As banning books that take up racism, feminism or LGBTQI+ subjects alarmingly escalates, students fight back, creating groups to read censored books.
LGBTQI+
Queer Notes: March-April 2022
March 19, 2022LGBTQ+ students are protesting injustice in Kenya, Florida and Texas; the suspected suicide of Gay mayor Kevin Ward highlights suicide risks for gay men; Black Trans woman Ju’ Zema Goldring’s unjust arrest; and the banning of conversion therapy for people under 18 in New Zealand.
Youth: Laws attack LGBTQ+
March 16, 2022Texas, Florida and Oklahoma have recently passed laws that threaten Queer kids and can be directed against any marginalized group. No matter which politician is in power or what political party is dominant, they will do little to protect oppressed groups or benefit the lives of regular people in any significant way.
Women WorldWide: March-April 2022
March 15, 2022Demonstrations in Mexico City against legislation recognizing surrogacy; decriminalization of abortion in Colombia; organizations assisting survivors of domestic violence and other traumas oppose the truck convoy in Ottawa, Canada, as re-traumatizing women; FiLiA began their “Kakuma Campaign” in Kenya on behalf of the residents of Block 13, an LGB&T+ refugee camp.
Women WorldWide: March-April 2022
February 27, 2022FiLiA began their “Kakuma Campaign” in Kenya on behalf of the residents of Block 13, the LGB&T+ area of the Kakuma refugee camp; demonstrations in Mexico City against legislation on surrogacy; the decriminalization of abortion in Colombia; and people in organizations assisting survivors of domestic violence, war, homelessness and other traumas came out against the truck convoy in Ottawa, Canada, as traumatizing women.
Queer Notes: January-February 2022
February 7, 2022Queer Notes on Nobody’s Darling, a new Queer bar in Chicago; the death of Rebecca Juro, radio host and advocate for Trans rights; LGBTQ+ reaction to the election of Gabriel Boric in Chile; and LGBTQ+ discrimination in South Korea.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2022, Part Two
February 5, 2022Readers’ 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)
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.
Queer Notes: November-December 2021
November 19, 2021Trans 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.
Readers’ Views: November-December 2021, Part One
Readers’ Views on Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives 2021-2022; Labor shortage?; Workers as reason; Support El Milagro workers!; Detroit women’s march; Chapelle’s sexism; Afghans dead and buried; Betrayal of Haitians; and Which side are you on?
Queer Notes
September 30, 2021Queer Notes takes up a Queer rights rally in Madrid, Spain, to call for stronger laws to protect LGBTQ+ people; LGBTQ+ people and their supporters in New York City protested the homophobic assault against Abimbola Adelaja and his friend; and Parents in Tennessee and the Human Rights Campaign are suing the state to overturn its anti-Trans law that allows schools to be sued if they allow a Trans student in a cisgender bathroom.
Ed Negron: In Memoriam
September 22, 2021Elise Barclay remembers Ed Negron, a Chicago activist for Latinx, LGBTQ+ and especially Bisexual rights.
Queer Notes: September-October 2021
September 21, 2021A 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.
Queer Notes
July 20, 2021More Russian youth are accepting LGBTQ+ people because for years many have been coming out publicly; the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya is demanding USAID and the UK redirect their aid–which has been funding conversion therapy in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda–to LGBTQ+-run organizations; and two businesses in Tennessee won an injunction against an anti-Trans law.
Queer Notes: July-August 2021
June 29, 2021Iranians 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.
Review: #ChurchToo
May 8, 2021Author Emily Joy Allison created the hashtag #ChurchToo to share her story of an adult youth group leader’s attempt to groom her into being raped when she was a teenager. By the next morning, thousands had used #ChurchToo to tell their stories of abuse within the Church.
Readers’ Views: May-June 2021, part one
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!
Readers’ Views: May-June 2021, part two
Readers’ Views on: A Colombian View: What Is Socialism?; Trevor Wins!; Detroit School Fight; Suez Accident; What Prisoners Want; Voices From Behind Bars
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.
Queer Notes
April 8, 2021Queer 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.
Editorial: Masses resist Burma’s murderous coup
March 11, 2021The 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.
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.
Queer Notes
February 15, 2021The Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland decries Ireland’s denial of asylum for a Zimbabwean Lesbian and for several other LGBTQ+ refugees; and U.S. Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., introduced a bill to block funding from state and local sports organizations that allow Transgender females to participate in girls’ or women’s sports.
Queer Notes: November-December 2020
November 28, 2020Thailand’s LGBTQ Pride Parade demanded resignation of Prime Minister and limitations on King; Black and Brown Trans, non-binary and gender nonconforming people on the South and West Sides of Chicago have a new mutual aid organization; Nigerian Queer rights activist Pamela Adie’s Lesbian love story film “Ife”; and Trans Sistas of Color Project locked out of their venue for their awards brunch.
