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.”
Detroit
Jeep pollutes Detroit
February 7, 2022Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler before merging with Peugeot, practices environmental racism with increased emissions from the Mack plant in a Black Detroit neighborhood, which it “offsets” in a less polluted suburban area.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2022, Part One
February 5, 2022Readers’ Views on: Labor: Teachers Face Politician Bosses; Labor: Automation and the New Humanism; Socialism, Statism and Philosophy; Fake ‘Right to Life’; Eviction Tsunami; Agribusiness vs. Planet; Afghanistan Exploited; Taiwan Faces China and U.S.; Desmond Tutu; With the Migrant Caravan; U.S. vs. Palestinians
Politics erases science
May 8, 2021The City of Detroit COVID-19 vaccination accessibility is far superior to the surrounding suburbs, yet Detroit’s vaccination rate is only 28% compared to 40-50% in nearby suburbs. Why?
Reopening schools mirrors class divide
March 11, 2021The divide between “reopen schools NOW” and “reopen schools SAFELY ASAP” mirrors the class divide in U.S. education.
Ray Bazmore 1926-2020
January 31, 2021Raymond Bazmore, who died Nov. 4 at the age of 93 in Detroit, was active and engaged all his life in numerous social justice struggles.
Pandemic prompts rethinking education
The pandemic challenges assumptions about the purpose of schooling, creating an opportunity to address basic issues, including ways to help students reflect and build on what they have learned, in school or out, and to figure out how to allow those experiences to “count.”
Pandemic changes education
January 14, 2021The pandemic challenges assumptions about the purpose of schooling, creating an opportunity to address basic issues, including ways to help students reflect and build on what they have learned, in school or out, and to figure out how to allow those experiences to “count.”
Queer Notes: November-December 2020
November 28, 2020Thailand’s LGBTQ Pride Parade demanded resignation of Prime Minister and limitations on King; Black and Brown Trans, non-binary and gender nonconforming people on the South and West Sides of Chicago have a new mutual aid organization; Nigerian Queer rights activist Pamela Adie’s Lesbian love story film “Ife”; and Trans Sistas of Color Project locked out of their venue for their awards brunch.
Detroit Dispatch #10: Concerns about the election
October 4, 2020Against bureaucratic hurdles, community leaders and activists in Detroit, Michigan are trying to encourage the vote for the November election, especially among young adults.
Detroit dispatch # 8: Police brutality and restraint
July 25, 2020Detroit resident Susan Van Gelder recounts a tense confrontation between Detroit citizens and police and quotes a Black resident about the need to defund the police and fund conflict resolution instead.
Detroit dispatch: ‘Mourning delayed’
July 1, 2020Detroit is still struggling with the pandemic as water is still shut off to over 3,000 residents. Funerals and hospitalizations are the most difficult for families because they can’t be together in a meaningful way.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: From Black mass revolt to Freedom
Excerpt from the pamphlet ‘Black Mass Revolt,’ issued in October 1967 following uprisings in Detroit and Newark: “Has Whitey got the message?” asked one of the Black militants. “Have our own leaders? The system has got to go.”
Readers’ views: July-August 2020, part 1
Readers’ views on American civilization on trial, coast to coast; Cops in schools; Police and power; Style and meaning; Sports fans speak; Revolt: where to now? and Health workers speak
Detroit Dispatch #6: Hospitalizations, funerals and the need for justice
May 26, 2020In Detroit most people have been practicing social distancing, enforced by the police who recovered from their own COVID-19 outbreak. The most difficult situations are hospitalizations and funerals, and sadly, Detroit’s “Right to Literacy” case was short-lived, overturned by the full panel of judges. Plaintiffs are regrouping to resume the struggle.
Detroiters dis rally
April 29, 2020Most Detroiters were dismayed by the “reopen” rally at the state capital, where hundreds of people got out of their cars to flout social distancing guidelines, scream conspiracy theory propaganda, and flaunt assault weapons.
