Takes up: Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination demanding mobility rights in South Korea; Disability Inclusive Community Building helping people in Kakuma Refugee Camp, in Kenya; and Autism Awareness Month in Mississippi, Malasya and South Africa.
On October 2025, the Rapid Support Forces, one of the factions waging war against the Sudanese people, took over the city El-Fasher, perpetrating genocide. This is the latest action in a three-year war which is causing the gravest humanitarian crisis of the 21st Century.
While immigrants suffer as winter settles in North America, the new year arrived without a Congressional bargain on immigration. Republicans not only demand harshly restrictive immigration measures but want to make Biden look bad by blocking accomplishments.
In October, the Pakistani government announced mass deportations for all migrants without papers by Nov. 1, mostly aimed at Afghans and causing great hardship. It decided on this mass expulsion mostly because of the deteriorating relations between Pakistan and the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan.
U.S. President Joe Biden simultaneously put in place a proposal different from Donald Trump’s Title 42 that required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their asylum hearing appointment. Biden used another of Trump’s laws: to require refugees to prove that they sought asylum in the first country they encountered. In both proposals human rights are trampled.
It is an atrocity that Bashar al-Assad was welcomed back to the Arab League Summit on May 19. This is one more attempt to bury the Syrian Revolution, which has heard its obituary pronounced again and again since the first mass demonstrations of Arab Spring, March 15, 2011.
After Cyclone Mocha devastated Rakhine State in Myanmar (Burma) on May 14, the National Unity Group representing civilian opposition and armed resistance reported 200 Rohingya Muslims had been killed as the storm hit with 130-mile-per-hour winds.
People are robbing banks in Lebanon as the only way to get to their own money. The economy has experienced a meltdown. Years of war, sectarian violence, and rampant corruption have led to extreme poverty for Lebanon’s citizens and thousands of Middle East refugees there.
Takes up: in a groundbreaking ruling a Tokyo Court ordered Juntendo University to compensate women because they were rejected from medical school which had tampered with their exam scores and set stricter requirements for women; women in refugee camps in Somalia created their own credit lending system; Sandbach High School’s feminist club in Cheshire, UK, launched a petition calling for the government to ban sales of school uniforms in sex shops and their use in porn videos; and the girls’ track team at Albany High School in New York launched a petition to “Stop Gender Biased Dress Codes: Allow the Girls Track Team to Wear Sports Bras.”
Readers’ Views on: Putin’s Brutal War on Ukraine; War on Yemen; Canadian Convoy; Trucks and Tribes; and Abortion Politics.
Demonstrations 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.
FiLiA 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.
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?
In Afghanistan the Taliban are murdering men who helped the U.S., UK, and other forces who fought them; and murdering and beating women and girls who have made even marginally independent lives for themselves. Yet, despite the terror, Afghans, especially women, continue to demonstrate against Taliban rule.
In Afghanistan the Taliban are murdering men who helped the U.S., UK, and other forces who fought them; and murdering and beating women and girls who have made even marginally independent lives for themselves. Yet, despite the terror, Afghans, especially women, continue to demonstrate against Taliban rule.
Neither the coronavirus nor the ongoing climate changes are merely “acts of nature.” Rather both have emerged at this moment because humanity is grounded—entrapped—in the economic-social-political system(s) of capital/capitalism. It is the behemoth that we must examine: the monster we must free ourselves from.
News & Letters interviews some of the Global Climate Strike participants.
Schoolchildren continue to hold Fridays for Future strikes weekly across the world, demanding “that governments immediately provide a safe pathway to stay within 1.5°C of global heating.” The Right’s attempts to co-opt this passion highlight capitalism’s contradictions and the need to center a liberatory direction.
Solidarity is needed with Central Americans seeking refuge and targeted by criminal policies of the Trump administration, with Mexico’s president knuckling under to Trump’s pressure.
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.
A Marxist-Humanist view of the 2018 U.S. midterm elections that highlights the illegitimacy of Trump’s rule, showing how it is the rule of a minority won because of anti-democratic voter suppression, gerrymandering, racism, sexism, extreme anti-immigration rhetoric, hate speech and lies. It highlights the other America that opposes such neo-fascism.
With disastrous consequences of climate change making themselves felt, both scientists and movements are pointing to the need for a radically different direction, but capitalism has blocked the way and even put a cult of climate denial in the White House.
