Efforts to declare an end to the COVID pandemic are part of a drive to return to a pretended normal, to keep anything fundamental from changing–even if it means leaving the door wide open for the next pandemic
disability rights
Readers’ Views: January-February 2023, Part One
January 24, 2023Readers’ Views on: Women’s Struggles for Freedom; Open Season on Lgbtq+ ; Healthcare Workers on Strike; Lois Curtis; Immigrant Solidarity Needed; Putin vs. Ukraine; U.S. Right vs. Ukraine; Water and Humanity’s Future
Handicap This! December 2022
December 8, 2022Asian-American disability rights activist Alice Wong’s memoir “Year of the Tiger”; In Poland, caregivers of children with disabilities called for the right to work part-time jobs while keeping government stipends; and disability rights activists critique California’s CARE Courts Act, where courts can order involuntary treatment plans for people with psychotic disorders.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2022, Part Two
March 19, 2022Readers’ Views on Absolute Idea and Self-Liberation; Labor and Ecology; Avoiding Race; and Voices from behind Bars.
Handicap this!, March-April 2021
March 11, 2021Autistic man in UK awarded damages in a discrimination case against Virgin Active; professor at Oxnard College put on leave for berating hard-of-hearing student; “little person” banned from a cooking class at Heart of Worcestershire College; London Stansted Airport pulls special assistance from woman because she “didn’t look ill.”
Handicap this!, May-June 2020
April 29, 2020April Dunn, advocate for alternative ways for students with disabilities to get a diploma; workers and disabled adults in group homes don’t get medical equipment they need to avoid COVID-19 and to care for those who have it; the fear that the disabled have that they are disposable in the COVID-19 pandemic; and how pediatricians are considering denying organ transplants to kids with disabilities.
Handicap This!, March-April 2019
March 9, 2019Handicap This! column on Black Disability History; maltreatment of children with disabilities; and bill aimed at phasing out the subminimum wage paid to over 150,000 disabled workers.
Millions denounce Trump’s heinous immigration abuses
July 19, 2018Marxist-Humanist analysis of the nature of President Donald Trump’s inhuman immigration policy, the damage it is causing and the outcry against it, including from his own base.
Women’s Marches sweep the world
February 3, 2018Women’s Marches took place around the U.S. and the world in 2017 AND 2018, once again showing that the opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump is alive, thriving, militant and exuberant.
Handicap This! September-October 2017
August 29, 2017New Jersey medical parole passed; Chicago cop shoots autistic teen; films lack characters with disabilities.
Philosophic basis of News & Letters
November 20, 2015On the 60th anniversary of News & Letters we discuss its philosophic basis and invite readers to participate.
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
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.
Becoming a handicap activist
How a Black woman in Chicago with several handicaps became a disabilities rights activist.
Things fall apart
May 6, 2015In the absence of successful social revolution, today’s total crisis is shown in a world capitalist order that is falling apart economically, politically, environmentally, and in thought. That does not mean that we can wait for capitalism to collapse and step aside for a new society. On the contrary. Its desperation makes it that much more vicious, and it threatens to doom all of humanity with it.
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
HandicapThis, March-April 2015
March 7, 2015Several hundred people blocked streets; Women with disabilities dumped into institutions; Judge hits mentally disabled man.
Budget cuts are death sentences!
Rauner’s $1.5 billion Medicaid cuts will have a devastating impact on those who depend on this program for their healthcare. “Some people will die from these cuts,” a woman at the rally said.
Handicap This! January-February 2015
January 30, 2015Missouri school district forced to return student’s cane; memorial for people with disabilities systematically murdered by Nazis; people with disabilities enslaved in South Korea’s salt fields.
ADAPT warns Rauner
Illinois Governor Rauner has made his living out of exploiting the disabled and elderly in his many nursing homes.
Readers’ Views, May-June 2014
May 25, 2014LABOR AND IMMIGRATION
On April 8, about 100 people, the majority young Latinas/os, gathered in front of Los Angeles City Hall to protest the deportation of immigrants. Obama’s administration has aggressively deported 2,000,000 immigrants. We held signs reading: “Not Even One More!” and “No Separation of Family!” Separation of family members has serious adverse effects [=>]
Handicap This! May-June 2014
May 24, 2014Hungary’s discrimination; violence against women with disabilities in EU; Jenny Hatch wins right to make her own decisions; death of Michael Anthony Kerr, a North Carolina prisoner with disabilities.
Disabled demand services from DHS/DRS
May 23, 2014Chicago ADAPT, along with Community Alliance and Northside Action For Justice, held an action at the offices of the Department of Human Services, which also houses the office of the Department of Rehabilitation Services because of the conflicting and confusing information we were getting from the state heads of human services versus the various DRS offices throughout Illinois.
Handicap This! March-April 2014
April 7, 2014Cops beat deaf man in Hawthorne, Calif.; Assad’s forces torment man with Down Syndrome in Syria; South Carolina abuses mentally ill prisoners; disabled Chicago woman illegally evicted.
Legislators let us down
April 6, 2014People shared stories about their experiences with Medicaid, the minimum wage, disability rights, and talked about the importance of seeing the human side of issues. The only things the legislators would say was that “revenues were the problem.”
