On Aug. 9 we honor women who gave their lives in struggle. We cannot continue to accept the violence that is all around us. We need to build a peaceful society in which there is full equality between men and women, a society in which land, wealth and power are shared.
On Women’s Day, August 9 in South Africa, Abahlali baseMjondolo will celebrate all the women whose names are not remembered in the official celebrations who struggled in community organisations and trade unions and held families together under a brutal system of oppression.
The shackdwellers’ organization addresses riots in South Africa and the underlying hunger, poverty and corruption, and the need to oppose xenophobia and tribalism and work towards a world in which each person counts as a person.
The arrest of Abahlali baseMjondolo Deputy President, Mqapheli (George) Bonono, on trumped-up charges is related to the longstanding attempts by the ANC (African National Congress) to crush the eKhenena Occupation in Cato Manor, an occupation that is now a working commune run on a democratic basis with a co-operative managing the farming.
Detroit Eviction Defense (DED) and Detroit Will Breathe/Black Lives Matter held a rally of over 100 people near Detroit Police Headquarters on April 10 to stop illegal evictions perpetrated by the police.
Report on “#Black Homes Matter” podcast with experts taking up how one in three Detroit families have lost their homes, often due to the fact that Detroit homes continued to be assessed as if no change in market value had occurred and that one of the highest property tax rates in the nation.
Nationwide Black-led revolt and white supremacist backlash, class struggles and the ravages of a pandemic and economic collapse are taking place amid election battles and attacks on democracy.
Readers’ Views takes up: Queer safety is a human right; fake green politics; women in India; women in the U.S.; shameless evictions; voices from behind bars.
Many of the precautionary measures to prevent the spread of the virus in South Africa assume that everyone lives in a house with water and sanitation, and at no risk of being destroyed by the state. But millions of us continue to live in shacks of indignity.
Shack dwellers, and other poor people, including street traders, casual workers and undocumented migrants, have not been taken into consideration when it comes to the prevention of the coronavirus, or included in decision-making about the crisis.
Readers’ Views on Philosophy and Revolution; disorder is the order; anti-Semitism; Black August, and voices from behind bars.
Malcolm reflects on the increasing crisis of homlessness in San Francisco after the sudden death of a homeless man at the University of California-Berkeley.
Matthew Desmond’s book “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” is an important contribution to understanding the workings of exploitative housing, although he fails to appreciate that, under the capitalist system, the best-intentioned programs will always become conduits to extract money from the poor.
A view of the fire at the Ghost Ship that takes into account the capitalist nature of rents, evictions, land use, and how youth, by the way the live their lives, are fighting back.
Reports 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.
Durban, South Africa—On April 8 Abahlali baseMjondolo supported a march against xenophobia organized by our comrades in the Congolese Solidarity Campaign together with the Somali Association of South Africa and other migrant organizations. There was a permit for the march and yet the police would not allow it to go ahead.
The number of Detroiters helping their neighbors resolve property tax foreclosure has grown by leaps and bounds as community groups all over the city host meetings on what can be done.
From Ferguson to Staten Island; Revolutionary Rojava; Youth Protest; Violence Against Women; Detroit Solidarity; Paris March; Recalling Mary Jo
From UPM: The formation of the Black Consciousness Movement in this country was a realization by Black people that we could no longer stand and be spectators of the game we are supposed to be playing. This election season continues to demonstrate the relevance of Biko’s teachings.
Cops 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.
THE SYRIAN REVOLUTION AS TEST OF WORLD POLITICS
I have been active in a number of student groups around labor and women’s issues. We always talk about “intersectionality” and recognizing different struggles. Somehow that didn’t seem to apply, though, when it came to the Syrian Revolution. Suddenly people didn’t want to talk about it. I [=>]
Displacement of lower income people in San Francisco has entered a new stage because of the massive expansion of Silicon Valley and massive real estate speculation.
Just when Mandela has passed, the African National Congress is not even ashamed of the lives the poor are living, or the fact that the residents of Cato Crest will spend Christmas on the street.
Detroit 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.
The new November-December 2013 issue of News & Letters is online.
News & Letters, Vol. 58, No. 6
November – December 2013
Lead
The Syrian Revolution as the test of world politics
On Aug. 21 the genocidal regime of Bashar al-Assad murdered over a thousand civilians, mostly women and children, with sarin gas in the Damascus suburbs of Eastern Ghouta. [=>]
Detroit Eviction Defense came out of the Direct Action Workgroup of Occupy Detroit about two years ago. We work with people who want to save their homes. We have saved about 60 so far.
The rulers are not about to sit back and let revolt freely develop. All sorts of reactionary ideas and attitudes have been ushered into the mainstream of politics and the media.
From the May-June 2012 issue of News & Letters:
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2012-2013
III. Paths of destruction
A. From war to war to war
War is one of the rulers’ most potent counter-revolutionary weapons when faced with economic crises and revolt. With a military stretched thin, one eye on China, and the failures of Iraq and [=>]
From the new issue of NEWS & LETTERS, May-June 2011:
Readers’ Views
Contents:
A CALL FROM SOUTH AFRICA
A call by Abahlali baseMjondolo for Madikizela to step down as MEC [Member [=>]
Editor’s note: Zimasa Lerumo is coordinator of Abahlali baseMjondolo-Western Cape Youth Project and involved in the “No Land! No House! No Vote!” campaign. Their campaign for South Africa’s 2011 elections declares: “No! to Capitalist Democracy. No! to ANC, DA, ID, COPE, UDM policies that lead to water cutoffs, electricity cutoffs, and forced evictions.” They will [=>]
Chicago–Cook County’s Anti-Eviction Campaign activities include rallies, meetings with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, door-to-door canvassing in Chicago neighborhoods where there are many foreclosures and talking to people who come to foreclosure court.
On March 24 we rallied at Bank of America with a pink pig made of wire and tape that was filled with gold [=>]
On Jan. 13 Silvia Baca appeared in Housing Court and found that the loan company had sold her house on Nov. 4–for one-fourth what she and her husband had paid. Below is the history of her ongoing struggle against eviction.
Chicago–My husband and I bought a house in 2006. A year later, we wanted to refinance. [=>]
From the Nov.-Dec. 2010 issue of News & Letters:
Sheriff Dart on notice
Chicago–In Illinois, a five-day notice is supposed to be given before you are evicted. (It doesn’t always happen.) On Oct. 14, we gave Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart his own five-day notice demanding a moratorium on all economically based evictions. This is the latest [=>]
