Readers’ Views: March-April 2023, Part One

March 21, 2023

Readers’ Views on: This Society’s Ingrained Violence; After the Murder of Tyre Nichols; Women and Girls Face Oppression; Church Sexism and Hypocrisy; Fundamentalism vs. Women; Call to Action; Censorship Here and Now; Brexit Catastrophe; China’s Workers and U.S.; Iran Revolt Continues; Azadkar, In Memoriam

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Handicap This! December 2022

December 8, 2022

Asian-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.

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What abortion denial does to women

September 10, 2022

Review of “The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—an Abortion.” The study was conducted before the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and Diana Greene Foster investigated the real experiences of women receiving abortions in the first and second trimester.

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Nationwide marches for abortion rights

July 5, 2022

March participants report on the thousands of women, men and gender diverse people who demonstrated across the U.S., including Chicago and the Bay Area. They were protesting the Supreme Court decision that decimated women’s right to an abortion and thus to control over their own bodies.

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Ecuador’s Indigenous movement wins concessions

July 2, 2022

On June 30, after 18 days of protests, the government of Ecuador sat at the negotiating table with the leaders of the Indigenous movement. A representative of the Catholic Church asked reluctant Indigenous leaders to sign the agreement prepared by the government.

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Tens of thousands march for abortion rights

May 19, 2022

In San Francisco on May 14 over 10,000 people marched for the right to abortion and against the U.S. Supreme Court which has now lost all legitimacy. A million people marched in over 450 events across the U.S. to show their anger at the Supreme Court’s impending reversal of Roe v. Wade, which had legalized women’s right to abortion.

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Taliban reconquest shakes alliances, challenges Left

September 12, 2021

The Taliban’s reconquest of Afghanistan has shaken world politics and challenged the Left to respond in a revolutionary way. In the absence of truly liberatory revolutionary movements, what looms to fill the vacuum is not only a reinvigoration of fundamentalist political and military movements but the reactionary maneuvering by Russia and China, refugee-scapegoating parties, and repression of social movements on the model of Syria’s Assad and Burma’s Tatmadaw—all of which have been flourishing under the U.S. permanent “war on terror.”

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Medicare for all!

A high-school student from San Jose read her poem castigating lousy U.S. health insurance at a Medicare For All (M4A) Rally in San Francisco on July 24.

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Afghanistan turmoil shakes world politics, challenges Left

August 21, 2021

The Taliban’s reconquest of Afghanistan has shaken world politics and challenged the Left to respond in a revolutionary way. In the absence of truly liberatory revolutionary movements, what looms to fill the vacuum is not only a reinvigoration of fundamentalist political and military movements but the reactionary maneuvering by Russia and China, refugee-scapegoating parties, and repression of social movements on the model of Syria’s Assad and Burma’s Tatmadaw—all of which have been flourishing under the U.S. permanent “war on terror.”

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Volvo workers defy UAW to resume strike

July 5, 2021

UAW workers on June 7 resumed their strike at the Volvo Truck Plant in Dublin, Va., the day after rejecting for the second time the tentative agreement that Local 2069 Bargaining Committee presented to them. The vote to reject, like the vote on May 16 to strike, was by more than 90%.

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The injustice of India’s surging COVID-19 deaths

July 4, 2021

In person report of the COVID-10 pandemic in India which is in the throes of a second wave. There are horrific scenes of people dying due to the lack of medical oxygen, hospital beds and so on. There is neither enough space for the dead in the crematoriums and graveyards, nor enough wood for the pyres.

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The health crisis in India

May 29, 2021

India is in the throes of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first reason behind the health crisis is a chaotic vaccination campaign and the second reason, which has impacted the first, is the augmentation of neoliberal healthcare over the last decades which has subjected the health sector, its institutions, systems and services to a severe process of erosion.

