Susan van Gelder presents a mix of reports, information, commentary and dialogue about the ICE raids against immigrants in Southwest Detroit, as well as the actions to resist it.
labor / workers
Trump grabs power, spreads hate, stirs resistance
February 3, 2025President Donald Trump is encouraging deadly hate toward women, Blacks, people of color, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and immigrants. It is grassroots responses and mutual aid that can block Trump’s power grab. More forms of revolt will erupt in the face of the downward spiral of this capitalist world in crisis.
انتخابات ایالات متحده بهمثابه جلوهای از ضدانقلاب
January 13, 2025Farsi translation of the lead article “The U.S. election as manifestation of counterrevolution.”
Amazon workers strike
December 24, 2024A striking driver at an Amazon warehouse near Chicago speaks. We are demanding better pay, better working conditions, respect and to be treated as human beings.
Lead-editorial article: The U.S. election as manifestation of counterrevolution
December 6, 2024Counterrevolution is the guiding principle of the Trump campaign and the dominant characteristic of politics worldwide. Although revolution does not appear to be on the horizon in the U.S. or in most other countries, capitalism is stumbling through a global crisis, both economic and ecological, psychological and communal.
Featured article: Can Bangladesh’s revolutionary process continue to deepen?
August 24, 2024A massive movement of students overthrew the dictator and aim for deeper social transformation, which needs to encompass various social forces. Can the needed solidarity between students and workers chart a way forward?
UK mail software robs postal workers
May 16, 2024In 1999, new Horizon software was installed in post office branches across the UK. Immediately, sub-postmasters and postmistresses experienced inexplicable shortfalls from their branches. It has been called “the UK’s most widespread miscarriage of justice.”
Draft Perspectives, 2024-2025: Part Two, Trump 2.0: A global threat
May 4, 2024Part II of the 2024-2025 Draft Perspectives. Takes up: the global retrogression that a second Trump period would mean.
VW workers in U.S. South unionize!
April 24, 2024Workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., voted three to one to join the United Auto Workers. This gives hope that racial, ethnic and sexual divisions will not slow down the drive for auto worker solidarity in the South and across the country.
On the Anniversary of the 1871 Paris Commune: Women, youth and education in revolutionary Paris
February 12, 2024In this essay, originally published in the March 1985 N&L, Erica Rae takes up the new kind of education arising in the 1871 Paris Commune. She focuses on the role of women during this historic turning point, especially the revolutionary educator Louise Michel.
World in View: Thousands protest Argentina’s Milei
February 6, 2024Argentine President Javier Milei aims to privatize state institutions; eliminate regulations on businesses; prevent strikes; and seek full executive powers. Less than two months after taking office, he was confronted by a one-day mass general strike. What kind of society do Argentinians want to create?
World in View: Garment workers protest in Bangladesh
November 16, 2023Garment workers poured out of factories in Dhaka and other cities in Bangladesh to demand a wage of about $200 a month. The police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. Bangladesh is the second largest garment-producing country in the world after China.
Angela Terrano, 1929-2023
October 17, 2023Angela Terrano died on Oct. 1. She was the managing editor of ‘News & Letters’ from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s and the co-editor of the 1976 Marxist-Humanist pamphlet ‘Working Women for Freedom’. She made an important contribution to Charles Denby’s 1960 pamphlet ‘Worker’s Battle Automation’.
Blue Cross workers demand end to outsourcing jobs
October 10, 2023Blue Cross workers walked out two days before the UAW began calling auto workers off their jobs on Sept. 14. “We have the same demands as they do,” one worker told News & Letters.
Editorial: Auto workers strike the Big Three
September 30, 2023Sept. 14 was Day 1 of the United Auto Workers’ Union strike against all Big Three automobile manufacturers. We are at a crossroads, where either the working class will push back the capitalist offensive with their own counteroffensive, or the capitalist class will keep taking more and more for themselves.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The African Revolutions and the World Economy
September 19, 2023The contributions and contradictions of the African revolutions of the 20th century speak to today’s very different situation. These excerpts from Dunayevskaya’s ‘Philosophy and Revolution, from Hegel to Sartre and from Marx to Mao’ aim not only to recapture the greatness of those revolutions, but also grapple with why they retrogressed after independence, so as to aid the creation of new beginnings now.
Climate toll sparks revolt
July 23, 2023The climate crisis is already disrupting billions of lives. Yet the economic and political powers are more concerned with eliminating safeguards for workers and pushing more fossil fuels. It is no time to despair. It is a time of crisis that opens the door to a revolutionary transformation of society.
