POSTPONED: Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2020-2021
Indigenous peoples
The fall of Morales; whither Bolivia?
January 22, 2020Important human forces in Bolivia are strongly opposing the threat of a developing fascism, and at the same time have not shied away from criticizing the contradictions of Evo Morales’s rule.
Readers’ Views, January-February 2020, Part Two
Readers’ Views on Philosophy and Revolution; disorder is the order; anti-Semitism; Black August, and voices from behind bars.
Bolivia’s extreme right consolidates power
December 3, 2019Important human forces in Bolivia are strongly opposing the threat of a developing fascism, and at the same time have not shied away from criticizing the contradictions of Evo Morales’s rule.
Letter from Mexico: Chiapas Indigenous join Zapatistas
September 1, 2019Analysis of the new moment arrived at by the Zapatista Indigenous movement, which now has 11 more units of self-government in the southearstern state of Chiapas, Mexico.
Women defend land
June 27, 2019We women In Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala are fighting the Integral Morelos Project [construction of a thermoelectric plant] and giving another direction to this centuries old struggle of the defense of the land.
Readers’ Views: May-June 2019
May 6, 2019Readers’ Views on: Socialism and a philosophy of revolution; Sudan in revolt; Iran vs. Iranians; Flint, Mich., play captures voices; Notre-Dame and fracking on native land; gun control debate; labor strikes; debate on fascism; Trump and DeVos; and voices from behind bars.
World in View: Samir Flores murder
Thousands marched in Mexico City, Feb. 22, to protest the murder of journalist and environmental activist Samir Flores Soberanes. He had been shot twice, execution style, on Feb. 20, at his home.
Editorial: Brazil under Bolsonaro’s heel
January 24, 2019Marxist-Humanist Editorial that takes up Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, including his attack on the landless workers movement, on the environment, on those who are LGBTQ, and his support for capitalism and neo-fascism.
Readers’ Views, November-December 2018
December 14, 2018Readers’ Views on: Capitalism vs. the Planet; Anti-Semitism’s Inhumanity; Kavanaugh Travesty; Youth Rock!; Freedom Movements vs. Fascism across the Globe; Catholic Church Crisis; Voices from behind Bars
Letter from Mexico, November-December 2018: Rejecting fake choice in airport referendum
The elected government of Morena party organized a National Consultation on Mexico’s New Airport from Oct. 25-28. How are the Indigenous people resisting it?
Masses vs. capitalism: Climate chaos hangs in the balance
September 28, 2018With disastrous consequences of climate change making themselves felt, both scientists and movements are pointing to the need for a radically different direction, but capitalism has blocked the way and even put a cult of climate denial in the White House.
Letter from Mexico, September-October 2018: Next in the struggle
September 19, 2018The Zapatistas called for a gathering Aug. 3-5 in Chiapas of the support networks that participated in trying to register the spokeswoman of the Indigenous Governing Council as an independent candidate for the presidential election in Mexico.
World In View: Colombia Humana raises questions
May 9, 2018Colombia Humana presidential candidate Gustavo Petro, a former M19 guerrilla, has caught the imagination of Indigenous people, Afrocolombians, and many other poor Colombians.
Uprising in Honduras
March 12, 2018Protesters in Honduras consider the Nov. 26, 2017, reelection of President Juan Hernandez to be fraudulent. In the capital, Tegucigalpa, people lay down day after day to block the streets in front of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.
Letter from Mexico: How will Indigenous movement organize?
The National Indigenous Congress did not collect enough signatures to allow María de Jesús Patricio to run as an independent candidate for President of Mexico in 2018. This has deepened discussions of how to create horizontal, autonomous organizations born from below.
World in View: Australia’s castaways
February 2, 2018Since 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.
Earthquakes in Mexico: a wake-up call
September 26, 2017An in-person report of the recent devastating earthquakes in Mexico and how social conditions including capitalism, government corruption, etc., negatively affect rescue efforts; how everyday people’s self-organization makes a significant difference.
