Graduate workers at Columbia University who won representation with the UAW in an historic August 2016 NLRB election face further delays as Columbia seeks to overturn the results, seeking to stall union certification until after Trump stacks the NLRB with anti-union appointees.
Postal workers won a major victory. In the face of an international campaign of boycotts, leafleting and picket lines, the multinational company Staples stopped pursuing a deal to provide postal services within their stores.
Reports by participants of celebrations and protests on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Oakland, Calif., and Detroit, Mich.
Long Island University-Brooklyn locked out their teachers but were not prepared for the support the teachers received from students and staff and finally had to end their lockout.
Readers’ 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?
On the anniversary of the Hungarian revolution, we present a letter by Dunayevskaya whose concept of the relationship of spontaneity and party, and its inseparability from organization of thought, speaks to the dialectics of organization and philosophy.
Trump’s electoral victory by appealing to racism and sexism menaces all freedom movements. It is the index of this system’s crisis and bankruptcy of thought, which needs to be met with a truly revolutionary vision.
Trump’s electoral victory by appealing to racism and sexism menaces all freedom movements. It is the index of this system’s crisis and bankruptcy of thought, which needs to be met with a truly revolutionary vision.
Teachers at Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York, with support from students and staff, won their strike against the University who locked them out after they refused to accept a bad contract.
An appeal for funds to help keep the paper, News & Letters, going and growing; and to help us expand our subscriptions to prisoners.
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.
Readers’ Views on Needed New Beginnings in Philosophy and Revolution; Making One Year Count; Subjugated Knowledge; Free Syria/May Day; and Voices From Behind the Bars.
Uber drivers begin to organize against exploitation by their management but are sold out by unions bureaucrats; but some continue fighting for a real union.
A revolutionary critique of the “lynching” charge against Black Lives Matter activist Jasmine Richards and how it reveals the racism endemic to U.S. society and spotlights the revolutionary Black youth fighting against it.
Workshop Talks columnist Htun Lin looks at the world situation from the massacre of LGBTQ people in Orlando to the murder of Jo Cox in Britain to Brexit and to how workers are reacting, suggesting that there is no exit from global capitalism without international labor solidarity.
An Editorial on how Brexit has emboldened the Far Right, not only in Britain but also in the U.S., bringing out blatant expressions of racism, homophobia, sexism and anti-immigrant hatred; and the importance of people’s own self-organization to counter this moment in history.
Participant report of Chicago May Day demonstration in solidarity with the Syrian Revolution.
April 30, 2016
Dear Sisters and Brothers of LALIT,
We in News and Letters Committees are honored to send you whole-hearted revolutionary greetings and hopes for a successful Labor Day gathering. Your struggles against capital in league with the Mauritius government are a reminder of how capital is now global, and so are the struggles [=>]
The late Revolutionary Olga Domanski is remembered for reminding us that Absolute Method is the only way for feminism, as part of a totally new society built on truly human foundations, to be completely realized.
Chinese worker-activists reveal the recent history of laborers in action for their rights and seek an exchange of ideas with U.S. labor activists.
Our era, when racist police gun down Black men, women and youth, continues a history as old as the U.S. The piece excerpted here shows some of that history and how racism can be spurred on by this country’s leaders and would-be leaders, out for power. It takes up how Left movements respond to racism and the attempt to answer the question by funneling liberatory impulses into the dead end of electoral politics. The relationships between the Black freedom movement, anti-war youth, workers, and philosophy of revolution remain as critical today as when this article was written.
Part IV of the Draft Perspectives 2016: The renewal of Syrian demonstrations for freedom refuted the state powers’ belief that the idea of revolution can be destroyed by bombs, and highlighted a civilizational crisis and the need for international solidarity.
Part III of the Draft Perspectives 2016: Strikes and workers’ uprisings in China have forced industrial wages up, not pausing even during the global Great Recession, as a window on capitalism and its crises.
Part II of the Draft Perspectives 2016: The worldwide war against women includes attacks on abortion rights, counter-revolution in Egypt, attacks on women by UN troops. Women celebrated International Women’s day in Turkey and other countries.
Chicagoans form picket line at local market in support of San Quintin, Baja California, Mexico, striking farmworkers and many shoppers show their support as well
Part I of the Draft Perspectives 2016: Discontent is seething in the U.S. among workers, youth, Blacks, women, LGBTQ, including elements of the new society. Fear of revolution is powering neo-fascism opposing the revolt.