Detroit dispatch #3: a pall over the city
April 27, 2020Two weeks of chilly weather—including a little late-spring snow—combined with increasingly dangerous Presidential “leadership,” a quarter of Michigan’s workers claiming unemployment, and more deaths of friends and relatives has cast a pall over the city and state.
Detroit Dispatch #2: Easter Sunday
April 13, 2020As elsewhere, in Detroit numbers of cases and deaths continue to rise, the lockdown is intensified, school is on hold, Black citizens are sick and dying in large numbers, and unemployment grows.
Pandemic as battlefield
March 30, 2020The battle against the COVID-19 pandemic is a battle over how society will change, mirroring the battle over how to confront and adapt to the climate and extinction crisis. Strikes are erupting across the world.
#FixTheElevators
March 4, 2020A coalition of students and workers at Wayne State University in Detroit have been conducting a campaign since November 2019 for the elevators on campus to be repaired. It is a disability, safety, and working conditions issue.
Readers’ Views, November-December 2019, Part One
November 17, 2019Readers’ Views on youth climate strike; Socialism and ecology; counter-revolution and revolution in the Middle East; auto and teacher strikes, and Brexit and labor
Voices of young and old from the Global Climate Strike
November 4, 2019On the first day of the third Global Climate Strike, Sept. 20, 2019, millions of people, mostly teenagers, marched across the world—the biggest climate action ever. Hear the voices of youth and adults in Chicago, Detroit and San Francisco.
Green Detroit!
September 2, 2019Susan Van Gelder reports on a rally of youth, workers, and native people in Detroit demanding ”Make Detroit the Engine of a Green New Deal.”
Pride confronts Nazis
June 26, 2019Participants at Detroit’s Motor City Pride March were shocked and horrified to confront 15 armed Nazis protected by a cordon of mostly Black police officers.
Detroit women rally
March 10, 2019An in-person report of the Jan, 19, 2019, “sister march”–sponsored by Women’s March Michigan, a separate organization from the National Women’s March–which brought nearly 1,000 women to a rally at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History.
Detroit celebrates Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
January 26, 2019Participant report from Detroit’s 16th Annual Martin Luther King Day Rally.
Detroit women rally to fight for our freedom
January 23, 2019Participant report of how women in Detroit celebrated the Women’s March by highlighting diverse women fighting for fundamental changes and challenging racism, sexism, and capitalism.
Michigan post-election voter suppression
December 18, 2018Report from Detroit about the Michigan legislature passing bills to reverse the results of the election, and about plans to oppose from below the suppression of democracy.
The ‘Power of Pink’
September 27, 2018Report of Planned Parenthood’s “Power of Pink” volunteer training conference, which drew over 2,000 young women to Detroit July 27-29, 2018.
Review: ‘Labor Notes’ on fighting ‘open shops’
The journal “Labor Notes” published a special issue on organizing strategies which aims to guide members of public sector unions to a concept of an inclusive, participatory unionism.
Why teachers strike
May 1, 2018Public school teachers, historically underpaid as “women’s work,” have been striking or threatening strikes from West Virginia and New Jersey to Oklahoma, Kentucky, Colorado and Arizona.
Charles Denby’s life story: the story of the struggle for freedom
March 8, 2018Excerpts from the introduction to the new French edition of Charles Denby’s book “Indignant Heart: A Black Worker’s Journal.”
Fight for $15 and labor’s full potential
On Feb. 12, workers across the country marched in Fight for $15 demonstrations held to commemorate the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike and Dr. King’s visionary, multi-racial Poor People’s Campaign. It is a struggle to realize labor’s full potential.
Woman as Reason: The humanism of #MeToo
February 1, 2018The #MeToo movement, with roots in the 1960s, is part of a humanist revolutionary red thread that shows in a visceral way that revolution must deepen at every point in order to finally make the relationships we have with each other into actually human relationships.