Readers’ Views: July-August 2017, Part 1
July 2, 2017Readers’ 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?
Letter from Mexico: A new moment for revolution?
June 30, 2017Around 800 Native people from all over Mexico met May 26-28 in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, to create an Indigenous Governing Council (IGC) and name its spokeswoman.
Essay: Marx’s Marxism vs. Trump-Putin’s barbarism
March 21, 2017Trump’s barbarism in power is a crisis for bourgeois democracy and revolutionary thought. Opposition from below is far deeper than bourgeois opposition to Trump. To have efficacy today, Marx’s body of ideas must be grasped and projected as a whole. The movement from theory needs to meet the challenge of history, of freedom struggles and revolution.
Standing Rock: the struggle continues
March 14, 2017The fight against the Dakota Access pipeline continues despite military-style destruction of resistance camps. The movement for Native American liberation from colonialism and for stopping the fossil-fuel exploitation that drives climate change is still growing.
Letter from Mexico: Indigenous organize to contest 2018 vote
January 31, 2017The National Indigenous Congress in Mexico announced that 430 communities had created an Indigenous Governing Council to prepare for selecting a woman to contest the presidential election in 2018, not with the goal of taking power through the ballot box, but to elicit the voices and actions from below.
Readers’ Views, November-December 2016, Part 1
November 27, 2016Readers’ Views on Election Stirs Battles in Thought and in Life; Deep Racism in the USA; Women Fight Back; Indigenous Struggles; Global (In)Humanity; Why Read N&L?
Demand Indigenous Peoples Day
November 26, 2016Participant report from Indigenous Peoples Day observation in Tucson, celebrating expanding human freedom rather than colonialism and imperialism.
Solidarity with Standing Rock: Water Is Life
Participant reports of Chicago and Oakland actions in solidarity with the Standing Rock Lakota who are fighting to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. #NoDAPL
Editorial: Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline now!
The resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline has become a beacon for all opposing the ruling system—and has been assaulted with ferocious repression. It is a powerful manifestation of the vast forces putting American civilization on trial. The time is now to support this struggle in practice and in thought.
Why Indigenous Peoples Day
October 22, 2016Participant report from Indigenous Peoples Day observation in Tucson, celebrating expanding human freedom rather than colonialism and imperialism.
Chicago solidarity action with Native resistance to oil pipeline in North Dakota
September 22, 2016As part of over 200 solidarity actions on Sept. 13, 150 people gathered in Chicago to support the people of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe fighting to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Lakota protest Dakota Access oil pipeline
September 6, 2016Citizens of the Standing Rock Lakota Nation and allies are maintaining a Camp of the Sacred Stones along the proposed route of the Dakota Access oil pipeline to defend the water, sacred and burial sites and wildlife habitat despite having their water and medical care removed as well as threats from the state government.
Fires in Canada, drought in India inspire creative revolt
July 3, 2016The wildfires sweeping Alberta’s tar sands region provide a window onto the state of the environment and the multidimensional worldwide struggle against pollution and climate chaos fueled by capitalism’s drive for production for the sake of production.
World in View: Murder in Honduras
May 18, 2016Over 1,300 activists from more than 20 countries attended a gathering in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, celebrating the life of murdered Indigenous rights and ecological-social activist Berta Caceres.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2016, Part 2
March 30, 2016Readers’ Views on: The Movements from Practice and from Theory; Berta Caceres; Why Read N&L?; Women’s Liberation; Voices from behind the Bars.
World in View: Pope Francis in Mexico: pity and contradiction
March 18, 2016The Pope has a partial, limited critique of certain transgressions of industrial capitalism. In some areas of human rights, the Pope and the Catholic Church as an institution is not only silent, but in opposition.
Paris climate accord’s suicidal complacency spurs protests
January 24, 2016The Paris Agreement on climate change reveals limits of what capitalism will do even in the face of catastrophe. The question is what kind of development can people in all kinds of countries achieve?
