Takes up: Transgender Day of Remembrance in Chicago; Russian LGBTQ+ activist Andrei Kotov; filmmaker of ‘Crossing’ not showing it in home country, Georgia; and the Constitutional Court of Lithuania striking down “anti-LGBT propaganda” law.

Takes up: Transgender Day of Remembrance in Chicago; Russian LGBTQ+ activist Andrei Kotov; filmmaker of ‘Crossing’ not showing it in home country, Georgia; and the Constitutional Court of Lithuania striking down “anti-LGBT propaganda” law.
With the gutting of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court has taken away a human right and stripped bodily autonomy from half the population. It is a giant step towards fascism. What is the answer to such an outrage? It is not the Democratic Party, who couldn’t even rid us of the Hyde Amendment.
With the gutting of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court has taken away a human right and stripped bodily autonomy from half the population. It is a giant step towards fascism. What is the answer to such an outrage? It is not the Democratic Party, who couldn’t even rid us of the Hyde Amendment.
Just before his release, Robert Taliaferro writes about the lack of resources for prisoners who leave prison. “They are left to their own devices to find housing, transportation, and jobs, even after decades of confinement. When they fail, the logistics of incarceration fire up again in lockstep to gladly welcome them back to the fold.”
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.
The worldwide protests over George Floyd’s murder and other protests of Republican-led policies led them to erode, stifle, obfuscate, erase from memory and repress democracy, passing laws to subvert elections and teaching. Republicans decided that democracy must be destroyed so that they can rule in perpetuity, representing the 1% in the name of white Christian America.
Black prisoner Robert Taliaferro critiques the attack on critical race theory, which he sees as helping “a nation to understand how far it has come, and how far it needs to grow, when it comes to issues of racial equality.”
In her book, Ijeoma Oluo discusses the serious damage caused when we expect white men to have all the leadership roles in a society. The damage is not only to women and people of color whose voices are not heard, and to society, which loses their input, but to white men themselves.
Concerned groups in Los Angles, Calif., held rallies and delivered a petition to LA District Attorney Jackie Lacey demanding she “Prosecute Killer Cops” or step down as DA.
Adele reviews “How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosures to Trump,” by Laura Briggs, which discusses “reproductive labor,” “the work necessary to the reproduction of human life.”
Puerto Rico is devastated by hurricanes, with climate change a factor, and by the administration’s racist malign neglect, atop an existing debt crisis the masses did not create. Real solidarity came from below. .
In-person reports of demonstrations in Chicago, Memphis, Oregon, Los Angeles and Halifax in Canada in solidarity with activists in Charlottesville, Va., fighting against neo-fascism and demanding to take down Confederate statues. .
An in-depth Marxist-Humanist view of the state of the women’s movement in the U.S. and worldwide as it responds to the rising fascism of U.S. President Trump and other world leaders.
Readers’ Views on: Racism and Revolt Put U.S. on Trial; Life and Death Under the Class Divide; Environmental Struggles; War and Atrocities; and Women’s Lives at Stake.
Many voices spoke at Chicago’s People’s Climate March.
On the 60th anniversary of News & Letters we discuss its philosophic basis and invite readers to participate.
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.
A roundup of women’s actions worldwide including: feminists jailed in China before International Women’s Day; the unfair and punitive jailing of Purvi Patel for having a miscarriage; the fightback against the increase in sexist, racist, homophobic and classist harassment in Sci-Fi fandom; and the women’s hunger and work strike against terrible conditions at the Karnes Detention Center in Texas for migrant women and children.
From the July-August 2014 issue of News & Letters
by Robert Taliaferro
Race has always been at the forefront of this nation since its founding. It seems ironic that the generation that produced the country’s first Black president is also the generation that is seeing the advances made in civil rights during [=>]