Editorial: Alabama Blacks beat Trump-Moore
January 28, 2018Black voters in Alabama, led by Black women, overcame blatant voter suppression—including discriminatory voter ID laws—to flood the polls and block Roy Moore from the Senate seat he expected that God would anoint him to.
Convention shows women persist
November 15, 2017Report on the Oct. 27, 2017, Women’s Convention in Detroit, Michigan, one of the followups to the Jan. 21 Women’s March on Washington, D.C. .
Dan Perron, 1959-2017
News and Letters Committees lost a wonderful comrade when Dan Perron (Oct. 12, 1959-Sept. 7, 2017) died. Dan was a lifelong activist for freedom and justice.
Readers’ Views: November-December 2017, Part 1
November 12, 2017Readers’ Views on: Puerto Rico:Trump’s Katrina; LGBTQ in Australia; Transgender in Texas; Women’s Liberation; Racism in Canada; Detroit and “Detroit”; Labor and Robots; Haitian Revolt; Why Read N&L?; and a Correction.
Readers’ Views: September-October 2017, Part 1
September 5, 2017Readers’ Views: facing far right’s threat; don’t scapegoat; Canadian strike; Transgender troops; women’s liberation; homeless in Los Angeles; defend dissidents; why read N&L.
Auto jobs and 1967 Detroit Rebellion
August 31, 2017On the 50th anniversary of the Detroit rebellion, “The Origins Of The Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit,” written in 1996 by Thomas Sugrue, is again timely.
Detroit cops’ abuses
August 29, 2017Detroit police invaded our neighborhood, indiscriminately stopping people and impounding cars.
Which vision for rebuilding Detroit?
June 30, 2017Does housing in Detroit in 2017 mean large tracts of vacant land and substandard houses ripe for development and easy slumlord profit, or a focus for community organizing to take back our city? .
We stand with Planned Parenthood
March 23, 2017Report of the pro-choice Feb. 10 rally in Chicago, a day before anti-abortion fanatics planned to mob Planned Parenthood clinics across the U.S.
Democracy in the streets votes Trump out!
January 23, 2017Reports from the huge Women’s March from participants in Chicago, Ill., Detroit, Mich., Oakland, Calif., Nashville, Tenn., Memphis, Tenn., Los Angeles, Calif., and New York City.
Union betrayals
November 30, 2016Latina union activist in Detroit questions how working people lost out in the school board elections and the ballot measures in the recent election and, noting that the AFL-CIO supported the Dakota Access Pipeline, asks, “Which side are you on?”
Readers’ Views: September-October 2016, Part 1
September 14, 2016Readers’ Views on: Racism and Revolt Put U.S. on Trial; Life and Death Under the Class Divide; Environmental Struggles; War and Atrocities; and Women’s Lives at Stake.
Detroiters insist: water is a human right
September 12, 2016The book Mapping the Water Crisis: The Dismantling of Black Neighborhoods in Detroit and the film Detroit Minds Dying, expose that the preponderance of water shutoffs in Detroit occur in poor neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color, the lies of Detroit city officials, and the difference determined activists can make.
Workshop Talks: Alive in struggle
April 27, 2016Chinese university students’ struggle at Tiananmen Square for better living conditions; Kaiser workers’ fight against two-tier wages and the continuous miner; and today’s Hong Kong Youth’s Umbrella Revolution, Occupy Movement and Black Lives Matter all show that workers are alive in struggle.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2016, Part 1
March 30, 2016Readers’ Views on: Environment, Labor, Race and Philosophy; Queer Liberation; Black Lives Matter; Bolivian Social Movements; Trumpery’s Fascism & Racism.
Workers reject Nexteer-UAW deal
March 18, 2016Workers at Nexteer Automotive dealt a blow to the United Auto Workers bureaucracy and the company when 97% of the rank and file rejected the contract the UAW had negotiated, forcing sharp revisions on two-tier wages and healthcare benefits in the contract they ratified.