Paris climate accord vs. humanity’s future
December 19, 2015Paris Accord reveals limits of what capitalism will do even in the face of catastrophe. The question is what kind of development can people in all kinds of countries achieve? So long as the vision of an alternative, liberatory path of development is not made concrete as the energizing principle of a movement, a vacuum is left for false alternatives.
Land struggles in Honduras
December 11, 2015A historical look at Hondurans struggle for their land.
Latin America ‘statism’ challenged by movements
September 6, 2015Governments which could never have come to power without the social movements’ mobilizations are using vague expressions of anti-capitalism, socialism, resource nationalism, anti-imperialism, etc., to impose developmentalism on their populations, often in collaboration with neoliberalism.
Letter from Mexico: The Zapatistas and Critical Thought
July 4, 2015An appreciative and critical look at the Zapatistas’ seminar held in Chiapas, Mexico, May 3-9 on “Critical Thought in Face of the Hydra of Capitalism,” by a participant.
Winds of change from Alberta?
July 3, 2015Analysis 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.
Things fall apart
May 6, 2015In the absence of successful social revolution, today’s total crisis is shown in a world capitalist order that is falling apart economically, politically, environmentally, and in thought. That does not mean that we can wait for capitalism to collapse and step aside for a new society. On the contrary. Its desperation makes it that much more vicious, and it threatens to doom all of humanity with it.
Letter from Mexico: Zapatistas on praxis
May 1, 2015The Zapatistas are not just creating a new world in practice, but in theory—as we have seen by the radical concept Compa/Work Day (CWD), which opens new possibilities to emancipatory social movements. Or, better to say: They can develop revolutionary theory because they develop simultaneously a revolutionary practice (and vice versa).
Lima climate talks betray future
January 29, 2015The 20th “Conference of Parties” was held in Lima, Peru, and, rather than action, issued a “Call for Climate Action” without binding commitments or effective monitoring. The U.S. and other nations as good as admitted the bankruptcy of capitalism by arguing that binding commitments had no chance of being adopted.
Letter from Mexico: Mexican protests deepen
At the end of the Nov. 20 mass demonstration in Mexico City in support of Ayotzinapa’s missing students, acts of repression from state forces became more open and intense.
Help us! Paramilitaries in Colombia Threaten Black and Indigenous Communities to Protect Illegal Mining
October 19, 2014An appeal for help from the Afro-Colombian Solidarity Network (ACSN):
Hello. We need the media to help us get this information out. These paramilitaries are going to kill us.
Help us please.
We need many people to write letters to the council of state and to the government of Colombia demanding the protection of the communities of La Toma and the north of Cauca.
On the evening [=>]
People’s Climate March
August 30, 2014From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters
The People’s Climate March will be hitting the streets of New York on Sept. 21. It will precede the Sept. 23 Climate Summit called by the UN supposedly to “mobilize action and ambition on climate change.” The march will call for “a world with an [=>]
WORLD IN VIEW: Latin America’s people in view and in motion
July 8, 2014Colombia’s Election and ‘Peace’; Zapatista Activist Assassinated; World Cup Shows Other Brazil.
Québec election the ‘dirtiest campaign’
May 22, 2014The results of the Québec Election on April 7 are a disaster that may have implications for all of North America.
Bolivia’s two worlds
May 11, 2014A new conflict broke out in Bolivia at the end of March. Thousands of miners blocked highways in five departments of Bolivia to protest a pending new mining law. Three miners were killed by the national police, while the miners took dozens of police hostage.
‘Say NO to KXL!’
March 20, 2014Chicago–“Say NO to KXL!” was the message of 100 protesters outside the local State Department offices on the bitter cold night of Feb. 3, demanding that President Obama reject the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry extra-dirty tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast. It was one of 283 actions across the U.S. and Canada organized in three days after the State Department released its fake environmental report on the pipeline–a report crafted by cronies of TransCanada, Keystone’s owner, with the imprimatur of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.