Youth in Action: March-April 2023

March 21, 2023

Students from 47 schools in Iowa walk out of class on March 1 to protest “Don’t Say Gay” bills; state legislatures are rolling back child labor laws; Scottish youth protest cuts to a youth assistance and engagement program.

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Queer Notes: September-October 2022

September 13, 2022

Queer notes on human rights violations on LGBTQ+ people in Ghana; anti-LGBTQ+ actions against UpRising Bakery and Café in Lake in the Hills, Illinois; and South Korea’s Seoul Queer Culture Festival.

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Reactionary Supreme Court attacks freedom

May 17, 2022

Having control over what happens to your own body is the difference between fascism and freedom. A woman’s right to control her own body is inherently a fight for a universal freedom. Contempt and hate have worked so well for Republicans that they will go after birth control and LGBTQ+ people.

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Freedom vs. the war against women

April 27, 2022

The Republican attack against women won’t stop with trashing our right to control our bodies. Hate has worked so well for them that they will also come down harder on LGBTQ+ people, especially Trans people who trample every notion the Right has of “how things are supposed to be.”

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Readers’ Views: January-February 2022, Part Two

February 5, 2022

Readers’ Views on: Racist Censorship; Learning from 1619; Backlash to Women, Blacks; Racism and the Far Right; Censorship in Prison; The 13th Amendment and Slave Labor; Incarcerated Immigrants Face Racism; Trans Women Abused in Prison; Prison Activist Resource Center (Parc)

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Queer Notes: November-December 2021

November 19, 2021

Trans people in Puerto Rico; a counter-protest led by Rainbow Coalition, protector of Trans children in Canada; and a protest at Chicago’s Benet Academy against the firing of soccer coach Amanda Kammes.

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Queer Notes: September-October 2021

September 21, 2021

A roundup of Pride events around the world: Pride Afrique; Budapest, Hungary, Pride March; Equality Pride in Warsaw, Poland; Sulong Vaklash in Manila, the Philippines; Pride Parade in Bogotá, Colombia; Resiste Bebita in Lima, Peru; Boston Pride/BP; Chicago Drag March for Change, Pride Without Prejudice and West Side Pride.

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Queer Notes: July-August 2021

June 29, 2021

Iranians protesting “honor killing” of Gay man Alireza Fazeli Monfared; students at Pendleton Heights High School in Indiana protest administration’s demand that Pride flags be removed from classrooms; nonbinary genderqueer Tryfan Morys Eibhlyn Llwyd, fighter for Gay liberation and the end of racism, died at age 70.

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Readers’ Views: May-June 2021, part one

May 8, 2021

Readers’ Views on: Atlanta Racist Femicide; Women Rise in Australia; Chauvin and Racist Usa: Guilty!; Attacks on Civil Liberties; Black Lives Matter; Amazon Workers Resist; Berta Presente!; Burmese Masses Revolt; The Empire Strikes Out; Maâti Monjib Released!

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Queer Notes: May-June 2021

Pro-LGBTQ+ Solidarity Workouts in Poland; Transgender girl Kai Shappley testifies to the Texas Senate; Queer-Art hosts “Response to Anti-Asian Shootings in Atlanta” exhibit; International Transgender Day of Visibility.

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Queer Notes

April 8, 2021

Queer Notes takes up: LGBTQ+ Ghanaians’ struggle to to raise awareness of the persecution Queer Ghanaians experience; how supporters of Transgender people are trying to raise awareness and protest the many anti-Transgender rights bills introduced in 25 U.S. states; and that an appeals court ruled that Coon Rapids High School in Minnesota must pay $300,000 to Transgender student.

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Editorial: Masses resist Burma’s murderous coup

March 11, 2021

The people of Burma have taken to the streets daily by the tens of thousands since the army carried out a coup on Feb. 1. This deeper, more human level of opposition is not just to the coup, but the nationalist monks as well as NLD’s positions. A new social solidarity is emerging.

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Queer notes, March-April 2021

Ohio assailed for refusing to recognize Jack Henning-Sepkoski’s gender identity; Chicago Black Drag Council holds town hall over racism against performers of color in Gay bars; children of same-sex mixed nationality couples in Europe struggle for citizenship.

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‘Power Worshippers’

July 1, 2020

“The Power Worshippers” by Katherine Stewart explains the religious Right as a “Christian nationalist” movement. This is not a grassroots movement but one deliberately designed by ultra-rich businessmen and families to impose complete political, social, and economic control.

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Stonewall at 50

September 1, 2019

On the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, Elise reflects on the situation of LGBTQ rights today.

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Women WorldWide: May-June 2019

April 23, 2019

30,000 in Italy protested World Congress of Families; Sudan’s first female-run radio show; survivors of prostitution marched from France, arriving to Germany for Survivor’s Day; Women Advocates Research and Documentation Center in Nigeria provides pro bono legal services and research to fight civil rights violations and violence against women.