Hollywood strikes
July 17, 202360,000 Hollywood actors joined the 70-day-long screenwriters’ strike. Despite the glamor, all who work in this $134-billion entertainment industry under the capitalist system are subject to exploitation and alienation like any other worker.
World in View: France: Police murder sparks mass youth protests
July 7, 2023After Nahel Merzouk, a teenager of Algerian-Moroccan descent, was killed by police at a traffic stop in a Paris suburb, French youth, many of North African descent, responded with outrage. How did France come to this explosive moment?
Capitalism can’t deal with disability
May 9, 2023People with disabilities make up 15% of the population. They are in every country and culture on earth. One thing that unites the disabled is that capitalism is a world not made for us, and communism is the only way to establish true freedom and equality for everyone.
Is COVID over when thousands still die?
March 21, 2023Efforts to declare an end to the COVID pandemic are part of a drive to return to a pretended normal, to keep anything fundamental from changing–even if it means leaving the door wide open for the next pandemic
Congress imposes rail worker contract
January 25, 2023Congress has done its best to become the nation’s strikebreaker by forcing a five-year contract on railroad workers who had been set to go on strike on Dec. 12.
Jordan truckers strike
January 24, 2023Truck drivers in Jordan were on strike during most of December, as soaring fuel prices have left them unable to work. Other Jordanians, especially youth, who are fed up with energy prices and high unemployment, held protests which blocked two highways.
School workers defy anti-union law to win
School support workers in Ontario, members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, ratified a four-year contract on Dec. 6, after weeks of defying both school administrators and provincial politicians.
Win for Michigan workers
At last over 600,000 Michigan workers will receive increased minimum wages and earn paid sick leave, thanks to a court ruling this summer overturning a 2018 law the state legislature had quickly and cynically passed.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2023, Part One
Readers’ 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
‘Sweet Years of Protest’
Bob McGuire reviews the book “Sweet Years of Protest: 1990-2021; A Chronicle of Actions, Ideas, and Events” by Séamas Cain.
World in View: After Brexit come strikes
January 22, 2023Great Britain is in a cost of living crisis. Newspapers are publishing “Heat or Eat Diaries.” Brexit has been an important catalyst for Britain’s dire economic situation. Hopefully the labor militancy now taking place can show a way forward.
El régimen iraní teme la revolución, las mujeres lideran el camino
December 15, 2022El régimen iraní debería tener mucho miedo. Los gritos de: “¡Mujeres, vida y libertad!” “¡Muerte al hijab!” “¡Muerte al dictador!” llenan las calles. Las mujeres iraníes han inspirado al mundo y han advertido a los oligarcas de Irán que su régimen represivo está en grave peligro.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Iran: Unfoldment of, and contradictions in, Revolution, parts III and IV
December 10, 2022Today’s revolt in Iran is illuminated by Raya Dunayevskaya’s March 1979 Political-Philosophic Letter, “Iran: Unfoldment of, and Contradictions in, Revolution.” The first two parts were published in the November-December 2022 issue. The concluding two parts are published here. Written shortly after the massive women’s revolt that tried to open a second chapter of the revolution, this letter was part of a series written during and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and published in both English and Farsi.
Congress breaks railroad workers’ strike
December 3, 2022Congress has done its best to become the nation’s strikebreaker by forcing a five-year contract on railroad workers who had been set to go on strike on Dec. 12. Union members in four of the 12 unions had voted to reject a tentative agreement that negotiators had reached with six major rail carriers in September.
National Costco pact
November 12, 2022Unionized Costco workers achieved their first national master contract. This needs to form the basis for reaching out and organizing the majority of Costco warehouses that remain non-union.
Readers’ Views: November-December 2022, Part One
November 11, 2022Readers’ Views on: Iran: Woman, Life, Freedom; Election Threats and Battles; Women’s Marches and Enemies; Sexist Supreme Court; Ukrainians Fight for Freedom; Para-Transit Disservice; Mike Davis; Labor Struggles, from Amazon…to the Bank.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Contradictions in Iranian Revolution
November 10, 2022Today’s revolt in Iran is illuminated by Raya Dunayevskaya’s March 1979 Political-Philosophic Letter, “Iran: Unfoldment of, and Contradictions in, Revolution,” published here in two parts. Written shortly after the massive women’s revolt that tried to open a second chapter of the revolution, this letter was part of a series written during and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and published in both English and Farsi.
