Girls fight dress codes in Israel; mostly young high school women speak out and plan mass demonstrations against police abuse that arose after the murder of George Floyd.
racism
Detroit dispatch #7: art, protests and evictions
June 29, 2020Detroit dispatch #7 saw a multiplicity of daily Black Lives Matter protests, in both city and suburbs, illuminating revelations of and resistance against systemic racism. Art flourishes while evictions loom, Fiat-Chrysler workers walk out while speed-up of workers continues and social distancing and mask wearing fall by the wayside.
Outrage in San Francisco
May 31, 2020Since May 29, there have been ongoing demonstrations sparked by the outrage over the police murder of George Floyd. They spread throughout the many San Francisco Bay Area cities including ones not especially known for activism like Walnut Creek.
Sexism, racism and incarceration in Brazil
November 17, 2019A report on a forum with Brazilian Black women activists in San Francisco on sexism, racism and incarceration in Brazil.
Women as reason: Women, terrorism and misogyny
August 31, 2019Terry Moon traces the connection between mass shootings and the misogynistic, racist U.S. society. Hatred against women is so woven into the very fabric of our society that to get rid of it will take a revolution.
Editorial: Supremacists are ‘coming for you!’
After revelations of horrendous conditions at concentration camps for immigrants, hundreds of immigration-rights activists and workers rally in several parts of the U.S. against anti-immigration policies, far-right actions and militarization. The El Paso massacre underscores the threat. The true power of the pressure campaigns lies in their potential to open this path to both immigrant poultry workers and working-class Trump voters.
Trumpism aims to bleach the census
June 26, 2019The Trump administration’s attempt to manipulate the census could undercount some communities by 17% in an effort to calcify white minority rule.
World in View: Rise of Far Right threatens ‘Europe’
March 13, 2019The Far Right threatens to make significant gains in the European Parliament elections this May. What inheres within the “idea of Europe” that can destroy fascism as idea and reality is the humanism that became its internal critique, Marx’s humanism.
World in View: French ‘Yellow Vests’
January 28, 2019The uprising of the gilets jaunes (Yellow Vests) against French President Emmanuel Macron embodies the unity and brutal disunity of our time.
Essay: How dead thought failed Syrian revolution’s living history
The Syrian Revolution has been the physical and intellectual battlefield that defines our time. As early as 2012 it was clear that what happened in Syria would determine the next stage of world history.
The many forms of racism in the U.S.
December 2, 2018Prisoner Robert Taliaferro discusses how racism and xenophobia are alive and well in the U.S., and take many forms, both blatant and subtle.
Solidarity with Trans people under attack by Trumpism
October 28, 2018News and Letters Committees statement on Donald Trump’s latest attack on Trans people by trying to claim that the word “sex” in Title IX does not include them. Trump has chosen to dehumanize a group of people whose whole lives have often been fraught with brutal violence and discrimination, those who are Transgender.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Religion, racism and capitalist crisis
October 4, 2018With hate crimes, anti-Semitism, racism and anti-immigrant xenophobia on the rise, Israel’s “Jewish nation-state” law and fascism brewing globally, we excerpt two pieces addressing roots of these phenomena in capitalism’s crises.
What is freedom?
September 29, 2018A prisoner from Bellefonte, Penn., asks: “In America are we really free or are we going through an act, or through the motions?”
Readers’ Views, September-October 2018: Part 1
Readers’ Views takes up: attacks on immigrants; Syria and the Left’s failure; Democratic Party’s selling out women; Women’s Liberation; Serena Williams; ending money bail the right way; Trump-Kim “peace”; genocide and war heroes; and a discussion on sex crimes and their fallout.
Students in Vermont decry campus racism
May 10, 2018Report on a series of meetings at the University of Vermont (UVM) in Burlington on Feb. 13 and 14, 2018, of several hundred students who gathered to protest school administrators’ lack of response to campus racism and to support a UVM staffer who was on a hunger strike.
Voices From the Inside Out: ACCESS/KEEFE robs prisoners’ families
May 9, 2018Prisoner Robert Taliaferro writes of how the predatory company ACCESS/KEEFE is now the most expensive, convoluted and ONLY way Wisconsin prisoners can receive funds from external sources.
