Readers’ Views addressing: challenging fascism across all borders; charter teachers strike; pitfalls of bourgeois politics; women on the march; prison strikes big and small; and the racist criminal injustice system.
criminal injustice system
Voices From the Inside Out: Wisconsin’s prison system on trial
January 24, 2019Prisoner Robert Taliaferro looks forward to what a new governor in Wisconsin may mean for prisoners, especially prisoners of color, who have suffered under Governors Tommy Thompson and Scott Walker.
Readers’ Views, November-December 2018
December 14, 2018Readers’ Views on: Capitalism vs. the Planet; Anti-Semitism’s Inhumanity; Kavanaugh Travesty; Youth Rock!; Freedom Movements vs. Fascism across the Globe; Catholic Church Crisis; Voices from behind Bars
Readers’ Views, March-April 2018, Part 2
March 12, 2018Readers’ Views on Indignant Heart; Justice and ‘Justice’; Youth in Action; Free Press?; Fight Prison Censors!; Voices from Behind Bars.
Readers’ Views, March-April 2018, Part 1
March 11, 2018Readers’ Views on Women’s Marches; Iran in Revolt; Around the Globe; Race and Freedom; Queer Oppression; Why Read N&L?
Handicap This! September-October 2017
August 29, 2017New Jersey medical parole passed; Chicago cop shoots autistic teen; films lack characters with disabilities.
Detroit cops’ abuses
Detroit police invaded our neighborhood, indiscriminately stopping people and impounding cars.
Readers’ Views: July-August 2017, Part 2
July 6, 2017Readers’ Views on Cooperative Form of Labor vs. Abstract Labor; Marx vs. Trump-Putin; Voices From Behind Bars
The view from solitary
Jonathan J. Rodriguez submits a drawing of the view from his solitary cell.
Counter-fascist rally in Portland, Oregon
July 4, 2017Participant report on the June 4 rally against the fascists’ “Free Speech Rally” in Portland, Oregon, and the police intervention on the side of the fascists. .
Futureless people
April 27, 2017For-profit CoreCivic prison inmate’s lament on lack of hope because of slave-like treatment in prison and outside of jail, if one is lucky enough to be paroled.
I just want to be free!
March 21, 2017A prisoner speaks against the U.S. criminal injustice system and declares that he–like so many other prisoners–is a boy who just wants to be free.
News and Letters Committees Call for Plenum 2017
February 26, 2017Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2017-2018
Readers’ Views, November-December 2016, Part 2
November 27, 2016Readers’ Views on The Dialectic of History Vs. Retrogression; Prisoners, Supporters Speak.
Readers’ Views, November-December 2016, Part 1
Readers’ Views on Election Stirs Battles in Thought and in Life; Deep Racism in the USA; Women Fight Back; Indigenous Struggles; Global (In)Humanity; Why Read N&L?
Jasmine Richards – Black Lives Matter speaks
July 3, 2016A revolutionary critique of the “lynching” charge against Black Lives Matter activist Jasmine Richards and how it reveals the racism endemic to U.S. society and spotlights the revolutionary Black youth fighting against it.
Mass Killing in Florida is a Measure of Society’s Dehumanization
June 14, 2016We stand in solidarity with those murdered and wounded in the attack on a Gay Florida nightclub, and their families and communities. The struggle for LGBTQI freedom must continue unabated. A response requires developing, practically and philosophically, the uncompromising assertion of human freedom and dignity common to the Black Lives Matter movement, the Arab Spring and the Syrian Revolution, which has long struggled against ISIS and its related ideologies. It means uncompromising solidarity with the LGBTQI community, the target of reactionary attacks across the world, from Trump’s America to Putin’s Russia to ISIS’s “caliphate.”
For prisoners, ‘lack of education is education’
May 18, 2016The Berkeley Human Rights Center hosted a talk, “The (In)Justice System: Incarceration, Education, and Reentry: Reversing the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” part of a series about imprisonment, arbitrary and racist “mass incarceration.” The primary purpose—to create different realities for the incarcerated, the formerly incarcerated, and those yet to be incarcerated—was not made central.
