouraging deadly hate toward women, Blacks, people of color, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and immigrants. It is grassroots responses and mutual aid that can block Trump’s power grab. More forms of revolt will erupt in the face of the downward spiral of this capitalist world in crisis.
Women WorldWide: January 2025
February 1, 2025Takes up: International Criminal Court prosecutors investigating the Taliban’s horrific laws oppressing women as war crimes; the formation of a “morality police” to enforce new restrictions on women in Libya; and “deepfake” porn targeting girls in Toronto, Canada.
Thoughts from the Outside: The Pelican Bay Hunger Strike documented
January 24, 2025The Pelican Bay State Prison hunger strike documentary, The Strike, will air on PBS on Feb. 3. Faruq, a participant interviewed for the documentary, sees the strike as more than history—as an opportunity to reflect on the present and help determine the future.
Editorial: California fires reveal human power to ruin and heal
January 20, 2025In 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.
Review: ‘The Cult of Trump’
Adele reviews ‘The Cult of Trump,’ whose author explains how so many people could support Trump for President in spite of his criminal activity, bullying personality, and nonsensical campaign speeches.
انتخابات ایالات متحده بهمثابه جلوهای از ضدانقلاب
January 13, 2025Farsi translation of the lead article “The U.S. election as manifestation of counterrevolution.”
Essay: The decades-long struggle for free universal public education
January 11, 2025Facing Trumpist attack on public schools, teacher Susan van Gelder traces history of the struggle in the U.S. for free education, from Reconstruction to the present. She highlights what we must fight for and the forces of retrogression.
A review: Peregrina—Heartbreak and Joy
January 6, 2025Susan van Gelder reviews ‘Peregrina,’ a multimedia 80-minute one-woman performance, telling the story of femicide in Mexico and the movement of Mexican women to combat it.
Women WorldWide: December 2024
December 31, 2024Takes up: Sixteen days of activism in Ivory Coast opposing violence against women; a demonstration against violence against women in Kenya; technology intended to monitor wildlife in Northern India being misused to harass and intimidate women; and the European Court of Human Rights rejects the challenge against France’s anti-prostitution law.
Handicap This!: December 2024
December 20, 2024Takes 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.
Syrian revolution roaring back
December 13, 2024The Syrian revolution rose again, ousting Bashar al-Assad. While the HTS played a key role, so did the people rising up. What is urgent now is solidarity with these revolutionary masses, making a category of them, helping them be heard, and opposing all efforts to subordinate them.
Women WorldWide: November 2024
November 30, 2024Takes up: Students in Seoul protest plans by Dongduk Women’s University to become co-ed; London conference by the feminist organization Nordic Model Now!, debunking the sex industry; and a mass demonstration in Rome against violence against women.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Lebanon: The Test Not Only of the PLO but the Whole Left
November 23, 2024It is crucial both to oppose Israel’s attacks on the Lebanese people and to confront the state of the resistance and its contradictions. To grapple with how the 1970s failed Lebanese revolution set the stage for today, we present this 1976 piece by Raya Dunayevskaya on the dialectic of developments, from regional rulers’ maneuvers, to the ambivalence of the Left, to the masses in motion.
Women WorldWide: Gisele Pelicot ignites a movement
November 22, 2024The trial of Dominique Pelicot, who arranged for 82 men to rape his wife, Gisele Pelicot, over 200 times began in September. Gisele successfully fought for the judges to open the trial to the public, igniting a new wave of a women’s movement fighting mysogyny and sexual violence worldwide.
Queer Notes: November 2024
November 15, 2024Takes up: Draft law for civil partnerships in Poland; Gay men and Trans people attacked in Ivory Coast; Trans woman Jin Xing’s adaptation of the play ‘Sunrise’ blocked in China; and Lesbian writer Sylvia Townsend Warner honored with a statue in Dorchester, England.
Handicap This!: November 2024
November 4, 2024View of the struggle and rights of people living with disabilities: an art series depicting youth with disabilities in Nigeria, Kenya and Senegal; a seminar for women with disabilities in Tanzania; Disability Pride in the U.S. and Canada; a protest in Brussels against segregation in residential care homes.
Woman as Reason: A battle we must win
October 31, 2024The fundamentalist, sexist, anti-gay convictions of J.D. Vance, Josh Hawley and Harrison Butker reveal that their movement not only wants to end abortion but control what women think, what we feel, in fact who we are.