World In View: UK’s present racism
In April UK Prime Minister Theresa May and her Conservative government were forced to apologize for the racist persecution of Caribbean-born citizens.
III. The reality and the myth of contemporary capitalism
May 5, 2018We look at the world economic situation that must be changed: the role of state-capitalism, labor, climate change, the law of value, exploitation, alienation, and revolution and counter-revolution in Syria.
II. Spreading revolt opens new doors
May 3, 2018We look at the true opposition to Trumpism: mass revolt worldwide of women, youth, Black people, labor…–the context to work for new beginnings.
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2018-2019: Fighting Trump and his fascist allies in practice and theory
May 1, 2018Part I of the Draft Perspectives Thesis: Trump’s war show.
The real threat of war reflects Trump’s extremeness as a product of failing capitalism, which is not an aberration but an index of the nature of U.S. capitalist imperialism.
Students in Vermont decry campus racism
April 5, 2018Students demonstrate at the University of Vermont in Burlington over racial inequality on campus, calling for mandated diversity and equity training for university staff as well as increased recruitment and retention of faculty and staff of color.
World in View: Reaction rises in Brazil and Costa Rica
March 12, 2018Racist and homophobic politicians have moved from the fringes to contend for state power in Brazil. Fabricio Alvarado in Costa Rica and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil represent a further step down an anti-human path.
World in View: Libya and Italy chaos
On Feb. 7, 2018, many Libyans celebrated the seventh anniversary of the revolution that overthrew long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi. But the dictator’s toxic influence has outlived him.
Fight for $15 and labor’s full potential
March 8, 2018On Feb. 12, workers across the country marched in Fight for $15 demonstrations held to commemorate the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike and Dr. King’s visionary, multi-racial Poor People’s Campaign. It is a struggle to realize labor’s full potential.
#MeToo, Women’s Marches show the resistance deepens
Women have changed the world through an incredible and sustained activism based on a humanism that runs like a revolutionary red thread through an amazing array of actions, demonstrations and statements. This development is based on over 50 years of a movement that the founder of Marxist-Humanism, Raya Dunayevskaya, characterized as “Woman as Revolutionary Force and Reason.” .
Racist mine boss remembered
February 6, 2018Former coal miner Andy Phillips recalls his close friend Scoots Riley, “a big Black man” and his close friend, who worked with him in the mines and how Riley pranked their racist boss.
World in View: Australia’s castaways
February 2, 2018Since 2012 Australia has held around 2,000 refugees and asylum seekers in brutal detention camps. Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis, Uighurs, Rohingya and Kurds, thrown together, have been subjected to stress, violence, and rape.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2018, Part I
January 31, 2018Readers’ views on: U.S. Racism on trial, the right’s crocodile tears, creeping fascism, climate change, nuclear alarms, teachers as labor, Pat Hunt Presente! and Judy and Dan presente!
Editorial: Alabama Blacks beat Trump-Moore
January 28, 2018Black voters in Alabama, led by Black women, overcame blatant voter suppression—including discriminatory voter ID laws—to flood the polls and block Roy Moore from the Senate seat he expected that God would anoint him to.
World in View: U.S. ‘democracy’ enters crisis mode
November 16, 2017Trump-style neo-fascism has been gestating for decades, as seen in Reagan-era photos of Paul Manafort side by side with Lee Atwater, who in 1981 described the rhetoric of “tax cuts” as “abstract racism.” .
World in View: U.S. military in Africa
At least 358 civilians were killed and over 400 wounded in a truck bombing by al-Shabaab in Mogadishu, Somalia, Oct. 14, 2017.
Help Puerto Rico now
November 15, 2017In person report on a demonstration in Chicago in support of the people of Puerto Rico, and to demand the Trump Administration give them the help they need.
Voices from the inside out: Ferguson, Mo., at three
November 14, 2017Black prisoners ponder if Black Lives Matter, as a functional organized entity, can develop philosophically, and thereby become capable of generating something beyond a national discussion of U.S. racism?