Readers’ Views, May-June 2016
May 17, 2016Readers’ Views on Women as Reason; Harriet Tubman; Racism and Internationalism; Bisexual Health; Trans Liberation and Feminism; Chinese State vs. Workers; Nuclear Arms Threaten All; Ireland’s Red Banner; Remembering Olga Domanski; Haggard but Not Tired; Voices from Behind the Bars.
Voices From The Inside Out: Criminal Prisons
April 27, 2016Article by prisoner comparing the U.S. prison system–which commits extortion, assault, theft, substandard medical care, racism and a host of other crimes–to an erupting volcano whose magma destroys all it touches.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2016, Part 2
March 30, 2016Readers’ Views on: The Movements from Practice and from Theory; Berta Caceres; Why Read N&L?; Women’s Liberation; Voices from behind the Bars.
Black youth and labor come together
March 18, 2016The Chicago Teachers Union, Black Lives Matter, Labor and disability rights movements work together to oppose racism, government cutbacks and austerity
Program on ‘(in)Justice System’ leaves out ‘the heart’ of the issue
March 13, 2016An article by a formerly incarcerated person who gives a critical review of a conference on the criminal (in)justice system that leaves out the heart of the issue because it leaves out those most impacted by incarceration.
‘Wellness check’ is Orwellian for torture
January 26, 2016Women prisoners in Central California Prison are battered by so-called wellness checks.
Prisoner beats legal odds to win guard retaliation suit
Jury unanimously finds that prison guards violated California prisoner Jesse Perez’s constitutional rights.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2016, Part 2
January 25, 2016Philosophy, theory and News & Letters; Flint Part Ii; Mumia Abu-Jamal; Voices from behind the bars.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2016, Part 1
California prisoners battle barbaric ‘justice’ system; Against ISIS attacks; Women under attack; Support Maati Monjib; The Burmese Way; Race, class & politics.
Stop Rikers cruelty
December 15, 2015Prisoner supporters speak out on draconian proposals for Rikers Island jail.
The Raza wants theory
December 13, 2015The Raza needs theory that includes struggles within U.S. borders, not simply how to support other people’s struggles. There are issues unique to our existence. Nationalism of the oppressed is applied Internationalism.
Voices from the Inside Out: Racism and the nine murders in South Carolina
September 3, 2015A prisoner speaks about the murders in South Carolina, President Obama’s reaction to them, and the needed philosophical direction for those still yearning for freedom.
California prisons’ punitive ‘wellness checks’
Pelican Bay Prison guards use court-ordered “wellness checks” to harass prisoners. They make it impossible for anyone to get any sleep as they rampage through each SHU pod for 10-20 minutes.
Readers’ Views, Sept.-Oct. 2015, Part 2
August 31, 2015Readers’ thoughts on “Dialectics of Philosophy and of Forces of Revolution”; “Free Mumia!”; “Federico Arcos, 1920-2015”; and a section of “Voices from Behind the Bars.”
Philip Zimbardo and Marx’s Humanism
August 30, 2015A discussion with Philip Zimbardo followed the San Francisco premiere of “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” a movie based on his notorious 1971 experiment. It raises questions about the meaning of being human, which for Marx turned on needing human beings as free beings whose self-determining, free, conscious activity is not a mere means but the first necessity of life.
Women prisoners and allies create health fair
July 8, 2015Prisoner-advocates in Central California Women’s Facility initiated a health information exchange, not just sharing information about health, but acknowledging people taking care of each other under the worst conditions. Such care does exist in the prison and it needs support to strengthen and reinforce it.