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World in View: COVID-19 decimates India

May 8, 2021

A second wave of COVID-19 is devastating India. Each day over 300,000 new cases are reported, and over 3,000 people die. In the midst of this, the farmers’ protests continue as thousands remain camped outside Delhi. The Modi government has accused the camps of being “super-spreader” events, while farmers say the government is using the pandemic to demobilize its opponents.

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Count every vote!

November 28, 2020

In virtually every Bay Area city at least several hundred came out to “Count Every Vote” rallies on Nov. 4, the day after the election with the feeling, as one speaker put it, “vacillating between anxiety and hope.”

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Detroit voters speak truth to power

November 26, 2020

People in Detroit, Mich., involved in counting the vote of the 2020 presidential election speak for themselves of their pride in fighting Republican intimidation and their anger and determination to keep fighting against racism.

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Workers vs. Proposition 22

November 10, 2020

Gig companies pushed through California’s Prop 22 denying workers recognition as employees, and want similar laws in other states and countries. Other workers are bracing to see if the “gig economy” will be able to overtake their own industry.

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Mental health strike

March 17, 2020

Four thousand mental health workers at Kaiser Permanente HMO held a five-day strike, once again calling attention to a serious lack of resources to provide timely care.

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Editorial: Abuser-in-chief trashes women

November 12, 2017

The Trump administration’s attack on both abortion rights and birth control panders to their anti-abortion fanatical base–in the process torturing a 17-year-old immigrant who tried to get an abortion after being locked up for illegally crossing the border. .

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25 years since the Los Angeles Rebellion

June 5, 2017

A participant reports on the actions on April 29, the 25th Anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion, when over 500 Latino, Asian, and Black and white mostly youth marched through the streets starting from Florence and Normandie, where the Rebellion began.

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Workshop Talks: Why allow Assad to kill the sick?

September 7, 2016

Healthcare worker Htun Lin takes up the relationship between workers in healthcare in the U.S. who are told “not everyone can be saved,” and what is happening in Syria where the Syrian government, Russia and Iran are bombing civilians including–or especially–hospitals and healthcare workers.

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Editorial: Brexit emboldens the Far Right

July 3, 2016

An Editorial on how Brexit has emboldened the Far Right, not only in Britain but also in the U.S., bringing out blatant expressions of racism, homophobia, sexism and anti-immigrant hatred; and the importance of people’s own self-organization to counter this moment in history.

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Workers reject Nexteer-UAW deal

March 18, 2016

Workers 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.

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Women WorldWide: January-February 2016

January 24, 2016

A brief roundup of what women are doing worldwide including: a report to the UN about the appalling status of women in the U.S.; The Cupcake Girls organization that supports sex workers in two U.S. states; and the British group Mumsnet that fights against the gendered marketing of children’s toys, books and clothing.

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Latina worker speaks

December 10, 2015

In San Quintin Baja, California, women agricultural workers force the state to the bargaining table as they fight for the education of their children and experience development in the process.

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Workshop Talks: Workers not robots

October 26, 2015

The workplace at Amazon.com is making employees physically and mentally ill which is a hallmark of production under capitalism. What happens at Amazon.com is not unusual and can be seen even in areas like healthcare, for example, at Kaiser.

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Winds of change from Alberta?

July 3, 2015

Analysis of the New Democratic Party victory and the election of Rachel Notley as Premier in the May 5 Alberta, Canada, provincial election. It is critically important that we use this time well.

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Handicap This! July-August 2015

June 30, 2015

A 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.

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Review of ‘She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’

April 30, 2015

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry is a documentary of the women’s liberation movement (WLM) in the U.S., from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. Filmmaker Mary Dore used a wealth of historical news coverage to give a sense of the breadth of organizations and depth of demands in the explosive growth of the WLM. Activists, identified within archival footage—including women like Fran Beal of the Civil Rights Movement’s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Lesbian rights activist Karla Jay, and Judith Arcana of the abortion underground organization Jane—gave contemporary interviews interspersed in the film.

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