Queer Notes: May 2024

May 15, 2024

Takes up: The public outcry that restored a talk by a gay actor to middle school students in Pennsylvania; a bill signed by Great Britain to deport people to Rwanda, a country not safe for the LGBTQI+ community; LGBTQ+ curricula being included in Washington state’s public schools; and three extraordinary support groups for 2SLGBTQ+ in Latin America.

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World in View: Immigration: the view from Mexico

January 9, 2024

The situation for migrants in Mexico is dire: the National Guard is used against newly arrived immigrants; gang members kidnap them and demand ransom from relatives in the U.S.; Mexican and U.S. authorities make the journey to the border excruciating.

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Immigration deadlock reveals inhumanity

January 6, 2024

While immigrants suffer as winter settles in North America, the new year arrived without a Congressional bargain on immigration. Republicans not only demand harshly restrictive immigration measures but want to make Biden look bad by blocking accomplishments.

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World in View: Blood on Saudi Arabia’s hands

September 13, 2023

There is an “Eastern route” for migrants from Africa that crosses Yemen and lands in Saudi Arabia. A new report from Human Rights Watch documents the violence of Saudi border guards against Ethiopian migrants. The U.S. has chosen not to raise the issue publicly.

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Youth in Action: January-February 2023

Takes up: graduate researchers and academic student employees’ strike of the University of California’s campuses won a contract on Dec. 23, 2022; Students at Benito Juarez Community Academy in Chicago walked out of class on Dec. 19, 2022, to protest gun violence; and DACA recipients and other young in Phoenix, Arizona, made 60,000 phone calls and knocked on 4,000 doors to pass ballot measure 308.

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World in View: Migrants die in Qatar

January 22, 2023

Qatar, one of the richest countries in the world, runs on sweated migrant labor. Since Qatar was awarded the World Cup over 6,500 migrant workers have died there building the infrastructure for the games.

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U.S.-Mexico collusion against immigrants

November 19, 2021

Once again a migrant caravan—primarily Central Americans and Haitians—is proceeding from southern Mexico towards Mexico City, with hopes of reaching the U.S. While Mexico has historically been a safe haven for exiles the Haitians are facing Mexican government hostility, including National Guard soldiers who have attacked caravans near Mexico’s southern border.

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Racism still core to immigration policy

March 11, 2021

Despite immigration reforms by President Biden that made a significant impact on people’s lives, they fall short in some ways and racism and exploitation continue–not only in abuses by ICE officers but in the overall concept and design of the system.

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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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II. The true pandemic war

April 29, 2020

Draft thesis for discussion about where the world is heading, and what to do about it from a revolutionary standpoint. Part II. The true pandemic war: A. The capitalists’ class war; B. Subjects of revolution fight back; and C. Pandemic class war reveals the social structure.

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Editorial: Supremacists are ‘coming for you!’

August 31, 2019

After revelations of horrendous conditions at concentration camps for immigrants, hundreds of immigration-rights activists and workers rally in several parts of the U.S. against anti-immigration policies, far-right actions and militarization. The El Paso massacre underscores the threat. The true power of the pressure campaigns lies in their potential to open this path to both immigrant poultry workers and working-class Trump voters.

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Letter from Mexico: Mexico in disarray

June 27, 2019

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.

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Immigrant caravan born in the USA

December 3, 2018

Migrants on the immigrant caravan to the U.S. speak for themselves about why they left their home countries, which have experienced problems due to a history of U.S. imperialism.

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Solidarity with Trans people under attack by Trumpism

October 28, 2018

News and Letters Committees statement on Donald Trump’s latest attack on Trans people by trying to claim that the word “sex” in Title IX does not include them. Trump has chosen to dehumanize a group of people whose whole lives have often been fraught with brutal violence and discrimination, those who are Transgender.

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Readers’ Views, September-October 2018: Part 1

September 29, 2018

Readers’ Views takes up: attacks on immigrants; Syria and the Left’s failure; Democratic Party’s selling out women; Women’s Liberation; Serena Williams; ending money bail the right way; Trump-Kim “peace”; genocide and war heroes; and a discussion on sex crimes and their fallout.

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L.A. is fighting Trump

July 24, 2018

Los Angeles was one of hundreds of cities in mass protests in June against Trump’s “zero tolerance” agenda against migrant refuges looking for asylum.

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Chef fights abuse at Azusa Pacific

February 6, 2018

Mahesh Pradhan, an immigrant, was working as a chef and supervisor at Azusa Pacific University, a Christian college in California, when other supervisors and employees who perceived him as Gay subjected him to chronic abuse, which he fought with support from an underground campus Queer club.

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Women’s Marches sweep the world

February 3, 2018

Women’s Marches took place around the U.S. and the world in 2017 AND 2018, once again showing that the opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump is alive, thriving, militant and exuberant.

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World in View: Australia’s castaways

Since 2012 Australia has held around 2,000 refugees and asylum seekers in brutal detention camps. Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis, Uighurs, Rohingya and Kurds, thrown together, have been subjected to stress, violence, and rape.

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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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Rising U.S. racism challenges all freedom movements

September 2, 2017

A Marxist-Humanist analysis of the history and meaning of the rising of the right-wing neo-Nazi white supremacist movement, its relationship to President Donald Trump and his administration, and its challenge to the freedom forces arrayed against it who are fighting for a humanist world. .

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Left’s blame game

May 2, 2017

A reflection on the question “Where are all the women?” posed by a speaker at one of the several recent and massive immigrants’ rights marches in downtown L.A.

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‘Care not cages’

April 27, 2017

Immigrant rights and prisoner rights activists held a demonstration outside the largest immigrant detention facility in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Immigrants and allies challenge Trump’s inhumanity

April 22, 2017

As the Trump administration ramps up deportations and related abuses, strikes, protests, and sanctuary cities are proliferating. The oppression of a lower caste of workers and the discrimination and violence faced by immigrants present a challenge to the Left, labor and the rest of humanity.

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