Readers’ Views, July-August 2015
July 4, 2015Black lives as Subject; Russia in crisis; Nothing about us without us; Homelessness in L.A.; Central Canada Alliance; Perspectives and philosophy; Elderly to the streets?; Women and Yemen half-peace; Labor and climate justice; Dialectic and women’s liberation; Voices from behind the bars
The folly of jailing the elderly and non-violent
July 3, 2015Prisoner Rand W. Gould writes to Michigan Governor Rick Snyder about what is wrong with continued incarceration of elderly prisoners.
Transgender liberation at the Left Forum
A report of two workshops on Trans liberation at the Left Forum, one that was affirming and one that provided no way forward for Trans people except a very narrow view of both gender and the Trans liberation struggle.”
Handicap This! July-August 2015
June 30, 2015A roundup of actions around disabilities, including the police gunning down of mentally ill Thaddeus McCarroll in St. Louis, MO; a protest against Peter Singer, who called for legalizing killing disabled infants; and how American Airlines forced a woman in crawl onto a plane.
Editorial: Black Lives Matter NOW!
June 28, 2015The video of Cpl. Eric Casebolt’s June 5 attack on Dejerria Becton and other kids at a pool party in McKinney, Texas, went viral because it was simultaneously shocking and commonplace. In 2015 USA, protests were inevitable and were heard around the world.
Workshop Talks: When workers’ own time begins
How, on the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, does that document speak to what workers and prisoners are facing today?
Cop killings protested!
May 7, 2015Several hundred people of all races marched from the Union Rescue Mission in Skid Row, where a homeless Black man with mental problems known as Africa, was killed by six Los Angeles police officers.
World in View: U.S. police blotter
Tulsa: Eric Harris murdered by Sheriff’s “reserve” cop; North Charleston: cop murder of Walter Scott videoed; Chicago: meager reparations for victims of police torture.
Chicago marches in solidarity with Baltimore protesters
On April 28, hundreds gathered outside Chicago Police Department headquarters, at 35th and Michigan, to show love and respect for Rekia Boyd, Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, and all the others whose Black lives matter. The crowd was largely young and multicultural. What is the truth about Freddie Gray’s death? The truth is that he was murdered by the notoriously racist and brutal Baltimore Police. Baltimore has exploded in anger because of the attempt to obscure this obvious fact, to pretend that the basic life experience of Black people over the last five decades, if not the entirety of U.S. history, can be dissolved into a social mystery. This generation serves notice: that shell game is over.
Black Lives Matter
May 3, 2015The long-simmering outrage of Black masses has broken out into a movement against this racist society, particularly its pattern of racist killings by the police. It has not only reverberated internationally, but also made itself felt in the battle of ideas and the sphere of theory.
12 years in the SHU
May 1, 2015Pelican Bay Prison, Calif.—Twelve years have passed since I entered the Security Housing Unit (SHU) on gang validation. This year I turned 53 years old. My cognitive skills over this past decade have taken an odd turn. The deterioration is discernible. When I first arrived I was attentive and, if you’ll excuse the expression, bright-eyed. I thought I could beat this thing, whatever this thing was. I confess—I was ignorant.
L.A. march against police brutality
March 11, 2015About 500 people, mostly Black and Latino youth, gathered in Los Angeles. Anti-police brutality and anti-ever growing surveillance society has radicalized youth as well as concerned people from all walks of life.
Readers’ Views, March-April 2015, Part 1
March 8, 2015Revolt and Counter-Revolution, from Greece to Syria; Here Come the Reformers; Women’s Freedom; Against Racism
The todayness of Selma, USA, 1965
In acquainting readers with coverage of the forces of revolution in News & Letters over its first 60 years, we present “Continuing Magnolia Jungle terror exposes reality of ‘Great Society,’” written by Charles Denby in February 1965, in the midst of the bloody campaign for voter registration in Selma, Alabama.
News and Letters Committees Call for Plenum 2015
March 3, 2015Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2015-2016
What solitary means
January 30, 2015Nothing can prepare you for entering the Security Housing Unit (SHU). It’s a world unto itself where cold, quiet and emptiness come together, seeping into your bones, then eventually the mind.