The 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.
Donald Trump
Revolution in Permanence in Syria, After the Uprisings
March 22, 2020Review-essay (longer version) on the book ‘Syria After the Uprisings: The Political Economy of State Resilience’ by Joseph Daher. With a combination of ruthless criticism and consistent solidarity, the author situates the Assad regime and Syria’s three counter-revolutions into a broader trend of global neoliberalism.
Voices from the inside out: Impeachment and injustice
March 17, 2020Prisoner Robert Taliaferro’s column on the meaning of the Senate’s impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump.
AMLO and Trump join forces to oppress
Despite Mexican President López Obrador’s sweet words about humanitarian treatment of Central American immigrants entering Mexico, the truth is horribly different.
Torture of immigrants in the U.S.
March 11, 2020As millions of immigrants improve the U.S. in various ways, Donald Trump continues a crusade to keep his most vile campaign promises, like stopping dark-skinned immigrants.
Editorial: Trump after impeachment
March 8, 2020In the aftermath of Trump’s impeachment trial, impunity and purges rage while checks and balances failed. Armed with a philosophy of freedom, the opposition to Trump and to the capitalist system that spawned him would give Trump the challenge that fellow politicians could not.
Women’s movements reach for new global stage
March 6, 2020What has become clear in 2020 is the global nature of the women’s movements. It is a new stage which has announced itself by the international fight against femicide; the Women’s Marches; and by the National Women’s Meetings in Latin America, also called Encuentros.
News and Letters Committees Call for Convention 2020
March 2, 2020POSTPONED: Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2020-2021
Voices from the inside out: Impeachment reveals flaws of democracy
January 22, 2020Prisoner Robert Taliaferro reflects critically on the myth of democracy in the U.S., revealed by Trump’s impeachment.
Readers’ Views, January-February 2020, Part Two
Readers’ Views on Philosophy and Revolution; disorder is the order; anti-Semitism; Black August, and voices from behind bars.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2020, Part One
Readers’ Views on Capitalism and climate; Mideast upheaval; Trump the Mullah?; war crime hero; Trump’s judges; detransition debate; and women’s liberation.
Right’s war on voters
January 21, 2020Republican state officials around the country are enacting policies to depress the vote of poor people, students, and people of color to extend their minority control of state and federal government.
Google and Amazon workers rebel
Google and Amazon tech workers organize around the companies’ complicity in war, environmental destruction, and workplace safety.
Editorial: The death of counter-revolutionary Qassem Soleimani
The death of counter-revolutionary Qassem Soleimani, together with Donald Trump’s war moves, illuminate this changed world.
Australia’s megafires lay bare capitalism’s climate death march
Australia’s megafires show that the climate crisis is upon us and powerful people are forcing humanity into a death march toward climate catastrophe–in sharp contrast to the passion and urgency of the youth climate strikes that have spread across the globe.
Editorial: The death of counter-revolutionary Soleimani
January 5, 2020An Editorial in News & Letters taking up who General Qassem Soleimani was, what he did in aiding counter-revolution in the Middle East, and ramifications of his death.
Oakland meeting: Impeachment, constitutionalism, and humanity’s search for a way out
January 4, 2020Jan. 12 6:30PM 6501 Telegraph, Oakland
A look back at a Marxist-Humanist perspective during the Nixon impeachment and forward to new beginnings in the idea of self-liberation in our time of political crises.
World in View: Trump doctrine for a changed world
November 4, 2019Trump’s Oct. 23 speech on Syria lays out his counter-revolutionary vision of a changed world including his intention to reorient the U.S.’s PYD allies in line with world capitalism.
Kurds in U.S protest Trump’s betrayal
A report on the Oct. 13 demonstration of Kurds in San Francisco, California, to protest Donald Trump’s giving Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the green light to invade the Kurdish-held part of Syria.
Essay: Black August, from 1971 to 2011-13
September 4, 2019Ex-prisoner Faruq takes up the revolutionary history of Black August Memorial and relates it to his life and the historic Pelican Bay Hunger Strike.
Readers’ Views, September-October 2019, Part 1
September 1, 2019Readers’ Views on: Youth revolt, from China to climate strikes; Gunning for immigrants; Circling the abyss; Queer Notes; A prisoner responds; 1619 and today; Reading ‘N & L’; Elena Grigorieva; and Deborah Morris
Women as reason: Women, terrorism and misogyny
August 31, 2019Terry Moon traces the connection between mass shootings and the misogynistic, racist U.S. society. Hatred against women is so woven into the very fabric of our society that to get rid of it will take a revolution.
Hong Kong masses fight rulers’ grab for power
An account of the development of the Hong Kong protests to block a proposed extradition bill, which could send residents of Hong Kong to face pre-determined injustice before Beijing courts, tracing them back to the 1989 Tiannamen Square Massacre.
Message to the 57th International Antiwar Assembly
July 30, 2019Message in solidarity with the annual international antiwar assembly, stressing the full development of proletarian internationalism.
They’ll be coming for the immigrants–and for you
July 22, 2019“We’ll be coming for you” begins with the immigrants of color but will not end there.
Editorial: Freedom=control of our own bodies
June 27, 2019Editorial on the struggle women have in the U.S. to keep abortion legal and accessible, how the Left has mostly given lip service to the struggle, and how today when socialism is again on the agenda, it also has to mean women have control of their own bodies.