Readers’ Views: November-December 2017, Part 1
November 12, 2017Readers’ Views on: Puerto Rico:Trump’s Katrina; LGBTQ in Australia; Transgender in Texas; Women’s Liberation; Racism in Canada; Detroit and “Detroit”; Labor and Robots; Haitian Revolt; Why Read N&L?; and a Correction.
Puerto Rico devastated by hurricanes, colonial exploitation, and Trump’s racism
October 1, 2017We condemn the racist response of the Trump administration to the desperate situation in Puerto Rico. What we are seeing there is nothing less than a physical and moral apocalypse.
Voices from the inside out: ‘Agreement to End Hostilities’ 5th anniversary
September 5, 2017Prisoner Faruq writes about the meaning of the fifth anniversary of the historic “Agreement to End Hostilities” that continues to challenge the racism imposed on prisoners in the California prison system and elsewhere. .
Rising U.S. racism challenges all freedom movements
September 2, 2017A Marxist-Humanist analysis of the history and meaning of the rising of the right-wing neo-Nazi white supremacist movement, its relationship to President Donald Trump and his administration, and its challenge to the freedom forces arrayed against it who are fighting for a humanist world. .
Fighting back against the rise of neo-Nazi hate
August 28, 2017In-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. .
Youth in Action, July-August 2017
July 6, 2017Youth in action in Bayonne High School in New Jersey, Independence, Mo., Venice High School in Calif., Vernon Township High School in New Jersey and in Charlotte, N.C.
Voices from the inside out: “I Am Not Your Negro”
Review by a prisoner of the companion book to the documentary film “I Am Not Your Negro” on James Baldwin, whose title speaks to the liberation of New Afrikan people in Amerika. .
Review: ‘I Am Not Your Negro’
June 5, 2017From a prisoner’s perspective, Faruq reviews “I Am Not Your Negro,” a documentary film and companion book produced by Raoul Peck that concentrates on the writings and life of James Baldwin.
I. Trumpism as an excrescence of world capitalism’s crises
May 17, 2017Trumpism’s self-perpetuating disorder is based on negation of social movements, trying to stifle the positive in their negation of this exploitative society. His deceit and power grabs express capitalism’s disintegration, exuding racism, sexism, and fascism.
Left’s blame game
May 2, 2017A reflection on the question “Where are all the women?” posed by a speaker at one of the several recent and massive immigrants’ rights marches in downtown L.A.
Youth In Action: May-June 2017
Students in Puerto Rico agitate against government slashing funds to higher education; classmates and parents of high school student Hunter Bailey, who committed suicide, protest memorials to him being destroyed by his high school’s superintendent; students of North Carolina’s Salem College sit in demanding diversity training; students of the University of North Texas successfully rallied for the university to become a sanctuary campus.
Trump won’t smash Assad’s genocidal regime—support the Syrian Revolution!
April 9, 2017Assad’s chemical attack on civilians reveals the lie the world has been living. Trump’s limited counterstrike was a response to the unprecedented mass opposition to him, not an abandonment of his counter-revolutionary agenda. It is crucial to take the living freedom struggles in Syria and globally as our basis, to oppose the lie that “there is no alternative,” and to clarify what we are for, not just against.
Essay: Marx’s Marxism vs. Trump-Putin’s barbarism
March 21, 2017Trump’s barbarism in power is a crisis for bourgeois democracy and revolutionary thought. Opposition from below is far deeper than bourgeois opposition to Trump. To have efficacy today, Marx’s body of ideas must be grasped and projected as a whole. The movement from theory needs to meet the challenge of history, of freedom struggles and revolution.
Mass rallies denounce Trump and defend immigrants: Los Angeles
March 16, 2017Los Angeles youth march against the xenophobic deportations of Mexicans, Muslims and undocumented workers by Trump.
News and Letters Committees Call for Plenum 2017
February 26, 2017Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2017-2018
Youth in Action, January-February 2017
February 3, 2017Student journalists at the University of Kentucky targeted for publicizing a professor’s sexual misconduct towards a student; protests against racism at Cornell University; Maryland middle school students’ creative protest against sexist dress codes; Fees Must Fall Movement in South Africa continues shutting down Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.