Readers’ Views: November 2023

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.

read the rest!

Women World Wide: November 2023

November 18, 2023

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.

read the rest!

World in View: Garment workers protest in Bangladesh

November 16, 2023

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.

read the rest!

Handicap This!: November 2023

November 14, 2023

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.

read the rest!

Queer Notes: October 2023

October 18, 2023

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.

read the rest!

New pamphlet: Pelican Bay prisoners speak

Thoughts from the Outside: What is needed for prisoners to remain sane

October 7, 2023

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.

read the rest!

Women WorldWide: October 2023

October 3, 2023

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.

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!

World in View: Blood on Saudi Arabia’s hands

September 13, 2023

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.

read the rest!

World in View: Protests erupt in Syria against Bashar al-Assad

September 12, 2023

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.

read the rest!

World in View: After the Niger coup

August 25, 2023

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.

read the rest!

Youth in Action: August 2023

August 10, 2023

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.

read the rest!

Women WorldWide: August 2023

August 9, 2023

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.

read the rest!

Queer Notes: August 2023

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.

read the rest!

Women WorldWide: July 2023

July 13, 2023

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.

read the rest!

World in View: Mexico Notes, May-June 2023

June 16, 2023

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.

read the rest!

Readers’ Views: May-June 2023

June 15, 2023

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

read the rest!

World in View: Haiti citizens fight gangs

June 14, 2023

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.

read the rest!

World in View: Sudanese killed by feuding generals

Sudanese generals—Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on one side and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, “Hemedti,” on the other—are sending soldiers against each other in Khartoum making the masses fair game to be bombed, shot, and forced to flee. Hundreds have been killed since the fighting erupted on April 16. It is the Sudanese revolution that both armed factions fear and aim to suppress.

read the rest!

Preventing recidivism

June 13, 2023

Prisoner writes about how to reduce refidivism as within the first year post-release from prison, three of every five citizens will relapse back into a state of consciousness that begets physical bondage; one of those five will be murdered; and only the remaining one will maintain enough freedom to gain a job, have a child, and struggle to survive. If prison is perceived as a rehabilitation center, then our tax dollars will be used to restore citizens back into a mental, spiritual and physical state of freedom, justice and equality.

read the rest!

Youth in Action: May-June 2023

June 9, 2023

Takes up: students at 300 schools in 42 states and D.C. participated in a national walkout against gun violence on April 5; at Boston University’s commencement ceremony on May 21 students booed the CEO and president of Warner Brothers, whose one year salary exceeds the sum of raises demanded by his 11,000 writers who are now on strike; and after days of protesting, grad students in Delhi, India, succeeded in blocking a 200% tuition hike at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute.

read the rest!

Queer Notes: May-June 2023

June 8, 2023

Takes up: Uganda’s President Museveni who signed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023, which includes the death penalty; That supporters of drag story time at Middlesex County Library in Parkhill, Ontario, Canada, protected the storytellers and attendees from 40 anti-gay protesters; and Namibia’s Supreme Court ruled that the Ministry’s lack of recognition of same-sex marriages conducted in other countries undermines the dignity and equality of the appellants.

read the rest!

Handicap This!: May-June 2023

June 7, 2023

Takes up: Minnesota Personal Care Assistants (PCAs) who agitated for better wages and overtime pay won; Hereford’s Mercia Learning in the UK applied to convert a day nursery into a Growth, Empowerment and Motivation school, to educate 30 neurodivergent students; and on April 26 people with disabilities protested train travel into Paris, France, as most of the 12 million people with disabilities in France struggle because of taxis and train ramps that cannot accommodate wheelchairs, or no ramps at all.

read the rest!

Woman as Reason: Save democracy, save abortion

June 3, 2023

Republicans have to destroy democracy if they want to rule because a robust majority of the U.S. population supports legal, safe, accessible abortion; are for gay rights and don’t despise Trans people. So how do you trash their rights? You do it by destroying a government by the people and for the people. Let us count the ways.

read the rest!

World in View: Chile moves to the right

June 2, 2023

In a stunning reversal on May 7, voters in Chile elected a majority of far-right candidates responsible for drafting a new constitution. The first draft, written by a progressive coalition of elected representatives from below, had insisted on gender equality and Indigenous rights. It was rejected after an extensive negative campaign of misinformation and right-wing media manipulation.

read the rest!

World in View: Turkey’s president

Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after 20 years in power—first as Prime Minister, and then with a constitutional change as President—faced a challenging election and failed to receive a majority in the first round, before winning the second round runoff.

read the rest!

Women WorldWide: May-June 2023

May 15, 2023

Worldwide domestic violence has intensified: The Strangulation Clinic was opened in Surrey, B.C. Canada, as this form of violence has increased since 2014; Iraqi women and allies demonstrated at the Supreme Judicial Council in Baghdad demanding a strict law to deal with increasing domestic violence and “honor killings”; and there has been an explosion of femicides in several countries, including Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan, and Sudan.

read the rest!

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.

read the rest!