Letter from Mexico: Mexico in disarray
Since the developmentalist projects posed by the new “Left” Mexican administration are aimed at generating profits and not at solving human needs, they will just mean more exploitation and misery for the masses.
Voices From the Inside Out: Prisoners debate socialism and capitalism
June 26, 2019Over the past several years there has been a heated debate in the U.S. regarding socialism. These same issues are discussed nationwide within its prisons, with an interesting level of diversity which rivals opinions beyond the prison walls.
Stop the Criminalization of Immigrants!
June 7, 2019Solidarity is needed with Central Americans seeking refuge and targeted by criminal policies of the Trump administration, with Mexico’s president knuckling under to Trump’s pressure.
Freedom has to mean we control our own bodies
May 30, 2019“Woman as Reason” columnist Terry Moon writes about the state of abortion rights in the U.S. in light of the draconian attacks against it and relates women’s struggle to control their bodies to the thingification of women, the poor response of the U.S. left, Karl Marx’s devastating critique of capitalism, and what revolution must come to mean.
Readers’ Views: May-June 2019
May 6, 2019Readers’ Views on: Socialism and a philosophy of revolution; Sudan in revolt; Iran vs. Iranians; Flint, Mich., play captures voices; Notre-Dame and fracking on native land; gun control debate; labor strikes; debate on fascism; Trump and DeVos; and voices from behind bars.
Essay: What is socialism? Socialism, labor, and the Black dimension
May 1, 2019Marxist-Humanist Bob McGuire looks through history to Marx’s relationship to labor and the Black movement for freedom and then to our day and the relationship of Marxist-Humanism to labor and the Black struggle for freedom in speaking to the question many are asking today: What is socialism?
Gaza’s Twin Reality/Brutality
April 1, 2019Palestinians in Gaza face a double brutality: Israel’s blockade and bombardment, and Hamas’ brutal repression.
World in View: Trump-Kim summit
March 13, 2019The second summit meeting between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, in Hanoi on Feb. 27, ended without any new agreement. But it achieved what it aimed for as theater.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2019, Part 1
March 11, 2019Readers’ Views on: workers strike back, genocide and Facebook, Mauritius victory, Syrian Revolution under fire, “55 Steps,” debating yellow vests, women’s struggles, and why read News & Letters.
Presidents Day 2019 demonstration in Oakland, Calif.
March 10, 2019With just 72 hours notice, over 50,000 people came together in 48 states in almost 300 events to protest Donald Trump on Presidents Day. While the events were organized by MoveOn.org as a response to Trump’s fake emergency declaration, their call was answered spontaneously by many.
Editorial: Is nuclear war on the horizon?
March 6, 2019The retreat from even modest efforts to control nuclear weapons has brought humanity closer than ever to annihilation. President Donald Trump’s suspension of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Vladimir Putin’s Russia gins up an already accelerating new arms race.
Women bearing the brunt of reaction lead the resistance
In a year marked by the contradiction between deepening women’s revolt and activism and neo-fascism rising across the globe, women have been fighting back in unprecedented numbers and ways.
News and Letters Committees Call for Plenum 2019
February 25, 2019Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2019-2020
How to celebrate Presidents’ Day
February 21, 2019An inperson report on how people in Oakland, California, creatively protested President Trump on Presidents’ Day.
Statement on Venezuela by the Anti-War Committees in Solidarity with The Struggles for Self-Determination
February 19, 2019We share the Statement on Venezuela by the Anti-War Committees in Solidarity with The Struggles for Self-Determination, which looks at the situation today, its history, and takes the measure of today’s Left.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2019, Part 2
February 3, 2019Readers’ Views regarding: Thought-diving into revolution in permanence; murky waters[ the Church and oppression; why read N&L; and voices from behind bars.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2019, Part 1
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.
World in View: Sudan rises against genocidal Bashir
January 28, 2019Sudan’s genocidal President Omar al-Bashir is being challenged by nationwide protests. The Sudanese people’s struggle is humanity’s struggle.
Handicap This!: January-February 2019
January 26, 2019A roundup of actions around people with disabilities: Secretary of Education’s drive to rescind federal guidelines ensuring that disabled and minority students not face unfair discipline; Japan’s plans to use the 2020 Paralympic Games to make Tokyo hotels and public transportation more accessible; the insufficiency of Social Security Disability Insurance; and how charter schools are less likely than public to respond to enquiries regarding disabled students.
Trump aids capitalism’s attack on labor; workers strike back
January 24, 2019A Marxist-Humanist analysis of the state of the U.S. economy and the revolt of labor in the wake of country-wide teachers’ strikes, an historically long government shutdown, and an unsteady, uncertain worldwide economy.
Woman as Reason: Anti-Semitism mars Women’s March
January 21, 2019Woman as Reason columnist Terry Moon discusses the anti-Semitism among the leadership of the Women’s March, attacking the excuse they have given, and what it means to abandon the principles of women’s liberation.
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
World in View, November-December 2018: Counter-revolution redefines EU, OPEC
December 11, 2018In OPEC powers’ participation in the counter-revolutionary attacks on the revolutions in Syria and Yemen, and in the anti-immigrant reactionary reshaping of European politics, we see the next stage of bourgeois politics taking shape.
Women as Reason, November-December 2018: Solidarity with Trans
The Trump administration’s latest outrage is its attempt to erase Transgender people. Its tactic this time is to declare that Trans people do not exist, subverting the spirit of Title IX, enacted in 1972.