What it is about this moment of this capitalist society that brought a creature like Trump to the top? The crumbling of society goes beyond economic measures. The symptoms are everywhere of a system that increasingly does not believe in its own future.
The pandemic and the climate and ecological crisis struck when the world capitalist system had shown its inability to extricate itself from a prolonged economic slump. They deepened it. Despite the happy face that government and corporate economists paint, the opposite story is told by people’s lives.
On June 22, Decarcerate Alameda County called on Oakland’s City Council to move $43 million from the sheriff’s proposed budget and designate a total of $122 million to fund mental health and housing.
Where I work among the homeless on the street, I see the infinite degradation experienced by those discarded by capitalist society and barely surviving on its margins. There were always those who live on the edge. Karl Marx was describing the lack of transparency in social relations: what appears to be a free decision to sell your labor is nothing of the kind. Yet people stay away from thinking about how all labor, even paid labor, is forced labor.
Honduran migrants from the first caravan since Joseph Biden’s election speak about why they are leaving their homeland; and São Paulo, Brazil residents, thrown out of work by the pandemic, are occupying buildings in order to have a place to live.
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.
Women seize homes in Los Angeles for the homeless; Rachel Lloyd awarded for services for victims of commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking; huge increase in domestic violence intensified by COVID-19; and the Colabo organization in Tokyo, Japan, helps teen girls fleeing home due to abuse, poverty or other reasons.
Faruq reflects on the question of social interaction in the modern capitalist world, seen from the point of view of someone who has spent several years in prison.
Residents from different areas of Xoco, a neighborhood in Mexico City, speak about what it means that their neighborhood is in the process of being destroyed by the “urban development” project called Mítikah.
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.
Participant report from Detroit’s 16th Annual Martin Luther King Day Rally.
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.
On July 8, 60 residents and activists rode bikes from Skid Row to City Hall to protest the lack of bike lanes in their neighborhood, despite the large number of bicycle riders living there.
Does housing in Detroit in 2017 mean large tracts of vacant land and substandard houses ripe for development and easy slumlord profit, or a focus for community organizing to take back our city? .
Readers’ Views on: Racism and Revolt Put U.S. on Trial; Life and Death Under the Class Divide; Environmental Struggles; War and Atrocities; and Women’s Lives at Stake.
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.
Nearly one-third of Detroit’s residential properties are blighted. Participants at an October protest at a Town Hall meeting speak.
From the November-December 2014 issue of News & Letters
Readers’ Views, Part 1
WOMEN FIGHT RAPE, HARASSMENT AND ABUSE
When I voted, many posters reminded folks that within 100 feet of the polling place you may not “interrupt” a person, nor “harass” nor even speak about your political views. [=>]
From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters
Los Angeles—On Aug. 1, 30 Los Angeles Community Action Network activists of all races, including many formerly homeless, protested in Skid Row and adjacent downtown. We were demanding that the homeless be housed in the largely vacant Cecil Hotel, which had been designated low-income housing. [=>]
From the July-August 2014 issue of News & Letters
New York—When new Mayor Bill de Blasio was campaigning, his pledge was to end the “two cities” here, one of the rich and one of the rest of us. And a major component of that was to address the housing problem. Some may contend that [=>]
London, England–The UN’s own rapporteur for housing, Raquel Rolnik, has denounced UK government policy as creating a housing crisis for its most vulnerable citizens. Her findings were dismissed as a “misleading Marxist diatribe” by cabinet ministers. In a report detailing her investigation into the British housing sector, Rolnik specifically targets the government’s now infamous “bedroom tax.” She described it for Al Jazeera as having “an enormous impact on [a citizen’s] right to housing and also on other human rights, like the right to food [and] the right to education.”
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 “bedroom tax” will force those living in a property with a spare bedroom to take a cut in their housing benefit. Those in under-occupied properties can face a reduction of up to 14% in housing benefit for single rooms and 25% for two unoccupied rooms.
From the March-April 2012 issue of News & Letters:
Queer Notes
by Elise
A California Girl Scout put out a YouTube video asking the public to boycott Girl Scout cookies because she objects to a troop admitting a Transgender girl. While three Louisiana troops disbanded over the issue, a national Girl Scouts spokeswoman for the 100-year-old organization [=>]
by Gerry Emmett
Israel has seen an unprecedented protest movement grow in the wake of the Arab Spring. Around 250,000 people marched through Tel Aviv, Israel, on Aug. 6 in the biggest protest rally the country has ever experienced. Another 50,000 participated in other cities and towns. It is being seen as a direct challenge to [=>]
From the July-August 2011 issue of News & Letters:
Readers’ Views
Contents:
AS REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION TAKE WORLD STAGE
Congratulations on a fine May-June issue. Thanks especially for [=>]
New York–I have been actively involved in the tenant movement since 1997, when rent laws actually expired, albeit temporarily. Many tenants woke up then and a massive demonstration took place in front of then-Governor Pataki’s office. The stage was set for even bigger demonstrations, but tenant groups (closely allied with the Democrats) decided not to [=>]
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 [=>]
Chicago–Faced with the prospect of budget cuts throwing thousands of people out on the streets or forcing them into institutions, 300 people packed into the Chicago Temple on Feb. 25 for a teach-in called “Stop the HUD Budget Cuts!” As Liz Brake of the Jane Addams Senior Caucus said, “They pick on the old, the [=>]
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. [=>]
Editor’s note: S’bu Zikode of Abahlali baseMjondolo of Western Cape spoke recently in Oakland, Cal., on a U.S. tour about this movement within South Africa. Here are excerpts from his talk:
People are born and live in these shantytowns, at least 2.3 million of us. In 2005 Abahlali baseMjondolo, an organization representing 25,000 people, came together [=>]
From the Nov.-Dec. 2010 issue of News & Letters:
South African activists slam Communist Party
Editor’s note: The self-organized communities in the Western Cape shackdwellers’ movement in South Africa have protested lack of services and housing through direct action, to be followed by a march on Parliament. The South African Communist Party (SACP), a part of the [=>]
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 [=>]