University of North Carolina students and workers bring down statue of generic Confederate soldier; Swedish pro-asylum student Elin Errson prevents deportation of Afghan refugee; Iraqi youth and women protest unemployment, electricity shortages and lack of clean water.
Racist 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.
Through a view of his childhood as ethnic Chinese in Burma, Htun Lin takes up the plight of the Rohingya and the betrayal of democratic ideals by Aung San Suu Kyi.
Far Right racist parties have continued to make inroads into mainstream politics. 40,000 people marched in Austria against the new governing coalition of the anti-immigrant Austrian People’s Party and the neo-Nazi Freedom Party.
Since 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.
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. .
Recollection of voices from the April 13, 2017, Day of Action for Syria, in which the Women’s March movement came together with supporters of the Syrian people.
As the Trump administration ramps up deportations and related abuses, strikes, protests, and sanctuary cities are proliferating. The oppression of a lower caste of workers and the discrimination and violence faced by immigrants present a challenge to the Left, labor and the rest of humanity.
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.
Breaking news: participant report of New York protests against Trump’s anti-immigrant actions.
Htun Lin’s Workshop Talks column takes up his experience as a refugee from Burma to the U.S. and today’s plight of the Rohingya, who are experiencing ethnic cleansing at the hands of the state and Buddhist nationalists in Burma today.
Reports from the huge Women’s March from participants in Chicago, Ill., Detroit, Mich., Oakland, Calif., Nashville, Tenn., Memphis, Tenn., Los Angeles, Calif., and New York City.
Buddy Bell of Voices for Creative Nonviolence tells of their recent 150-mile walk across the state of Illinois on the issues of indefinite detention, solitary confinement and the racist U.S. prison system.
Workshop Talks columnist Htun Lin looks at the world situation from the massacre of LGBTQ people in Orlando to the murder of Jo Cox in Britain to Brexit and to how workers are reacting, suggesting that there is no exit from global capitalism without international labor solidarity.
Part IV of the Draft Perspectives 2016: The renewal of Syrian demonstrations for freedom refuted the state powers’ belief that the idea of revolution can be destroyed by bombs, and highlighted a civilizational crisis and the need for international solidarity.
Part II of the Draft Perspectives 2016: The worldwide war against women includes attacks on abortion rights, counter-revolution in Egypt, attacks on women by UN troops. Women celebrated International Women’s day in Turkey and other countries.
At the crux of the world refugee crisis is a demand for new human relations. The will to deny any responsibility for centuries of exploitation of Latin America and Africa is at the root of inhuman attitudes toward refugees, and it becomes an opening for the most reactionary politicians.
Readers’ Views on: Environment, Labor, Race and Philosophy; Queer Liberation; Black Lives Matter; Bolivian Social Movements; Trumpery’s Fascism & Racism.
Foregrounding the new formal solidarity between Trust Black Women with Black Lives Matter, we explore the thought and actions of women worldwide, including the struggle for reproductive justice in the U.S.; women fighting war and terrorism in places like South Sudan and Syria, the successful fight of domestic workers to organize, and the need to make the revolutionary content of such actions explicit.
California prisoners battle barbaric ‘justice’ system; Against ISIS attacks; Women under attack; Support Maati Monjib; The Burmese Way; Race, class & politics.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s slaughter of Kurdish civilians and activists is viewed in the context of world revolution and counter-revolution.
Putin found a formula: to participate in genocide while claiming to be fighting “terrorism.” This says everything about the nature of his retrogressive rule, and about the hypocrisy of the U.S. and Europe
Readers’ thoughts on “Srebrenica, Bosnia, 1995; Europe and the World, 2015”; “Struggles against Racism”; “After Cecil, People Are Next”; “Teachers and Children”; “Workers, Customers Pay.”
Although the Greek masses reject the austerity program imposed on them by the European institutions, Syriza inexorably took a path to capitulation because it is rooted in the search for state power rather than the power of mass self-activity.
From the signing of a nuclear weapons agreement by the U.S. and Iran, to the ongoing war in Syria including the roles of Turkey and of the Left, this wide-ranging article delves into the Middle East situation with an emphasis on the forces fighting for genuine freedom and a multi-ethnic society.
Worldwide, the refugee crisis is unprecedented and is fueled by war, terrorism and climate change. The worldwide response is paltry with country after country turning away or deporting frantic and desperate people in search of a safe haven.
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 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, [=>]
