From food safety to public health, from immigration to Black history to Israel’s war on Palestinians, the Trump administration is stripping access to important information. But every strategy to attack information and thought has generated new resistance.
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
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.
A prisoner speaks out about lockdown conditions with rancid food and unclean showers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Diné, one of the largest Native American tribes in the U.S., show a strikingly different attitude to the COVID-19 pandemic. They have a strong sense of group responsibility as opposed to the phony “rugged individualism” that reveals a warped idea of what freedom means.
Pennsylvania prisoners are not afforded any quality healthcare or meaningful relief, even from debilitating conditions; not even from disability.
The Diné, one of the largest Native American tribes in the U.S., show a strikingly different attitude to the COVID-19 pandemic. They have a strong sense of group responsibility as opposed to the phony “rugged individualism” that reveals a warped idea of what freedom means.
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.”
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.
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.”
A high-school youth 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.
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%.
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.
In-person report on the revolt in Colombia and the history of displacement, repression and revolt from which it flows.
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.
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.
Vaccine rollout has been mired in poor planning, profit-centered thinking and indifference, with discrimination both within countries and against poor countries. Worldwide, a rat race ensued.
What is happening in Poland is revolutionary as women lead a movement that is protesting the Catholic Church’s inhuman attack on women’s freedom as well mounting a deep challenge to the fascist-leaning Polish government.
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.”
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.
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.
Trump’s administration directed border agents immediately to deport immigrants, no hearing required. Refugees in the border region of northern Mexico, already waiting in line for months, are now stranded indefinitely.
Special coverage of COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Watch this space for periodic additions. Latest: Detroit Dispatch #6: Hospitalizations, funerals and the need for justice; Discussion article: Neoliberal necropolitics and Indian migrant workers; Detroit Dispatch #5: Education and individualism; COVID-19 has generated a lot of “free time” for workers, but how can we create full, human “free time”?; Detroit dispatch #4: The rush to reopen; Detroit dispatch #3: a pall over the city; Woman as Reason: Abortion in the time of COVID-19; Detroit Dispatch: Easter Sunday.
Incarcerated people are producing masks to protect people from COVID-19, but the vast majority of them are not receiving these masks for their own use.
As 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.
Press release from the California Coalition for Women Prisoners reporting on the incarcerated women at the California Institution for Women, who are producing masks to protect people from COVID-19 but report that the vast majority of incarcerated people are not receiving these masks for their own use.
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.
A Marxist-Humanist analysis of the 40-day strike by the autoworkers at General Motors and its ramifications for the labor struggle in the U.S. and abroad.
Editorial that takes up the evil that the Catholic Church has imposed on children and women; how movements from below, especially by women, have challenged it; and how future church crimes will be revealed, signaling the beginning of the end of the Catholic Church.
A roundup of GLBTQT news including: Trinity College Dublin students march for quality healthcare for Transgender people; study reveals that Bisexual female youth are more subject to depression and suicide than straight women and Lesbians; Lesbian refugees living in an East African refugee camp will soon have a chicken farm; Queer people and their supporters in Bermuda want tourists to support their businesses, rather than boycotting them.
At the second gathering of “ConSciences for Humanity,” scientists shared with the Zapatista Indigenous communities their views of “Science in the face of the wall [capitalism].”
Readers’ views on: U.S. Racism on trial, the right’s crocodile tears, creeping fascism, climate change, nuclear alarms, teachers as labor, Pat Hunt Presente! and Judy and Dan presente!
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. .
Puerto Rico is devastated by hurricanes, with climate change a factor, and by the administration’s racist malign neglect, atop an existing debt crisis the masses did not create. Real solidarity came from below. .
Readers’ 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.
“No cuts to Medicaid” sit-in; UK official endorses forced institutionalization; nursing homes dump people with disabilities; rally at Illinois Capitol demanding budget; four prisoners with disabilities executed in Arkansas.
Readers’ Views on Philosophy and Revolt vs. Trumpism; Trump and the Left; Injustice to Immigrants; Anti-Woman, Anti-Labor Uber; ACT UP; From Iran; To Mexico; Why Read News & Letters?
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.
Excluding some people from healthcare, as well as vaccinations and treating infectious diseases, puts even those with health coverage at risk. Battling healthcare exclusions is essential to confronting capitalism’s class rule. .
Supporters of universal healthcare rally for proposed bill that will provide single-pay healthcare for New York state residents.
An in-depth Marxist-Humanist view of the state of the women’s movement in the U.S. and worldwide as it responds to the rising fascism of U.S. President Trump and other world leaders.
An International Women’s Day March in Flint in solidarity with the Selma-to-Montgomery March 52 years ago highlighted Flint residents’ ongoing struggle for civil and human rights.
Readers’ Views on: environmental and social crises; Martin Luther King Day; healthcare crisis, Donald Trump and the election; brutal “justice”; and who reads News & Letters.
Htun Lin’s Workshop Talks column takes up his experience as a refugee from Burma to the U.S. and today’s plight of the Rohingya, who are experiencing ethnic cleansing at the hands of the state and Buddhist nationalists in Burma today.
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.
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.