World in view: Massive student-led protests cover Thailand
November 24, 2020Tens of thousands of Thai students, many from high schools, have been carrying on massive demonstrations for months demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha; rewriting the Constitution that Prayut foisted on the country, including a Senate appointed by the military; and reining in the vast privileges and protections of the monarchy.
Philosophic dialogue: New perspectives on Marx’s Humanist Essays
November 10, 2020A high school student, a former prisoner, and a long-time Marxist-Humanist discuss why Marx’s 1844 Humanist Essays are critical to meet the total challenges to humanity today.
Polish women’s revolutionary moment
October 30, 2020While what is happening in Poland may not be a revolution, it is revolutionary. Women are leading a movement protesting the Church’s inhuman attack on women’s freedom, and mounting a deep challenge to the fascist-leaning Polish government.
Queer Notes
October 10, 2020The new event, Trans Empowerment Month; Trans founded and run dairy farm colony in Manthithoppu, India; and the alarm in the LGBTQ+ community over the nomination of anti-human-rights judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Readers’ views: September-October 2020, part two
August 29, 2020Readers’ Views takes up: Queer safety is a human right; fake green politics; women in India; women in the U.S.; shameless evictions; voices from behind bars.
Queer Notes, September-October 2020
Camila Falquez’s photo manifesto of Trans and Queer Black and Brown people; the arrest in Poland of Transgender rights activist Małgorzata Szutowicz, and the rally to support her; Mexico City’s outlawing of conversion therapy; and a remembrance in Allentown, Pa., for 20 Black, Transgender and Indigenous people murdered for being who they were.
‘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.
Readers’ views: July-August 2020, part 2
Readers’ views on Methology and liberation; LGBTQ liberation; Worker-student victory; Immigrants and the court; Black August; and Voices from behind bars.
Queer Notes: July-August 2020
The relationship between the LGBTQ movement and Black Lives Matter develops through pride celebrations; Gay people face discrimination in Turkmenistan; and the death of Aimee Stephens, the Transgender woman at the center of the Supreme Court case on discrimination by gender identity and sexual orientation.
Being LGBTQ in the COVID-19 era
“Queer Notes” author Elise explains how the COVID-19 pandemic is hitting minority communities especially hard and that the LGBTQ community is no exception.
Queer notes: May-June 2020
May 3, 2020Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling against Peruvian government in favor of Trans woman Azul Rojas Marin; LGBTQ Asians fighting hate crimes; and a coalition of LGBTQ people demanding California enact the Emergency Transgender Wellness and Equity Fund.
Readers’ views, March-April 2020: Part one
March 17, 2020Readers’ views on climate struggles; labor struggles; racist politics; election contradictions; Modi’s Kristallnacht?; anti-abortion terror; rewriting history; and women and culture.
Queer notes, March-April 2020
Queer notes on youth in Vietnam; anti-LGBTQ actions at the University of Louisville; and the firing of two teachers at John F. Kennedy High School after announcing their engagements to same-sex partners.
The Power of Women’s Liberation in Mexico
March 10, 2020Participant report of women’s strike in Mexico City, March 9, 2020.
Queer notes, January-February 2020
January 22, 2020The death of Charlot Jeudy, president of Haiti Queer rights group Kouraj; anti-LGBTQ+ norms in Turkey; anti-Trans laws in India; and the largest-ever art exhibit about Southeast Asian LGBTQ+ people in Bangkok.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2020, Part One
Readers’ Views on Capitalism and climate; Mideast upheaval; Trump the Mullah?; war crime hero; Trump’s judges; detransition debate; and women’s liberation.
Queer Notes, November-December 2019
November 17, 2019Stabbing of a Palestinian Transgender teenager; vandalization of the Women and Children First bookstore in Chicago; a Shoreline, Wash. Christian school’s new policy stating the Bible is inerrant, and rainbow crosswalks in Ames, Iowa.
Stonewall at 50
September 1, 2019On the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, Elise reflects on the situation of LGBTQ rights today.
Readers’ Views, September-October 2019, Part 2
Readers’ Views on What is socialism?; Surviving the prison system; Women fight back; and Exploiting prisoners
Readers’ Views, September-October 2019, Part 1
Readers’ 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
LGBT: ‘Lives in Transition’
June 26, 2019The photographs and captions in Slobodan Randjelovic’s “Lives in Transition” exhibit show a Queer community that hopes, fears, desires, loves and struggles.
Women WorldWide: May-June 2019
April 23, 201930,000 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.
Queer Notes: March-April 2019
March 10, 2019Queer Notes on the Auckland Pride Festival; Denise Ho Wan-sze; two newly-elected Democratic governors making strides for Queer rights; and a history of Compton’s Transgender Cultural District in San Francisco.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2019, Part 2
February 3, 2019Readers’ Views regarding: Thought-diving into revolution in permanence; murky waters[ the Church and oppression; why read N&L; and voices from behind bars.
Review: ‘Lesbian Revolution’
January 24, 2019Adele reviews “The Lesbian Revolution: Lesbian Feminism in the UK 1970–1990,” by Sheila Jeffreys, the first book documenting the history of British Lesbian feminism.