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Queer Notes, July-August 2018

July 25, 2018

Queer notes on Delaware’s anti-Transgender legislation; Gay asylum seeker and detainee Udoka Nweke; Lesbian activist Constance Kurt; Aryman Menem, founder of Tea and Talk for Syrian LGBT; and Baltic Pride’s Pride Parade in Riga, Latvia.

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Readers’ Views, July-August 2018, Part 1

July 23, 2018

Readers’ Views on: Fighting Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Hysteria; Women’s Liberation; Attacks on Gays; Support Restaurant Workers; Swords into Plowshares; Human Rights Struggles in Iraq…; …And in Russia; Arthur Gursch in Memoriam

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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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Mass Killing in Florida is a Measure of Society’s Dehumanization

June 14, 2016

We stand in solidarity with those murdered and wounded in the attack on a Gay Florida nightclub, and their families and communities. The struggle for LGBTQI freedom must continue unabated. A response requires developing, practically and philosophically, the uncompromising assertion of human freedom and dignity common to the Black Lives Matter movement, the Arab Spring and the Syrian Revolution, which has long struggled against ISIS and its related ideologies. It means uncompromising solidarity with the LGBTQI community, the target of reactionary attacks across the world, from Trump’s America to Putin’s Russia to ISIS’s “caliphate.”

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Readers’ Views, May-June 2016

May 17, 2016

Readers’ Views on Women as Reason; Harriet Tubman; Racism and Internationalism; Bisexual Health; Trans Liberation and Feminism; Chinese State vs. Workers; Nuclear Arms Threaten All; Ireland’s Red Banner; Remembering Olga Domanski; Haggard but Not Tired; Voices from Behind the Bars.

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Readers’ Views, July-August 2015

July 4, 2015

Black lives as Subject; Russia in crisis; Nothing about us without us; Homelessness in L.A.; Central Canada Alliance; Perspectives and philosophy; Elderly to the streets?; Women and Yemen half-peace; Labor and climate justice; Dialectic and women’s liberation; Voices from behind the bars

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30 Years Later: AIDS activism and ACT UP Chicago

May 9, 2015

ACT UP Chicago grew out of an organization that began in 1984 of Dykes and Gay Men Against Racism and Repression. We became an AIDS activism organization, first called Chicago For Our Rights, then by spring Chicago for AIDS Rights. We pushed for lowering the prices of AIDS drugs, and the release of more of them. By October and the national action in Washington, D.C., we had become ACT UP Chicago. AIDS is a global issue today. This time around, I’d like to see an AIDS activist movement that’s organized by poor, working-class, mostly people of color.

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Queer Notes, May-June 2015

May 7, 2015

Malta protects Intersex infants from “normalizing” surgery; Richard Hedger exhibits National Treasures collection of elderly LGBT people; Russia refused drivers’ licenses to Transgender and Transvestite people; Gay-straight alliance at Andrews University banned from holding a bake sale for homeless LGBT youth.

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University of Minnesota homophobia

From the May-June 2015 issue of News & Letters

Duluth, Minn.—Shannon Miller, the only women’s hockey head coach the University of Minnesota, Duluth (UMD) has ever known, has been fired after 16 seasons. “Discrimination rears its ugly head in many forms, and I feel I have been discriminated against because I’m a woman. [=>]

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Things fall apart

May 6, 2015

In 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.

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Marx and Transgender

March 11, 2015

Leelah Alcorn’s last words, making her suicide an appeal for Transgender people to be “treated like humans” and to “fix society” if her death is to “mean something,” were stunning.

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Queer Notes, January-February 2015

January 31, 2015

From the January-February 2015 issue of News & Letters

by Dee Perkins

The late December suicide of 17-year-old Transgender youth Leelah Alcorn has shaken the public with an intimate glimpse into the torment of gender dysphoria in a too frequently uncomprehending world. In the suicide note she posted to Tumblr, the [=>]

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Essay: ‘We all can’t breathe’–Reflections on Marx’s Humanism and Fanon

January 29, 2015

As a Black man, I asked myself: Why—through the dialectical crises of the social relations of production and the subsequent implosion of multiple outlived modes of production—has racism persisted? Why, despite the relations of property literally bursting asunder, does racism survive? How and why does racism, sexism, homophobia survive revolution after revolution? Will we again be left behind after the next revolution?

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Readers’ Views, November-December 2014, Part 1

November 23, 2014

From the November-December 2014 issue of News & Letters

Readers’ Views, Part 1

WOMEN FIGHT RAPE, HARASSMENT AND ABUSE

When I voted, many posters reminded folks that within 100 feet of the polling place you may not “interrupt” a person, nor “harass” nor even speak about your political views. [=>]

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Queer Notes, September-October 2014

August 31, 2014

From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters

by Dee Perkins

With the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories, going nowhere, President Obama signed an executive order July 21 prohibiting such discrimination by federal contractors, which employ some 28 million workers, and, further, [=>]

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