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.
immigrants
World in View: Immigration: the view from Mexico
January 9, 2024The 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.
Immigration deadlock reveals inhumanity
January 6, 2024While 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.
World in View: Pakistan expels Afghans as ‘illegal’ immigrants
November 23, 2023In October, the Pakistani government announced mass deportations for all migrants without papers by Nov. 1, mostly aimed at Afghans and causing great hardship. It decided on this mass expulsion mostly because of the deteriorating relations between Pakistan and the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan.
World in View: Blood on Saudi Arabia’s hands
September 13, 2023There 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.
World in View: Migrants die on treks to Europe and U.S.
August 4, 2023More than 50,000 migrants are known to have died worldwide since 2014, revealing inhuman conditions that force so many people to flee their homes, indifference of governments, and official acts that caused the deaths of hundreds of migrants.
World in View: ‘We are all Africans!’ vs. Tunisia state racism
March 21, 2023Tunisia’s President Saied demonized Black immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa as the latest move in his authoritarian takeover.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2023, Part One
January 24, 2023Readers’ Views on: Women’s Struggles for Freedom; Open Season on Lgbtq+ ; Healthcare Workers on Strike; Lois Curtis; Immigrant Solidarity Needed; Putin vs. Ukraine; U.S. Right vs. Ukraine; Water and Humanity’s Future
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.
World in View: Migrants die in Qatar
January 22, 2023Qatar, 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.
Editorial: Attack on abortion harms democracy
February 3, 2022The raging attack on abortion rights is an attack on freedom by fascist leaders and their followers who want to undermine democracy and save a decrepit, unworkable, exploitative, racist-patriarchal capitalism.
Attacking abortion rights undermines democracy
December 14, 2021The raging attack on abortion rights is an attack on freedom by fascist leaders and their followers who want to undermine democracy and save a decrepit, unworkable, exploitative, racist-patriarchal capitalism.
U.S.-Mexico collusion against immigrants
November 19, 2021Once 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.
KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng are burning, we need to build a just peace
July 25, 2021The 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.
Central America deal: troops at borders
May 8, 2021Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico agreed with the Biden administration to put more military at their borders to stop immigrants.
Racism still core to immigration policy
March 11, 2021Despite 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.
Count every vote!
November 28, 2020In 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.”
Amid election battles, masses demand no return to normal
August 29, 2020Nationwide 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.
I. The failed pandemic response and the fetishism of the economy
April 30, 2020Draft thesis for discussion about where the world is heading, and what to do about it from a revolutionary standpoint. Part I: Leaders around the world from China’s Xi Jinping to Donald Trump—have focused more on keeping production and the economy going than people’s health and lives.
II. The true pandemic war
April 29, 2020Draft 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.
Readers’ Views, September-October 2019, Part 1
September 1, 2019Readers’ Views on: Youth revolt, from China to climate strikes; Gunning for immigrants; Circling the abyss; Queer Notes; A prisoner responds; 1619 and today; Reading ‘N & L’; Elena Grigorieva; and Deborah Morris
Editorial: Supremacists are ‘coming for you!’
August 31, 2019After 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.
Letter from Mexico: Mexico in disarray
June 27, 2019Since 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.
Stop the Criminalization of Immigrants!
June 7, 2019Solidarity is needed with Central Americans seeking refuge and targeted by criminal policies of the Trump administration, with Mexico’s president knuckling under to Trump’s pressure.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2019, Part 1
February 3, 2019Readers’ Views addressing: challenging fascism across all borders; charter teachers strike; pitfalls of bourgeois politics; women on the march; prison strikes big and small; and the racist criminal injustice system.
Immigrant caravan born in the USA
December 3, 2018Migrants 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.
Massacre of Jews measures the inhumanity of capitalism
October 29, 2018The Oct. 27 massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue was a modern pogrom, with assault weapons, social media presence, and poisoned roots in the current stage of world counter-revolution represented by Trump, Putin, and their like.
Solidarity with Trans people under attack by Trumpism
October 28, 2018News 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.
Readers’ Views, September-October 2018: Part 1
September 29, 2018Readers’ 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.
L.A. is fighting Trump
July 24, 2018Los Angeles was one of hundreds of cities in mass protests in June against Trump’s “zero tolerance” agenda against migrant refuges looking for asylum.
World in View: Reaction and racism in the ‘new’ Europe
Update on the reaction, racism and anti-immigrant and anti-refugee laws growing in Poland, Italy and Hungary.
‘Families Belong Together’–Chicago
July 2, 2018Participant report: 60,000 demanded “Families Belong Together!” in Chicago, with 700+ protests nationwide.
‘Families belong together’: Chicago protests
June 27, 2018In-person report of one of the demonstrations in Chicago, Ill., on June 23, against Trump’s inhuman policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S. border.
World In View: After Italy, European Right coalesces
May 9, 2018The victory of Far Right and “populist” parties in Italian elections, preceded by that in Austria, and followed by that in Hungary, emphasizes the current threat of neo-fascism which means to take power in the EU.
Chef fights abuse at Azusa Pacific
February 6, 2018Mahesh 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.
Women’s Marches sweep the world
February 3, 2018Women’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.
World in View: Visage of Hitler rises in Austria
February 2, 2018Far Right racist parties have continued to make inroads into mainstream politics. 40,000 people marched in Austria against the new governing coalition of the anti-immigrant Austrian People’s Party and the neo-Nazi Freedom Party.
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.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2018, Part I
January 31, 2018Readers’ 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!
Editorial: Abuser-in-chief trashes women
November 12, 2017The 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. .
Readers’ Views: September-October 2017, Part 1
September 5, 2017Readers’ 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.
Rising U.S. racism challenges all freedom movements
September 2, 2017A 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. .
Chicagoans defend Genoveva Ramirez against ICE
August 31, 2017Hundreds demonstrated Aug. 31 outside Chicago offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, supporting Genoveva Ramirez and all others being threatened with deportation.
Thousands demand Trump release his tax returns
June 5, 2017Participant report of the April 15, 2017, thousands strong protest in Los Angeles demanding that Donald Trump release his tax returns.
Left’s blame game
May 2, 2017A 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.
Letter from Mexico: Zapatistas support U.S. migrants
Zapatistas in Mexico issued a statement and provided material support for immigrants resisting expulsion, especially from the U.S. .
Voices From The Inside Out: Resisting Trumpism
May 1, 2017Through the study of theory and philosophy and by solidarizing and striking, prisoners seek a humanist society that rejects Donald Trump, his plutocratic regime and the U.S. criminal injustice system. .
‘Care not cages’
April 27, 2017Immigrant rights and prisoner rights activists held a demonstration outside the largest immigrant detention facility in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Immigrants and allies challenge Trump’s inhumanity
April 22, 2017As 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.
Mass rallies denounce Trump and defend immigrants: Florida students rally
March 23, 2017Florida college students rally for immigrants, against U.S. President Donald Trump’s first immigrant ban and against the University of South Florida’s support for companies that harm the environment or support the military.