Iranian regime fears revolution while women lead the way to total change
October 22, 2022The Iranian hard-line regime should be very afraid. The cries of: “Women, life and freedom!” “Death to the head scarf!” “Death to the dictator!” fill the streets. Iranian women have inspired the world and put Iran’s oligarchs on notice that their repressive regime is in grave danger.
The debt owed to Haiti
September 24, 2022A demonstration by Haiti Action Committee called on Citibank to stop funding death squads and others who massacre Haitians demanding the right to even stay on their own land.
Editorial: Ukraine is a beacon against fascism & war
September 9, 2022Ukraine is afraid of losing European supporters after having fought off a Russian invasion for six months in the largest war in Europe since World War II. Ukrainians are also fighting imposed rotten compromises at the expense of Ukrainians! Yes to Ukrainian self-determination and freedom from Russian imperialism!
Handicap This!: July-August 2022
July 20, 2022The difficulties people with disabilities are experiencing in Ukraine as it is being attacked by Russia; the newly formed Marion County (Oregon) Advisory Group will help the disability community connect with emergency management during emergencies; and the Australian Disability Enterprises refused to raise their sub-minimum wage for disabled workers.
Apple workers unionize
July 19, 2022Workers at the Apple Store in Towson, Md., outside Baltimore voted in June to unionize. Organizers of the successful union drive have reached out to employees at other Apple locations.
World in View: Militant truckers strike in South Korea
July 12, 2022More than 7,000 truckers took part in an eight-day strike for better pay and fewer hours. A measure dubbed the “Safe Trucking Freight Rate,” which ensures minimum pay, is set to expire this year.
Women, workers for freedom in Burma
July 5, 2022Dedicated youth from the cities have joined the resistance in Burma (Myanmar), primarily from the urban working class. In the rural “heartland” of Upper Burma the People’s Defense Forces is a broader phenomenon–hundreds of thousands have rallied to the red banner, more all the time.
Ecuador’s Indigenous movement wins concessions
July 2, 2022On June 30, after 18 days of protests, the government of Ecuador sat at the negotiating table with the leaders of the Indigenous movement. A representative of the Catholic Church asked reluctant Indigenous leaders to sign the agreement prepared by the government.
Women, workers, hew new revolutionary path in Burma
June 4, 2022Dedicated youth from the cities have joined the resistance in Burma (Myanmar), primarily from the urban working class. In the rural “heartland” of Upper Burma the People’s Defense Forces is a broader phenomenon–hundreds of thousands have rallied to the red banner, more all the time.
San Francisco holds May Day rally
May 20, 2022Participant report: the San Francisco May Day demonstration addressed labor organizing, bread and butter issues, and political repression in Iran and Turkey.
Workers self-organizing at Amazon
Workers at Amazon’s JFK8 facility on Staten Island voted in the first union shop in Amazon’s history. By talking to and supporting each other, the workers were able to stand up to unionbusters and create a union by self-organization.
Review: ‘The 1619 Project’
May 14, 2022‘The 1619 Project’ tackles U.S. history since the first enslaved Africans were brought to Virginia—from multiple perspectives. Each essay is grounded in original sources, scholarly works, interviews and oral histories. Historical events, photographs of ordinary African-Americans and poetry surround each essay, adding a human touch.
Alabama coal miners keep strike alive
By May Day 2022 coal miners at Warrior Met in Brookwood, Ala., had been on strike for a year and a month since they walked out April 1, 2021, to demand restoration of their wages, benefits and work rules. Strikers rejected a tentative contract as an insult. The company offered to restore just $1 more in wages.
Strike threat wins
May 11, 2022Porters, doorpersons, superintendents, concierges and handypersons in more than 3,000 New York City high rise buildings were able to avoid a cutback in benefits by insisting they would rather go on strike.
Threatening a strike wins it
April 30, 2022Porters, doorpersons, superintendents, concierges and handypersons in more than 3,000 New York City high rise buildings were able to avoid a cutback in benefits by insisting they would rather go on strike.
Review: ‘The 1619 Project’
April 22, 2022‘The 1619 Project’ tackles U.S. history since the first enslaved Africans were brought to Virginia—from multiple perspectives. Each essay is grounded in original sources, scholarly works, interviews and oral histories. Historical events, photographs of ordinary African-Americans and poetry surround each essay, adding a human touch.