The philosophic moment of Marxist-Humanism as concept vs. experience
October 4, 2024As we embark on a series of discussions on dialectics of organization and philosophy, we present the first half of an important document from Dunayevskaya’s work toward a book tentatively titled, “Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy: ‘The party’ and forms of organization born out of spontaneity.”
World in View: Ayotzinapa: 10 years without justice
September 30, 2024Ten years after a brutal attack by the police and organized crime resulted in the forced disappearance of 43 students from a Rural Teachers’ College in Ayotzinapa, Mexico. What cannot be forgotten is the living social forces that can transform Mexico root and branch–first of all, the parents of the students, who continue searching for their sons.
Queer Notes: September 2024
September 18, 2024Takes up: Colombian paramilitary groups kill LGBTQI+ people; the Borough of State College, Penn., declares itself a refuge for Transgender and nonbinary youth; Giggle for Girls, a female-only social network, discriminated against Trans woman Roxanne Tickle; and LGBTQ+ people and supporters protest Bulgaria’s new anti-LGBTQ+ bill.
Women World Wide: September 2024
September 6, 2024Takes up: the documentary ‘Old Lesbians’; the Taliban’s law granting authority to arrest anyone violating its 35 articles, which especially oppress women; 19 Afghan women arriving in Scotland to complete their medical degrees; and the National Assembly in The Gambia voting for female genital mutilation to remain illegal.
Handicap This!: August 2024
August 15, 2024Takes up: Disability services for students in college; the Supreme Court in Japan ruling unconstitutional the Eugenics Protection Law, which prevented people with disabilities from giving birth; and the life of disability rights activist Margot Imdieke Cross.
Essay: Black August, from 1971 to 2011-13
August 10, 2024In the spirit of Black August Memorial, Faruq talks about the conditions of Black prisoners, the need to break race divisions between them and white prisoners, and the quest for the Idea of Freedom.
World in View: Venezuela: What Direction Now?
The obviously fraudulent election results in Venezuela, along with the dire economic-political situation in the country, signal the impasse, if not dead end, that the decades-long call for “21st Century Socialism” has reached.
World in View: England’s right wing on a racist rampage
August 7, 2024The UK faces a stark reality of empowered anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim racism. Riots have been spreading in Northern Ireland, as well as in Southport, Liverpool, London and other cities in England.
World in View: Bangladesh student protests a mass movement?
August 3, 2024What started as a student protest at universities has become an expression of profound discontent about life in Bangladesh. Can this mass movement grow and force authentic change?
Queer Notes: July 2024
July 26, 2024Queer Notes columnist Elise presents a bird’s-eye view of the advances and retrogressions in the struggle for freedom of LGBTQI+people worldwide, from Uganda and South Africa to Indonesia, from Poland and Czech Republic to the U.S. and Canada.
World in View: Kenyan youth storm the system
July 19, 2024On June 25, young protesters stormed the National Assembly in Kenya protesting a bill raising taxes and prices on imported staples. The protests forced the president to cancel the bill. Grave contradictions exist in this supposedly “stable” country, including multiple dimensions of revolt.
World in View: Defeat of French far right Is incomplete
July 10, 2024The mass of French voters in the latest parliamentary elections allowed the Left-wing coalition of parties—the New Popular Front—to gain the largest number of seats in Parliament, though far short of a majority. The far-right National Front has hardly been defeated.
Women World Wide: July 2024
July 8, 2024Takes up: Protest in Brazil against a bill that equates abortion after 22 weeks with homicide; the 4th World Congress for the Abolition of Prostitution in Montreal; women outdo fundamentalists in Turkey’s local elections; and the cancellation of a state-sponsored mass wedding of 100 orphaned girls and young women in Nigeria.
World in View: South Africa’s masses reject the ANC
June 26, 2024Thirty years after the ANC took power, defeating the racist apartheid regime in South Africa, the party decisively lost its majority in the parliamentary elections. How could this happen?
Woman As Reason: Anti-abortion fanatics yearn to repeat ‘Communist’ Romania’s horrors
June 19, 2024If Republicans are able to institute their white Christian Nationalist dream of forced pregnancy and no birth control, the kinds of fascist practices women in Romania suffered under Nicolae Ceausescu will be imposed on women in the U.S. Not only women, but children too will suffer and die.