Black Lives Matter activists, low-wage workers, disability rights group ADAPT, students and many other people solidarize with striking Chicago Teachers Union members by participating in the “Shut It Down” day of action, which exposed the Chicago Public Schools making Chicago’s public school system broke on purpose.
Chinese university students’ struggle at Tiananmen Square for better living conditions; Kaiser workers’ fight against two-tier wages and the continuous miner; and today’s Hong Kong Youth’s Umbrella Revolution, Occupy Movement and Black Lives Matter all show that workers are alive in struggle.
Contents: Introduction; I. Discontent, revolt and reaction in the U.S.; II. The worldwide war against women; III. Chinese labor in revolt; IV. Counter-revolution and revolution in the Middle East and North Africa; V. Toward organizational new beginnings. The fact that the old, crumbling order will not go away quietly explains why we print the Marxist-Humanist Draft Perspectives in the pages of the paper of News and Letters Committees. It is an open window onto the needed philosophy of revolution, without which all revolutions and freedom movements remain incomplete.
Readers’ Views on: The Movements from Practice and from Theory; Berta Caceres; Why Read N&L?; Women’s Liberation; Voices from behind the Bars.
Readers’ Views on: Environment, Labor, Race and Philosophy; Queer Liberation; Black Lives Matter; Bolivian Social Movements; Trumpery’s Fascism & Racism.
Workers at Nexteer Automotive dealt a blow to the United Auto Workers bureaucracy and the company when 97% of the rank and file rejected the contract the UAW had negotiated, forcing sharp revisions on two-tier wages and healthcare benefits in the contract they ratified.
Upsurge of workers’ struggles in 2015 in Mexico, from field workers in San Quintin, Baja California to maquiladora workers in Ciudad Juarez along with ongoing opposition to government educational “reforms” by teachers in the autonomous union CNTE, demonstrate workers’ resistance to the plans of capital and its state. How can organizations of activist-thinkers meet what workers have achieved in our own organizational response?
As Host and Crusty Workers Association union contract in New York City with Brod expired, the company threatened to close the union bakery while opening two non-union plants and fired three union officers and activists. Over 200 union members and immigrant activists rallied union and city support on Jan. 28.
The United Arab Emirates, a Gulf state ally of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, is the perfect model of a two-tier society.
With Trump’s appeal to racism and reaction winning support from part of the working class, we present Dunayevskaya’s letter taking up Enoch Powell’s racist speeches and their impact on the working class.
A statement of solidarity issued by Trust Women Partnership to Black Lives Matter that highlights the importance of reproductive justice in the struggle for freedom and self-determination.
A critique of HMO practices that sanction nurses for giving quality care, showing the relation of that practice to what Marx worked out about labor time.
In the face of an upsurge of strikes, China struck back with new weapons against the spread of job actions and demonstrations.
The two-tier contract between the San Francisco Municipal Railway and the Transit Workers Union was shoved down workers’ throats.
Workers often ignore borders to solidarize with fellow humans. Solidarity needed now against atrocities against Syrian civilians and in support of Larycia Hawkins risking tenure to stand with Muslims under attack.
Workers in four maquiladoras in Ciudad Juarez began organizing to form an independent union and for higher wages, better working conditions and against sexual harassment.
California prisoners battle barbaric ‘justice’ system; Against ISIS attacks; Women under attack; Support Maati Monjib; The Burmese Way; Race, class & politics.
Olga Domanski’s summary of the series on “Women as Thinkers and as Revolutionaries” by Raya Dunayevskaya.
readers views nov dec 2015 part 1
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.
UAW workers reject Chrysler contract and force an improved one, showing the power of their strike.
Putin found a formula: to participate in genocide while claiming to be fighting “terrorism.” This says everything about the nature of his retrogressive rule, and about the hypocrisy of the U.S. and Europe
On the 60th anniversary of News & Letters we discuss its philosophic basis and invite readers to participate.
The workplace at Amazon.com is making employees physically and mentally ill which is a hallmark of production under capitalism. What happens at Amazon.com is not unusual and can be seen even in areas like healthcare, for example, at Kaiser.