Handicap This! January-February 2014
February 18, 2014Vigil for Rights of Persons with Disabilities bill in India; 6.5 million refugees with disabilities; Iraq camp for Syrian refugees with disabilities; Georgia: marginalization of children with disabilities.
Readers’ Views, Nov.-Dec. 2013, Part 1
December 14, 2013Readers’ Views from Nov.-Dec. 2013 N&L: U.S. RACISM AND BLACK AND LATINO STRUGGLES; LABOR UNDER ATTACK; CTA vs. THE HOMELESS; DISABILITY AND HUMANITY; ABORTION IS A HUMAN NEED; EGYPT’S CONTRADICTIONS; DETROIT CRISIS; NUCLEAR PERIL; WHY A NEWSPAPER LIKE N&L?
Handicap This! Nov.-Dec. 2013
December 8, 2013Bus discrimination in Leeds, England; school sit-in in Pennsylvania; Russia “psychiatric” repression; Montreal voting rights
Catch-22 for prisoner with disabilities
December 7, 2013The only way to get out of Administrative Segregation is by attending the Gang Renouncement and Dissociation Process. After many months I was told that I could not attend this program because the units do not house inmates with wheelchairs and don’t have cells or showers for the handicapped.
Stop Detroit evictions
November 20, 2013Detroit Eviction Defense is fighting to keep Jerome Jackson in his home in Inkster, Mich. Jackson has been a leading fighter in Detroit Eviction Defense, active in many campaigns to keep others in their homes. We fight with the Hernandez and Orozco families in Southwest Detroit fighting Fannie Mae and its out-of-control efforts to throw families from their homes and cause further damage to our neighborhoods. Resistance is growing; join us! We demand no more foreclosures, no more evictions and good housing for all.
Readers’ Views, September-October 2013, Part I
October 11, 2013Readers’ Views, September-October 2013, Part I
Handicap This! September-October 2013
October 8, 2013Solitary confinement in Contra Costa County juvenile hall; New Bedford theater expulsion; Providence school makes disabled students work manual labor for little or no pay
May-June 2013 issue of News & Letters is out
April 29, 2013News & Letters, Vol. 58, No. 3
May – June 2013
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2013-2014
Capitalism’s violence, masses’ revolt show need for total view
The world today is riven between the creativity of masses in revolt and the violent degeneracy of counter-revolution, whose destructiveness even extends to the revived specter of nuclear war two decades after the collapse [=>]
Readers’ Views, March-April 2013, Part 2
April 26, 2013AT THE CROSSROADS OF HISTORY
When the Green Movement started in Iran over the 2009 election, the so-called leaders were part of the government who were against Ahmadinejad. The growth of the movement of women and youth got so big it became “out of control” by the so-called leaders. The government leaders got scared because [=>]
Handicap This! January-February 2013
March 1, 2013by Suzanne Rose
England—Church of England leaders want doctors to have the right to withhold treatment from disabled newborn babies in “exceptional circumstances,” even though it will “certainly result in death.” The church states that the principle of “justice” inevitably means that the potential cost of long term healthcare and education in the saving of [=>]
Rape and people with disabilities
December 19, 2012On Oct. 3 the Connecticut State Supreme Court made the inhuman and sexist decision to overturn the sexual assault conviction of a man who “had sex” with a woman who has severe cerebral palsy, with the intellectual functional equivalent to a three-year-old and who cannot verbally communicate. The Court held that, because Connecticut statutes define [=>]
November-December 2012 issue of News & Letters is now available on the web
November 24, 2012Lead
Obama’s re-election doesn’t end clash of two worlds
The two worlds of the rulers and the ruled shone through the suffocating blanket of propaganda surrounding the election in which Barack Obama won a second term. A pronounced gender gap and long lines at the polls in African-American and Latino areas reflected the determination to defeat the [=>]
Readers’ Views, September-October 2012, Part 2
October 16, 2012From the September-October 2012 issue of News & Letters:
Readers’ Views, Part 2
REVOLUTIONARY SYNDICALISM DISCUSSION CONTINUES
The discussion article on “Revolutionary Syndicalism” (July-August N&L) reminds me of when it was considered a major force of revolution. There was a syndicalist party, the Socialist Labor Party (SLP), that thought we could vote in socialism. [=>]
Disabled are human, deserve transplants
October 13, 2012A 23-year-old man was denied a heart transplant by the University of Pennsylvania Hospital because of his autism, says his mom, Karen Corby. Paul Corby has autism and a mood disorder. He has a good quality of life and a social network to support him after the surgery. Paul was diagnosed with a deadly heart [=>]
ADAPT activists sentenced
August 7, 2012Washington, D.C—Fourteen of 74 ADAPT activists arrested in April for protesting Chair of the House Budget Committee Representative Ryan’s proposal to cut Medicaid funding by $800 billion were sentenced in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.
During the court proceedings, Mike Oxford, an ADAPT organizer from Kansas, made a statement on behalf of the [=>]
Protest Brown’s cuts
April 8, 2011Hundreds of low-income and unemployed people and people with disabilities marched through San Francisco on Feb. 28 wearing signs identifying services they would lose under Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed draconian cuts. They chanted, “They say lie down and die/we say organize,” and demanded budget solutions that do not devastate lives. Their sentiment was that the [=>]